The other thing that tends to happen is when an idea/opinion/what have you looks conservative/Republican to some posters, they immediately attack and start making rather odd assumptions. Such as in the anti-vax thread, where I dared to ask a question and suddenly I must be an anti-vaxer. Okaaay. Shoot, I don’t even know if anti-vaxers are right or left, but it is certainly one of the hot buttons folks in here cannot consider with any - ahem - consideration of the facts, reason and logic.
No love Starving Artist?
I agree: It shouldn’t have been lonesome polecat. It could have been some of those you mentioned. It should have been you. Post 10 was completely benign and correct, and when people ARGUED WITH YOU, you took it as insults, and instead of arguing back, played the victim. Even then though, you didn’t really deserve it. Then you posted this:
“Liberal “reason and logic” has damn near ruined this country, and the prolems they have caused have literally resulted in millions of deaths and ruined lives that would not have been lost or ruined in a more disciplined and adult society.”
Now it’s open season. I’m just going to say it again: fuck off. Get off of the site.
When it comes to certain subjects, it’s very clear; the modern republican party (let’s be honest; it is representative of conservative america)/tea party (like the republicans, just more insane) are simply wrong or lying. For example: deficit reduction. Nonpartisan sources such as the CBO showed, for example, that the health care bill would be GREAT for deficit reduction. Republican politicians apparently disagree… based on what information, I have to wonder?
Another great example is climate change. let’s be clear here; when the vast majority of the scientific community is in agreement on a subject, then you should fucking listen to them. That there are many republicans who flat-out deny its existence should be a warning light.
Now, it’s not that all conservatives are wrong on all issues. It’s the the vast majority toe the party line, which, in several very important issues (for example, the economy), is either stupid or evil.
No, never said that. I simply posited that, because the republican party is almost single-handedly responsible for downgrading the nation’s credit, they should be put in the stocks for it!
Because that’s who the OP was arguing with at the time, obviously.
I once tried to have a reasonable conversation with you many moons ago. I soon realized that you were nothing but a caricature of a stupid old man whose mind was made up long ago about everything under the sun, and who simply refuses to be swayed by things as inconvenient as “facts” or “logic”.
There are certain people who have abrogated their rights to civil discourse, and simply need to be mocked. That you and napkin lady are the only two like this I’ve discovered here, makes this board really quite fantastic.
You called me out first, dickhead. You single me out by name, insult me, and when I respond, you, with deliberate dishonesty, try to paint yourself as the innocent victim.
You are a duplicitous coward.
So you acknowledge that during my more civil attempts to engage posters on this board I was attacked unfairly and simply for being a conservative. Thank you. That practice is single-handedly responsible for the fact that I started posting as I do now.
I don’t recall…and I doubt that you could ever find…any instance where I said that I was gonna start being shitty to you despite your friendliness to me because I was being forced to by the board’s liberals.
I also seem to recall that if you could point to an instance where I behaved abusively toward you without provocation I would readily apologize and retract whatever I said.
And as I recall, you couldn’t point to anything specific and instead laid the blame at the fact that I make broad brush criticisms at liberals, and since you are a liberal I was therefore being shitty to you.
Have you noticed that this board is full of broad brush condemnations of conservatives and Republicans? Yes, I know you’ve said that you’ve called a couple of them on it from time to time, but I think you would readily agree if you were honest about it that those occasions don’t amount to a drop in the bucket. And at any rate you don’t find them nearly as offensive as you do the criticisms from me, even though theirs outnumber mine a hundred to one…at least.
I don’t claim to be, I am.
Can you point to any instance where I appeared to be friendly to you and then attacked you specifically? I don’t think you can.
You betray yourself with those comments. You could not possibly know what you’re talking about, and yet you make these declarative statements as though they are fact. And I can say that with confidence because I know the PMs are there and if you had looked through them to see if I was lying you would find out otherwise. So obviously you haven’t looked through them, therefore you’re just talking out of your ass. There’s no two ways about it. I think anyone who is being honest about it knows that I cannot in good faith post PMs I’ve received in the expectation of privacy, however, to give you an example of the support I do occasionally get from posters who are on the opposite side of the fence from me politically, I refer you to this post from the ATMB thread I started about you. It was posted publicly by Banquet Bear, so I can point to it without violating a confidence. It should be sufficient to back up my claim that I do sometimes get support from people who nevertheless don’t agree with my politics.
