Thanks, TVeblen

[TVeblen]

@Miller

Which is, I think, the best evidence there is that Bricker is not the sort of conservative who’s interested in legislating his religion. His positions are certainly influenced by his religion, but he seems more than able of keeping the two separate when it comes to the voting booth.

Thoughtful post, Miller, but we’ll have to agree to disagree on the despicable Bricker. He’s a lawyer. He’s trained to argue and sidetrack, dodge and weave. What he talks and what he does are diametrically opposed.

He gives great lip service to a lot of lofty principles, tolerance and respect for others included. Then he actively works against them.

See, he can nod and pontificate and swear he firmly supports fair treatment for gays. All that hot air doesn’t erase the fact that he actively, ardently supported Shrub through two terms. Being such a bright guy and all, Bricker really couldn’t have failed to notice that Shrub was a technicolor disaster by the end of his first term. Shrub mangled foreign policy, he shit on the constitution, he borrowed money like a drunk sailor on leave–he was the ‘anti-conservative’ in every way that mattered. But smiling little Ricky threw so Shrub so much support it snagged him a White House party pass.

What exactly was left about Shrub to enthuse high-minded, tolerant little Bricker so? One thing was packing the courts with far right-wing judges, qualified or not, the ones absolutely least likely to consider fair treatment to anyone who isn’t white, straight, male, republican and batshit fundamentalist ‘christian’. Or maybe it was the second successful GOP use of assassination smear tactics; you know, the internet nastiness that so hopelessly sullied the campaign of a Democrat running a clean campaign that Bricker recoiled in moral outrage and horror.

IOW, glib little Ricky, the reasonable, nice guy neocon, is either the most cynical hypocrite on the board or he pours out shit faster and slicker than a goose on an ExLax diet.

Bricker talks a helluva game. It’s his profession. All that carefully reasoned tolerance and respect for others? It’s a work of fucking art. He even uses the ‘walk the talk’ thing with such conviction. Damn, it’s enough to make you shake his hand and buy that man a beer because he’s such a good sort. Just listen to him. Wants gay rights. Capital punishment? The horror. Nice guy, helluva nice guy.

As long as you can ignore where Bricker, the nice guy, has actually thrown his support and energy. It sure isn’t where his words are.

You respect the guy. For four years I haven’t read a word he’s written without laughing or stifling dry heaves. You like him. I think he is, as a human being, a vicious, cynical piece of shit. You have your reasons. I have mine. We’ll have to agree to disagree.

[Equipoise]

I’m really disappointed. Here I thought you (Starving Artist) were going to say how you now see how intelligent TVeblen is and has been in all her posts. I thought she made you see the light. Such a shame.

@Starving_Artist

I’ve also said around the board here many times over the years that I’m fairly often in agreement with liberal goals but rarely in the way they are pursued.

Huh. Then become a self-proclaimed liberal and work to effect the change in attitudes and how to pursue goals in a way that you feel is more polite and meaningful. Kinda like…Barack Obama.

[eleanorigby]

@Starving_Artist

However, I doubt very seriously if the blacks of that era and the women of that era would have chosen to have things end up the way they are now. I believe they would have preferred, as would I, to have things done in a more sensible, step-by-step manner that would have left the things that were good about that era intact.

But there has always been a very strong throw-the-baby-out-with-the-bathwater element to the way liberals have pursued social change in this country, and what I am saying is that our society is worse off as a result.

Well, I guess I’ll stay home, but can I have some shoes, and not be pregnant?

And my primary complaint about the liberal attitude goes to exactly the type of behavior that you’re exhibiting above: Agree with us and everything we’ve done and want to do in toto or you’re an asshole.

Odd. That is exactly the same complaint that many liberals have against conservatives.

