One of the things that really hit me in the first Presidential debate (besides how poorly Bush did) was in fact the difference between how I felt Bush and Kerry were trying me, the audience. I felt like Bush was treating me like an idiot, who could easily be swayed by emotional appeals and misleading rhetoric. Kerry, by contrast, was trying me like an intelligent human being. This contrast wasn’t quite as dramatic in the subsequent debates but it was still there at times.
Please change “trying” to “treating” when you read that.
Well, he’s gotta speak to his crowd…
I am not misunderstanding. You are misrepresenting. When the government takes my money and spends it to, supposedly, look out for my best interests, I The Person am not using a mechanism to do anything. Uncle Sam The Socialist is using me as a mechanism to fund someone else’s priorities.
I think it’s interesting that you describe the gov’t as a mechanism but you describe the market as if it were an actor. The market is a mechanism. I challenge you to show me evidence that government is a better “mechanism” for feeding the poor than the market is. Not being subject to competition, government agencies do not do anything particularly well.
What you’re more likely to find are cases where the market participants aren’t voluntarily contributing as much as you think they should. Which goes back to my original point. I phrased it to make it SOUND condescending, but however you phrase–or justify–it, the message itself remains one of condescension.
You mean, if they happen to have any money left, right? And I suppose you think that the Ponzi scheme that is the Social Security system is an example of the government doing a better job of investing? As bad as some of my money decisions have been, I have yet to spend money and claim that it is still in my savings account.
My original point was that Dems don’t think people are responsible enough to plan for their own retirement meeds. Repeating my point with a preface of “experience has shown” does not make it less condescending. You are merely saying that you think your condescension is justified.
Once again, you are saying that you don’t think Black people are capable of succeeding to the level that you want them to without your help. Your reasonable tone does not make this less condescending.
Regardless, here is what I WISH you would give some thought to. You guys have been at this effort to “level the playing field” for a pretty long time, now. Have you taken a look to see how much good you’ve accomplished? How close are you to success? And how does that compare with the harm to the black culture? Perfectly capable people have been taught to think of themselves as 1) incapable of success without help and 2) ENTITLED to special treatment.
From what I’ve seen of your definition of “assistance”, I would like to officially request right now that if you ever think that I am being victimized, please do not try to help me. If I’m really in trouble, a little of your help might just finish me off.
I’m not up-to-date enough on the slew of political threads to have an opinion on the factualness of your assertion. However, I will point out that if someone calls you an elitist, that does not mean that you have hurt their feelings. It means they are trying to hurt yours.
I completely agree with the part that I underlined. However, it is not, in fact, condescension. Please check the discussion of the definition earlier in the thread.
Just so you’ll know how to attack my beliefs effectively, I’ll go ahead and volunteer that I am a libertarian. Which means that it bothers me when you say that when the government wastes my money, it is We The People who are taking action. I disagree. And the fact that the assholes responsible were elected does not make me feel any better about it. If 60% of the people vote to bring back slavery, I won’t feel any better about that, either.
I see that the same misconception I used to run up against 3 years ago is still a problem on these boards today. Libertarians do NOT believe that the market solves problems or makes society great. We also do not believe that hammers and screwdrivers build houses. We believe that most people actually do have a sense of ethics and do have meaningful values and that, therefore, left to make their own decisions, they will use the efficiency that a free market provides to build a, like, totally bitchin’ society.
So, let’s start by assuming that we BOTH agree that those with more have a responsibility to help those who are in need. Unless you have some evidence that some amount of money given freely would produce poorer results than the same amount of money acquired by taxation and spent by government agencies, then there is no point in further discussion of the government as a “mechanism” for fighting poverty.
If, on the other hand, you continue to think that not enough people are responsible enough to make the decisions that you (and the rest of the Democrats) know to be the correct ones, then I continue to maintain that Democrats are condescending by the nature of their platform, even when they think that “evidence has shown” their opinions are correct. I would also submit that if people do not do what you think to be correct, maybe society’s values don’t match yours as well as you think. The libertarian response would be to try to convince people to choose differently. The socialist reponse would be to take everyone’s money and effectively make them slaves to someone else’s priorities.
