Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
What alternative history? You mean the one where no Jews were actually imprisoned in concentration camps and killed in gas showers? That one? Because that's a bunch of nazi lies.
Freedom of Speech and Maturity
- Thread starter wellwisher
- Start date
What alternative history? You mean the one where no Jews were actually imprisoned in concentration camps and killed in gas showers? That one? Because that's a bunch of nazi lies.
Magical Realist said:
As a matter of practical advice we're probably best off just stopping at the first question mark. People always talk about challenging perceptions but don't want to explain what they mean; and when you prompt them like that, they seize on the cynical offering as an excuse to never actually explain themselves.
But if you leave it at the first interrogative, and they don't answer, then their claim is left wihtout any real substance.
Remember how much of this sounds like generic talking points. It's not just Bowser's latest bit about alternative history↑; look at the genera of his recent threads. The abortion topic post↗? Or his would-be generic resets for homosexuality in two different↗ threads↗? No, really, welcome to, like, 1993, you know? Try the topic post about misogyny↗. Or rape culture↗. The whole thing is an attempt to reset various discussions to frames he is more politically comfortable with. Even the threads about charity↗ and police↗ want to start all over from square zero, as if we're composing a "sociomorality for dummies" handbook. They are very nearly template questions, written not quite in zero-person voice, and thus would have us believe that Bowser is among the most naïve individuals in American society.
And, you know, the thing is that if people want to do a discussion for dummies, as such, that's fine. But we also see, as in the rape culture and abortion threads, that the pretense doesn't hold; this argumentative form he shows is just the latest iteration of cynicism begging for a chance to turn back the clock and restart the discussion according to a yet undiscovered formulation that would let them win out logically if only we would disregard logic.
As a practical matter, I would encourage you to stop "doing the work for them". To wit, in this case, sure, it's just a couple more sentences you typed, but why bother with the effort when all it accomplishes is giving him a pretense to run away? Just ask him the question, and let him put the effort into pretending he's really that stupid.
uh oh... someones getting their man period
http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=53725
http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=53725
Go and pound sand, Bells. You jumped into this thread to post a nasty piece of character assassination against Milkweed, full of misrepresentations and flat out lies, and then you have the gall to adopt your mod font and tell me to stop trolling? If anything, I'm doing you a favor by telling you that your vitriolic shit can be smelt 5 miles away. Try to be a little more subtle the next time you try to troll.
I thought it was so obviously a character attack/misrepresentation that it only degraded bells herself. Bells wont know that though; bells is a fanatic. Cant argue with a fanatic, like you cant argue with someone who sees the devil everywhere. Hysteria is a refuge for such mindsets; feeds an internal need.
Sheesh, excuse me for offering threads for discussion on issues that I believe deserve consideration. I have no problem with others offering their own views, even when I disagree with those views. And if I don't reply to every comment, it's probably because I don't live on SciForums as do others. I don't have the time to write an essay in response to every post offered in my direction, so I try to be short and to the point, for my benefit and theirs. I might spend 5 to 15 minutes on this site at any one time.
Homosexuality, Abortion, Police Brutality, Misogyny, all are social issues that are currently being discussed online and elsewhere. If I open a discussion with my opinions on the matter, it's to fuel the conversation, and I think it has been successful in many threads. People have opinions that they want to express, I would hope that
in some small way I have made that possible.
In the WWII video I watched, it does raise several questions. It travels the timeline that ended with war, showing Germany's part in events and those of the allies. There were other items of interest that had nothing to do with Jews or concentration camps, but rather the timeline of events...from beginning to end. If I still had the URL I would offer it here. Maybe I will search for it and send you the link.
Bowser said:
Spare us.
I mean, you know, this is a website at which we write words for others to read, and yet you still need to learn how to be a better actor:
Alright, so:
(1) Ask a question purporting particular ignorance.
(2) Ignore responses.
(3) Raise a straw man to attack.
(2) Ignore responses.
(3) Raise a straw man to attack.
Why did you engage in that particular behavior? If you "open a discussion with [your] opinions on the matter", why do it in such a deliberately dishonest way?
No, seriously, what was up with the way you opened the rape culture↗ thread?
Or here's one: All these years since you and I first discussed gay rights issues, and you never managed to learn a thing?
I mean, seriously, in all those years, with that whole issue playing out center-stage, you never learned a thing?
It's not like you're some rube fresh off the turnip truck, Bowser. Those topic↗ posts↗? Really? Over the course of those years, you never encountered the answer to "why homosexuals need my approval"? Or that comparing gay rights to the Nazi movement doesn't work, and has really, really dangerous implications?