Your bigger point is that you are uncomfortable with the direction society has taken in the past say 40 years. Yes, we have traded some civility and predictability for raunch (which I deplore wholeheartedly) and rudeness. But to view the 1960s and before as some kind of golden age is sheer nonsense. To hold the Civil Rights movement, the woman’s movement, the gay pride movement responsible for the increase in drugs, crime and eroding social mores (whatever they may be) is silly. It’s not all black and white. Our society has changed due to a myriad of reasons, too complicated to do justice to here (I’d have to write a book and there are more learned people than myself out there who already have. Sociologists study this issue. Personally, I think the grander movements that started in the 60s are still playing out, so perspective is difficult at best).

If you truly think that life was better for you, a white middle class male, in the 60s, that’s because it was: at the expense of the women, the minorities and the rest of the world. You are no longer king; cope.
This waxing nostalgic for a time that was better is non-productive. Blacks being treated like people; women (still not given equal pay for equal work mind you) able to obtain advanced degrees and choose to work outside the home–how are these bad things? Neither of these occurrences forced up the crime rate or increased public rudeness. Wall to wall news coverage of sensational crime, racial profiling, ghettoization of our inner cities(and now the outer ring of those cities as gentrification moves inward)–these all* helped increase the danger you perceive.

In short, it’s not that times were overall better back then; it is that you felt safer and more assured in those times (and it must be reitierated, those times were better for you, white, middle class male). We all have a time in our lives that we look back on with some wistfulness–there’s nothing wrong with that. But to make that desire for Elysium a political platform, however well disguised, to want to drag the populace back with you, that is madness.

This longing I see in the conservative party is what most baffles me about it. It’s like they accepted those 1950s sitcoms and old movies as reality. America is not a sitcom–Leave It to Beaver is no longer the ideal life. In fact, it never happened. Neither did Donna Reed. Sadly enough, too many genuine Archie Bunkers lived back then, as they do now. I always thought that most of America didn’t get that Archie was satire–they believed wholeheartedly in all the shit he spewed. Real life was more like Good Times and whatever the hell that show was with Valerie Bertinelli and MacKenzie Cokehead and Bonnie someone with Schneider re single parenthood.

*there are many more, I’m sure. Like I said, the subject deserves a book, not a post.

[Starving_Artist]

@Rubystreak

Frankly, I’d rather deal with vulgar rap music than have black people go to different schools.

The problem - and a widespread one it is - is that the one has nothing to do with the other! It’s a false equivalence. One that to me is ridiculous. Are you truly saying that the only alternative to music with lyrics like “I’ll bust a cap in yo’ ass and yo’ bitch’ll be suckin’ my dick while I do it” is for black people to go to different schools?

It’s this kind of equivalence that is so maddening about discussions of this type.

@Rubystreak

…and not whinge about petty shit like the evils of rap music or illusory things like “more drugs and STDs.”

Petty shit? I’m glad to see you think a society in which twenty-five percent of teenage girls have STDs is petty. And more drugs is petty? Do you live a totally sheltered existence? I’ve seen more lives (and the lives of family members and loved ones) fucked up in the most horrible ways because of drugs than I have because of any other reason.

You don’t know what you’re talking about.

@Rubystreak

…All society’s current ills exist because liberals propagated social change too quickly?

No, I would say it’s because they propogated it too thoughtlessly and with virtually no regard to consequence. Either that or with a total inability to see the consequence. “Do something, even if it’s wrong!” is how I’d characterize it.

[Mr.Svinlesha]

Well, part of the problem is that Starving Artist is looking for an open, disinterested discussion of topics. He wants a discourse where people with differing opinions can rationally debate issues without moving into the sphere of the personal. You can see this at work in a neighboring thread where he suddenly exclaims “Fuck this political talk! Its Saturday night. Let’s be human beings – I’m having salad for dinner. What are you having?” As if the conversation can suddenly be dropped and we can all join hands and sing Kumbaya. Sorry, it doesn’t work that way.

