And I should point out that I started his by pointing out that the OP was comparing his own behavior to an over-the-top politician. I invited him instead to compare his behavior to mine.
septimus then asked me to supply an example of similar over-the-top language from a Democrat. I did.
Now comes the parade of attempts to explain that the over-the-top language was justified.
If I were inclined to parse carefully, I’d minimize this comment by pointing out that it’s puffery. There is, as you intuit, no factual answer to what might make someone “American at heart.” it’s a complete statement of opinion, unverifiable and untestable.
Stark’s comment was a factual claim. One that was false.
But I don’t regard that as useful. Both comments have no place in our political discourse.
Oh come the fuck on.
Yes, I know, I know. You’re a retired lawyer. You were trained to dissect every statement with customized, diamond tipped tweezers to extract every slight, singular semblance of meaning out of every single word choice. You’ve done so all your life, maybe. At least you pretend you do at all times when you’re writing here.
But, having been exposed to actual humans at some point in your life, doubtlessly under carefully controlled conditions :D, you must know that people don’t necessarily mean the very last iota of what their words convey, strictly speaking and under a microscope. Even more so words uttered while under the thrall of powerful emotions.
IOW, yeah, that’s not what he said, but you bloodly well know that’s what he meant.
I, and I can’t possibly conceptualize a world where you wouldn’t, understand what the Democrat dude meant when he said what he said. That doesn’t excuse the exact words he uttered, but it explains them. He said them in Congress, in a heated argument with a political opponent. It’s very different from Republican whatshisname making statements to the press, or carefully writing them in a peer-reviewed newsletter.
I do think I understand what Coffman meant and where he came from, too. And that’s why I don’t believe the words come from the same place. At all.
On these boards, the exception is Mitch McConnell, who clearly and literally meant that no outcome, strategy, or act is out of bounds so long as Obama is not re-elected.
That statement, for some at least, has only one interpretation possible. It is evidence, for example, that the GOP is sabotaging the economy, an inference made by members of this board who have presumably been exposed to actual human beings at some point in their lives.
If it were the other way around, you’d be castigating the Republican for soiling the hallowed floor of the House, the one place where political speech matters the most and should be most carefully made, and pointing out that at least the Democrat’s intemperate speech was done more informally, with less importance, and in a more private setting.
You will, in other words, seize upon any excuse to label the Republican example worse.
Let’s return to the example I suggested in my first post in this thread.
I haven’t called President Obama any names at all. I haven’t leveled any inappropriate charges at him. Indeed, I’ve praised him at times. At times. But some of my counterparts on the Left here at the SDMB can’t say the same about their behavior towards Bush. Since the OP started by weighing his behavior against the politicians, and septimus responded to my critique of that comparison by demanding apples to apples, why don’t we choose to look at that path?
Stratocaster makes a good point. Why do you choose to treat Senator McConnel’s obvious hyperbole as if he were under oath and responding to a demand that he reveal the literal truths about the GOP priorities? Why doesn’t he get the ‘you bloody well know that’s what he meant’ treatment?
Giving him that treatment, he is no traitor; but he is a flaming asshole even by politico standards; but I am satisfied with his apology.
The widespread thinking his mouthing-off represents is really much more disturbing.
I say, let’s respond in kind and up the stakes: If you don’t care that some Americans are poor or just-getting-by, if you object to any effort to do something about that as “socialism,” if you think some libertarian-asshole definition of “freedom” is more important than equality, then you, sir, are no American! It’s not an honest approach, but it is not thereby unwarranted.
:Shrug: I didn’t much like Bubba or Shrub. I think Shrub’s administration had both quasi-fascistic and terroristic traits, and the fact that my country voted for him doesn’t change that.
It’s a shame that people (including his supporters) ascribe to Obama positions that he doesn’t actually have. Can we argue about what’s actually going on?
Hahaha. Dude, have you even *met *me ? Wait, have you even met *the House *?
Seriously though: I’m no blind Democrat partisan. It’d be kinda hard for me to be, what with the no voting and not being an American to begin with. The fact that you assume I must be is somewhat telling of *your *partisanship, doesn’t it ?
But I stand by what I’m saying. Reduce Democrat guy’s words to a non-hyperbolic root and he’s merely saying “you agree to pay for war but not for kid insurance, WTH is wrong with you ?”. Which one may or may not agree with, or find relevant to the debate on kids’ health care, or file under appeal to emotion, whatever.
But you try and reduce “Obama is not an American in his heart” or “we will have no other recourse but to take arms if Obama is re-elected” to *their *unoffensive non hyperbolic roots, please ? Because I’m having trouble with that.
I chose to do that ? Me ? Well golly gee, I must have been drunk or something, I don’t remember it at all. Total black out. Can you quote me on that ?
You reduced out what I think everyone would agree was the worst part of the statement - that Bush started the war because he enjoyed sending soldiers off to die.
Now Bush may have sent troops to Iraq for the a lot of wrong reasons - faulty intelligence; belief in neo-con rhetoric; trying to establish an American imperial presence in the middle east; a desire for glory as a wartime president; creating business opportunities for his cronies; a weird freudian competition with his father - but there’s no evidence he did it out of bloodthirstiness. So Stark had plenty of legitimate or at least plausible reasons he could have used to make the same point. But he chose to use one that wasn’t plausible. And the reason he used was more offensive than any of the more legitimate reasons. So it appears Stark’s intent was to offend.
