DoctorJ: I sincerely thank you for that. And let me respond by saying there are an awful lot of posters on this board that, while they may disagree with conservatives vehemently, limit their disagreements to the subjects being discussed and don’t resort to name calling and boorish behaviour. elucidator and Mr. Svinlesha come to mind, as well as yourself. If more posters on both sides of the aisle were like that, we might actually have a chance to fight ignorance in Great Debates, rather than just retreating into our respective bunkers and hurling epithets at each other.
And as a purely strategic matter, treating your opponents with respect is the best way to get them to see your point of view. Calling people names may feel good, but it just hardens people’s positions.
Oh, thank goodness. I was getting worried that we’d be able to make it all the way through a whole page in a Pit thread without someone speculating where Bush would have come down in World War II.
To me, this is evidence in Sam’s favor. You’d either have to be delusional or totally unexposed to the opposition to believe that there aren’t even arguments against your subjective opinion on Iraq.
As for the OP, I think the SDMB leans left. And sometimes it’s frustrating to see perfectly odious posts get a free pass just because they use the word “Bushco” or whatever. But I don’t come here for those posts. I come here for the thoughtful opposition that forces me think about and revise my own positions.
This isn’t an easy place to be a vocal conservative. But if it was, it wouldn’t be worth checking out.
The “co” is short for “corporation”, not “administration”. It’s used to liken the administration to a private business. I suppose it’s a way to emphasize what the people who use it see as the Bush administration’s too tight ties to private industry. It seems derogatory in intent, though rather mild.
Unless they develop a reputation that deserves the treatment you specify. And you most certainly have developed such a reputation…
As the author of the OP which you are quoting frequently here and as I said to you in the thread, the single point of data on SO2 that you introduced was not relevant to the OP. I called you on the fact that this is something which you have a propensity to do, going off on tangents that have nothing to do with the OP.
You’re also prone to misinterpreting statements made, putting made-up words into people’s mouths, taking quotes out of context, repeatedly using the same or similar data that has been disproven to you in the past and attempting to insert your opinion that “Bush is good, Clinton was bad” into many threads.
For example, using the thread referred to above:
This excerpt was part of my reply to you where you took a quote RedFury drew from a cite he provided on Bush’s poor environmental record and in which he was “unimpressed” that your statement that America was “one of the cleanest countries around” (without any cites to back you up).
So then you jumped on the quote that RedFury had provided and went off in a new direction of your own where you started trying to compare EPA standards for “hazardous levels” [smog or soot] now to back in 1980! Huh? I then told you that it didn’t matter what the standards were then, only what they are now and furthermore, as is usual with you, that you were wandering far off course. But no, this wasn’t enough for you. Digging yourself further into a hole, you then reply and throw in a nonsense statement about comparing air quality in the administrations of your favorite subject (Bush vs. Clinton)!
Another thread where you AGAIN had to be corrected on points that had been made previously in other threads was How’s the economy doing?. In this one, you tried to change the date the last recession started and showed that you hadn’t paid any attention to past discussions on how job numbers were calculated by the BLS. You were called on your misstatement’s by multiple people.
As a Canadian, you have a lot to say about our economy and politics, but precious little to say about events, the economy or politicians in your own country. When this point was brought out in some thread which I don’t feel like searching for, I recall someone saying that when pressed on this in the past, your reply was to the effect that all your own politicians “suck”.
All of the above (and much more that I don’t have the interest or time to research) contribute to why so many feel you are full of shit. I personally know that as soon as you enter a thread, it is virtually guaranteed that it will go off in unrelated directions and that you will be called on the carpet at least once (and usually more) for taking things out of context.
To be fair most of those who have had ‘invaders’ remorse’ abot Iraq still say that it was a good idea at the time, just that durned WH screwed up the implementation of the noble and beautiful visions of petal strewn streets.
Personally, I think that the red flag was when the criteria used to make the case for the invasion of Iraq were fulfilled more fully by other countries. That’s when it became obvious to me that the case for the invasion was a snow job. In part, this’s why there’s been so much speculation about the ‘Real Reason(s)’ for the war.
I mean think about it, the fact that that meme even exists says a lot. It implies that there is a real yet notably untold reason for the invasion.
And given the 27 some odd rationales for the invasion that have glommed onto one another over the months to form a congealed, amorphous blob of BS, who can blame us, the electoral foot soldiers, for having some doubts and seeking the ‘Real Reason’?
Many attack-Iraq-Bush-backers have, in fact, (treacherously and ‘treasonously’ so IMHO), declared that it is acceptable for the gov to thwart the electorate’s right to deny consent to be governed by means of mendacity. A horridly loathesome and fundamentally unAmerican, (if not anti-American), position to take. YMMV.
