That was intended to add what to the discussion? Confirmation?
Seems to me the main divide on the board isn’t left/right or Rep/Dem but realist/fantasist. There’s a lot of overlap, of course. The realist camp starts with the facts and then applies reasoning to reach conclusions, the fantasist camp starts with the answer their ideology (or simple partisanship) requires and backfills. **Collounsbury ** was (is still) a hard realist. **Bricker ** has gone over into the fantasist/partisan camp where **Sam ** has always been. But we judge positions on their merits here, as I’m sure do most lurkers as well as those IRL we say the same things to. A fantasist position is easily recognized as such and is just as easily exposed as bullshit, and has the appropriate level of convincingness, though the fantasists often tend to take the revelation of their bullshitting personally (right, Sam?).
Speaking of Sam, can you give us some names to go along with this lumpnen “left” whose existence you hypothesize and whose behavior you whine about? It’s the Pit, go right ahead - and be sure you can back up what you say.
As I said before, Ickey Woods’ touchdown celebration didn’t last nearly as long as Bricker’s bullshit. It is, in an odd way, heartening to see that it is still going on. Makes me know that I was correct in my estimation of his character.
As for the charge laid in the OP, I, unfortunately, must not have been around long enough to remember when he wasn’t.
You did by starting a thread, any thread, in any forum.
It’s considered widely to be a general courtesy, and has been mentioned in countless threads, for the subject or complaint to be clear in the OP. Yes, details can be mined for in the link(s) but one shouldn’t have to go there for even the most basic of info.
Telling Ethilrist to “fuck off” strikes me as a bit extreme, not to mention contradictory to your supposed desire for a more mature tone to the posts.
Sure–and similarly you’ve noted Shodan’s and Brutus’s and milroyj’s and duffer’s venomous attacks on anyone they perceive as liberal? Shodan at least is often funny and often compassionate; Brutus at least cracks the occasional hilarious joke. But all of them have got a whole heaping helping of viciousness they unload on liberals fairly often.
I ain’t saying that it’s more than some liberals heap on you conservatives; I’ve got no desire to engage in a shitweighing contest, and even if I did, I don’t know where we’d find the appropriate scale. But tom’s point is sound: jerkishness knows no party.
If I start making nasty comments toward Republicans in general, I hope I’ll get called on it, just as Bricker deserves to get called on his attitude. The whole, “You started it!” defense is ridiculous, especially when applied toward a group.
My $.02 that Bricker has done nothing pitworthy and me showing a little support for him. Since when has more been required of a pit thread post? I certainly added more to the discussion than Reeder’s typical drive by sniping posts. (To name just one.)
:rolleyes:
So, it’s not a left right divide, but a realist/fantasist divide. Oh, and bytheway, according you it seems that it’s only the right wing posters that you are including in your “fantasist” label. Give me a break.
No, I don’t see any real difference at all there. Well, perhaps one: You’ve just confirmed that you can recognize simple vitriol of a different brand from yours, but you actually believe your own to be simple, factual truth. :wally
Show me where I said that. Or is it simply that you include your fellow fantasists under your “righty” label, and label all realists (including Coll!) as “lefties”?
Bricker at least has shown us flashes in the past that he can be more responsible and adult than he has been lately. You so far have not.
GD was always a place where people talked past each other instead of to each other. At least on political and religious topics. There have been some incredibly informative and civil debates, but usually on other topics, like homeschooling or scientific topics.
I don’t have a problem with the lack of civility, counterproductive as it is, I have a problem with the talking past each other. Bricker’s big thing right now is the results of the 2004 presidential election. The final vote tally is pretty much all that matters, the gold standard by which everything will be measured. This completely ignores the 800 pound gorilla in the room. Campaigning is not the same as governing. Writing speeches and slogans is not the same as crafting policies. Every time someone tries to bring up questions of the wisdom or implementation of specific policies, actions, or proposals of the Bush administration, the same rejoinder is met. “Bush won the vote, so sit down and shut up.”
Hold on to that safety blanket if that’s what you prefer. The reality is that policies, actions, and proposals, those things that make up the realm of “governing” is ultimately what matters. Crapping on discussions of these aspects of the Bush administration with the “suck my ballsack, we won the election” bludgeon is doing nothing more than isolating yourself from the actual meat of the discussion and making yourself irrelevant.
A sentiment this progressive fully agrees with. For all of Kerry’s alledged nuances, this time around, he lacked the courage/conviction to engage in a full frontal attack of all the mistakes and outright lies that have led the US down its current pariah-nation path.
The authors then go on to critizice Neocon policy thusly:
Hmm…gotta love these “lefties,” they sure as shit make a lot of sense.