Just what is it you want to say about homosexuality? Or raping women? Or what you will allow women to do with their bodies according to your aesthetics?
Because your effort to pass hatred and evil as some bland manner of unspectacular naïveté really is beyond stupid. It worked in the pipe and cardigan days of Ward Cleaver and Steve Douglas, but the Long Decade ended fifty-three years ago, and apparently you haven't learned a thing in subsequent years. No, really. Bentley Gregg might seem dnagerously old-fashioned in the twenty-first century, but for 1957 he did okay, even if I really don't get the Asian houseboy routine outside the pretense of the secret assistant to the superhero.
And, you know, I get that people have diverse reasons for not writing long and detailed posts, but if the question is evidence of rape culture, then it doesn't matter whether the rape jokes are any good↗.
In a larger context it's one of the things that is frustrating about the American political discourse, right now; for years, there has appeared to be a strong coincidence between being conservative and refusing to actually attend the discourse one asserts to participate in. In the microcosmic presentation it's just annoying and seems deliberately insulting. That is to say, if your whole purpose is to blurt out your opinion and move along with no real regard for discussion, then stop pretending you're part of any discussion. For instance, why set up the topic post↗ as you did in the rape culture thread if you already had an idea what you were going after and intended to simply dismiss the response↗?
And in that context of the relationship between the macro- and micro-cosmic, it's also true you're still in rhythm with the larger movement; we're in an age of rising Know-Nothingism, in which the way to relitigate lost political fights of history is to pretend ignorance that the discussion might start all over from the ground up, and in this case the ground is usually fixed somewhere in the Long Decade.
And this reset is required because some can't deal with the fact that there really is no logical way to establish supremacism as a prerequisite of equality; how can we possibly find different outcomes unless we change the presuppositions?
But in order to change the presuppositions, one must pretend astounding ignorance of history. It shows through pretty quickly, because it is merely a façade of naïveté that always reveals its knowing―that is, presuming―confidence behind the fresh-faced mask. It was one thing when you were venting your frustrations with queers because you flat out lost, but nobody really believes this pretense of confused innocence.
You know where my generation used to see your model of discussion-starting a lot? Facilitated discussion, like we got in school and church. The facilitator, such as a teacher or youth pastor, doesn't know how to address an intended subject properly, so gets an instruction manual, and instead of applying what it says in context pretty much reads out the model framework. I remember one time our confirmation class leaders got it into their heads to do a workshop on the disrespect of lust notes, except the problem was that they both lived one town over in different directions, and whatever moved them to identify this need was not actually taking place in our peer group, so they essentially ended up teaching us how to explicitly sexually harass girls in order to teach us why it's wrong.
Nor, it turns out, was it wrong because it was disrespectful for objectifying females; rather, it had something to do with adultery, and therefore was wrong for tempting innocent young girls to wander astray, or something.
And they were pretty much reading from the manual.
It's the same thing some people complain about with ideas of sensitivity training and other such facilitated discourse. In the macrocosmic consideration, it is not insignificant that we have, as a society, become so accustomed to this manner of facilitation that even legislators forget to actually write the legislation, and instead put the generic "model legislation" in the hopper. (And there is presently this weird chapter playing out in which one of the Beltway journalism houses put out an editorial under a particular byline, and it turns out that author forgot to remove the "model editorial" instructions from the text; it's not a candidate or other headliner, though, so it's a really quiet discussion, which is what makes it strange.)
These days it seems deliberate. Indeed, whether it is the frontline voices of human rights, or the martyrs of history who were slaughtered for the sake of personal aesthetics, one functional result of pretending you haven't been paying attention is to assert that you haven't been paying attention, which in turn only undermines your pretense of naïveté.
In the end, if the purpose is to offer threads for discussion on issues that deserve consideration, are you really precribing that the important thing is to turn back the clock and start from a pretense of ignorance? Or if you intend something better, is there a more useful, or, at least, a less clumsy way of doing it than pretending you haven't been paying attention as these issues play out in our society?
If is not the question of turning back the clock, but making sure subjective pressure was not used make social changes that are irrational. For example, if anyone questioned president Obama early in his presidency this was called racist. This irrational peer pressure was used to prevent any rational discussion of valid concerns, so irrational appeal will stand. There was a fear of free speech because things did not always add up in a rational way. These ideas may appeal to the immature who are vulnerable to noises, sounds, prestige and consensus peer pressure. Those who benefit by this do not want truth to stand in the way with the advantaged the fantasy brings. Many will buy the pet rock once the herd starts to move, since there is prestige and safety in the herd. But a pet rock makes no sense if you reason it through. Free speech is not a friend of the pet rock manufacturers.
