True. Bye. 
Well, I must say that’s pretty lame, coming from someone of your (self-vaunted) intelligence.
Overturn Roe vs. Wade and criminalize abortion again. In his words, change the laws and convince you I’m right. IOW, I’ll enact my precious, enlightened beliefs into law and maybe you’ll see how wrong and sinful you were.
Given Creationist Barbie’s quite vocal positions on reproductive issues, the door is also open on birth control as well as teaching abstinence in schools. Pregnant teenagers deserve no state assistance. Apparently the ‘christian’ thing to do is dump pregnant kids back onto their families. No slack or help for kids who might not have really swell, supportive Ozzie and Harriet families who should have taught them to keep their legs together in the first place. The usual fundamentalist ‘christian’ excuses to criminalize and forcibly discourage sinnin’.
You can imagine how tolerant and respectful the Maverick Johnny McCain Right-Wing Theocracy are about gays. It’s safe to say there’d be a lot more pressure toward closets and reprogramming than marriages.
I think people who support this kind of arrogant, officious hatefulness are awful. ::shrugs:: They’re contemptuous of others. They assume a right to dictate religion and morality for others, with the full force of law. I don’t ‘disagree’ with them. I think they’re arrogant shits.
I don’t think i’ve ever made any extravagant claims about my own intelligence on these boards. Maybe i have, i don’t remember.
My main contention here is not that i’m outrageously intelligent, just that i’m more intelligent than you. But that’s not exactly boasting, because you set the bar so very low.
You just don’t get it, do you? That in itself would make you outrageously intelligent.
I guess I didn’t express myself too well, then.
The thing is: I wouldn’t have pressed to get the dog killed either. Neither would I have tried to sue their pants off.
However, I would have tried to talk to the people, one-on-one, person to person. And, maybe, instead of returning days later, I would have pressed them into taking the actions they apparently took.
Do you really know whether that dog actually attacked someone else? Maybe someone else did something like I have just described. Maybe it was your “yelling” that did the trick. But my sense of community would have told me to ensure that the desired outcome took place.
I couldn’t bear the thought of a little kid, walking by, getting bitten, just because I was “thinking things through”.
It must be comforting to indulge in such gross oversimplifications so that you can see things in black and white and claim a righteousness that you don’t deserve. That’s usually the way it works if you’re a hatemonger. The Nazis had reasons to hate the jews. The Klan had reasons to hate blacks. The reasons themselves don’t really matter. They exist to justify one’s hatred, to give one an excuse not to treat other people decently.
It is so ordinary and banal and predictable.
Subjects like abortion and the subsidization of single motherhood are complex issues with strong arguments on both sides. I’m not going to bother correcting your stretching, and oversimplification, and misstatements of position or intent. You’ve doubtless heard it all before, and chosen to ignore it and carry on with lies and demonization.
The fact is that topics like abortion and subsidization of single mothers, and what religion a person chooses to follow are topics in which good people of goodwill and intelligence may disagree. Somebody disagreeing with you on these topics does not make them a bad person, unworthy of respect, decent treatment or basic human civility.
Thinking it does is self-indulgent, stupid, and truly evil.
It’s the kind of attitude that let people feel justified screaming “baby killer” at returning soldiers. It’s the kind of attitude that created concentration camps. It’s the kind of attitude that let people Lynch blacks for looking at a white women. It’s the kind of attitude that let’s people bomb abortion clinics. It’s the kind of attitude that created a glass ceiling and prevented women from voting.
You shouldn’t marginalize people simply because they are different or disagree with you.
The simple fact that you are an adult means that you should understand this. I’m sure you do. Why you should choose to abandon such rational consideration and join the batshit fringe is beyond me. Ultimately I think it is degrading to one’s self and self-destructive.
I don’t suppose you’ve ever given a moment’s thought to the fact that many people oppose abortion, not only because of religious concerns, but because of concern and revulsion over the ripping apart and murdering of viable little creatures (I’m speaking primarily of second and third trimester abortions, primarily), who had no say in either their creation or their destruction?
No, no one could possibly be acting out of the horror that these little people (and that’s what they are; outside the womb they can survive and even be taken home like a full-term baby long before they would have been born conventionally) are subjected to. No, it’s only about other people wanting to inflict their values on you, isn’t it? It’s only about your own selfish desire not to be inconvenienced by the consequences of your own actions.
See, I can play the “You’re an asshole for your beliefs!” game just as well as you, can’t I? However, you might take note that I’ve never pushed this view on anyone here before.
Putz!!!
I did talk to them face-to-face, they penned the dog up immediately, and as far as I know it was never out again.
Gross oversimplifications are easy and fun, but that doesn’t mean they should be thrown about casually. Use them as you would saffron: sparingly, to add an exotic hint of flavor to an otherwise dull conversation. In fact, I dare say it’s best not to use them at all simply to avoid the risk of using them incorrectly.
You know, Starving Artist, I’ve been paying attention to your posts and to your political opinions, and have really been starting to grow a respect for your ability to express them so eloquently without attacking people who view things differently. I personally really enjoy reading and observing the political analysis of folks who don’t agree with me.
I must say I’m really disappointed by the things you have said here.
I believe experiences can shape who we are, but I really don’t think we have as much control over our sense of what’s right as most people would like to believe. There is a decent amount of evidence that indicates our gut sense of right and wrong isn’t a rational process, but a biological impulse stemming from a very specific region of the brain that is shaped by the environment we grew up in, among other factors. What that means is, when faced with a moral dilemma, first our brain tells us what is right, then we feel emotion, and we rationalize the feeling with logic long after the fact. Part of the reason there is such a huge breakdown in communication between people on opposing political sides is because we speak different moral languages which are mutually unintelligible. (Note: I disagree heartily with this reviewer’s interpretation of Hauser’s objective for writing his book as well as his interpretation of the content, but you get the point.)
