You, sir. Yes, you! Are a partisan asshole.

[Starving_Artist]

@El_Kabong

Whoa there, big fella. You DON’T actually have to be polite and reasonable. I don’t think anyone is seriously contending that, and I certainly don’t much care if you do. The only issue that you really need to recognize is that in several years and hundreds of thousands of repetitive words expended on this board, your sole significant accomplishment is to have made a bunch of strangers, pretty much across the political spectrum, think you are one of the most obnoxious people they’ve ever heard of.

I don’t suppose it matters to you at all that I find the political tone of this board and the behavior of many of its posters to be every bit as obnoxious as you think I am? What I am basically is all of you condensed down into one guy and coming at you from the opposite end of the spectrum. If my words are repetitive, it’s only because people say things that indicate they didn’t understand it the first time. Either that or they weren’t around when I said it the first time. But how many times have I read on this board how much Bush sucked, or how stupid Palin is, or how evil Cheney was, or for that matter, how evil Republicans and conservatives are? Where’s your lack of patience with the repetitiveness of all that? Where’s your disdain for the obnoxiousness of all that? Face it, you don’t object to repetitiveness or obnoxiousness at all, you just object to them when they’re aimed at you.

@El_Kabong

What some people, I agree, are telling you is that (check the title of the thread you are posting in) you are generally considered a partisan asshole.

Generally? I don’t know how it could be more obvious. Yeah, I’m a partisan guy. So what? This is a board filled with partisan guys. Yet I’m the bad guy. Why is that? What do I say about liberals that is any worse than what gets said around here dozens of times a day about conservatives? And generally in more coarse and hateful ways?

@El_Kabong

It really doesn’t much matter for which particular ideology you choose to be an asshole…

And for that matter, why am I even considered an asshole? I generally don’t go around endlessly calling people stupid, or calling them names, or insulting them in anything like the way I get insulted. Generally I try to state my position in at least a moderately polite and conversational way, and I am usually polite and respectful to posters who approach me in the same way. So I would say that with regard to being an asshole, I’m much more sinned against than sinning.

@El_Kabong

you routinely make bad, unsupported, fact-free arguments, presented badly.

You know what happens when I make supported, factual arguments, presented well? They get ignored. Or the goalposts change. Or they get distorted or mischaracterized and the whole thing goes off the rails. This place is deeply dishonest when it comes to cites, and I finally just said “fuck it, I’ll just speak my mind and let people make of it what they will”, and so that’s what I do. If you think my points are well taken and get something out of them, fine. On the other hand if you think I’m full of shit and don’t know what I’m talking about, that’s fine too. All I’m interested in is getting my point across. Perhaps I have more faith in the intelligence of the board’s readership than most, but I’m honestly fine with people reading what I say and what my opponents say and deciding for themselves who is right.

@El_Kabong

The tired canard that you are singled out for your conservatism is not supported by known facts. Is Der Trihs a conservative? Was Commissar a conservative? Is Elvis L1ves a conservative? How about blindboyard? All of these people have been objected to in this thread or others for their partisan or generally obnoxious behavior, by numerous posters who consider themselves liberals.

They don’t come in for anywhere near the grief that I come in for, nor as often. Hell, the most dingbattiest of anyone here, Der Trihs, almost always gets a surprising amount of support in threads where he comes under fire. Usually it’s along the lines of “Well, maybe he goes a little too far but I can see where he’s coming from.”

The fact of the matter is that it’s virtually impossible to make any statement on this board with even a hint of a rightward slant and not get jumped upon immediately, no matter who you are, and I come in for more of it than most by far both because of my willingness to get right back in my opponents’ face and because of the large number of threads and subjects I post on. Trust me, none of this is coming as any sort of surprise.

[El_Kabong]

My, my, so many words, and so little understood.

[Miller]

@Starving_Artist

Unfortunately all these former friends, save Zoe, have become annoyed by and taken offense at my generalizations of liberals and as a result are no longer friendly.

It’s astonishing to me that you can have enough self-awareness to write this sentence, but not enough self-awareness to consider that the problem might actually be with you, and not with everybody else who reads your posts, including (apparently) people on your side of the political aisle.

[Bosstone]

@Starving_Artist

And for that matter, why am I even considered an asshole? I generally don’t go around endlessly calling people stupid, or calling them names, or insulting them in anything like the way I get insulted.

Quite right. You really are so gentlemanly and polite when you make baseless and often provably incorrect assertions that liberals are destroying America. It’s a wonder anyone dislikes you when you’re so tactful.

[Starving_Artist]

@mhendo

Actually, i posted helpful information on doing a search and i insulted you. I can walk and chew gum at the same time.