Wow. So it’s open season on Sam then, huh? I have made the grave error of developing a ‘reputation’ so vile that it’s fire at will? Have you cleared this policy with the mods, then?
It’s nice that just when I was thinking that maybe some of the posters here have a point and I am over-stating things a bit, you come along and make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
Just wanted to point out that if someone had said “leave-Iraq-Kerry-backers” were treacherous, treasonous, and held “horridly loathesome and fundamentally unAmerican” ideas, then they would have been shouted down already. But since this was said about conservatives, the obvious comparisons to McCarthyism will be notably absent.
Originally, I thought both “Bushco” and “Bushista” were kind of clever and funny. But much like “Slick Willy” in the 90s, the phrases ceased to be clever long, long ago. Now, like a protest sign bearing the word “Halliburton,” they merely stand as a symbol that the poster lacks the imagination of original thought, and instead sees the world in cartoonish simplicity.
It’s not like the people that use the word “Bushco” referred to the Clinton Administration as “Clintonco” or the Carter Administration as “Carterco.” In fact, “Bushco” has a very distinct meaning. It seems to indicate that the poster believes that business organizations are inherently bad, and that the mere addition of “Co.” to something shows that it is evil. It shows that the poster believes that corporations are themselves evil. It shows that the poster has not realised that the left has corporate ties, too. It’s a blaring sign that the poster has allowed personal animosity to cloud his/her judgment. It indicates that the poster believes in a caracature of the Bush Admin as making decisions based solely upon the interests of cigar-smoking corporate cronies, who in turn are interested solely in profits. And I have a hard time taking people who believe that stuff seriously.
If people have a point, I invite them to make it. If they can make it in an interesting and creative way, I will be much more likely to pay attention to them (for example, nearly every post by elucidator). But if they cloud their posts with needless invective and corny and overused wordplay like it’s the most clever thing in the world, then I run the risk of missing their points because I’m so busy rolling my eyes and groaning.
Mega-dittoes! :dubious: Just kidding. Me too! I had been thinking GD politics were pretty normal. I guess to a reactionary, however, they might seem a little left of center.
I tried to encourage Sam to express his opinion, but I was ignored. I will try again with the same question:
Sam, can’t you see the irony in a series of comments that begins by telling others to “lay off” and ends with a complain about those who try to “squelch opposing viewpoints”?
“Fringe” implies a group with marginal or extremist views. (See Webster’s.) Right now a fairly large part of the country opposes President Bush. I don’t see you making any real distinction between mainstream Democrats and the " fringe left." Anyone who is a Democrat and finds George W. Bush to be a detriment and danger to this country seems to be in this fringe group. Choose whatever word you like, but care in word choice would go a long way in clarifying your points.
This is where you get into trouble, Sam. If a march of 15,000 people is “massive,” what do you call a march of 750,000 people?
Almost right. Maybe not a liar – just gullible or careless. Try to find unbiased sources, Sam. Or sources which present both sides.
An idea which no one had proffered.
No. Those kinds of generalizations about motives indicate that you know you are losing ground. You can’t know another person’s motives for certain. But your speculation is irrational. Speaking only for myself, when a Conservative or a Republican expresses an idea with which I agree, I would not dream of objecting! More likely than not, I would want her or him to run for Vice President.
Call me crazy but I’ve never seen Sam be anything but polite, even in the face of being unnecessarily attacked. I’m certainly willing to be shown that I’m wrong.
Does anybody but me seem amused that those folks who seem to believe that if a certain thing wins out in the marketplace, this proves it is inherently superior somehow seem to not believe this to be the case in the “marketplace of ideas” that is this message board?
I think the reason that things are going so badly for conservatives here on the SDMB is because events are making it quite clear how badly some of their ideas are working out. And, as they get more and more desperate, I have noticed as a result an increase in unsourced statements by conservatives, such as the OP, that turn out to be wildly inaccurate. (I am thinking, for example, of recent claims that the demonstrations against the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan were as big or bigger than demonstrations against the invasion of Iraq.)
That said, I will certainly admit that some of the threads in Great Debates can be over the top. And, as has been noted here, those of us on the left wing side have not blindly agreed, for example, with the notion that Bush really wants to become dictator. In fact, in one of my posts to that thread, I stated this disagreement in bold type while trying to turn the thread to more realistic appraisal of the ways in which the Bush Administration has done things that I believe undermine the full, free, and honest discourse that is necessary for a democratic society to function well.