What he doesn’t get it is that, after so many years of Republican mismanagement, it’s gradually becoming impossible to have those kinds of discussions. We on the “left”, in the middle, and even many on the right, are beginning to really suffer as a result of these policies. It’s no longer so easy separate the realm of “political ideas” from our actually daily experiences. TVeblen, once a very calm, balanced, and rational member of this board, can no longer dispassionately discuss conservative ideas, because she’s beginning to understand what they really mean in terms of actual consequences. And she hates it, quite understandably.

The same thing happened to me around the last presidential election. I realized the swiftboating shit was dangerous – that it might tip the election to Bush. And I realized the people promoting it didn’t really give a shit about it in the context of the election: they just wanted to disparage Kerry as a way of winning a debate point to tip the election, despite the overwhelming evidence that Bush was a lying, warmongering sack of shit. I lost a lot of respect for members of the right here that I had previously held in pretty high regard: Sam Stone in particular. And it became impossible for me to have dispassionate discussions about it in any sort of objective sense, with respect for my opponents, since their arguments were so transparent, and since the damage Bush had done by that point was not some abstract idea to me, but a very obvious and tangible result of his administration’s policies.

Of course, it doesn’t help matter that SA is fundamentally immune to reason, either, of course.

[MovieMogul]

@Starving_Artist

No, I would say it’s because they propogated it too thoughtlessly and with virtually no regard to consequence. Either that or with a total inability to see the consequence. “Do something, even if it’s wrong!” is how I’d characterize it.

Gee, if it’s good enough for the President, why shouldn’t it be good enough for the rest of us?

[GSV_Consolation_of_Dreams]

Please ignore this, the Thread Tools menu ain’t working again.

[Starving_Artist]

@eleanorigby

Well, I guess I’ll stay home, but can I have some shoes, and not be pregnant?

More false equivalence.

@eleanorigby

To hold the Civil Rights movement, the woman’s movement, the gay pride movement responsible for the increase in drugs, crime and eroding social mores (whatever they may be) is silly.

I couldn’t agree more, which is why I haven’t done so. What I’m critical of is the way these issues were pursued (and usually by people acting on behalf of the aggrieved parties but not actually a member of them) which resulted in the problems you mention.

@eleanorigby

This waxing nostalgic for a time that was better is non-productive. Blacks being treated like people; women (still not given equal pay for equal work mind you) able to obtain advanced degrees and choose to work outside the home–how are these bad things? Neither of these occurrences forced up the crime rate or increased public rudeness. Wall to wall news coverage of sensational crime, racial profiling, ghettoization of our inner cities(and now the outer ring of those cities as gentrification moves inward)–these all* helped increase the danger you perceive.

In short, it’s not that times were overall better back then; it is that you felt safer and more assured in those times (and it must be reitierated, those times were better for you, white, middle class male). We all have a time in our lives that we look back on with some wistfulness–there’s nothing wrong with that. But to make that desire for Elysium a political platform, however well disguised, to want to drag the populace back with you, that is madness.

You make some worthwhile points, but then you go and ruin it all with that last sentence. The desire for a society in which people behave well is not the same thing as wanting to drag people back to racism and sexism!

Damn, I’m getting tired of this!

This longing I see in the conservative party is what most baffles me about it. It’s like they accepted those 1950s sitcoms and old movies as reality. America is not a sitcom–Leave It to Beaver is no longer the ideal life. In fact, it never happened. Neither did Donna Reed.
[/QUOTE]
Exactly, and I know perfectly well that it never happened. Those shows were idealized versions of life in this country and the only people I ever hear from who seem to take them as actually being representative of that time are people who want to ridicule conservatives for it.

Still, all in all, your post was civil, well thought out, and presented with consideration for the other side. I appreciate your taking the time to post it.

[xenophon41]

Hi Mr. Svinlesha!

You’ve spotlighted one of the several elephants in the room quite nicely. Many on the right want to pretend that every debate begins outside of any real world context and history, and even outside of SDMB context and history. It just aint so. The dialogue turned nasty by their choice a long time ago.