-VM
-VM
Can’t really explain the double sig. Just think of it as my equivalent of a dramatic exit.
Yes, it is condescension. It is saying, “We know better than you what should be done here and, in fact, we are so sure of this that we are going to do our best to deny you the tools and information through which you can decide through the democratic process whether you agree with us or not.”
But unlike the condescension that is being whined about in this thread, it is a much more dangerous form of condescension because it is not in any way benign; it is an active and malignant condescension that actively seeks to deny people the ability, information, and tools to overcome the attitude of “We know what is best for you.”
In other words, a libertarian is a person who’s never read Dickens?
Hmmm, if that’s what they were saying, I would say you are definitely right. Last time I checked, though, there isn’t even a polished version of this in the Republican Party platform. The actions that you refer to, as far as I can tell, are more properly examples of where they hypocritically practice something different from what they preach. Also, they are able to hide it behind the requirements of national security. It’s definitely self-righteous and arrogant, but I don’t think it has proper air of “this hurts me more than it hurts you” for you to rally many people to your cause of calling it condescending. Keep in mind that the point of my post was the condescension inherent in the party platform, NOT in the behavior or rhetorical style of any particular member.
They think they know what’s best for me. You think you know what’s best for me. Since you are determined to discuss THIS PARTICULAR ADMINISTRATION, I will go ahead and say that just the passage of the Patriot Act is, to me, far more dangerous and threatening than anything that I’ve seen in a long time. I’m just not sure why you are so determined to pin the “condescending” label on everything you dislike about the Republicans. Hitler was about as evil a person I can think of, but I never really thought of him as condescending.
Another baby step toward getting rid of that “condescending” label? With all due respect, you’re making my case for me. I’ll just play it straight:
No. If you insist on a Dickensian metaphor, I would say that a libertarian is a person who doesn’t believe in punishing the entire population for the behavior of the small percentage who act like Ebenezer Scrooge.
Just the tone of your post leads me to submit this free advice for Dems: One thing that would help you would be to focus on painting a picture of how wonderful America could be and ease up on painting the country we (supposedly) all love as a Dickensian nightmare. Reagan’s “shining city on the hill” won him oodles of goodwill. Even the Dems with the best of intentions tend to come off like they really don’t like the place. Pointing across the ocean and talking about the wonders of Europe doesn’t help much, either.
-VM
To add to smartasses post, anyone who thinks Dickensian Britain is an example of a free market is nuts. Dickensian Britain had the same economic model that both the democrats and republicans espouse, an economic fuedalist or mercantilist model.
But it is nice to see someone admit that they want to inflict their religous beliefs on others just like the republicans do. Only a religous nut would want to ban people like Scrooge from being able to be themselves. So, there are some selfish miserly people in the world. So what?
I wasn’t thinking about Scrooge…Smartass brought him up; Rather I was talking about the general conditions described by Dickens.
As for it not really being a free market, in my experience, libertarians are like communists…They are able to explain why any implementation of their ideas really wasn’t implemented correctly and if we only try it again but do it right this time, it will be fine and dandy! I’d prefer to infer from the fact that when we have gone off too far in that direction, things have gotten pretty shitty and not hypothesize that if we had just gone a little further through the mire, we would have gotten to Camelot.
Well, except that Dickensian Britain in no way is ‘that direction’ if you mean the libertarian direction. Its quite the opposite in fact. Its far more the direction that both the democrats and republicans want to take, again as I said, mercantilism.
I love it when you say things like this. I hear the exact same argument from leftists (you as well) saying that poverty may still be a problem after a protracted war, but if we only just do a little more…
Very funny indeed. 