Now, having said all this, I’ll make you the same offer again. If you can show where I ever attacked you personally without previous provocation on your part, I will rescind whatever it was I said and apologize to you willingly. And I’ll go one step further and make the same offer to you that I did to tomndebb, another poster I’d gotten considerably crosswise with over time. I told him I’d be willing to make a fresh start and let bygones be bygones if he was willing to do the same. He agreed and there has been no trouble between us since. I will make the same offer to you now. If you are willing to bury the hatchet and let bygones be bygones, I will be happy to do the same. The offer of an apology for an unprovoked attack still stands whether you agree or not.
How did I call you out? All I did was quote your own words.
(bolding mine)
Starving Artist is currently set to mode two, also known as “beleaguered crybaby mode”. Once again, we’re at mode two. If your Starving Artist seems unable to return to mode one “slamming what he imagines liberals to be”, please reset him by placing him near a hungry family on food stamps. Giggling is a normal side effect of this procedure, please don’t be alarmed.
Which is quite different from:
On the other hand, I doubt you really know that a vast majority of people with conservative view points toe the party line. “Conservative” does not always, and perhaps not frequently, equal “Republican party line toer”.
What you said, exactly, is:
You are not saying that you think members of the Republican party to be bashed at any opportunity because they - what? - purposely do whatever they can to destroy the US?
Did you ever ask these legions of adoring fans why they can’t be bothered to post anything in public to that effect, Starving Artist? That tells me either they are egging you on because your trainwrecks are amusing or they are even more craven than you and can’t stand the idea of everyone else knowing they’re morons, as well. Because you pretty much have to be one in order to think the republican party or most prominent conservatives have anything right.
No. YOU are single-handedly responsibility for the way you post. No one else - just you.
Here’s a good example of your basic hypocrisy.
People here make broad-brush insults against conservatives. You are offended by these broad brush insults. So you start to make broad-brush insults against liberals. And when I, a liberal get offended by these attacks, you act as if you’ve done nothing wrong. Despite the fact that I’m reacting in exactly the same way you did, to exactly the same broad-brush insults.
Except, of course, for one crucial distinction. When I was insulted by your broad-brush characterizations, I didn’t respond by attacking all conservatives. I responded by attacking you, directly. Because it wasn’t all conservatives who were being dicks to me because of my politics. It was just you.
Yes, I have never made any bones about the fact that I find your broad-brush anti-liberal attacks personally insulting, in exactly the same way you find broad-brush anti-conservative attacks. The way you have tried to spin that, here, as me back pedaling at some point is another fine example of your basic lack of integrity.
Yeah, you got me on that one. I find insults about me more insulting than insults about other people. Holy shit, what an insight! You fucking putz.
Let’s also note, here, that you’re trying to justify your behavior towards me, by citing the way a bunch of people I’ve personally criticized on multiple occasions acted towards you. If fifty people walk up and punch you on the nose, that does not excuse you turning around and punching some other random dude. At least, not if you have any shred of personal integrity. Which, as we all know, you do not.
That’s a lie, as this very post has amply demonstrated. Your party - arguably - may be that. You, on the other hand, are the very antithesis of personal responsibility.
You do know I’m a liberal, right? So when you say, “All liberals are X,” you are talking about me. You should be familiar with this principle, since you’ve spent the bulk of your time on these boards in an endless whinge about people doing the same thing to conservatives. I can’t actually believe that even you can be so stupid as to not recognize that the insult works in both directions, so I can only conclude that you’re overlooking this out of deliberate dishonesty. As is your habit.
Liar.
I don’t want an apology from you. I’ll be willing to bury the hatchet with you when you begin behaving with the barest modicum of honesty and integrity.
Don’t expect me to hold my breath.