My insulting comment was not, however, merely gratuitous. It emerged from a long history of encounters with you, in which you manage to find all sorts of excuses not to pony up evidence for your variously wild, unlikely, and flat-out retarded claims.

See my post just above for yet another explanation of my disdain for cite demands.

@mhendo

Hell, some time back, when i asked you to provide evidence for a factual assertion, you refused to do so unless i promised to pay you money.

Yep, sometimes if people make an outrageous enough demand for cites which is going to require extraordinary amounts of my time, I may feel that if they want to know badly enough to monopolize my time like that, they should also be willing to compensate me for my time. I don’t do this routinely however, and rarely in the case when I think the other party is being honest in his approach.

@mhendo

Of course, in plenty of cases, you just ignore requests for evidence and move on. It’s that sort of unwillingness to follow the etiquette of rational and reasonable debate that makes you such a laughing stock around here.

Etiquette? About the last fucking thing anybody cares about around here is etiquette! What you really mean is that I refuse to play your obfuscatory little games and it drives you to distraction. I’ve said before that my behavior on this board is the result of the way other posters here behave, and the same goes for cite demands. I tried playing that game when I first came here and it soon became obvious that it was an utter waste of time. So I simply decided not to play along. If you want a cite for something legitimately citable, such as the height of the Empire State Building or the interest on the national debt, I’m generally happy to provide one. On the other hand, if you start demanding cites for things that are clearly an opinion or observation and where no cite can legitimately be expected to exist, then I’m going to think that you’re being dishonest and obfuscatory, and I’ll either say so or ignore you.

And as far as the “laughingstock” thing goes, I’m of two minds there. One, people seem to get entirely too cranked up over my posts for me to think they regard me as a laughingstock; and two, I don’t care. Mmkay? I. don’t. care. All I’m intersted in is getting my view out there for people to consider. If after reading it they want to think that whatever I’ve said is laughable, that’s fine. At least they’ve had a chance to decide for themselves if it had merit.

@mhendo

As for being an asshole to you, i’ve already made quite clear that i’m guilty as charged.

Actually, IIRC, you’ve somewhat proudly owned up to being an asshole in general. “I own it” was, I believe, the term you used in claiming it. And the fact that you can scarcely answer a question in any thread or forum wihout being insulting at the same time bears this out. So, when you’re being an asshole to me I just figure you’re being yourself. And I’m right.

[Starving_Artist]

@Miller

It’s astonishing to me that you can have enough self-awareness to write this sentence, but not enough self-awareness to consider that the problem might actually be with you, and not with everybody else who reads your posts, including (apparently) people on your side of the political aisle.

I have a fair amount of regard for many of the board’s conservative posters, but we all have to post in the way we think is best. I would not expect any of the board’s conservative posters to alter their approach to suit me, and I would not expect any of them would want me to alter my approach to suit them. My position on things is pretty clear and that’s the way I want it. They may feel a different approach is best, and if that works for them, then that’s fine too.

P.S. - Has anybody gone back and looked at my last one or two hundred posts like I asked in order to see just how outrageous is my posting behavior actually? I bet the vast majority of them are just fine.

[elucidator]

OK, I got it now. Its Wilford Brimley in high drag, channeling Cher, doing the balcony scene from Evita, and singing Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina…

[mhendo]

@Starving_Artist

Yep, sometimes if people make an outrageous enough demand for cites which is going to require extraordinary amounts of my time, I may feel that if they want to know badly enough to monopolize my time like that, they should also be willing to compensate me for my time. I don’t do this routinely however, and rarely in the case when I think the other party is being honest in his approach.

For those playing along at home, here’s an example of what Starving Artist apparently considers to be a dishonest and unreasonable request for evidence:

First, the claim made by Starving Artist:

@Starving_Artist

What I do for the most part is offer opinions…opinions and observations. And so quite natually when I say something like “many people confuse evolution and abiogenesis largely because liberals have been proclaiming for years that creationism isn’t responsible for life on this planet, evolution is”, and some bozo comes along demanding cites to that effect from the scientific community, I roll my eyes and ignore them because I’m clearly talking about the types of liberals one finds around here and on television talk shows or elsewhere in public discourse and not members of the scientific community. I do find it amusing however, and something of a victory for me, when my opponents are reduced to these kinds of desperate and dishonest maneuvers.

Here’s my response:

@mhendo

Presumably, if liberals blurring the distinction between abiogenesis and evolution is so prevalent that it is responsible for “many people” confusing the two, then surely you can provide us with at least a couple of examples in places where people might have been likely to see them, and thus influenced by them.

I mean, a claim about influence, especially on a national scale (which is what you’re making here), should at least be able to turn up a little bit of evidence in the historical record, surely? I don’t even expect the evidence to come from the scientific community. I’d happy if you could provide some from “around here and on television talk shows or elsewhere in public discourse.”

