The very thread you quoted earlier was an excellent example. After Bricker argued you into the ground on an issue related to Jesus-as-Messiah, you refused over and over and over to acknowledge his points (it looked as if you didn’t comprehend them). I and others suggested to Bricker that he was wasting his time arguing with you. He acknowledged our advice, and left the thread, even saying that he recognized you would have the last word. Polycarp came in a couple days later and posted something interesting, but certainly not something that proved Bricker wrong and you right.
So what did you do? You declared victory!
Nobody in their right mind would count that as a victory for you, but that’s what you did. Making the last post doesn’t count as a victory. Hell, counting victories doesn’t count as a victory in my book; it counts as pathetic and missing the point of a discussion.
On the contrary: as Bricker mentioned, he changed his mind re: gay marriage based on discussions on this board, and he admitted in another thread that I’d given a specific example of Bush lying about the reasons for the War in Iraq. I’ve found him to be one of the most honorable people on the boards in regards to evaluating evidence and arguments put before him and changing his mind based on such arguments. The fact that he’s very, very good at constructing counterarguments doesn’t make him a weasel; in fact, if he lacked either the honor to admit when he’s wrong or the wit to argument like a sumbitch, he’d be no fun to argue with.
In this regard, I hold him as a model for other posters and for myself; I’m not as good at acknowledging my own errors as I’d like to be, to put it mildly.
But this is not an area where you may justly criticize him.
Aw, supercrap. I shoulda put a quote tag in before “The Highwayman” in the post above. Could a kindly Mod fix it for me? Or could a kindly other poster report it for me?
Geez, Scott Plaid, where do you get the idea that answering equals winning? If you think that just because you’ve answered someone’s point, you have proved them wrong, you really do misunderstand debate. You have to make a better point! And as has been said here already, you are frequently so completely incoherent that it is impossible to even tell what the point is.
OK, now I’m terrified. Did you have to, like, pass a test or anything?
Scott: This thread is twice as long as it was when I last visited it. I have one more piece of unsolicited advice for you. Take a break from the board. Stop posting right now and don’t post for a month, no matter how badly you want to, no matter how righteous you feel, no matter who insults you. What does it matter anyway? You don’t have to answer ever post directed at you; your time could be spent in ways that are far more valuable to you (like reading Strunk & White).
After a few weeks, once this thread is dead, maybe you could lurk, read the GD threads and see how other people write. Then come back with a fresh mind when everyone has somewhat forgotten about this whole mischegas. Try to post more questions than screeds. Most of the posters in GD are older, more educated and/or informed, and more articulate than you. If you want to duke it out with them in a meaningful way, you need to have the tools to do so. Being right just ain’t enough.
I hope you will take my advice and leave this thread now. It’s only digging you deeper, probably makes you feel bad, and isn’t leading to anything productive anymore. Let it go, and come back in a little while. I think this will very salutary for you. Feel free to disregard this advice, though I offer it out of genuine concern.
In fairness, you and I disagree about the Iraq war, but not about much else. That issue is, to be sure, the number 1 hot button for a lot of people here, but it is just one issue.
After thinking a bit more about this pitting, I would like to comment on this topic.
I realised in the last several hours that I have never spent more than one or two posts in a Bricker thread–the reason for that being that any time I have seen a thread which he enters, it seemed like suddenly the entire board turned off its collective brain and gathered to insult him. I would check back later, and he would be diligently returning comments–still entirely peacably (for a debate) and very well spoken. For which, the only response he could seem to get back in return was, “Yes I know you think that, but you’re wrong.” “Why am I wrong? I have good evidence that X, Y, and Z are true, and those all point to Alpha.” “What do you mean, ‘Why am I wrong?’–you’re wrong because you’re BRICKER.”
Personally, I had no desire to step anywhere near a thread where such blatant bullying and ignorance was being practiced–and slowly, I have begun to not open threads I knew Bricker is in.
Besides insulting Bricker, you and Highwayman and any others that were in that pack (I didn’t note the names) are destroying the level of intelligence on the board itself.
You yourself are forcing the board to lose its greatest ability to maintain a varied and wide-ranging scope of opinions and values: And assuming you are against religion due to such issues as indoctrination and forcing all people to share a common idea that cannot be argued with and must be right–then you are repeating the same fallacies as those religions. The only difference is that here, The Democratic Party according to Scott Plaid is your inviolate god.
^ Is point 1
Point 2 ->
You personally feel that GW Bush is evil, while personally I think he’s an idiot. The difference being that an evil person is truly malevolent and goes out to do mischief in the world just because it makes him feel strong. An idiot, however, doesn’t question anything he believes, he doesn’t allow the possibility that anyone else’s ideas could be correct (unless they are the same as his own), and he ignores all evidence that is contrairy to what he has already decided off in his own little world.
