Well, that’s fair. I’ll allow that at present, violent crazy is being heard more from the right, in ways that I find shocking.
Aside from president, senator is pretty much the highest, most serious office someone can run for. Not only did this apparent fringe candidate win a primary for senator, but she got 45% of the vote. How does a fringe candidate, someone that only the loonies support, very nearly win the eletion?
To be clear - I don’t like the way this works. I hate that our electoral system becames a race to see who can get the biggest chunk of the pie. But the reality is that Harry Reid was a powerful, long serving, influential Senator who brought a lot back to Nevada. Angle would be weak and possibly ostracized. Reid brought in the pork and special treatment (Yucca Mountain for example) into Nevada and people who vote in purely their own self interest recognize and vote on that basis. Reid could bring way more to Nevada than Angle could, and that influences the voting.
You’re right, I should’ve looked up the numbers first. My personal experience distorts this one for me. I argue a lot on skepticism related topics like conspiracy theories, so I run into a lot of True Believers in… everything. Almost all of these people will believe any conspiracy you throw their way. And of that group, there’s a surprising amount of political diversity.
You’re right, though, I’m wrong on that one. I was thinking more in terms of the actual proponents who are out there promoting the ideas, rather than just what mostly disinterested people would say if they were asked.
Why would you point to just them? The right on this board contends that this board is overwhelmingly liberal, right? So you could pick the most reasonable people from the majority of the board - no reason you have to jump right for the most hard headed.
I’m saying you represent the intellectual right on this board, and I was asking if your counterparts on the left would make as ridiculous a defense as you stated with a straight face on the issue of second amendment remedies.
I don’t. I mean, if the question is “has the left always been perfect?” then that would be relevant. I’ve not defended any position remotely like that though and you keep trying to feed these straw men at me. For practical purposes I’m only interested in what’s going on now. Who can I vote for? What is the political climate and rhetoric doing to our social cohesion? Saying the left had some loonies in the 60s doesn’t practically offset the idea that republican candidates are afraid to, for example, say that the earth is billions of years old.
Well, I appreciate that. So many here just say “yeah sure we have Rush/Beck but you have Olberman/Limbaugh so all is even!”
I agree that anti-nuke activists are definitely a black mark on the left and you won’t see me argue against a group any harder. Cindy Sheehan you’ll have to explain - I’m not especially familiar with her other than that her son died in Iraq and she became a war protester. Is she a nut with huge support and I’m not aware of it? Asking honestly, I have no idea.
9-11 truthers I already conceded. I don’t know how much of that is purely disinterested partisanship - by which I mean people who don’t really have strong feelings about it but would answer in a way that attacked/defended their side reflexively.
The trade protesters - you’re right, violent protest is generally bad. I thought a lot of the violence in this case was caused by self-identified anarchists - are those part of the left to you?
It’s not just Trump. Palin, obviously. Newt Gingrich winked and danced around the issue in a way that was pretty suggestive. Huckabee talks about Obama’s perspective because he grew up in Kenya. They’re all afraid to outright deny it because the majority of republican primary voters are birthers. And even the ones not promoting birtherism are afraid to deny it.
To use our comparison, I don’t think the democratic presidential candidates in 2004 believed Bush was behind 9/11 or were at least too afraid to deny that he was.
The invasion of Iran wasn’t all that kooky an idea. He labelled them as part of the Axis of Evil, and ironically Iran was actually doing the stuff that we supposedly invaded Iraq for. It would’ve actually been more ideologically consistent with the Bush Doctrine to invade Iran rather than Iraq.
As for whether he’d cancel the next election, I don’t recall that ever being a serious discussion, just an off-hand suggestion by kooks.
What does happen a lot is that when somewhere here says “the republican base is absolutely ape-shit about Obama”, someone else will say “yeah well the left said a lot of bad things about Bush too!” - again with the “all sides are equal” bullshit.
But the discussion was about birtherism, status as a secret muslim, a communist, etc. People absolutely hated Obama from the first time they ever heard of him. The anti-Obama sentiment began before anyone even knew what his stances were. I remember it in 2007 - there was so much fury and hatred towards him before he’d ever even really done anything at all.
Then people will say… yeah, well, a few years into Bush’s term, a lot of people hated him! But… those people actually hated what he did and what he stood for. They hated Iraq. They hated the Patriot Act. They hated actual policies and things that Bush did. They didn’t have to make shit up, or exaggerate - there was legitimate grounds for criticism.
