Who stormed the US Capitol?

Discussion in 'World Events' started by James R, Jan 8, 2021.

  1. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    37,884
    No, he's just this guy I know, y'know? And the thing is I've known him for years, and he's chronically dishonest, and the strangest thing about it is that he still tries to pretend it isn't obvious.
     
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  3. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    39,397
    It appears you're referring to me, then. One attack thread at a time wasn't enough for you? Thought you needed to open up another battle on a second front?

    Not pretending. I self-identify as "some kind of liberal".

    This was back in 2016, was it? I'm sure it was true back then. Five years later, things have moved on a bit.

    I doubt it.

    You think?

    And how did yours go?
    Whatever I wrote back then, chances are it wasn't an accident. Maybe you should link to the actual thing, in context. You know, bring the actual evidence along with your slimy allegations?

    I think you're posting in the wrong thread. Some random stuff from a different thread seems to have bled over into your brain in this one.

    My worries were clearly justified, then!

    The ones like me, you mean?
     
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  5. river

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    Feeling guility James R . ? Your no better than trump james r .
     
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  7. river

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    Uneducated and educated simple people , easily manipulated by trump .
     
  8. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    39,397
    No. It's obvious who he was referring to. Do you need me to walk you through it?

    I disagree.

    But perhaps you'd like to expand on what you're talking about. You know, actually compare us in some meaningful way, rather than just giving us your random opinions?
     
  9. river

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    17,307
    I do just to be clear .
     
  10. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    Okay.

    See that picture with the dog playing the violin? Just below that, there's my screen name "James R". And just below that there's a tag line "Just this guy, you know?"

    Now, Tiassa, in his post #21, which you can see above, in reponse to my request for clarification about who he was talking about in a previous post, wrote "No, he's just this guy I know, y'know?"

    Clever man that Tiassa is, he used my tag line to obliquely reference me. But see, I'm also clever, so I understood what he was doing there.

    And that's the story of how I knew Tiassa was talking about me!

    Does that help you, river? Anything else I can help you with?
     
    Last edited: Feb 11, 2021
  11. river

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    17,307
    In my post#24 I gave my thinking . My reasoning . And it is true . Education does not necessarily mean you have superior intellect .
     
  12. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    Well, you're right that some educated people voted for Trump. I agree with you that being educated doesn't mean you can't be manipulated.
     
    river likes this.
  13. river

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    17,307
    Its about being informed . And to say to yourself , is this or that true ? The ability To Question . What you are told as true . Investigate . For yourself the info given .
     
    Last edited: Feb 11, 2021
  14. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    37,884
    Well, you finally got around to asking, and at that point you'd already been told directly.

    But still, inasmuch as we're taking time to consider your cleverness:

    Y'know, James, a lot of people don't like being associated with the things they defend or sympathize with. It would, of course, be easy enough to convince me that your support for the sorts of people who went on to attack the U.S. Capitol wasn't that kind of accident, but you do tend to not want to be associated with any number of things you have some strange need to defend and even sympathize with, including Trump-supporting bigots and tinfoils.

    Your reading comprehension appears to have been guided by your pride: Whatever you wrote, chances are it wasn't an accident? Well, that's the wrong context of accidental, but, sure, whatever, I'll believe you. Still, given that you identified yourself as this guy I know, the subsequent complaint about actual evidence and slimy allegations was, well, kind of futile.

    Meanwhile:

    You've identified a few ways, variously trying to pass yourself off as center-left, liberal, and even leftist, yet when you really let it out, it's a rightward argument on a right-of-center lexicon, and it has been for years.

    This is one of those where we might wonder if you're trolling or just having another bout with reading comprehension, but after a while it doesn't really make much difference. James, we're discussing episodes of you worrying on their behalf, so—

    —inasmuch as you might have made a joke at someone's expense, we are in fact discussing occasions of you arguing sympathetically on their behalf.
     
  15. foghorn Valued Senior Member

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    1,453
    Tiassa for clarification... Are you saying it is JamesR who keeps those kind of members on this site.

    It seems to me you're saying you would have banned the ''bigots and tinfoils'' long ago. Is this right??
    Ps. Where would that leave MR? Don't tell me, I know, in the stamp Quote collecting thread.
     