And here’s the dope’s request for cash:

@Starving_Artist

It seems to me that if I’m going to have to waste my time copying and pasting links to something so painfully obvious, it ought to be worth my time somehow. Either of you guys willing to cough up some dough for every example I can find where liberals frame the question as creationism vs. evolution? Say, $20 per cite? I’ll even limit my cites to those with a national forum and you’ll still lose your ass.

I’ll leave you readers to make up your mind whether or not my request for examples (hell, even a single example would have been fine) was a reasonable one in the context of that debate.

It is interesting to note, though, that Starving Artist believed that the truth of his claim was “so painfully obvious” that finding evidence would be a waste of time, and yet finding evidence was apparently also such a chore that he would require $20 per citation to even attempt it.

The guy’s a walking case of cognitive dissonance. Among other things.

@Starving_Artist

What you really mean is that I refuse to play your obfuscatory little games and it drives you to distraction.

If by “obfuscatory little games” you mean “rational discourse,” yes. This is another example of the Starving Artist newspeak machine in action. Anything that challenges his worldview and his made-up “facts” is, by definition, “obfuscatory.”

It’s also hilarious the way that SA is constantly claiming victory trophy for himself in these debates. The only way that would ever happen is if they gave out trophies to everyone, even the slow kids, just for turning up. You’d definitely get the “special” trophy, SA.

[Omg_a_Black_Conservative]

@mhendo

It’s that sort of unwillingness to follow the etiquette of rational and reasonable debate that makes you such a laughing stock around here.

I’m sorry, but if that’s the case, then there are a hell of a lot laughing stocks around here. It’s quite a common occurrence for me to ask someone for proof of their assertions-- or to flatly provide evidence contrary to someone’s assertion-- only to have it either ignored or have it straw manned into something else.

[Starving_Artist]

@Bosstone

Quite right. You really are so gentlemanly and polite when you make baseless and often provably incorrect assertions that liberals are destroying America. It’s a wonder anyone dislikes you when you’re so tactful.

This country is chock-a-block with kids growing up troubled, under educated and underprivileged in single-parent homes, drug addicts and drug-related death and criminality are rampant, we have a revolving door prison system, a lousy educational system, and an almost complete breakdown in sexual morality - a breakdown so complete that one in four high school girls has an STD and kids are giving each other blow jobs in grade school classrooms. Each and every one of these problems is directly traceable to liberal values and liberal social engineering. To the degree they existed at all, none were much of a problem prior to the counterculture revolution, and they’re all big problems now. None of this has been disproven. Do the math, it isn’t hard.

[Bosstone]

Yeah, I just don’t see why people think you’re obnoxious. Taking the opportunity to launch into an anti-liberal rant rather than actually deal with the conversation at hand is totally cool.

[Omg_a_Black_Conservative]

@Bosstone

Yeah, I just don’t see why people think you’re obnoxious. Taking the opportunity to launch into an anti-liberal rant rather than actually deal with the conversation at hand is totally cool.

But launching an anti-conservative rant is cool, right? Because that’s pretty much what happens almost like clockwork around here.

[Bosstone]

@Omg_a_Black_Conservative

But launching an anti-conservative rant is cool, right? Because that’s pretty much what happens almost like clockwork around here.

Well yeah, and the ones who take any opportunity to explain how conservatives are the root of all evil are also tiresome. Or are you ignoring the fact that Der Trihs got tagged in here too?

If you can’t see why “I don’t know why I get dumped on when I tell liberals they’re responsible for everything wrong in the country. It’s not like I swear” is either disingenuous or rock stupid, you’re really not any better than SA.

[GIGObuster]

@Omg_a_Black_Conservative

I’m sorry, but if that’s the case, then there are a hell of a lot laughing stocks around here. It’s quite a common occurrence for me to ask someone for proof of their assertions-- or to flatly provide evidence contrary to someone’s assertion-- only to have it either ignored or have it straw manned into something else.

Uh, **mhendo **gave an example there, that you want to ignore it now just shows another poster with the same problem.

I just gave up on Starving Artist when a discussion turned into looking for evidence that liberals were the reason why conservatives confuse the origins of life with evolution, SA not only ignored the direct quotes of conservative groups pushing for that confusion in legislative bodies or in academia, when pressed into finding sources that showed liberals or scientists that actively confused poor conservatives into an ignorant scientific position like Evolution=origin of life (Evolution does not deal with the origins of life or the universe, Abiogenesis and Cosmology does) SA produced a Google Vomit (posting a google search and not ever looking at what the hits did say) when he was cornered into finding evidence for his position.

