Google hit counts do not a proof make.
Correct.
You seem to conveniently forget how condescending the Republican platform can be.
Item: We don’t trust you to be responsible about your pot-smoking habits, so we’ll prevent everyone from smoking pot.
Item: We don’t trust you to make the right choice about how to gamble, so we prefer gambling to be illegal (at least in most states)
Need I continue?
Actually, the point of this thread is not that liberals don’t condescend or think other people are stupid. As I stated in the OP: “Both sides are arrogant and condescending, so can we stop this stupid meme that’s been going around that only liberals are?”
So, proof that liberals insult people who supported Bush does not contradict the OP, because the OP already claims that “both sides are condescending”.
Really? What does? A controlled laboratory test? A Euclidean proof invoking the Binomial Theorem? Define the type of evidence you would accept, or that you think could exist for an observation about what liberal society, as a whole, seems to be saying about conservative society.
The proposition is that liberals-at-large are (on a significantly broader scale than conservatives-at-large) condescending to, patronizing, and questioning the basic intelligence/sophistication of their opposite numbers.
Faced with strong suggestive evidence, from a medium in which both liberals and conservatives are at large, that libs. are insulting conservatives’ intelligence and sophistication significantly more than vice versa, you first weirdly suggest that many of thost “Conservatives-are-stupid” sites were actually conservative-run, then weigh in with the not-obviously-helpful observation that “Google hits are not a proof.” Do you have anything better on the quasi-statistical front, and drawn from an analogously-broad and quasi-random sample as the millions of webpages Google indexes, that points in a different direction from the strongly suggestive numbers I cited? If so, let’s hear that, instead of the non-responses to date.
By implication of course (as you well know).
I’m not debunking anything either…merely pointing out that its DEBATABLE (i.e. its not ‘truth’) what the report really tells us about either Dems OR Pubs…or about anything at all in the end. And they asked questions related to partisan Bush issues (partisan defined either way), i.e. things about WMD, Saddam, Iraq. They didn’t ask any Kerry specific questions.
Fine…then I take it you DON’T think the PIPA report shows a preponderence of ‘ignorance’ on the Bush voters side, yes? Great then, we are in agreement.
You’ve thrown it around and made a few sweeping ‘truth’ statements when its debatable what the results MEAN…if anything. And please for the love of og, don’t do these one line sentences…its a bitch to quote you to reply. 
Well, I think its reasonable to interperet your remarks the way I have…obviously you disagree and can’t see how I possibly could. I conceed your frustration and will try and keep my snark at bay in future. He tends to get out when I’m not watching closely…
I thought it was rather whimsical myself. Perhaps our problem is that we have no common definition of terms.
Why bring it up if not to paint with a broad brush through implication? I’m not disputing your conversation with said girl btw. However, it would be like me relating a real life conversation with a Catholic religous nut job and painting the entire church and its members (or some unspecified percentage of them) with the same broad brush through association and implication. At least, thats how I read it.
Nope, I don’t deny it at all. Do you deny that both sides use these things roughly equally? Your IMPLICATION (again, at least the way I read it) was that this is something the Pubs do but the Dems don’t. However, I conceed in this instance I might have read you wrong somewhat. If so, my appologies.
A ‘lie’ would imply that I’m deliberately misrepresenting you…i.e. I actually know what the hell you are talking about but choose to misrepresent your position for my own nefarious gains (whatever they are). Let me assure you that this is not the case.
Anyway, I’ve also lost patients with this back and forth also, so will cut it off here. I can only say in closing that your posts SEEM (to me at least) to imply things that you are now denying, and SEEM to sort of make the opposite case outlined in the OP…namely that ‘liberals’ CAN be condescending to the general public. You claim that I’m mischaracterizing/misunderstanding your posts (I’ll ignore the ‘lie’ thing) and I conceed that this is more than possible. If I have indeed mischaracterized or misunderstood what you were really driving at then you have my appologies.
-XT
You obviously have misunderstood the OP then.
The OP never said that liberals CAN’T be condesceding. It said that *both * liberals and conservatives are condescending.
I didn’t say that “many of those “Conservatives-are-stupid” sites **were ** actually conservative-run”, I said they **could ** be conservative-run, and without going through them, you can’t be sure.
Besides, I did some more Google searches in the spirit of your searches and got very different results:
Results 1 - 10 of about 935 for "stupid republicans".
Results 1 - 10 of about 847 for "stupid democrats".
Results 1 - 10 of about 266 for "republican moron"
Results 1 - 10 of about 56 for "democratic moron".
Results 1 - 10 of about 1,100 for "republicans are idiots".
Results 1 - 10 of about 550 for "democrats are idiots".
