Very good point, and you’re absolutely right. Look at history: starting in 1992, conservatives dug their heels in and didn’t stop aiming vicious invective at the Clinton administration until … hmm, now that I think about it, they never really stopped, did they? Even today, on message boards throughout the land (including this one), there ain’t nothin’ wrong with the country that certain vitriolic conservatives can’t blame on Clinton’s weenie.
Seriously, I can’t say I find it all that surprising that a message board devoted to intelligence and truthseeking leans leftward. Maybe y’all who are leaning in the opposite direction oughtta take that as a hint?
<numbering mine>
Well, if you don’t open the threads, y’know?
was met with howls of derision.
is a perfectly normal debate on wasteful products with a slightly hyperbolic title.
was actually a fairly carefully worded OP which nonetheless got jumped on.
is a thread in election season - what do you expect?
was roundly derided from all sides.
is questioning the sort of hysteria of some anti-Bush types (did you even read these threads?).
was mocked by several and ignored by most.
seems entirely reasonable given that the White House had asked them to be left alone while simultaneously campaigning for Bush.
also seems not unreasonable, and is far from “radical” left-wing speculation - this perspective is all over the media.
In short, the titles are items for debate. They are frequently hyperbolic, and generally are not intended to be taken literally. If you open the threads, a whole world lies therein. And if they are meant literally, as in 1), the answer tends to be an emphatic “no, you tit.” This ought to be all that is required.
Sam Stone, why do you think that GD has more and more threads lately that show anger toward the President and his administration? I’m not saying that you are wrong; I’m asking for your opinion on why so many people seem to have shifted positions.
I’d like to know why my thread is a “conspiracy theory.” It’s gives data and examples as to a fairly significant negative element of the current Bush campaign, to which Sam’s only contribution was to say “nah nah, well Kerry is negative a lot too” which has no real bearing on anything. Coupled with the fact that he apparently didn’t even read the threads at the center of his own kvetch, I guess now I know why.
Yes, there have. I was kidding- however I think the threads have mostly been asking questions. What I was trying to say was that if this was really a radical left message board, the threads would all be about how the Bush administration murdered this guy and then faked the video of his execution.
In any case, I agree with majority here. The political explanations seem on target, and it’s true that thread titles only reflect the opinions of the people posting starting the topics, not the general tenor of the board.
I think what Sam Stone is saying is that he’s tired of “Bushco” rants, and so am I. SDMB is a left leaning forum. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, it’s just the truth. So when anti-Bush topics appear in GD it becomes less of a debate and more of a place where people chant “amen!”
I speculate that since SDMB attracts the academic type, and academic types tend to be liberal, that’s why they’re the majority here. Why academics are liberal is a whole 'nother great debate. Maybe I’ll go start one. Nah, someone else will do it.
Sam, like the Fringe of the Edinburgh Festival, I suspect your idea of “left” actually makes the fringe constitute more than the core itself, in this case encompassing most of the industrialised democratic world.
GD is now has significantly international input, as you yourself exemplify. The US currently sits far to the right of the rest of the industrialised democratic world. I might agree that there is far too much partisan squabbling in GD, but its overall political orientation is, I feel, accuratel representative.
Naw, Sam is an ardent conservative who isn’t afraid to speak his mind here on the SDMB and take the verbal abuse that’s flung by the likes of you and Guin and a host of other leftists. You’ve just confirmed my deep suspicions that the main reason people got upset with December was his strident conservative views.
So fucking cliche now. Twice used against Lib by Guin that I’ve come across recently. I guess you “liberals” only like free speech as long as it ain’t conservative.
Iraq has been THE big issue in American politics since about October of 2002. And the Administration’s policy (if one can even call it a policy) in Iraq jumped the shark ages ago. So the debating points on The Big Issue of The Year are all on one side (as even a passel of conservative pundits have acknowledged, by jumping ship on Iraq), and needless to say that’s had an effect on the overall feel of GD in terms of lefty-rightiness.
Ummm, no, december annoyed me because he invariably refused to accept that his world view or facts could ever be wrong, despite sometimes overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and made nasty, backhanded insinuations about the anti-American and/or self-hating Jewish motivations of posters who disagreed with him, assertions which were unsupported by the facts.
You know, I lean to the left by American standards (which probably makes me a dead centrist by European standards), but there are plenty of conservatives whose opinions I can respect. Heck, some of my best friends are conservatives. But the conservatives I count among my friends are the ones who respect me in turn, because they understand that reasonable, informed people can have divergent approaches to issues, and it doesn’t mean that any of them is stupid or blind.
And hey, if this board leans to the left (which I’m not necessarily saying it does – how would one approach a study of the political leanings of a message board in a scientific manner anyway? Aren’t there too many uncontrolled, and uncontrollable, variables?), it just provides a nice counterbalance to a lot of the mindless right-wing drivel in the media. And anyway, aren’t there a bunch of Republicans out there these days saying GWB isn’t a real conservative, because he’s spending too much money on government programs?
But once it’s been decided that you’re the “new December”, it doesn’t really matter what you say, because people will invent their own meanings around everything you say and attack you for them. For instance, in this thread Guinistasia told me to fuck off for saying that “Liberal” is a bad word - something I never said, and I didn’t even use the word “Liberal” in the OP. Or rjung, that model of civil humanity, came along and berated me for ‘martyring’ myself - when I never claimed any such thing. I simply posted a pit thread describing how many wacky threads there happened to be at one time in GD.
Yesterday in GD I posted a reasonable message about pollution standards in the U.S., and linked to studies about SO2 emissions. And got accused of claiming that “pollution = good”.
Once you’ve been Decembered, it no longer matters what you say, because if you don’t say something that drives the thought police mad, they’ll invent something, put it in your mouth, and attack you for it.
Isn’t it funny that leftists claim to be all about openness, understanding others, compassion, free speech, and all that, but there are so many on this board who like to shout down conservatives, call them names, and run them out of town on a rail for speaking their minds? Awfully enlightened of them.
And that is the worst reason in the world to vote for anyone. That’s how Clinton and Carter got elected. Remember the disasters their Presidencies were.
Besides, you haven’t answered the question posed to you by more than one here: did you even read the threads in question? If you had, you certainly wouldn’t have included the “President Bush Wants to Become a Dictator?” thread.
