quote:Originally posted by Thimbles worth of opinion I somewhat disagree (I've been takng too many polls lately). Libs have a good record at winning political arguments...
I think you mistake politicians for "people". "Libs" as a people don't "win political arguments". That's a misunderstanding of what "politics" represents: agreeing.
Fuck all your politicians and hers, too. You and She share far more in common than either of you do with any politician worth note. Your concerns, and Hers, are more or less the same. "theirs" are alien and psychotic, because of the failure of American politics.
Pretty simple. Let go of your shit-ass losing team of liars and shills, and embrace your gorgeous human sister.
Bullshit. We have different principles that we organize around.
The priority we may put on organization vs principle may be different, but the fact that we do have a different set of principles makes an embrace difficult. I believe in a European Asian mixed economy model, she believes in something else.
Join hands, comrades, and jump off the cliffs of traditional political discourse. It's not hard, they have been worn down to around 3 feet by our cultural and technological advances.
I will not allow PDM to sound like mid-90's cspan! I want the bigger, flashier fox-news-like bombast of "fuck you and your mother-horse you fucked in on twat capacitor."
Besides, doesn't Smug already have a place to jerk-it?
quote:Originally posted by Thimbles worth of opinion Bullshit. We have different principles that we organize around.
Again with perceiving party affiliations as persona. This is what you claim she does when she casts all liberals under one blanket of shame. This is the same fallacious self-delusion that you claim destroys the logic of your chosen foes - who are, like you, actually not barons or slavers.
"We" have no principles in common with politicians of the modern era. You and 4B are both far better people than all but the rarest (and thus least significant) kind of political pony.
quote:Originally posted by Thimbles worth of opinion The priority we may put on organization vs principle may be different, but the fact that we do have a different set of principles makes an embrace difficult. I believe in a European Asian mixed economy model, she believes in something else.
That's not trivial.
That's just animus. had you stopped to apply logic to your stance and scrutinized it for debate-readiness, you'd see your error. i assume you're capable of it. Be 4B first, then be me: look at your argument and ask yourself "is there a flaw here?"
When she says "Become the change you wish to see" you have the option of reacting automatically to her snark, or taking her at her word, and using LOGIC and REAL CONCERNS instead pseudopunditry and poli-flavored euphemisms for things like Starving To Death, Being Shot to Death, Being Arrested For No Good Reason, stuff like that.
You say the embrace is difficult. I say you avoid it out of stupid pride and worthless animus. You, too, 4Bs. Stop growling and note that neither of you have a stake in any of the shit politicians wrestle over.
I can't fail to notice a certain point manifesting itself on the immediate horizon, and that is the emergence of a special phenomenon relating to a very a singular increase in real consequences of actual circumstances converging into a state where we can observe a constant transformation of the relevant parameters towards a suspiciously similar starting point.
quote:Originally posted by Mister Freign Again with perceiving party affiliations as persona. This is what you claim she does when she casts all liberals under one blanket of shame. This is the same fallacious self-delusion that you claim destroys the logic of your chosen foes - who are, like you, actually not barons or slavers.
No. Party affiliations have little to do with what I talk about. There were few harsher critics than I of the Democrats in America and the Liberals in Canada.
Again, I'm not talking about party,I am talking about principles, like the ones that got these folks arrested:
"We need more police."
That's the goddamned whore of a democrat representative of the mainstream of the party and the executive Obama surrounds himself with.
We, the people who discuss and organize around these kinds of principles, want to talk about the merits of ideas that are currently ignored by party because the party is aligned with the interests of THE RICH you mentioned earlier. They pay the bills, the party plays their tune.
I'm not defending their tunes, I don't even like the band.
And maybe Euphie doesn't like the band or tunes on her Republican side (though history over the last ten years indicate otherwise), but she does not like what I advocate either. And I'd love to have a discussion about what we both advocate, but she ignores my information and data and I dispute hers. (And I challenge the reader to evaluate both and see why that is.)
You cannot ask for people to resolve their differences in preferences by pretending there aren't any. If you go out with a girl and she wants sushi and you want KFC, one of you is going to be unhappy with the dinner act you're sharing. Democratic politics is supposed to be the process by which a society's preferences are resolved so that those who share the society are better and happier the majority of the time.
It's not the elimination of conflict within the society. Euphie and I will still fight over what we think constitutes a better world.
But neither of us see hope in realizing that world within a system of self seeking, self serving, politico-industrial complex bred politicians and their funders.
quote:
Corporate profits hit a new record in the U.S. in the third quarter of this year...
The corporate profit picture would seem to mirror what's been going on in the income distribution for individuals for the past few decades. The money is increasingly going to a select group at the very top of the economic food chain, who are able to reap the rewards of global growth, play the financial system astutely, and avoid taxes.
quote:
I almost don’t need to say this, but you think there might be a connection between that and the lack of urgency on the unemployment front?
So yeah, Euphie and I aren't arguing about which party is better (much of the time) we're arguing about who's ideas are better. Don't oversimplify that.
quote:Originally posted by Thimbles worth of opinion No. Party affiliations have little to do with what I talk about. There were few harsher critics than I of the Democrats in America and the Liberals in Canada.
Are you sure it's not a pressure valve? Did you vote for any of the people you now criticize? I'm not suggesting it's the case for anything but an hypothetical.
But surely you'd agree that you're not a statistical barometer - that the anecdote of personal ethic is one of the most important rhetorical tools of the "right" flavored blocs?