I’m not really sure that there is anything to add to the above posts other than my surprise that you seem to think that Dickens was describing a libertarian society. Regardless, he WAS writing fiction. If you decided to write a novel that took place in a libertarian society, I would expect it to appear just as bleak. What that would prove, I have no idea.
Seems to me that the closest we have come to a “correct” implementation of libertarian ideals is in the good ole USA. I am sorry you are so unhappy with the results. Have you noticed, though, that the best aspects of our society are those where the market is interfered with as little as possible? (As an aside, I am increasingly convinced that corporations are a distortion of market principles.) On the other hand, the most troublesome aspects are those that either the Dems or Reps have been fixing on for years.
Believe it or not, I share a lot of your ideals. What has made me a libertarian is years of observing that the more government fixes a problem, the worse it gets. Over the years, we pay more and more for education and get less and less of it. The War On Drugs is the most extreme example: Thanks to this “battle”, we still have the same drug problems PLUS all the violence and inequities that result from this attack on people’s freedom to make bad decisions. Many liberals think that libertarians want government out of things like education because we don’t recognize how important they are. In fact, the opposite is true. Most of us feel that education is far TOO important to continue to let the government fuck it up.
What I don’t share is your pessimism about the way that free people act. Sure, there will always be a certain number of Scrooges. But there will also always be a whole lot more. My personal vision of a libertarian “utopia” includes the great results that idealists such as you would achieve if you would stop using the government to achieve your ends and focus on “mechanisms” that actually work.
Note: I probly won’t have a chance to view or post for a few days: Business trip.
-VM
Personally, I’ve always felt condescended to by the ‘love it or leave it’ crowd. By the administration which tried to brand all dissent as disloyalty. By a president who thinks so little of my ‘smarts’ that he won’t speak straight. That we use newspeak instead of substantive political discourse.
And, yes, as someone who’s spent a lot of time screaming into the wind, I know it can get very very frustrating.
As the PIPA report showed, many Republican voters had no idea what they were voting for, and might not have voted for it if they’d known.
How on earth do you not get frustrated when talking to someone like that?
Hell, I remember a conversation with a republican gal who insisted that Bush was pro-troop. When I furnished her with cite after cite detailing how Bush had cut benefits, or was charging injured soldiers eight dollars a day while they were in the hospital, etc, etc, etc… she ignored it. Just… the information did not register in her brain. No cognitive dissonance. No questioning of The Glorious Leader.
And, honestly, what the hell can we call those people other than ‘morons?’
If someone tells me that the free market, as a platonic Form, is more important than universal healthcare, I’d disagree, but I’d respect that opinion.
It’s when someone tells me that Iraq is going just fine, or that there really were WMD there, or at the Iraqis want us there… well… how on earth do you respond to those things without saying “Someone seems to have pulled something over on you, here are the facts, and the cites, and the evidence.”
I mean… no, not all republicans are morons.
But let’s be frank, the republican campaign strategy of “talking points and soundbytes” caters to a people ready for quick information nuggests. Let’s be frank about who these tactics are most effective on, yes?
Just out of curiousity, what makes YOU think that you are so much better informed or intelligent than those people?
Yet no Liberals questions when people point to cuts that Kerry supported? When people furnish cite after cite of Kerry changing his position? All they care about is that he isn’t Bush.
Look, you can’t complain about people thinking that Liberals are elitist and then proceed to insult anyone who supported Bush…IN THE SAME THREAD! Talk about freakin’ ignorant. Why not just come out and admit that you think middle America is a bunch of morons? That everyone who lives in the suburbs with their SUV and big screen is a dumbass? You folks state it often enough.
Its called ‘irony’, and this thread is full of it (in more ways than one). 
-XT
Because I followed the news and read voraciously. I am fairly certain that on November the first I could’ve nailed with 99% accuracy what each candidate’s platform was as well as the contents of the 9/11 report, etc…
I have also been, by the stanford-binnet IQ test, SAT’s, reading level, etc… generally in the 99th percentile. It doesn’t figure into the debate, but you’re asking, in caps, how I could dare to think I’m more intelligent than other people. There ya go.