    Last edited: Feb 18, 2021
  16. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    8,466
    I gotta weigh in on this
    educated
    well educated
    seem like words used by lazy people who will not view people as unique individuals.
    I have been surrounded by academics for most of my life
    and
    from my perspective
    very few "well educated" people holding advanced degrees are actually well educated
    They may be well respected experts in their respective fields, but, quite often are basically ignorant of that which is beyond their fields.
    .............
    example
    1993
    the floods
    I watched the rain, and wandered down to the river and saw it rising
    then went online and looked at what information that I could find
    It seemed obvious that the waters would top the spillway in a matter of hours---heading for the University which is downstream
    OK
    so on the Saturday
    I gathered my wife and children and we went down to her office and removed everything below 3 feet above the floor.
    She ran/runs the writing center which is on the floor above and we moved most of her papers.books, electronics there.
    OK the University is chock full of people with advanced degrees(supposedly "well educated") and most did nothing to prepare for the flood.
    And
    on to monday
    We returned with her and found that of the over 0 offices in her department, hers was the only one which had saved the tools and materials of her/their trade
    "well educated" idiots
    IMHO
    "educated" is a meaningless term used by the lazy to categorize people, so that the lazy do not have to actually think.
    ..................................................................................................................................
    I have many more such anecdotes if you feel a strong desire to actually learn.
     
  17. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    21,635
    Sounds like you have a lot of unresolved anger over something.

    "Educated" does not mean smart. It does not mean wise. It does not mean they have common sense. It means they have formal schooling. That's it. There is certainly some CORRELATION between education and intelligence, both because many people become smarter through education, and also because people with IQ's of 70 can't get in to most schools. But they are not the same thing.

    Words mean things.
    The plural of anecdote is not learning.
     
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  18. sculptor Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    8,466
    Of course not.
    That was my point.
    Referencing "educated" as James R did is meaningless.

    alternately
    One could say that many uneducated people voted for HRC. or, many uneducated people voted for Biden
    Both of which are also meaningless.
     
  19. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    21,635
    River: Education does not necessarily mean you have superior intellect .
    James R: Well, you're right that some educated people voted for Trump. I agree with you that being educated doesn't mean you can't be manipulated.

    Both are correct.
     
    sculptor likes this.
  20. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    39,397
    It wasn't meaningless. Previously, we were discussing who voted for Trump, with reference to statistics. One of those statistics was the proportion of Trump voters who have a college degree, for example. If you have a college degree, it means your "educated" - i.e. formally educated.

    You are free to argue if you like that people with college degrees don't have "street smarts" or "common sense", or whatever other signs of intelligence you value, but my original meaning was quite clear from the context of my post.

    Those aren't necessarily the same thing, by the way.

    Of course, we can be more specific, if necessary.

    Who's not viewing people as unique individuals now?

    Why is it fine for you to stereotype people with advanced degrees, but not fine for me to generalise about the average education of people who voted for Trump?

    Thanks for your feedback, sculptor. You think I'm lazy, do you? Well, good to know.

    The plural of anecdote is not data.
     
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  21. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    39,397
    Tiassa:

    Really? Okay. Whatever you say.

    I asked you to quote me. You came up with zip. End of story.

    You're entitled to your opinion, of course. You're often wrong.
     
  22. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    37,884
    So, there is one Christian Secor, who …

    … was laying low at his mother's home in Costa Mesa California and bragging that he'd never get caught for his part in the Capitol attack ....

    .... It's not clear why Secor thought he'd get away with it. He showed up to the protest maskless and, according to the FBI affidavit, committed various federal crimes in front of a vast array of cameras, which caught him not only sitting in Pence's chair but also helping a crowd break through the outer doors of the Capitol.


    (Futrelle↱)

    He is apparently notorious at UCLA, starting a rightist "America First" organization, and eventually earning a mention in Ha'Am, a Jewish news magazine, describing him as a "textbook" fascist".

    Still, the situation could apparently could be worse:

    Secor's world view seems to be a mashup of a number of different far-right ideologies. A stroll through tweets archived from his now-banned Twitter accounts make clear that his main allegiance is to Fuentes and his "Groyper" troll army. Topics range from the alleged evils of the Jews, to the magnificence of far-right commentator Michelle Malkin, to a declaration that "Vapor wave is the official music of our people."

    What about the incel label? While there are a few tweets that dabble in incel lingo it seems like Secor called himself "Scuffed Elliot Rodger" not so much in homage to the mass killer than as a sort of "trigger the libs" style joke; with only a few exceptions, his tweets aren't misogynistic enough for Secor to be welcome in the incel movement. They have standards, you know.
    ____________________

    Notes:

    Futrelle, David. "Was an incel rioter just arrested for his role in the Capitol attack? The strange case of 'Scuffed Elliot Rodger'". We Hunted the Mammoth. 19 February 2021. WeHuntedTheMammoth.com. 19 February 2021. http://bit.ly/37wsvik
     
  23. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    37,884
    Yes, actually, it's something James and I have discussed, before. It's a complicated discussion↗ to be certain.

