Er, you should probably avoid resting an argument on the distinction between two words if you don’t know what they mean (which you obviously don’t, or you would be able to draw the distinction correctly – e.g. being tempted to assault someone because you don’t like their looks is indicative of a bad personality; actually doing so is indicative of bad character).
What? No Pit thread that George Washington owned slaves?
I know that being a blithering idiot everything seems like nonsense to you, it’s not my fault simple facts hurt you widdle head and confuse you, so keep your deficiencies to yourself.
His behavior was notable at the time, I don’t know that it could be said to be unusual. Pranks and bullying were super, super, super common. Encouraged by many parents and authority figures and never really something the rest of the parents and authority figures lectured about or tried to prevent. Romney is just notable in that he was a lot more creative and organized in his–if anything it shows from a very young age he was a natural leader among his peers.
In my High School I always thought bullying wasn’t as common as many think it was back in “the day”, but I’ll say the bullying there tended to be a lot worse than what Romeny did. Most of what Romney did was just embarrassing for the kid getting picked on, in my High School the kids who got bullied got pulled into the locker room, got held down and beat with socks filled with tennis balls and had dirty jockey shorts shoved down their throat and/or had their own underway pulled so far up their asses they usually tore in half. Romney’s stuff was more elaborate than the backwoods rednecks I grew up with would even think about, but it was also a lot less violent.
Is General Washington currently a candidate for President of the U.S.?
I never terrorized anyone for shits and giggles. If more people were evil in the '60s, that just means that fewer of them should have been trusted with power.
Right, but that’s an argument for why we shouldn’t hold Romney’s bullying against him as an adult: kids do fucked up things because they’re kids, and most of them grow out of it. I’m saying, to the extent that this is a reflection on Romney’s character as an adult, the fact that society winked at this behavior is not mitigating. In this particular case, I agree that the reflection is minimal - but only because of Romney’s age, not because of societal permissiveness at the time.
He’s just getting warmed up, I’m sure.
Yes, the output of blithering idiocy does tend toward the nonsensical. The craven bootlicking aspect noted by the Master adds a spice of contemptibility.
I generally find “as the twig is bent…” to be a fairly good predictor.
You should probably learn to fucking read. It’s really easy to blow up arguments no on ever made.
I have specifically said that the incidents, back then, do not reflect on Romney’s character right now because he wasn’t an adult, his character had not been formed yet. That’s why we treat people in High School differently.
I didn’t say that bullying is never indicative of character, I’m saying in Romney’s case bullying from High School has nothing to do with his character as an adult. People that think otherwise are stupid, you’re showing that here because I guess because my posts have a little bit of nuance your heads rolling off your shoulder and you’re getting confused by the simplest things I say. In your world I guess any thought that requires more than a few lines of text to explain is “tortured logic” and “nonsense.” But you do nicely illustrate my point the people who genuinely think this is indicative of what kind of President Romney would make are blithering, mindless idiots.
Further, to avoid confusing you even further as I know that is very easy to do, the reason I say this is part of “personality politics” is because it has nothing to do with legitimate political issues (of which a candidates character is one of those legitimate issues.) It’s sort of like the fact that say, George Bush was probably involved in hazing people when he was a frat boy. That has nothing to do with his character, but if it was brought up in 2004 it would have been part of “personality politics” in trying to portray the modern day George Bush in a negative light based on some random pointless thing from his past.
However, if George Bush was hazing people in the White House or bullying people in the White House, that would point directly to his character as an adult and his fitness to be a leader.
So to break it down simple enough even a SteveMB can understand it:
-
Bullying that goes on right now or in recent memory (say last 15-20 years) shows that the person is a bully as an adult and has poor character.
-
Bullying that went on at age 17/18 shows nothing about a 65 year old man, and people who bring it up are just engaged in personality politics. Something that is 100% valid as a political tactic, but back to my original point–if you think this is a “real” issue (meaning an issue that is actually important in the running of the country versus just an issue for stupid people to be interested in) you are an absolute idiot.
Of course at the end of the day stupid people get to pick our President for stupid reasons, so even the issues that have nothing to do with governance are important in that they decide who gets to govern, pretty sad really.
My experience has been precisely the opposite.
‘Swiftboating’ is soooo last decade. What can we call this one? 'Cranbrooking? ‘Shear-the-queer-gate?’
