I very rarely participate in political discussions on these boards, mainly because they tend to be US-centric and I have neither the knowledge nor, frankly, the interest to go up against some of the well-informed people we have here (and as an aside, I’m impressed by many of you). Therefore, you probably won’t know much about my political leanings, so let me just assure you that I’m pretty much as far to the left as you can imagine. No, farther than that. Yeah, that’s about right. I’m just saying this so that this post won’t be construed as coming from a Bushist. I hate the guy with a passion, I think he’s dangerous, a fool, a plain old asshole, and an absolutely horrible President. If I were ever to talk to him, I doubt we’d agree on anything more complex than “usually, it’s not a great idea to kill people”.
I do read political discussions, though, and I have to tell you something: they’re embarrassing. This thread is the latest example. Started for a perfectly valid reason, it soon turned out that the directive in question didn’t at all say what it first seemed to say. I can see this, and I very much doubt that you honestly can’t. The correct thing to do would have been to post “Whoops”, with an optional addition of “but you’ll forgive me for thinking that asshole would do something like that”. Since almost everybody on the boards, even people who supported and defended and voted for Bush in the past, now agrees that the guy sucks big donkey balls, we could just nod our heads and move on.
But no. Instead you keep going, distorting what the directive says, acting like it’s something other than it is. You change the subject to something different, and when called on that and asked for cites, you dodge and change again. And, seriously, look like idiots. I’m embarrassed by this, and I’m just a guy on the sidelines.
Couldn’t we try honesty for a while? You’re now in a situation where almost everybody agrees with you on Bush, even people on the other side of the political spectrum, and what you’re doing with it is pushing it farther than you have any reason (or possibility, really) to do. There is plenty of real things to criticize and attack him for, so why make all this shit up? And why refuse to acknowledge when you go off half-baked? Have you really not noticed that “I was wrong” does bring in a whole lot more respect than dodging and refusing?
Maybe, we could have a political discussion that doesn’t turn into name-calling, shit-slinging and general pointlessness. I know it’s possible, I remember a few… from way back.
I doubt this post will have any effect, but I felt I had to give it a go anyway. Bracing myself for the (sadly) inevitable shitstorm.