I am a liberal, I was born liberal, and I will most likely die a liberal. That said, I am an independent voter and do consider every candidate as objectively as possible without regard to party affiliation. I see the merits of fiscal conservatism. I tend to lean fiscally liberal because of my bleeding heart, but I can understand, rationally, why someone would be a fiscal conservative, and I’m always interested in hearing the perspective of conservatives.
Most of my relatives are extremely conservative, working-class, small-town folks. Some of them are bigoted and irrational and some of them, like my mother, are intelligent, hard-working, experienced people. I love them, and while I don’t spend hours arguing their positions with them, I do listen to them talking to one another to see what I can learn. Some of them are my heroes, political affiliation (and prejudice) be damned.
So what I wanna know is, if I am fully capable of sitting down at the supper table and excitedly relaying the details of my best friend’s recent lesbian wedding while my grandma tells me all about collecting bread for her church’s food drive, why is that so damn hard for some people?
What you are doing with this thread is buying into the bipartisan extremism that is breaking down all hope of cooperation and effective communication. So TVeblen pisses you off – why do you respond by painting us all with that same broad brush? I don’t think you’re a bad person. I think that like me, like my parents and my grandparents, you vote your soul, you vote what you think is right.
And as an added note – not directly at you Starving Artist – for the love of Christ, will people stop blaming their moral and political positions on other people? You have come to your own conclusions because of YOU. Nobody is responsible for how you think, or how you vote, but YOU. If I changed my opinions based on the hypocrisy of other people I would never get anything accomplished. Sheesh.
In my jurisdiction, you would have, in a very minor way, broken the law: all dog bites, all dog bites, are required to be reported to Animal Control.
Do yo know whether this dog has ever bitten someone before? Did you check whether it was current on its vaccinations? Do you know whether the owners have been cited half a dozen times for failure to keep a dangerous dog under control?
Of course not. That’s why we have law enforcement agencies: they track these things that individuals can’t track.
That dog may have already bitten someone, and the owners may have been required to keep it under control at all times, in which case, you’re endangering other folks by not reporting their behavior (not the dog’s, theirs). It may be that the owners don’t take your conversation as seriously as you’d hope, and they start relaxing their restrictions on the dog, and it goes after someone else in a serious attack three months from now. It may be that the dog has had exposure to a rabid raccoon recently, and its aggression was due to a neurological condition known as rabies.
Your behavior demonstrates neither intelligence nor character. The fact that you’re still alive shows that you’re lucky: seems that the dog wasn’t rabid. But settling it in the manner that you did exposes yourself to needless risk; what’s more, it exposes other folks to needless risk.
Daniel
If I could, I would have your babies.
“Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason. I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God’s will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.” — Barak Obama
Huh. I heard it the other way. It seems pretty interchangeable.
Actually that would barely make him capable of tying his own shoes.
TVeblen, I am simply in awe of your posts in these two threads for you’ve said everything I’ve been wanting to say for months now about this election and the choices and people involved. Except I highly doubt I could have said as clearly and succintly as you have.
Not being an American and having taken oodles of shit for insinuating as much in the past, I’ve been keeping a low profile as of late. But that doesn’t stop me from saying that I agree with every word you’ve written. Furthermore, should McSame and Cupcake manage to win the WH (by hook or by crook, bet they don’t give a damn) I have a sinking feeling that that will put an end to the experiment that was Democracy (naked capitalism and greed would be better descriptors) as practiced by the Unites States.
I’ll be sorry in many ways, for the US was the nation I grew up admiring and the one that gave me most of my values. The ones that seem to be fading faster than an ice cube in The Tropics for you’re rapidly becoming most everything I despise…such as a Police State. Who would have thunk it!
Funny thing is, they came from people like you, 'luc, Hentor, mhendo, Shayna, Mr S and countless others here and in real life that gave me a sense of hope for the future. That hope is fading fast. In spite of that, I wish you all the best.
Never give up, never surrender for this really is (as you’ve pointed out repeatedly) the make or break it point for your nation.
Best.
Welcome to the SDMB in election season. I quite sincerely suggest that you stop reading it until at least March of next year (this is what I plan to do - I’ve only come back because I was curious about the upgrade). People you once admired (or at least regarded as “not complete penises”) will, in fact, become complete penises for the next several months. There’s pretty much no stopping it, no reasoning with it, no way of sticking one’s finger in the dyke. Nothing you say will make the slightest bit of difference; some people just want to be dickheads at election time.
It is only going to get worse, and I say that as an irreconcilable optimist.
America, America.
Where are the Washingtons? Where are the Jeffersons?
They’re playing football in the NFL.
BS. I’ve met some very intelligent peole without character and I’ve known guys that are as dumb as a bag of hammers with it.
Good advice. (Yes, I’m back only for a short while.)
But perhaps you misunderstood the meaning behind my saying that. As I alluded to when I said it, it was intended as a flip-side to the vicious vitriol coming from TVeblen and others like her here. As I also said, I have never tried to proselytize that point of view here in the past.
Now, I’d like for you to think for a minute about how offensive that is to people of liberal, pro-abortion beliefs, and realize that those of us here on the right are confronted with accusations just as vicious and just a vitriolic and just as offensive to our belief in our basic humanity as what I said to TVeblen. And we are subjected to veritable barrages of it daily.
So thanks for the observation. It’s a good one. I just wanted to make sure you understood the reason behind my comment to TVeblen.