“Dude, remember in 2012 when Romney got Prep-Schooled and then he brain-sharted in front of the whole nation? Cost him the election. That was awesome.”
Is the Pit only for current events? Why haven’t we pitted GW?
I’ve actually observed kids that get bullied are more likely to become serial killers so we should really be worried about the kids who didn’t bully other kids.
And I have rejected your assertion. This sort of willful and premeditated violence as a young man is one of those things (like a pattern of animal abuse) that is indicative of a fundamentally broken personality, the owner of which needs to be kept away from society as much as possible.
No. Did you have another question?
Then you’re an idiot, end of discussion.
Except, of course, for in the reality-based community, in which Romney’s fellows are still disturbed about this outrageous conduct to this very day. As well they should be, because it was nothing resembling normal or acceptable behavior. It was a crime. As a society, we establish that certain behaviors are out of bounds for a reason. Mitt obviously didn’t consider them out of bounds then, and he laughed about it now, suggesting that he still doesn’t. That doesn’t mean the rest of us should ignore his behavior.
[QUOTE=Martin Hyde]
That’s why we treat people in High School differently.
[/QUOTE]
He was an adult. We treat adults like adults. Except, apparently, if they’re GOP presidential candidates. But the rest of the time, we regard adults as adults. We actually have explicitly made these rules as a society, and these rules we explicitly made as a society establish that Mitt Romney was an adult at the time he gay-bashed his younger schoolmate. So, no, we don’t treat him differently. And you haven’t presented any reason why we should.
[QUOTE=Miller]
He’s just getting warmed up, I’m sure.
[/QUOTE]
LOL.
By the way, it’s not provable but this guy almost 100% certainly does not believe this. My sincere belief is he and people like him just feel they can most effectively bash Romney with this by acting indignant and following this line of discussion. I had hoped since we aren’t actually in the public eye here political hacks would be honest about how this just hurts Romney’s “likability” (an unfortunately important metric in electability) and leave it at that, but even within the relative privacy and unimportance of an internet message board they have to maintain this faux-outrage and stick to the ludicrous position that behavior in High School can show that you’re a “fundamentally broken personality.”
May god have mercy on him if Steve MB typed that tard-line genuinely.
As much as it might pain some of you to realize, this is actually the kind of thing that makes Romney seem more like a real person. Most of us did stupid shit when were teenagers. Romney’s not the squeaky clean Mormon boy that everyone thought he was.
The story here, to the extent that there is one, is that Romney was a rich kid at a boarding school. The rest of us who grew up in those years had to harass kids in public school.
Meh, doesn’t really change my opinion of the man, I always thought he was a bit of an asshole and wouldn’t even consider voting for him. What I do find amusing is the various right wing pundits and personalities getting all up in arms about how this was decades ago and he is a changed man. These are the same people who thought Bill Ayers was such a big deal and stood behind the swiftboating. The right invented these politics of destruction and they are surprised when it is used against their candidates?
Fucking par for the course.
How many gay-bashings did you commit? Because if Romney smoked some dope or stole the other school’s mascot or mooned someone, I wouldn’t care in the slightest. But he did, in fact, conspire with his friends to commit a crime that I consider extremely serious.
I have no familiarity with 60s-era state law in Michigan but I’m pretty sure under common law what he did was battery, and it’s in a context that sounds disturbing. He attacked a kid for seeming to be gay (or seeming to be whatever his crew wants to rationalize this to be, but it boils down to seeming to be gay). That kind of thing might have been socially acceptable at the time but it was not okay and I have no trouble imagining how terrifying it was to his victim, even if the only actual physical damage was to his hair. Being physically attacked and held down by five people would have been terrifying to me. So, like, whatever insults you want to throw my way for feeling the way I do, I’m on the side of his victim. And whatever rationalization anyone puts forward for what Mitt did, what he did was still a major crime, at least at common law, and in my opinion, declaring certain behaviors to be crimes is pretty much the clearest indication there is that these behaviors are not normal activities, and they’re outside the realm of what we consider acceptable. It’s definitely not within the acceptable bounds of stupid shit teenagers can be wholesale excused for doing. Especially since he’s shown no remorse.
So pardon me, but I am pretty clear on my opinion of a youthful gay-bashing and on my opinion of anyone who thinks that’s something we should all politely ignore.