Yes, a good deal of people only cared that Kerry was not Bush.
A good deal of people also realized that opinions and political realities change.
Some even supported Kerry for who he was.
Some didn’t believe that the troops should be ‘supported’ by giving them money and equipment and should instead be supported by being taken home.
Now, the point wasn’t even about Democratic voters. Did any jam their thumbs into their ears and sing “La la la la la!” When faced with information on Kerry that they didn’t like?
I’m sure.
But I didn’t encounter any of that, so I can’t speak to it.
The PIPA report also doesn’t back up claims that most dems were anywhere near as factually incorrect/ignorant as most repubs. It’s just the truth, I’m afraid.
Correct.
Now show me where I did that, hmmmmmm?
Again, correct. (though the ignorance is yours I’m afraid)
Now give proof or retract.
Show me proof that I ever said that “anybone who supported Bush…”
Um, because I don’t?
I think that the mean IQ of the nation is not where I’d like it to be, but I don’t think idiocy is confined to any region or political party.
Again, read what I actually said before you leap onto your high horse.
That’d be hard, as my folks lived in a subburb with an SUB and a big Tee Vee.
Again, wanna give proof, or retract?
(or keep makin’ stuff up, ya know, whatever floats your boat)
Ah, You Folks!
We’re fungible! (don’t ya know!)
Perhaps you’re so eager to see generalizations and universal condemnation because that’s the kind of rhetoric that you use? Just an idea…
And, for your information, I’m not a democrat, I did not support Kerry, and your conjectures about my mindset are, to put it mildly, without merit.
Try again.
By any chance, have you read this thread? You might want to read through it carefully before you continue to throw around the PIPA report. Might give you some perspective…and perhaps cause you not to make statements such as ‘It’s just the truth, I’m afraid’. Or, maybe not. Wouldn’t want the facts to get in the way of a good arguement I’m sure…especially one where you aren’t being ‘condescending’ but merely pointing out that the other side really IS stupid.
The REALLY ironic (and fucking funny) thing is…you really don’t see it. Well, far be it for me to point out the obvious. Carry on.
-XT
Um… no…
What exactly do you think that the linked thread proves?
There was a statistical survey that is supposed to serve as a representative sample, and, again, quote me where I have overused it?
What exactly are you arguing?
That it wasn’t a representative sample?
That the data can’t be extrapolated to a larger population?
I don’t aim at reading every post in the thread you linked to, but having read the first few, I can’t find anything that’d kill the usefullness of the PIPA report. So please sum up your argument here, thank you.
~sighs~
I’m going to keep this GD worthy and not Pit quality stuff, but you’re making it very hard.
Fucking show, with a quote, where I said that the other ‘side’ is stupid. How the hell could I even do that, as I don’t belong to either ‘side’???
Will you please give proof or retract?
No, I don’t ‘see’ it, because that’s not what I’m saying!
Don’t give me this bullshit about not pointing out the obvious, that’s just a slimy debating tactic.
You have made an assertion, namely, as to my attitudes and statements.
I now call on you to put up or shut up.
sigh It PROVES the subject is debatable, especially the conclusions…the conclusions YOU are claiming are ‘fact’. Get it?
That its debatable that the study means really anything at all, that no similar study was done to assertain if Kerry supporters are equally clueless about things pertaining to partisan issues the other way, and that any conclusions drawn from the study that was actually done are pure speculation…or at least debatable in how much weight should be put on them or even what they mean? Stuff like that? And you HAVE been throwing the PIPA report around quite a bit in this thread…I just was trying to point you to a thread debating its actual merits. As I said before, carry on.
Ya…way to keep it “GD worthy”. :rolleyes:
However, your wish is my command or great one. Just a few examples mind you…I’m at work today.