These traits of Mr. Bush which leave me entirely unimpressed with him, if you look at them, are the exact same ones that everyone has been flaming you about for three pages.*
Sage Rat,
I am having difficulty determining who the “you” in post 171 is. I assume that it is Scott Plaid- but only because it makes more sense when I read it that way than the way I first did. (I first read it with LHOD as the you, since you were responding to comments by him, but it just didn’t make sense.) Still, I encourage you to clarify the matter.
If I am not mistaken, you are an atheist, and I am a Christian. And I believe atheism is or was another hot button for Scott Plaid. Although, as Liberal points out, Scott Plaid seems to have achieved a more moderate stance on the topic. That’s part of why I am agreeable to the “questions only” idea. Maybe he (and I!) can back off a bit from our other hot button topics.
I had myself suspended from the SDMB for a month a while back, and AFAICT it helped a bit. Maybe I need more
If Scott P suggests someone else as rational, I’m open to suggestions. Maybe some fair-minded leftie. Excalibre? Left Hand of Dorkness?
If Scott Plaid is interested. I don’t want to push the idea if it isn’t going to help, or if he is unwilling.
Sage Rat - what you say has a great deal of truth to it. Unfortunately, the other part of it you mention - the reluctance even to open threads if Bricker is posting to them - tends to reinforce the pile-on that the Usual Suspects tend to employ on those they find ideologically disagreeable.
The other half of it being something I see. Bricker is so obviously winning the argument that I don’t usually bother the hamsters by posting points he has already made. Which rather leaves the burden of the debate only to him - and the burden of dealing with the snarking and other unfair attacks to him as well.
Then, when he finally runs out of interest in reposting the same arguments to yet another persistent dolt, the thread trails off - and whichever dolt posted last to it is reinforced in the notion that he has countered Bricker’s arguments in some meaningful way, simply by being the last in a tag-team. I don’t think I need mention any names.
Heh–I was pretty shocked, too, when I first read the “you” in that post, thinking, “Huh? What’ve I done?”
But I think you’re right: I’m pretty sure Sage was referring to Scott, not me.
Thanks, tom, for fixing my coding; thanks, Contrapuntal, for reporting the post so it’d get fixed; thanks, Shodan, for including me among the fair-minded lefties; and thanks, caffeine, for finally enabling me to wake up this morning.
It’s not a matter of thick. I think it’s simply that Scott wants very much for people to know that he does not like “boy bands.”
As for all the rest of this . . . as I’ve said, I do believe that Scott will take a lot of these criticisms on board once he’s over his anger. He has indeed, as Liberal once pointed out, shown an ability to change and grow. I hope he maintains it.
I have to wonder, though, if he thinks me a conservative, a Republican, a religionist, or a Christian. Scott?
I’m listening to Gladys Knight and the Pips at the moment. Contrary to what you may think, Gladys Knight is not actually a knight at all. She’s a famous Motown singer, popular during the 60s and 70s. “Motown” is a record label that popularized such other artists as the Temptations and Marvin Gaye. The Motown label had a distinct pop R&B style, and were named after a well-known nickname for the city of Detroit, “Mo” being short for “motor” and referencing the city’s importance in automobile manufacture.
Except most people know this already. And the few people who don’t probably don’t care that much. In fact, chances are good that no one cares what music I’m listening to anyway. Why do you think that people care what music you listen to when it’s not the topic of discussion, and that many people are unaware of who the Pet Shop Boys are, given that they’re quite popular?
Man, the first time I noticed you, Siege (who is a liberal Christian) and I (an unabashed atheist) agreed on just how frustrating it is to have someone decide to represent ones viewpoint and do so in an embarrassing way. No one appreciates your poor attempts to push your viewpoint, but I think it’s probably true that those of us who share many of the same views - like me, a liberal, gay atheist - are more irritated, because when you argue an issue like gay marriage, it makes it look worse.
I don’t even want to speculate on why Liberal said that (I was pretty surprised at the time, actually.) But if you’re clinging to one person’s opinion when so many other people - of all stripes - find you so irritating, maybe you should reevaluate that. Having one fan and a thousand enemies is not something to be proud of.
How telling.
I like Bricker, quite a bit in fact, though I’ve gotten pissed at him in the past. Hopefully he’s willing to forgive my more obnoxious moments. Admittedly, I find his political views to be pretty far from mine; I can’t even wrap my head around his devotion to strict constructionism. But I like Bricker just the same, because even if he’s never changed my mind on any issue, he’s consistently given me interesting things to think about. I like hearing other points of view, and when they’re argued as articulately - even eloquently - as Bricker’s, it’s a pleasure to hear them.
The fact that you would consider yourself some sort of fair counterpart to him is, as I said above, telling. Sometimes I seriously can’t tease out what you’re trying to say. Even when I can, it actually makes me a bit embarrassed about my own politics, because I don’t like to see my views argued so badly. Apparently you can’t even appreciate how much better Bricker comes off in an argument than you do - you just don’t have the capacity to see that. So while Bricker is a frustration, it’s the frustration of arguing with someone who is so damn good at it. You’re frustrating because talking to you is like arguing with a tree - impervious to logic, reason, or even fact. Except that in this case the tree talks way too much.