And call me (along with Lobohan, elucidator, and kaylasdad) a partisan asshole.
He DID? REALLY?
Well, considering that I haven’t posted a word to the man for close to two years, I guess there’s only one rational reaction to that:[spoiler]HAHAHAHAHAHAHAhahahahahahahaha! I’m living rent-free in Starving Artist’s head! HAHAHAHAHA!
Y’know, I really should do some redecorating in here…[/spoiler]
I’m certainly responsible for making the decision to start giving as good as I got. Dishonest, dogpiling liberal assholes on this board are responsible for getting me to the point where I made that decision.
If the shoe fits, you know. You know as well as I do that most conversation will quickly come to a halt without the use of generalities. In political discussions it’s impossible to single out and exempt every possible variation on a theme. People here talk about Tea Partiers and “the rich” and “the poor” and every other possible combination of groups that they want to criticize or defend. I told you before that if my generalizations about liberal this or liberal that don’t apply to you, then you should know I’m not talking about you.
And besides, you’re being ridiculous to take it personally in the first place. Yes, I find broad-brush criticisms against conservatives offensive, but I have never, and I repeat, never, taken it as a personal affront from those posters directed at me…unless of course they did direct them specifically at me as posters in this thread have done. For example, if someone in the Pit says “conservatives are greedy”, I disagree with that and want to refute it so that people don’t accept that as incontrovertible fact. But I don’t take it to mean that they are being intentionally mean to me as an individual, which is what you’re doing. You seem to feel that by the simple expedient of being nice to me I am thereby precluded from making criticisms against liberals. And that’s just silly.
Kaylasdad99 and more than a few other posters on this board began saying shit like “all conservatives are evil” and “the only reason a person could be a conservative in the first place is if they were already evil to begin with”. So I decided to show that in the greater scheme of things, it was liberals who have caused the greater human suffering by far. In other words, I was fighting broad-brush condemnation of conservatives with an even stronger broad-brush condemnation of liberals. So it’s hardly the case that I responded to personal attacks on me by individual posters by attacking all liberals. It was a broad-brush attack made by liberals, and a broad-brush attack against liberals by way of defense.
You appear to be backpedaling when post that you were nice to me and I treated you like shit in return, and then when called on it all you can come up with is that I said mean things about liberals, and since you are a liberal I was therefore mean to you. You know as well as I do that phrasing things in that way makes it a personal issue between you and me, when in reality one is personal and the other is a generality. I would cast aspersions on your own integrity for this practice except for the fact that you appear honestly to believe there is an equivalence here. So instead I think I’ll just say that you’re being melodramatic and silly and let it go at that.
Well, you’re the one always trotting out bromides about how you occasionally criticise liberal posters for making unfair accusations about conservatives. So the fact that in practice you very rarely do so is, I think, germane.
There haven’t been that many occasions. And again I haven’t acted any particular way toward you, nor reacted toward other people for anything you personally have said to me.
No, but it might result in me pointing to the group of what turns out to be fifty-one people and reporting to the police that that group over there attacked me and punched me in the nose. I wouldn’t necessarily be thinking of you then, and I haven’t necessarily been thinking of you when I lay the ills of the country at the feet of liberalism.
Whatever. You’re being silly again.
As a general practice I don’t say “all liberals”. I generally just say “liberals”. I think it should be obvious that when I say something like “liberals have created a revolving-door prison system”, it doesn’t mean that I think you personally have lobbied for the early parole and release of convicted felons and murderers. You might have, but I would have no way of knowing so it would be silly for me to think you did.
Again, you can’t possibly know this, so you’re just showing your ass. And everyone can see that because you couldn’t possibly know that the PMs aren’t there. Either you haven’t looked so you couldn’t know, or you have looked and found them. Either way you couldn’t possibly know for a fact that they aren’t there because they are.
Perhaps because you know there’s no legitimate reason for one. The only thing I could have to apologize for according to your complaint is for speaking ill of liberals, and so far as I know it’s never been a practice on this board to apologize to individual posters for criticisms levied against large groups of people.
