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Originally Posted by ARTelevision
Just this once I'll respond to things ascribed to me that I did not say. Just this once because it so egregious that it amounts to putting words in my mouth and then arguing against those words as if arguing against my positions.
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Well let me respond also, as you are directly quoting me and some of the phrases I used in my post.
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I never said "all Americans" should do anything and never suggested it. Quite the opposite.
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No, you're right. You said "people should". I presumed, even assumed, that this meant that you were referring to Americans.
In every healthy political discussion, one assignes to one's "opponent" some characterisations, attributes and opinions, then moves on based upon them. Either direct quotations, or most of the time,
interpretations of what they said. To do otherwise, to base an entire argument on specificallly what was said and not what was implied (or indeed what was inferred), reduces that argument to a pedantic bout of word games.
Heck, I myself fell into this trap only yesterday with another poster.
The point is that this does not do the 'argument' any good, but results in hightened feelings and raised tension.
Coupled to that is a tendency of yours to express yourself in terms that are easy to interpret in many ways. What you may consider explicit, many will interpret implicit. That's not a criticism, but simply an oberservation based upon my opinion of your use of language. But having said that, I think in this thread you have used language that is clearer than usual.
So, going back to the specifics of the post and your responses to my post...
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I never advocated "Automatic support and obedience, and the abandonment of political opposition..."
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Perhaps you didn't. But that is how I interpreted what you said, or in this case, took your position one step further. It happens in political debate all the time. It happens in
any debate all the time. You say something, which is interpreted and expounded upon for the retort. That is what I did, and many did before me.
Why not respond with a counterpoint, rather than simply complain about being misquoted?
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I went to great length to make clear that these have nothing at all to do with my positions. This sort of thing is why I simply do not respond much in here.
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Well, let me quote one specific response of yours and bring to bear some standard semi-Socratic reasoning upon it to show you how your position was interpreted.
"Please continue exercising your inclination to judge and dissent and withdraw your support from things that do not meet your standards - I know you will anyway. I simply prefer other standards for myself and I think a little movement in this direction - a bit of a trend even - would be a healthy thing for the state of our union."
1) "Please continue excercising your inclination to judge and dissent..."
This is a direct invitation to not only dissent in the general term, politically, socially etc, but also
specifically in this thred.
2) "... and withdraw your support from things that do not meet you standards"
Again, you are accepting the position of others and, by implication, 'blessing' their opinion .
3) "I simply prefer other standards for myself...
Here is the crux of the matter. By preferring
"other standards" for yourself, you are immediately implying that the "other standard" is the opposite of your preceding invitation for dissention. In other words, a reasonable interpretation would be
"Please continue to dissent, but I will not."
That is how you were interpreted. I think it's quite a reasonable interpretation and indeed I think it fostered an interesting debate. Note that many people do indeed take the position that was attributed to you; viz, the President should be supported because he's the President.
Hence, not only due to your original post, and subsequent comments made by you, and the fact that "Presidental obedience" is a common opinion, we developed upon the argument to debate the issue further.
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I made some exception to that practice in this thread - for purposes of explanation - to no avail, evidently.
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Well, I'm not really sure what the purpose of this statement is. Are you refuting the arguments of others? Are you clarifying some misconceptions? Or are you figuratively sighing and saying "Tsk tsk, those people never really understand me despite my condescending to engage in petty debate with them. They'll never learn"... etc.
The use of quotation marks is usually used by me to imply the indirect quotation or expression of phrases, as often used in verbal discussion. I'm
NOT implying you actually said the above phrase. I also think that's quite obvious, but worth explicitly calling out in this circumstance.
So, in summary...
You may not have said exactly what others implied or responded to. But welcome to the real world of political debate. That's what it's all about.
People interpret what
is said, build upon those statements and interpretations, and move the debate on.
No offense was meant, taken and hopefully implied in this thread. I've enjoyed it and hope you have too.
Mr Mephisto