The reason we don’t and can’t respect their ideology is because we’re still buried in it and the stench of it’s ruining our republic.

It’s awesome and inspiring to me that Obama’s trying to raise the dialogue and all, but IMO that won’t happen until not only the sick neocon worldview itself but also the methods used by its proponents are repudiated. With prejudice.

[Starving_Artist]

@Mr.Svinlesha

Well, part of the problem is that Starving Artist is looking for an open, disinterested discussion of topics. He wants a discourse where people with differing opinions can rationally debate issues without moving into the sphere of the personal.

Yeah, silly me, huh?

But having said that, I’m spending way too much time around here and my work is suffering as a consequence. I’m outta here, for now anyway.

ETA: You forgot about the wine. It was more about the wine than it was about the salad.

[Mr.Svinlesha]

Hey, xeno! Long time no see!

Yeah, it’s sort of like a member of the Klan posting on the SMDB and expecting to have a dispassionate discussion about the racial superiority of whites. Even if he were to “respect” my views, why the fuck should I be required to respect his?

The current problems in the US have gone way beyond the sphere of dispassionate, friendly disagreement. They’ve trotted out Palin in order to mobilize the fundamentalists, a huge voting block previously ambivalent towards McCain, a crass ploy to win the election and continuing pursuing the same (or worse) policies. And it’s distinctly possible that they’ll be successful.

[Guinastasia]

Oh good god, not the “Oh, things today are SOOOOO much worse-the past was soooo much better, and everything is getting worse everyday.” Study history and you’ll see what bullshit that was.

The good with the bad my ass, Starving Artist.
(God, that is one of my biggest pet peeves!)

[Starving_Artist]

@Mr.Svinlesha

Yeah, it’s sort of like a member of the Klan posting on the SMDB and expecting to have a dispassionate discussion about the racial superiority of whites.

OH, give me a fucking break!

The Klan and I have absolutely nothing in common!

It’s funny. I’ve never seen this kind of underhanded and ridiculous idiocy from you before. I guess the times really must taking their toll around here.

I think you people who are losing it so badly around here are doing so because of the way Sarah Palin has energized the Republican party, and you’re living in abject terror that the pubbies are gonna win. So you’ve lost all perspective and all reason.

@Mr. Svinlesha

Well, part of the problem is that Starving Artist is looking for an open, disinterested discussion of topics. He wants a discourse where people with differing opinions can rationally debate issues without moving into the sphere of the personal.

Yes, how ridiculous of me to attempt rational discussion without insults and name-calling.

(Only on the Straight Dope can a person be castigated for attempting to have a rational discussion.) :rolleyes:

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the notion that this place fights ignorance is utterly laughable.

[Starving_Artist]

@Guinastasia

Oh good god, not the “Oh, things today are SOOOOO much worse-the past was soooo much better, and everything is getting worse everyday.” Study history and you’ll see what bullshit that was.

The good with the bad my ass, Starving Artist.
(God, that is one of my biggest pet peeves!)

Hi, Guin. Did it really take you this long to see which way the wind was gonna blow?

[Czarcasm]

@Starving_Artist

Yeah, silly me, huh?

But having said that, I’m spending way too much time around here and my work is suffering as a consequence. I’m outta here, for now anyway.

ETA: You forgot about the wine. It was more about the wine than it was about the salad.

My ghod, Barbra Streisand herself hasn’t had this many farewell concerts!

[Guinastasia]

@Starving_Artist

Hi, Guin. Did it really take you this long to see which way the wind was gonna blow?

Why yes, yes it did, thank you for asking.
:rolleyes:
[sub]Actually, as a historian, this is something that has ALWAYS made me want to explode-the romantification of the “good old days” and how everything is going to hell in a handbasket. But you can think what you like.[/sub]

[Hentor_the_Barbarian]

@Czarcasm

My ghod, Barbra Streisand herself hasn’t had this many farewell concerts!