Tell ya what, chum. How’s about you, in your role as moderator, being enforcing the barest modicum of honesty and integrity on the part of the Pit’s liberal posters and then I’ll happily follow suit. How’s that?
Likewise.
Do you deny that a key element in your dislike for Lonesome Polecat is his politics, as evinced by your apparent lack of ire at posters on the left who behave similarly?
Well, if you want to take pride in being foremost amongst a group who was making what is probably the most stupid and idiotically biased assertion I’ve ever seen on this board, then knock yourself out.
Somebody might want to quote this as Katydid has me on ignore and won’t see it otherwise (:D), and I’d hate to think that he’ll have to spend the rest of his life wondering what I had to say to his withering response.
I don’t have time to go through your standard pack of lies and distortions again, not the least because they’re exactly the same lies and distortions you’ve been posting all along. So I’m just going to answer to this part.
The key element in my dislike of Lonesome Polecat is his explicit and unabashed racism. Technically, I suppose you could call that part of his “politics,” but they are not the politics of the mainstream Republican party, or of mainstream conservatism in general, and my feelings about him as a poster cannot be accurately ascribed to a partisan bent. Just as my feelings about you find their generation in your habitual dishonesty and deception, and not in your particular politics.
Naturally, I do not expect this to dissuade you from accusing me of partisan politics in the future. Because, as previously established, you are an inveterate liar.
Most of the politicians do. In fact, there aren’t really any noteworthy congressional republicans that aren’t either on or more insane than the party line. Or am I wrong? Now, that all conservatives don’t toe said party line… Yes, I suppose that’s true. But I still question the wisdom of those who vote for those who do.
Perhaps I was a little bit harsh… But the republican party should really suffer for the shit they just pulled. Am I the only one here who thinks that? Is it unreasonable to claim that a party who, simply for the purpose of petty political games, held up discourse on a critical issue and caused our nation’s credit rating to drop for the first time in history, deserves to get a solid beating for it?
EDIT: Oh yeah, @Starving Artist: Still waiting on those sources of how liberals are destroying America.
I plead guilty. My swipe at you was totally gratuitous and unprovoked. But, as i made clear quite some time ago, that’s the only way i’m willing to engage you at all.
I tried, on multiple occasions over an extended period, to engage you as if you were a genuine and honest debater, but your complete and utter mendacity on just about any topic and your dishonest debating style convinced me that the only way to deal with you is in the same way as i would deal with a shit-flinging monkey.
But don’t confuse the way i treat you with the way i treat all conservatives. I’ve managed, over my ten years on this board, to have good debates with plenty of people who disagree with me. There are only a few people who i believe are unworthy of any rational engagement; you are one and, for somewhat different reasons, so is the subject of this Pit thread.
You can, if you like, continue to suggest that all conservatives around here get treated as badly as you do, but like most of your arguments, it’s bullshit. If you get treated like a drooling moron, it’s because of your own personal failings.
Or it could be that since the board is so heavy on the opposition, some of us deem it hopeless to try to put our two cents in.
Well, at least this thread hasn’t turned into the Starving Artist Show…
For some reason, I never read his posts. Maybe I noticed a long time ago that they were mostly nonsense, and I just ignored them, or maybe they are just too long.
As for LP… He doesn’t register with me as someone whose political leanings I know.
Well, obviously only you know why you do (or don’t do) certain things, but that seems like a pretty piss-poor argument.
I mean, as far as i know, just about everyone on this message board concedes that the place leans to the left/liberal side politically. It’s not really a secret. So if you hang around here, you are aware of this, and the idea that you would refrain from backing up an argument that you agree with just because of the volume of opposition seems pretty lame. Why stay at all, if that’s the case?
Also, i’ve seen other conservatives back each other up in arguments here, and often do it well. And they often weigh in when there’s an uneven pile-on occurring. But conservatives, especially the intelligent ones around here, are conspicuously silent when Starving Artist is fighting a rearguard action in defense of his retarded arguments. Bricker has, on at least one occasion, conceded that Starving Artist’s style of debate is inappropriate for the Great Debates forum, and John Mace has called him out on his stupidity more than once.