But if you go by “all sides are always equal” partisan apologist bullshit, you’d think birtherism and secret muslimism were offset by opposition to the Iraq war.
If this is true - and I’m not conceding it is - it’s actually because I’m more ideologically opposed to the left. That sounds strange, I realize - but think about it. I want someone to represent a sane, intelligent, rational, well-meaning conservative position. Because I was libertarian-leaning, I felt more identified with the right. So it bothers me more that they’ve gone fucking batshit and no longer represent anything remotely like what they claim they represent. It means I have no ideological allies - if you buy into the practical reality of a two party system, I either have to choose between democrats who I generally disagree with ideologically but who I can at least recognize are doing their best to make the country better, even if I think they’re often wrong - or republicans, who give lip service to the things I agree with, but who in practice don’t actually try to accomplish these things, and more damningly, no longer really seem to be doing their best to make the country better.
So in that way, I may be more sensitive and critical from the right. Because I’m more personally angry at the republican party moving away from something I could ever support, and I’m angry that people like you let it happen because you don’t have the integrity to stand up and say “ok, enough is enough, let’s stop catering to the crazies”
But I don’t think that bias is distorting my perception much. My personal experience is that the current right is far more outspoken and radical than the left was during my adult life (2000 on). And this includes 2000-2003 or so, when I was firmly anti-democrat. If the left was being as crazy in those years as the right is now, I’d have been just as sensitive to it, if not more so. But while there was criticism out there, it was usually based on actual real things to criticize, not made up shit. And it just wasn’t so loud.
I encounter people ALL THE FUCKING TIME in public who feel the need to tell me about how Obama and Pelosi are ruining the country. I get right wing chain e-mail with absolute bullshit from friends and family all the fucking time. In my daily life I need to hear about how EVERYTHING IS BEING DESTROYED OMG!!! The current right is far more loud with far less substance than the left was even during the worst of the Bush years.
Incidentally, who are my “bretheren” here?
I think there was enough argument in that original thread submitted that you could not have reasonably been ignorant of the fact that Angle was a kook and meant what she obviously meant. You chose to keep defending your original position despite this, but it must’ve caused a lot of embarassment. You often say stuff that’s borderline bullshit but you say it well so people give you a pass - but this particular argument was so out of line, so fucking whacky, that even people who generally take your side started saying “uh dude… nuts”
So I’m guessing at the time you were so invested in defending it that you doubled down and refused to budge - but when the issue was raised here, months later, you weren’t quite so impassioned and rigid about it, so you latched onto the excuse to change your views as to not be embarassed again.
It’s true that I’m guessing at your motivations, but while I do think it’s possible that you just skimmed over the quote, I’m not sure it’s possible that you couldn’t have really come to realize what a nut Angle was considering all the debate about it in that thread.
I do think you are concerned about how reasonable you come off looking to reasonably unbiased people. I suppose you don’t consider me one of those any longer. But… if you continue your apologetics at such an absurd level that you’re willing to say things like this, you’re going to exhaust your credibility with everyone.
Well, it’s not only possible, but fact.
I have, many times, publicly changed a position based on new facts or new arguments. Why would you imagine that this was the hill I choose to be so “invested in defending” that I would “[double] down and refused to budge?”
What happened here was simple. I started from the assumption that no serious major-party candidate would call for violent murder of her opponent. And therefore anyone claiming the contrary had a huge hill to climb. Given that assumption, naturally I bent over backwards to interpret her remarks in a benign light.
The introduction of the second quote met that huge, high burden. And so at that point I abandoned my claim.
It’s clear you don’t find that credible. Nonetheless, that’s what happened, and frankly I won’t be losing much sleep over my distress at your disbelief.
Yes, it’s correct that being out of power galvanizes partisan looniness. This does not change the fact that when asked for current examples of Left-Crazy to match the birthers et al, you selected 9/11 Truthers, a poor example (not to mention your other defective suggestions like Cindy Sheehan).
I gave you due credit for repeatedly spouting trollish partisan bullshit and repeatedly having to apologize for it, as if that is somehow to your credit.
And you’d have to have a serious attention deficit to suggest that I am of the “Left”. 
By the way:
This is almost a good analogy, except you got an animal wrong. It’s not Bricker Bear, but Bricker the Weasel trying desperately to avoid being pulled out of its rhetorical hole and when cornered eventually conceding defeat, receiving pats on its little muzzle before it returns to weasel yet again.