As does this right-cross to the Neocon jaw:
Note the source, that well-known leftwing rag, The National Interest, which, amongst others has recieved praise such as follows from Godless Pinko Commies such as The Iron Lady and Charles Krauthammer themsleves:
You know, if you read GD with any regularity you must be aware that “Republicans are evil” is a constant theme. Generalizations about Republicans and “tighty righties” abound. There are even threads debating weighty issues such as whether or not Republicans are pure evil or just misinformed idiots. Yet whenever anyone refers to ‘lefties’ as a group, it spawns instant pit threads about the horrors of generalization.
Mtgman said:
I tend to agree with this, which is why I haven’t been engaging (too much) in such crowing. It’s pretty clear that it wouldn’t have taken much in the way of political change to have swung the scales the other way. Of course, I have no doubt that if Kerry had won, a lot of the people dumping on Bricker for his triumphalism would have been doing exactly the same thing. In fact, I suspect the “In your face!” commentary would have been far more widespread. So there’s more than a little hypocrisy in this sudden cry for civility and the desire to ‘get past’ the election results.
Unfortunately, the tendency to beat your opponents over the head with news they don’t want to hear is the result of both sides engaging in the same thing. When there’s a news article that supports a liberal position, you know that within 30 minutes there will be a thread about it here, with the usual suspects going on about how it proves that Republicans are idiots and Bush is a monster. Then when news appears that supports the Republican position, we get the same from that side. The result is a polarization of positions and a refusal to budge an inch regardless of the merits of any particular position. That’s pretty much the definition of partisanship.
And that’s why civility is so important - when people are civil with each other, they become more willing to concede points on each side, and rationality ensues. But when people are nasty, positions harden and knee-jerk obstructionism is the result. And then no one learns a damned thing.
And while the tenor of the board has improved from a couple of years ago, there’s no way on God’s green earth that you’re going to convince me that the vitriol was equal on the right and left around the time of the Iraq invasion. The only member of the right I can recall that even approached the levels of hate-spewing of the anti-war side was Wildest Bill, and he was banned forthwith.
Redfury: I’m afraid your point was totally lost on me. So you found some criticism of the Bush administration’s policies. This proves what, exactly? That criticism exists? That some criticism comes from the right?
Honestly, I don’t understand your point. Could you state it a little more clearly?
The shrinks call that “projection”; the ardent loyalists (of which your kind is unique, admittedly) call it “They’re just as bad as we are”. That is an extremely common tactic, and just as transparent.
It’s no more than simply imagining how others (whom you fail to understand) would react in a different world.
But you still use it as factual evidence of “their” hypocrisy.
Really, what’s there in that little whine for anyone to take seriously?
Either this post is completely dishonest, or you have mannaged to spend 12,000 posts on this message board without ever reading a single contribution by Debaser, Brutus, milroyj, clothahump, et al.
As i’ve already said, i don’t much care if people spew venom, and i’m fully willing to concede that leftists and liberals do it. Just don’t pretend that conservatives are nothing but innocent victims in all this.
I was talking specificallly about the atmosphere during the height of the Collounsbury era. I’m fully aware that at various times both sides have engaged in this stuff. But Col and his buddies took it to a new level.
Collounsbury is conservative by any meaningful definition of the word, yet you persist in citing him as evidence that people on the left of this board are nasty. If anything, he’s evidence that people on the right of this board are nasty.
Second, I don’t think Col was any nastier than any number of other posters, and he certainly didn’t take nastiness to “a new level.” He was blunt when he was being nasty, sure, unlike the more usual practice of using sly (or not-so-sly) innuendo, but that just made his nastiness more obvious, not any more nasty. Really, Sam, the only thing Collounsbury took to a new level was insulting you. And to my knowledge, he only called you an idiot (albeit more colourfully). Contrast this with, say, manhattan’s persistant conflation between opposition to the war in Iraq with support for terrorism. Sure he’s been called on it any number of times, but he keeps doing it. Now, I don’t know about you, but I’d far rather be called an idiot than tarred as a supporter of terrorism. I think it’s high time you gave up this persecution complex of yours.
As I’ve noted before, you try defending a Presidency that advocates torturing prisoners, snubbing treaties, starting wars on false pretenses, and spreading propaganda on its own citizens, and see how long it takes before you crack…
Nonsense. I know it comes up on occasion, but nothing like constantly. I know there are a few liberals who can’t wrap their heads around the idea that conservatives can be motivated by honorable intentions, just as there are a few conseravtives who can’t wrap their heads around the idea that liberals are informed by intellectual rigor.
I also know that you seem to place a great deal of store in the idea that conservatives get more shit flung at them around here, but I think that even if that’s true, it’s wholly irrelevant. Those flinging shit on either side need to be told to stop, and when someone on your side flings shit, you need to tell them to stop.
I have on several occasions told liberals to stop flinging shit. I have never seen you tell Brutus, Shodan, milroyj, Debaser, or in this case Bricker the same thing.
It’s not the honor of conservatives that’s on the line. Its yours and Bricker’s.