The discussion isn't shredded by personal anecdote but neither is it advanced. We have to be able to own up to the failings of our personal ideals in the practical world just as we are obligated to face the failings of the candidates we have championed in the past. I, for instance, voted for Obama. Mostly I did it because I sold my vote to an English guy but really I only did that to justify voting at all. I would have sold a McCain vote if I'd thought he was fit for office. At the time I felt we needed a much better talker and that was the only thing on my mind at the time.
I should have voted for Nader. I regret that, now.
If you honestly can't find pseudoconservatives or even real ones that you would vote for, then you're blinded by something. This is why charges of bias stick and have merit - on both sides of the usual argument.
quote:Originally posted by Thimbles worth of opinion
Again, I'm not talking about party,I am talking about principles, like the ones that got these folks arrested:
Hey I want to jump in here and mention that I won't be able to watch (or hear) stuff on the internet for a while. Technically I'm homeless at the moment. Cheapo loaner netbook lacks the stones and the speakers necessary. It will probably be January or so before I have a real computer to rant on again.
quote:Originally posted by Thimbles worth of opinion
"We need more police."
That's the goddamned whore of a democrat representative of the mainstream of the party and the executive Obama surrounds himself with.
We, the people who discuss and organize around these kinds of principles, want to talk about the merits of ideas that are currently ignored by party because the party is aligned with the interests of THE RICH you mentioned earlier. They pay the bills, the party plays their tune.
Then you can readily see that in fact you share a reality with euphorbia - and she with you - that neither of you share with the people that actually have the power to screw The People, and no team seems reluctant to do it, hard and regular.
quote:Originally posted by Thimbles worth of opinion
I'm not defending their tunes, I don't even like the band.
So, more and more, you align toward agreeing with my perspective. Excellent. Euphorbia has mentioned that as well, on different tenets / principles. So, like, the three of us form sort of a continuum - one that seems almost holistic, and yet utterly excludes anyone who might actually hold office. Our concerns are not theirs.
There is no reason - no reason, no reason, no reason, none - to pretend that any of them, even the ones that say things we pretend to agree with, will ever do anything to fix the mess they have made themselves, and every reason for them to keep lying to us, and screwing us out of what we work for, to line their own fucking pockets so that they can queue up in the new post-national fascist global economy that will completely supplant demand-side economy sometime later this evening.
quote:Originally posted by Thimbles worth of opinion
And maybe Euphie doesn't like the band or tunes on her Republican side (though history over the last ten years indicate otherwise), but she does not like what I advocate either. And I'd love to have a discussion about what we both advocate, but she ignores my information and data and I dispute hers. (And I challenge the reader to evaluate both and see why that is.)
You dispute and she ignores? Hold it right there. You both impugn. Face this. You consider her as deluded and wrong-feeling as she finds you. The only qualitative difference is the specific rationale used to dismiss the other's finding. It is solidly consistent, on both sides. I challenge the reader to evaluate both and find some kind of meaningful distinction between your viewpoints that has something to do with what either of you will DO. How you will LIVE.
I suggest that your ideological differences are cosmetic at the very most extreme. You see a vast difference that I cannot detect unless you spell it out. typically it is only implied - or buried under a mountain of lame ad hominem.
Ad hominem should be polite and backhanded. It should be clever and funny. It should invite its object into the joke. It should be a rhetorical device, not the substance of your argument.
Unless you do in fact mean to earnestly insist that she wants people to die horribly while you want them to live bright and be fantastically happy at all times, which she specifically doesn't want.
I hope you see that that would be disingenuous and spurious. i hope you know that claiming this is how she sees you is equally meaningless in the practical sense.
quote:You cannot ask for people to resolve their differences in preferences by pretending there aren't any.
I can. i can point out when there aren't, further, and keep doing it, and stick to it with a ruthless, bloodless resolve that will make you and the Goddess of the Bayou both step back a bit, in mild surprise, and take stock. But I will be 'unfair' in that I will never 'point-by-point' show you where you make the gaffes you make every day (quote below, hint hint). I will demand that you both acknowledge your personal failings with the same vim and determination that you acknowledge one anothers. That would elevate each of you and the forum to new, nearly breathtakingly superheroic heights of renewed sanity that would sweep over this planet like a mythological jubilation and make dreams of the so-called Golden Age stick out as the cancerous ridiculous nightmare they actually were.
Sidebar: for alllllll the shit that gets argued about so passionately in so many venues, this is the happiest time on earth for the largest % of its people, in the history of the world.
quote:It's not the elimination of conflict within the society. Euphie and I will still fight over what we think constitutes a better world.
But neither of us see hope in realizing that world within a system of self seeking, self serving, politico-industrial complex bred politicians and their funders.
Don't you think it's at least worthy of consideration to stop seeking solutions from them, then?
quote:
So yeah, Euphie and I aren't arguing about which party is better (much of the time) we're arguing about who's ideas are better. Don't oversimplify that.
I didn't make it simple. I just pointed it out.
You're mistaken. When not condemning or championing a bloc-entire, you're arguing about who is a decent person and who is an evil idiot by dint of merely embracing one of these artificial clavens. It's retarded in the truest sense of the term, and depressingly emblematic of the failure of politics, in general.
quote:Originally posted by Mister Freign I would have sold a McCain vote if I'd thought he was fit for office....
I should have voted for Nader. I regret that, now.
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11-24-2010 04:21 AM
