Posted by Bricker, May 21, 2014, 7:00 PM:
Well, it’s been four years since Arizona passed their controversial immigration law, and as everyone now acknowledges, there is no evidence whatsoever of increased racial profiling or false arrests of citizens or legal residents. I guess we can say that opponents were wrong, eh?
Posted by Rhythmdvl, May 21, 2014, 7:07 PM:
Oh, Bricker, there you go again. It’s over, it’s in the past. Must you harp on obsessively about everything that happened years ago?
Posted by mhendo, May 21, 2014, 7:09 PM:
Just because it hasn’t happened yet doesn’t mean it won’t at some point. We don’t know when those racist cops might start harrassment.
If all you’re interested in is correcting the original claim, why not open a GD thread? Seems odd to be Pitting someone for a post they made 4 years ago in a GD thread. But hey, whatever floats your boat. Gotta put those files to use somehow.
Of course, it was diluted by all the other states that have allowed for same-sex marriage - five, i think. So, yeah, marriage was weakened by about ten percent in Virginia, but is still hanging in there.
:rolleyes:
Of course, as noted above, I opposed the law. I just didn’t like to see a blatantly false attack used to convince people the law was a bad idea.
So, yeah, the passage of this law did nothing to help marriage, and did a fair amount to damage families that happened to involve same-sex partners. Lose, lose.
You really do keep a file, don’t you?
Is there any chance this is a Brickroll and somewhere out there there’s a larger point about obsessive-compulsives on the Internet, or that as soon as poster X or Y chimes in Bricker will make the Grand Reveal and demonstrate the Great Hypocrisy of the Day?
Could the Brickroll be that one should never use slippery slope arguments? 'Cause, you know, if that’s the point, then that will clearly lead to the end of Great Debates as a forum as more and more threads die quickly, then the rest of the message board will collapse in non-use, and shortly after that the WHOLE INTERNET!!!
In my view, GD is not appropriate when the focus of a thread is a particular poster, as opposed to a general proposition. But I’m not so much Pitting Steve MB in the sense of calling him names, or railing against him as a whole. I just think his unwillingness to acknowledge the gossamer-thinness of the argument he was making at the time deserved a revisit now that the passage of time has produced some even more definitive results.
I would not oppose a move to GD, if the moderators think this subject is better suited to that home.
It’s unclear to me what good the law serves, too. Canada has had gay marriage for longer than three years and hetero marriage shows no signs of needing defense.
Anyway, yeah, yeah, the outcome wasn’t dire in the way Steve predicted. Let’s all watch Bricker do his happy monkey dance, etc.
Of course, perhaps a GD topic could be: In the service of fighting against the adoption of a bad law, is it ethical to make arguments that you know are phony?
Actually, the whole “defense of marriage” thing made a lot more sense to me after I saw a cite from someone here a few months ago, pointing out that quite a few religious anti-SSM crusaders believe that it’s normal and average for heterosexual people to have constant lustful thoughts about people of the same sex. Since being gay is A Terrible Sin Oh Noes, if *they *have those thoughts, it must just mean that *everyone else *does, too, ergo, if we don’t legally prevent people from acting on them, the whole human race is doomed.
Without going back and reading the thread that started this, I say ‘right on, Bricker.’
There is nothing more infuriating in debate or discussion than people throwing out definitive claims about the horrors of the future, because there is no argument against it in the moment.
Person 1: “If your side allows that to happen, then Hitler and Elvis will come down out of the sky and enslave us all!!”
Person 2: “um . . . no.”
Person 1: “Uh huh! Just you wait and see!”
. . . so, how do you prevent this sort of ‘argument’ from impeding any actual discussion about things? Do you just suck it up and wait for the next time and run into the same stonewalling based on an imaginary future, or do you call the person out on it?
It’s both a burden and boon of the internet. It used to be you could pretend or remember that you didn’t make an argument, or that you couched it in such a way that makes you still right today. Now that this shit is all recorded for posterity, it becomes suddenly harder to go off making unsubstantiated claims or predictions and expect to get away with it.
All in all, I think it probably makes for more honest debate, and forces people to taste humility a little more than they’re used to.
And, if I remember rightly, didn’t Bricker himself get called out on some opinion about Obama getting elected, well after the fact? Was that different in some way to this?
Oh, I dunno. There’s no real penalty for spouting bullshit, or continuing to spout bullshit about how your original bullshit wasn’t bullshit at all. It would force honest debate only among people who are willing to recognize error, and we ain’t got too many folks like that.
Yeah, this is what that’s all about. Pity Bricker couldn’t bring himself to say that to my face, but had to engage in a bit of of oblique crap-flinging.
Well, I’m sorry, Bricker. Sorry I remembered your epic meltdown about Obama. It would be hard to forget, because boy was that ever hilarious. The man who is constantly nitpicking others’ phrases said in the heat of emotion goes apeshit himself. How could we forget?
And sorry I don’t have the interest or strength to engage in an internet pissing match with you. My life is pretty dull sometimes, but apparently it’s a fuckload more interesting than yours. I have more interesting things to do, like count to a million in Catalan or paint the driveway black.
I’m sorry also that after you left the legal profession you couldn’t find a more interesting job. But for the love of Pete, can you please not take it out on the rest of us? The majority of us Dopers came here to GET AWAY FROM PEOPLE LIKE YOU. We have enough people looking down our noses saying “But if you look here at Paragraph 5, Section B, Clause 4, it clearly states that…” You actually put in your calendar that “it’s time to remind Steve_MB he’s wrong again”? WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU? WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?
Go outside, man. The air is fresh and spring birds are singing. Then come back, take a look again at the xkcd Rythmdvl posted.
Maybe, one day, you will realize why it is people on this message board hate you for being a nitpicking, must-be-right-at-all-costs tightass. It’s mainly because you are a nitpicking, must-be-right-at-all-costs tightass. Fuck, you should work for De Beers, because you probably shit diamonds.
I never criticized your right to bring the argument up again. I’m even happy to concede your point that the absence of domestic violence defendants trying to use the amendment strongly suggests that there isn’t any legal wiggle room to do so. While “I told you so” arguments might sometimes seem a little unbecoming, they do serve a purpose when they involve debates over important issues of public policy like this.
The main problem i have with your position in this thread, and with Eonwe’s argument defending you in this thread, is that you assume bad faith and “outrageousness” on the part of people who disagreed with you. Rather than simply pointing out that they were wrong, you argue as if their original argument turned out not only to be incorrect, but completely disingenuous.
This from a guy who claimed he was going to vote for Obama, and then changed his mind based on the assertion that some of Obama’s supporters wouldn’t be as morally upright as Obama was.
It’s true I said I wouldn’t, in a fit of anger… and it’s also true that I withdrew from that claim in the very same thread I made it, within 24 hours of making it.
I don’t mean by any stretch of the imagination to say that ALL instances of being wrong were disingenuous. I do mean to say this particular one was. It ran completely and obviously counter to the plain language of the statute.
And if that weren’t proof enough – when 11 months and one week had gone by, does Steve MB say, “Yeah, OK, I might have been wrong?”
No. He pops in to say that the original timeline didn’t allow for “a few weeks’” wriggle room. Is that the action of someone who was arguing in good faith at the time? Is it?