Results 1 - 10 of about 151 for "republicans are morons".
Results 1 - 10 of about 209 for "democrats are morons".
Results 1 - 10 of about 1,430 for "republicans are stupid".
Results 1 - 10 of about 999 for "democrats are stupid".
Results 1 - 10 of about 963 for "conservatives are stupid"
Results 1 - 10 of about 1,450 for "liberals are stupid".
Results 1 - 10 of about 175 for "conservatives are morons".
Results 1 - 10 of about 766 for "liberals are morons".
Results 1 - 10 of about 489 for "conservatives are idiots".
Results 1 - 10 of about 835 for "liberals are idiots".
Results 1 - 10 of about 1,370 for "stupid conservatives".
Results 1 - 10 of about 5,980 for "stupid liberals".
Overall, the total numbers come to:
against conservatives: 6,879
against liberals: 11,692
So, if we use the Google-hit-count method which you seem to espouse, you’re wrong. Conservatives seem much more condescending towards liberals than vice-versa.
But it is truth that the Dems weren’t implicated by the report. That really is truth.
[QUOTE=xtisme]
Fine…then I take it you DON’T think the PIPA report shows a preponderence of ‘ignorance’ on the Bush voters side, yes? Great then, we are in agreement.
[QUOTE=xtisme]
Nope, although it may be statistically significant.
To my knowleedge I made on such statement, that the report didn’t prove anything about dems. And that is still true.
I’ll do my best, it’s how I write for emphasis often.
Danke.
I have been trying to go to great lengths in the use of language to not implicate all republicans.
Now that all depends on what the meaning of is, is. ~ducks~
It was an example of how it’s very difficult to not talk about certain Bush supporters as morons. Some-but-not-all. No percentage given.
I think the republicans are better at shaping the memesphere, yes.
Then I apologize.
In this thread I’ve been told that I look down on the midwest, think all republicans are X, Y, or Z, etc… I’m sorry if I’m a bit jumpy.
No worries…I understand. Happens to me quite often with my strange writing style.
-XT
xistme:
I’ve heard you and a few other say espouse this idea that the PIPA study focused too much on “partisan Bush issues”, but what the hell is that? How is whether or not WMDs were found in Iraq a “partisan Bush question”? This doesn’t concern opinion; it concerns fact. A fact that will be quite meaningful when the history textbooks are written. Kids will one day take pop quizzes on the stuff revealed in the Dueffler report!
It seems as if you are trying to excuse the ignorance observed in the study by calling it a partisan issue. But it’s not working. Whether someone is conversative or liberal, it should not be a secret that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Everyone should bloodly know this by now. It shouldn’t matter if someone is a Bush-supporter: They should know and comprehend the fact that WMD stockpiles never showed up in Iraq. A question about that should ellicit a “no duh, dude” response from everyone, not just Kerry-supporters. And it shouldn’t take a CommiePinkoLiberal to realize that most of the country was/is against our invasion of Iraq. This should be evident to anyone half-way paying attention to the news. (Even Fox News!)
Facts are facts. When facts as important as these become relegated to the “partisan issues” pile, it makes me wonder what will be deemed fit to put in the history books.
forgive me for butting in, but I think you misunderstand the objection. Since I have made it in other threads, allow me to expand on xistme’s point.
The point is not that knowledge of the Dueffler report is in any way partisan. the point is that asking about the Dueffle report is partisan. For instance, what if the study had included the question “Are the republican’s quietly putting forward draft legislation?” Or something to that effect. Would you really be surprised if more people who support Kerry were ignorant of the fact the the only draft legislation being considered (I use that term loosely) was put forward by democrats? If the study consisted only of question like this, would you not suggest that it need others before you would believe its broad based conclusions?
There have been studies trying to determine how many people believe in “weird things”. Some of them have shown disturbing differneces in the rates of belief in things like ghosts demons and other supernatural phenomena by woman over that by men. However, may of those studies do not include the other “weird things” which men tend to believe in more than women. For instance teleportation, anti gravity and that sort of “star trek” stuff. (I cannot find a cite right now. I am remembering this mostly from an article I read about Micheal Schermer’s Why People Believe Weird Things).
The point is that making broad based assertions about the ignorance of Bush supporters from this study is problematic. You may be able to make assertions about the ignorance of Bush supporters concerning the Dueffler report and a few other issues. But not much more.
I hope that helps explain the argument.
Actually, I tossed it out as an aside…the main point I was trying to make is that its debatable if the study tells us ANYTHING at all.
To your main issue, I’ll say that I agree…I think every American citizen should be well informed at all times on a broad base of issues. I certainly TRY to be myself. However, I realize that most of my fellow citizens out there are more narrowly focused on what they hear from their associated political party (the dreaded ‘meme’)…and what vertical pet issues they are personally concerned with.