That he never noticed how unreasonable or silly was that assholish maneuver told me volumes of what his methods of debate are.

[Starving_Artist]

@mhendo

It is interesting to note, though, that Starving Artist believed that the truth of his claim was “so painfully obvious” that finding evidence would be a waste of time, and yet finding evidence was apparently also such a chore that he would require $20 per citation to even attempt it.

The guy’s a walking case of cognitive dissonance.

Things can easily be both painfully obvious yet time-consuming to explain. I offer the workings of the automatic transmission, the orbits of the planets and their moons around the sun and each other, and the significance of Pablo Picasso’s style as but three that come readily to mind.

@mhendo

Among other things.
If by “obfuscatory little games” you mean “rational discourse,” yes. This is another example of the Starving Artist newspeak machine in action. Anything that challenges his worldview and his made-up “facts” is, by definition, “obfuscatory.”

No, it’s more like, to use my response to Bosstone as an example, I make a comment about how liberalism has rent asunder the fabric of American life and caused all these social problems we have today, and you come charging in yelling “Cite that liberals tore America’s social fabric!” Clearly no cite can reasonably be expected to exist which would prove or disprove my claim either way. This is the kind of thing I’m talking about when I talk about the dishonesty and attempts at obfuscation that go on around here with regard to cite requests. I’m sure when the SDMB was originated, it sounded like a good idea to expect cites to back up a poster’s assertions, but I can’t believe it was ever intended to be used in the way that so many of the board’s more unscrupulous posters try to use it - which is as a roadblock to conversation intended to halt discussion of a point for which no more substantive rebuttal exists. IMO, cite demands for uncitable material is one of the greatest forms of dishonesty on this board.

[Bryan_Ekers]

@curlcoat

You don’t think any conservatives haven’t been killed, unjustly imprisoned or unjustly disenfranchised???

Systematically, with the expressed or tacit approval of authority in a manner akin to a pogrom or lynching? Yes, I’d like to see some examples cited.

[GIGObuster]

@Starving_Artist

No, it’s more like, to use my response to Bosstone as an example, I make a comment about how liberalism has rent asunder the fabric of American life and caused all these social problems we have today

That was not a comment from you, that was a Gish Gallop.

Gish Gallop

The Gish Gallop is an informal name for a debating technique that involves drowning the opponent in such a torrent of half-truths, lies, and straw-man arguments that the opponent cannot possibly answer every falsehood that has been raised. Usually this results in many involuntary twitches in frustration as the opponent struggles just to decide where to start.

Like El_Kabong said, “you routinely make bad, unsupported, fact-free arguments, presented badly.”

[Omg_a_Black_Conservative]

@Bosstone

Well yeah, and the ones who take any opportunity to explain how conservatives are the root of all evil are also tiresome. Or are you ignoring the fact that Der Trihs got tagged in here too?

Number one, I’m not talking about Der Trihs specifically. I’m talking about the random running theme of this board, which seems to be “conservatives are bad/dumb and liberals are good/smart”. It’s not much of a feat to find someone making a sweeping generalization of conservatives, in general, or blaming innumerable problems of conservatives without so much of any contention from their fellow liberal-minded folks. Number two, Der Trihs constantly gets a pass from most of the liberal-minded folk on this board. (S)he gets criticism occasionally (rarely, I should say), but it’s usually tempered and is nowhere near the criticism which is generally levied at the conservative-minded folk.

@GIGObuster

Uh, **mhendo **gave an example there, that you want to ignore it now just shows another poster with the same problem.

Nice try, but no. My post had nothing to do with Starving Artist, per se. The fact that you want to ignore what I type out apparently means you have much the same problem you believe others to have. Rose colored glasses and all that.

[Robot_Arm]

@John_Mace

Can you point us to a thread where you were courteous and rational (back in your early days of posting here) and were dumped upon simply because you were a conservative?

I can point to a counter-example where he insulted me unprovoked.[sup]*[/sup] I do get rather tired of the I-was-all-saintly-and-polite-until-liberals-made-me-resort-to-name-calling bit.
Unless “yee-haw buckaroo” means “your mother resembles a hippo in both smell and appearance” in Swahili, or something.

[GIGObuster]

@Omg_a_Black_Conservative

Nice try, but no. My post had nothing to do with Starving Artist, per se. The fact that you want to ignore what I type out apparently means you have much the same problem you believe others to have. Rose colored glasses and all that.

Well, I’m just saying, and I also pointed at other examples, (one from this thread, once again showing his very dumb debating or argument tactics) care to ignore it too?

The point here is that yes, not all conservatives are like that; heck, even here there have been already more than 2 posters that are conservative or leaning that way that are telling you that you are making a huge mistake into defending SA.