Its not entirely fair for Bricker to claim credit for changing positions under the weight of incontrovertible truth. I would certainly be willing to do the same, but I would have to be wrong to begin with. He has an unfair advantage in having such a wide variety of wrong to choose from, whereas my own stock of nitwitted positions to abandon is so paltry.
Perhaps we of the left could be offered some sort of affirmative action program, given credit for renouncing stupid positions we never held in the first place?
I come over to your house and beat the crap out of you, and you’re lying there bruised and bleeding. You defiantly pick up a rock and throw it at me.
“Look at that! An unjustified attack!” I cry.
You protest that you were only reacting to what I did.
So I demand you identify anyone who, in the last 30 seconds, had done anything hostile. “See?” I crow. “You’re the only one that’s done anything during that time period!”
You trumpet “current” as though it’s your hope of salvation – and, indeed, it is. CURRENTLY, the crazy on the Right is on the rise. When Bush was in, the crazy of the Left was rampant.
And why is 9-11 Truthism such a poor example? Because it’s just the sort fo thing that Bush and Cheney might do, so it’s not THAT unreasonable?
And for that, you’d have to actually say something of substance once in a while.
Bricker, you say that you had to think that Angle was using the Second amendment as a metaphor for the First, because your mind simply rebelled against the idea that a major party candidate would spout nonsense about a coming revolution. Yet here, unable to hold back the “you did it to!” instinct, you bring up McKinney and her 9/11 conspiracy, you bring up Maxine Waters saying the CIA is selling crack. So what is exactly going on? Did you just do a little research over the course of this thread? Or did you, in fact, have those examples of “major party candidate” craziness at your fingertips?
With all due awe, can you substantiate your claim that 9-11 Trutherism is/was primarily a lefty phenomonen? I clearly recall a number of us who advanced the proposition that GeeDubCo should have known, but failed. For my two bits, had they known they would have acted, and would have trumpeted that action from the very skies, they would have people going door to door apprising people of the good news about The Leader.
And then they would have misled us into a futile and pointless military adventure.
At any rate, if you have such evidence, might you not be well advised to provide it?
You did an excellent job,
CMC fnord!
I could offer my posts in advance, so that you have a chance to appraise the substance? Is there a particular time of the day you pull your head out of your ass to breathe?
If my head was up my ass, I’d leave it there rather than appraise your offerings.
You surely don’t have to read 'em, hoss. Userame’s right up top. I’ll get over it.
Link provided above.
By Senor Beef’s logic, of course, that means you must have already seen it and read it. And your refusal to acknowledge that now is tantamount to an outright lie.
Fortunately, I don’t subscribe to that kind of idiocy.
But I can only imagine the kind of dressing-down you’re in for from Senor Beef.
Here’s the link again:
“Unable to hold back?” That suggests that I just offered those up, out of the blue.
Instead, of course, I mentioned them to specifically rebut the claim that craziness resided on the right but not the left.
And the answer is yes, I did a little research in order to find those examples. Not sure how that’s relevant.
It’s relevant in the very obvious way already described in the post you were replying to.
You have mention McKinney before in the context of her truther talk and you’ve also mentioned Maxine Waters in a pretty negative way as well. I find it rather impossible to believe you have suddenly realized there are crazies in mainstream politics. So defending Angle, istm, came from some other motivation. Pure blind partisanship is my guess.
Funny you didn’t quote my post – you know, the one that shows my pure, blind partisanship:
Yes, that post fairly reeks of it, huh?
Pure blind partisanship.
My research was intended to ensure that I didn’t commit the same folly of posting without being sure of my facts.
I find it very telling that you accuse me of partisanship in a post that begins by praising Obama.
Why don’t you link to one of your many posts praising a Republican?
Fair enough, Bricker. Now how would you honestly characterize the George W. Bush administration and the behavior of his supporters in the conservative media during his term?
And, in the interests of fairness, withdrew it and admitted it was a singularly bad area in which to use that cliche when called on it.
Well, personally, *I * think it’s funny that you ignored the point of my post, which is that you had heard of those Democrats talking crazy about 9/11 conspiracy and CIA crack but conveniently couldn’t even imagine armed uprising crazy Republican talk.
So your post answered a question that nobody asked. Is Bricker always this blindly partisan? The answer is no. That’s nice. I’m not a Democrat, btw, so me praising a Republican wouldn’t give me that +3 saving roll against accusations of internet hypocrisy that you snagged by complimenting Obama.
See post #124 which addresses serial partisan troll-baiting and serial retraction.