I’m sorry that you obviously don’t see how condescending and even down right insulting some of your assertions are…its actually quite amusing to me to be honest. You paint with a broad brush about how stupid and uninformed the Pubs are, you condescendingly say, ‘well, not ALL republicans are morons’ (implying that most or at least some large percentage ARE, or that being a non-moron Pub is some special thing), and you give an anacedote that implies this is the norm. Retract? I think not baby puppy. If you really don’t see what I’m getting at here and in other examples in your posts I HAVEN’T included, then there really is nothing more for us to say on this…we just see things differently, no? You can go off an fume and I can continue to be amused by this entire thread. C’est la vie, yes? Or you could appeal to a higher authority on the board I suppose.
-XT
You see, it would help if you’d stick to what I say other than responding to what you hope I’d say.
(Bolding mine)
Notice, I said it doesn’t back up claims that most dems were ignorant. Please show where I said that it proves most republicans are?
Actually, I believe that they did ask questions on both candidates’ positions. Although this is incidental, as I am not making the claims that you are debunking.
Again, please read what I post carefully and not draw unwaranted assumptions please.
Again, show me where I said “all republicans”.
You are debating a claim I did not make.
I never even said it proves anything about the overall makeup of the electorate.
Yes, I’ve thrown it around.
But not in the sense that you’re arguing against.
It is a representative sample. That much is not argued.
What we do with it is, yes, speculation and uncertain.
Show me where I’ve claimed otherwise?
I find the unwaranted assertions made about me and my attitudes and my beliefs to be very frustrating. I feel entitled to use the word ‘fuck’. Especially if I’m not flaming anybody.
(besides, if snarky remarks are GD worthy, as I’ve seen, then so is frustration)
Love that snarky vibe.
-
Yes, I did indeed have a conversation with that girl. Yes, she was indeed dense. Yes, she was indeed ignorant. Yes, she did indeed ignore facts to suit her pre-conceived worldview. Notice I am only talking about one girl and not the entire republican party
-
Soundbytes and talking points are more effective at convincing the uninformed. Do you deny this? Is there something wrong with pointing out that a strategy which was most effective with the uninformed might be more effective with those who are uninformed? Notice I did not make a statement about what percentage of republican voters, registered replubicans, or indepepdants might be targeted and/or swayed by such tactics
-
I’ve covered this.
I really do sometimes wish for a ::bangs head against wall:: smiley.
The one assertion that I can see as condescending and insulting is where I refer to one single girl who was an idiot.
Now that is just a lie.
And I am quickly losing patience.
Please refrain from making these totally innacurate and false-to-facts statements about what I am saying.
Wrong
Your interpretation is not the ultimate reality of a text, one would even hope that our school system is teaching modern critical theory. But I digress.
I, qualifying said “not all” because I meant to make it painfully obvious that I was, in fact, not refering to a group of making it fallaciously fungible. Evidently I did not make it painfully obvious enough.
Nor did I imply that non idiot republicans were something special. Again, that’s an interpretation you drew from precious little textual support.
If this was an english paper and you were asked to justify your conclusions with matierial from the text, you’d be handed the paper back and told to revise.
Please stop extending what I say, especially when I make it quite clear that it’s not to be extended.
Quote where I say it’s the norm?
Again, you may interpret it however you wish, but if you want to claim I’m implying something you have to support it.
And you haven’t.
And you can’t.
And I wish you’d stop.
Wow. If you’d said “stupid asshole” I’d be against the GD rules, so instead you say “baby puppy.”
~sighs~
No.
You are essentially posting false material on the SDMB.
I have not said what you said.
I have not implied what you suggest I’ve implied.
I am now saying what you seem to be arguing against.
We do not ‘see’ this differently.
I am saying something.
You are misconstruing it.
I see no problem other than you eliminating your misperception.
Love the snarky vibe, love it.
I don’t plan on going off and fuming, it just annoys me to see a debating style like yours.
This is a message board. Not real life. It’s no biggie.
(and by the way, the irony of you being condescending and insulting to me s just too damn rich)