Hence, Starving for Attention. You won’t see anyone with more shoutouts, the obligatory Zoe defense and return appreciation, provision of info re: trivial personal events (e.g. what’s for dinner), and of course, multiple curtain calls.

[Starving_Artist]

@Czarcasm

My ghod, Barbra Streisand herself hasn’t had this many farewell concerts!

Yeah, but Cher’s still feeling pretty secure.

@Hector the Contrarian

…and of course, multiple curtain calls.

I’ll be here all week. Tell your friends and loved ones – if you have any.

And now, I’m outta here! :D:D:D

[Mr.Svinlesha]

SA:

*OH, give me a fucking break!

The Klan and I have absolutely nothing in common!*

No, I didn’t write that you had anything in common with the Klan. I was using a metaphor. Somewhat of an exaggeration, in order to drive the point home. But what I’m trying to say is that the ideas you espouse here are utterly bankrupt (like, for example, a Klansman’s ideas on the issue of race), and therefore not worthy of respect. Even if you respect my ideas. The fact that you respect my ideas doesn’t mean that I have to respect yours, especially if they’re idiotic.

And sorry to have to tell you this, but your OP is idiotic. You insult a whole group of people who hold one particular political view and then are shocked – shocked, I say, shocked! – when they respond in kind.

You write, “Yes, how ridiculous of me to attempt rational discussion without insults and name-calling.” Apparently, this is your definition of attempting rational discussion without insults and name-calling (from the OP):

*Liberals are so totally and thoroughly convinced of the rightness of their positions, the nobility of their motives, and their purity of heart, that there is absolutely no reason why any decent person could possibly disagree…therefore, anyone who thinks differently or disagrees with you simply HAS to be an asshole, because no one who isn’t an asshole could possibly disagree with you!

So I thank you for this insight into the liberal intolerance and arrogance that I’ve always noted but never understood.*

I guess you then expect me to hold a dispassionate, objective discussion with you on the subject of my own arrogance and intolerance. Sure thing. Afterward we can discuss what kind of wine you like with yer favas.

Anyway, this is the fucking pit. Don’t come here for rational discussion. Come here for a fight.

One last point: I’d like to be able to have one of those old fashioned political discussions. But enough is enough. At some point, words without action are meaningless. I would not rely on the notion that we lefties are nice, rational, friendly people anymore. I’m sick of this shit, and I’m not the only one.

[elucidator]

i am entirely capable of civility, especially when the topic is of no gravity. We can discuss the French Impressionists with calm aplomb, over tea and biscuits with pinkies akimbo, with a delicate sip every now and then. (I hold with Scripture on this, that a love of Monet is the root of all evil. But I am willing to disagree on that point with complete dispassion…)

A monstrous thing has been done in our name, under our flag. We have sent our best and brightest to kill and die on a fools errand. An untold number of innocent lives have been flushed down the crapper. A hundred thousand? Hundred and fifty? We have no idea, just big, round numbers. Mere statistics, as Stalin would have it.

The wonder is not that we find it difficult to discuss this without rancor and bitterness, the wonder is we don’t scream ourselves hoarse. The wonder is that we don’t set our hair on fire and run shreiking through the streets, gibbering and greebing about the madness, the madness.!

Utterly calm and reasonable men have turned out beloved country into an engine of horror and despair for untold numbers of innocents. I should engage them and their supporters with polite civililty and murmur the occaissional “Tsk tsk!”? Suggest in quiet tones of respecful dissent that perhaps debasing everything good and noble about my country into a turd wrapped in barbed wire is, maybe, not the best thing evah? So long as I’m respectful of gibbering idiots whose hands are dripping in gore?

Fuck that shit. If that makes me crazy, go ahead and say so, I ain’t delicate, I’ll get over it.