I'm sorry I've read bells opening post and I got to ask, are you stupid? At no point did she resort to anything like you and talk are claim. But than again given taki's pathological dishonesty and your agreement with the delusional twit I can only assume you have the same honesty issues. I'm going to give you a hint when it comes to lying don't it's rather easy to do a basic fact check. I'd rather not make people look like complete idiots because you don't understand we can look at the record
LoL....
I doubt you managed to read her first post, and obviously didnt check further.
Milkweed said:
I admit I wonder about the intellectual, emotional, and psychological maturity of making things up the way you do, Milkweed.
Grow up enough to learn that just because you say so doesn't make it true.
† † †
Wellwisher said:
You, too.
I mean, after all these years there's a reason conservatives just repeat that line without any rational support; there is no rational support.
Remember, you have more free speech than you imagine. The rest of us would appreciate it, though, if you learned the difference between speech being free and having no useful value.
But, yeah, the Pet Rock thing was pretty funny; you'd think people would learn, but the Trump candidacy, for instance, demonstrates otherwise.
(Edit: To revise and extend my remarks 08.22 PST)
Well you know, here is the funny thing, just who called people racists for questioning President Obama early in his presidency? Obama certainly never called anyone racist for questioning his policies. And just who feared free speech exactly? If you recall, Democrats were very critical of Obama and have been very critical of Obama. A good number of Democrats opposed vociferously his healthcare reform. They still do. They wanted a single payer system, something they didn't get. They wanted Obama to be more aggressive in advancing the liberal policies. You don't recall that?
It occurs to me that you suffer from a chronic and rather severe cognitive impairment or are just grossly dishonest. I guess you don't remember listening to Fox News and other Republican entertainers and elected officials tell you that it was traitorous to even question a wartime president when that president happened to be a Republican?
http://www.brendan-nyhan.com/blog/gop-dissent-attacks.html
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/ballot_box/2004/09/imperial_president.html
The fact is when Baby Bush was POTUS, Republicans questioned the patriotism of anyone who even questioned Baby Bush's domestic or foreign policies, even going so far as to call them traitors.
The truth is, you are not telling the truth.
Unfortunately for you and your so called conservative (i.e. Republican friends), the truth matters and there is a public record. Folks like you are very good at mindlessly mimicking right wing propaganda. If your right wing leaders were so great on free speech then they wouldn't mind restoring The Fairness Doctrine which was the law of the land for many decades and it required media outlets to fairly and honestly present all issues of national importance. That's free speech. That's free speech at its best. But that would mean the end of right wing entertainment and restoration of truly free speech. It would mean better informed voters. It would mean more discussion and more speech and it would mean equal access to free speech. Free speech does no good if everyone isn't allowed to speak and be heard. But your right wing leaders don't want that. They don't want opposing speech to be heard. They are all for "free speech" as long as it is right wing ideological speech and only right wing ideological speech is heard. They are all for letting the only the richest right wing Americans use their money to control the print and airwaves, but God forbid there should be honest dialogue. God forbid Democrats should be heard. Freedom of speech is more than just speaking, it is also being heard.
The truth be told, both sides of the ideological spectrum have issues with the truth. Republicans more than Democrats, but both sides employ the same tactics and both sides seem oblivious when they use the same tactics they claim abhor in the other. They can readily see fault in the other, real or imaginary, but they cannot see the gaping faults in their own ideological beliefs. It reminds me of that New Testament passage where Jesus speaks of the guy who complains about the splinter in someone else's eye but ignores the log in his own eye.
So for you to make the claims you have made, you are either severely cognitively impaired or just flat out dishonest. Frankly, I think it is the former.
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LoL More hand-waving from a 40 something (still) gender confused shut-in, living vicariously through (some) womens blog posts.
The internal frustrations abound... verily...
That's like the kettle calling the pot black.
Bells is a fanatic, but I think you need to take a long look at yourself.Now now joe, toddle off/back to Politics and have yourself a cup/glass of warmed milk.That's like the kettle calling the pot black.
LOL ... ad hominem is a substitute for honesty.
By the way, I hate warm milk. Coffee or tea is more to my liking. Yes, but it will interfere with your nap time.By the way, I hate warm milk. Coffee or tea is more to my liking.
LOL...well you see what you have been reduced to? You cannot make a rational fact based argument. So all you can do is what you have done and always do, throw out a bunch of fallacious and illogical arguments.
I'm not trying to discuss anything with you. I usually just ignore you.
No, you're just dumping bullshit.
It's your thing. God forbid you should have to deal with anything even remotely close to honest fact based discussion. That's just not your thing.
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