-XT
On reflection, pervert said it better.
-XT
If by “debatable” you mean that a few people are willing to debate it, then you might have a point (although the OP and Bill H. seem to have flown the coop in that thread recently). If by “debatable” you mean that there are really any compelling arguments that it tells us nothing, I would say that that claim has pretty much been shot completely to hell.
The only compelling argument that remains outstanding in the PIPA debate as far as I can tell is whether one could conceive of a set of questions on different important issues for an American voter to be informed on where Kerry supporters would do much worse than Bush supporters. Some claims that this might be the case have been made…But, at this point, until someone does such a study, we are in the realm of conjecture. (And, I have heard relatively few conjectures for specific questions even raised. pervert mentioned one above regarding the draft and while you might get a differential on that between Bush and Kerry supporters, with the Kerry supporters being on the incorrect side, I’d be surprised if it was nearly as high as the sort of wrong beliefs we see on the Bush side. Admittedly, this claim is also in the realm of conjecture.)
Except that no one has said the study tells us nothing. Even the most vociferous detractors admitted that it told us quite a bit about how a specific set of Bush supporters answered specific questions regarding IRaq, WMD, Terrorist ties, and the Dueffler report.
But, you see, the conjecture being made is that the PIPA study tells us anything more broadly than what it actually tells us. It is you guys who want to say so much that it proves broad based or massive ignorance on the part of Bush supporters. The conjecture is yours. Notice that when I proposed a possible question, I did not even suggest that it would change the responses to the questions in the PIPA study. I simply suggested that it might limit the broadness of some of the conclusions being thrown around.
How so? The report deals with Iraq, not what Bush said/believes/thinks about Iraq. It’s only partisan if you think the report reflects badly on Bush.
Asking about what the republicans are doing (or not doing) would be problematic because it forces the answerer to speculate. “Quitely putting forward” is loaded language, and I would agree that it doesn’t belong in a poll.
“Is there evidence that Saddam was involved in the 9/11 conspiracy” however is not the same. Neither Bush nor the GOP figure into the question.
I don’t see anyone saying that Bushites are more ignorant than Kerryites on issues surrounding, say, the prevalence of salmonellosis in turn-of-the-century Belize. Most people citing the study put the findings in the specific context of Iraq and the Dueffler report.
Well, I was responding to xtisme’s statement: “the main point I was trying to make is that its debatable if the study tells us ANYTHING at all.”
Well, I think it does show that on a very important issue of the day, the present knowledge of the truth of the various justifications advanced for our invasion of Iraq, along with the world opinion about that invasion, the world opinion about the two Presidential candidates, and the positions of the two candidates on about 7 different international issues (Kyoto, international criminal court, nuclear test ban treaty, labor and environmental standards in trade agreements, …)
I think the argument goes that Bush supporters are more ignorant regarding this issues involving Iraq because there the facts are allied more against the Bush Administration position.
So, a counterclaim would be that if you asked a question that was more allied against a Kerry position, what might happen? (For example, one could take an economic indicator that has improved in the last 12 months and ask, “Has [said indicator] gone up or down in the past 12 months?” and the claim would be that more Kerry supporters would say that it has gone down. They actually did ask the question about whether the national economy has gotten better or worse, and indeed saw very sizeable difference in what Bush and Kerry supporters said, but unfortunately that is so broadly worded as to be hard to pin down a correct answer on.)
Actually I was asking Zagadka…
NEVER!!!
Now, I think, at least you are getting somewhere. Don’t have much time–here’s my take, speaking to how Democrats are labeled as condescending and Republicans are not:
In Simple World, Dems are talking about what they think is best; Reps are talking about what they think is right. Both sides make a lot of assumptions and tend not to recognize that not everyone agrees on the assumptions.
Bypassing those, if you disagree with a Dem, the only way you can possible disagree is if you are not fully informed or don’t fully understand the argument, which explains why you so often see them explaining whatever it is that they assume is being overlooked or misunderstood.
On the other hand, the Reps pretty much justify their views with some fundamental moral precept (often with some reference to “family values”). They don’t often explain it–anyone of moral character will recognize that they are correct.
Thus, Dems are stuck with the “meme” of being condescending. You can try pinning it on the Reps as well, but I doubt it will work: They already have the “meme” of being self-righteous.
Speaking for myself, I wish they both were a little less interested in what is right or best for me. By my personal definition of the meaning of life, if these are not things for me to work out for myself, then my life has basically no meaning at all. Why would God want a world where everyone does His will because they have no other choice? And what is interesting or magnificent about a world where we are doing little more than punching the clock of the Common Good?
-VM