    There is a short answer, which goes, not necessarily, or, not quite, and then there is a long answer that involves the history explaining what that means. For instance, there is a part when I told him↗ nobody says we have to keep them around if they're utterly full of shit, and he responded↗ that yeah, he does; that occasion actually had to do with his complaints about the behavior of theists, inasmuch as he has "explained why, many times, at length", sure, I might wonder at what passes for an explanation, but it is still part of a discussion that goes beyond theists.

    But this is also the part where it gets long, so this post is the fourth or fifth attempt to get through your question more quickly. One point to start with, here, might be to ask if you can tell the difference between an opinion, and a behavior. Now, why would I ask that? Because the difference between behavior and a political view is one of the underlying, long-unanswered questions. And over time, the best estimation of the answer is found in the shape of what is absent.

    We might ask: If one cannot, for whatever reasons, argue a given fallacy, or push a supremacist trope in lieu of argument, then how is that individual silenced? More particularly: Do we presume these people will be silenced if they cannot behave poorly? Do they have nothing else to offer?

    It's also true we might find it easy to discriminate between forms of crackpottery and conspiracist tinfoil. Inasmuch as I might be uncertain what to do about ufo-extraterrestrial fantasizing, how anti-science, for instance, can it get compared to antivax, climate change denial, or Covid conspiracism? Or from ufo fancy on to religion, when does the argument become supremacist and harmful? Moreover, just because one should not preach, as such, does that mean there can be no discussion of a given religion?

    And if you're wondering why I might ask that last, like I said, it's complicated. For instance, check the spoiler for an excerpt from one of the prior drafts of this post.

    … like I said, it's a complicated discussion↗. One thing that stands out is a sense of extremity, as if it is some sort of all-or-nothing proposition. Like a household argument, even, it's akin to the idea of asking could one please not behave in a particular way and someone declaring, fine, they just won't do anything.

    In the end, the question of banning has to do with behavior. The historical origin also has to do with the pretense of rational discussion. The way around that point is to abandon that pretense of rational discussion. Compared to the proposition↗ of "saying 'enough is enough - you don't get to say that anymore'", for instance, we are down to↗, "seeing ignorance, mainly", that someone, "obviously has no clue about what he's talking about when it comes to racial inequality, and apparently doesn't want to learn anything either", though, "neither of those things automatically make him a troll or a supremacist".

    Now, at the heart of what isn't trolling in that example was a question of taking two and a half days to get a deliberately insufficient answer to a straightforward question, stretching the digression out over many posts in order to disrupt the primary discussion. Given a pretense that one can somehow be excused because they are too stupid to know an overworn racist trope is racist, the question of whether deliberate disruption of discussions is trolling, and the "problem … of saying 'enough is enough - you don't get to say that anymore'", we might wonder what anybody expects to happen.

    Moreover, on the point of things being complicated, consider two aspects omitted from the prior paragraph: The question of a member advocating for white supremacism was a weird straw man to work around a question of trolling behavior; the politic was recognized, prior policy discussions considered, and that's why the issue at hand was the disruptive trolling behavior, yet we somehow ended up with a public inquisition for the sake of burning straw. Also, the "problem … of saying 'enough is enough …'" is actually enumerated; it "lies in deciding who we can trust to be the gatekeepers", to which there is an obvious response: He's the Administrator, and Bells and I are moderators, and at some point, that would be our jobs.

    The question of banning bigots and tinfoils is one of behavior. If we reject bigotry, tinfoil, and crackpottery, who is utterly silenced? Please consider:

    But let's consider the topic of white supremacism, if you like. Suppose we ban all discussion of it. Then how are we going to meaningfully discuss matters such as the invasion of the US Capitol by Trump supporters? Are we just going to ignore an important facet of that because we've decided that white supremacism is unmentionable?

    (James R↗)

    "Suppose we ban all discussion" of white supremacism? Why would we do that? "Because we've decided that white supremacism is unmentionable"? What in the world does that mean? Are we really supposed to be unable to discern the difference between behavior and discussion of behavior?

    It's a long, complicated story, and shot through with fallacy, but one of the basic questions at hand is the difference between a belief and a behavior, a political view or the manner of expressing it.

    But if an advocate cannot rely on irrational supremacism as an argument, are they truly silenced? Beyond that, any question of banning someone would have more to do with their behavior, so we might wonder how hard who will push what.
     

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