Of course he was - he was in the process of calling his political opponents a bunch of useless wankers to their faces. Moderation would have been counter-indicated in the context :). But that’s not the issue, or at least it’s not mine.
I got no problem with being deliberately offensive or shocking, nor with hyperbole in and of itself. It’s a valid form of speech. Fuck, it’s my *preferred *form of speech.
I’m not some blue nosed Starving Artist, longing for imaginary olden days when everyone was polite and measured at all times. If anything, I’d long for the *real *olden days, back when the Andrew Jacksons of the world got to cane the everliving snot out of anyone dared talk shit about them on the floor. Or the S.Korean parliament, where they routinely try to strangle each other. That’s more like it. That’s passionate debating
But that outrage has to come from somewhere. There has to be a white hot center of actual, factual rage-inducing stuff at the core of it all. You don’t get to make it up top to bottom. You don’t get to manufacture your use of offensive hyperbole out of whole cloth. That’s what I take issue with. “Obama is not an American in his heart”, where the hell does that come from ? The hell is it even supposed to *mean *?
TL;DR you can make some shit up, but not all of it.
Some of us have different motives for participating in these discussions.
If this is a debating society where we compete for points, I concede defeat to a lawyer who has demonstrated that he’s happy to misapply statistics, or leap from one half-truth to another, whatever is the best ploy of the moment to bamboozle a jury.
OTOH, I worry about the future, not just of the U.S.A. but of the whole world since the U.S. is such an important power. I’ll get flustered, stammer, and make typos because the questions are important. So you win, Bricker, if we’re arguing before a jury. But that doesn’t make your position correct.
I asked the follow-on question not because I wanted to “move the goalposts” (), but because it seems relevant. I’m sincerely curious which Republicans have condemned Coffman.
I think Stark losing his temper and comparing Bush’s “amusing” war to GOP’s disrespect for America’s children was indeed “out of line.” Yet – perhaps I am a hypocrite – I’m less concerned about knowing which Democrats failed to censure him. In a fantastic world where I was a Congressmen dealing with today’s GOP I’m sure I’d have been censured by now, if not hospitalized for apoplectic stroke or as part of some insanity plea after mayhem. The Iraq War was so ill-founded, that it’s only a short step for one’s passion to lead to Stark’s hyperbole. Stark was once my Congressman and I was happy to know he was passionate about issues.
Another follow-on question: What is the underlying passion that led Coffman to make such a despicable remark?
But that, again, moves the goalposts. I was challenged to find a similarly offensive statement made by a Democrat against a Republican president. You now appear to agree that I have, but wish to point out that he had more justification to actually be offensive.
I thought Stark’s goal should have been to get health care enacted. And in general to see to the welfare of his constituents and the country.
You seem to be saying that these are just side issues. Stark’s real goal was to make Bush look bad and in general to make the Democrats look better than the Republicans.
Isn’t this the kind of thing that a lot of people are condemning the current Republicans in Congress for doing? Just acting as obstructionists and saying or doing whatever they can to make the Democrats look bad?
Well, to be honest, he is saying that one’s based on fact that is wrapped in a bunch of hyperbole, and the other is a baseless lie. By pointing this out, he’s saying they’re not similar. Wouldn’t you be more offended by a baseless lie rather than an exaggeration of your actions?
No. He was trying to get health care enacted. By trying to make his opponents realize what kind of terrible human beings they were being, in the hope that maybe they’d change their position. I would guess - I’m not in the man’s head.
Or maybe he was just venting his impotent frustration at not being able to get his pet measure passed.
Either way, how you would classify that as “obstructionism” I have no idea.
So no, it’s not exactly the same thing as just randomly slagging the President at some town rally to garner some cheap cheers from Birther yokels. And no, Bricker, no matter how hard you try to find a square peg to jam into a round hole to prop up your sempiternal tu quoques (as if those were any kind of defence or justification for any behaviour whatsoever. What, your dear old mum never gave you the “if your friends jumped off a bridge…” talk ?), the two examples are not equivalent.
If you want to strip away the rhetoric, then he’s saying that the core of Americanism is individualistic achievement, and a President who constantly proposes programs designed to punish the successful and force them to pay for the unsuccessful clearly does not share that belief in American individual achievement. Since that’s the heart of the American success story… well, you do the math.
And since you’ve already acknowledged a lack of familiarity with debate… Those are not examples of tu quoque.
Which is which? Surely you would agree that for all of the bad reasons we went into Iraq is was not for Bush’s pure amusement at seeing soldiers die? Was that the “baseless lie”? If it’s an exaggeration, was it it an exaggeration of?
Or was it the statement that Obama is not an American “at heart”? Is that the exaggeration? As Bricker said, it can’t be a baseless lie, because such a statement has no factual qualities. It is purely an opinion.
No, the birther part was the part of Coffman’s statement that was a lie. If you’re still “Just asking questions” about that at this late date, you’re trying to perpetuate a lie. The opinions on either side, who cares.
), but because it seems relevant. I’m sincerely curious which Republicans have condemned Coffman.