Quote:
Even when making a reasonable and valid point your bias shines through
I think its safe to say that moosegoose doesn't wish to kill everyone or that his point is to "nuke fuckers who don't sing the star spangled banner". Your examples were meant to be extreme of course but interestingly both paint moosegoose as the unreasonable party.
Now what I think is interesting here is I don't' think you did that on purpose, but it is just another example of how our preconceived notions effect how we react.
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funny how this kind of argument turns back around on the person making it almost every time.
for ustwo, the question of biais is now flattened into some a priori in order to exempt the conservative in the debate from having to submit his position to debate (which would imply the possibility of rethinking basic assumptions --without that there is not and never will be any debate) or even to be reasonable (read through what moosenose has posted in this thread and try--just try--to convince me that his positions are reasonable by any measure).
the point concerning paradigms/predispositions--which was interesting and potentially important when ustwo initially made it---now gets instrumentalized--the notion of paradigm becomes a device for relativizing positions and short circuiting arguments, particularly arguments involving a conservative at the loosing end of things.
and so it joins the ranks of other such moves--bush-bashing, bush-hating ad nauseum--whose sole function is to give conservatives a way to opt out of discussion when things reach a point that they might actually have to re-examine their position.
all this in a post that purports to adjudicate a particular exchange.
i dont think that moosenose is being defended by ustwo because his arguments are reasonable--i think he is simply being defended beacuse he is conservative. the basis for the defense is that any rejection of conservative ideology, of conservative arguments, is arbitrary--but this argument, like the other quoted above, reverses immediately--it implies that any commmitment to conservative ideology or conservative argument is arbitrary as well--and--sadly, the relativizing move simply functions to confirm that.
arbitrariness creeps into things because even as ustwo moves to the register of paradigm or predisposition, he does it not to open that register up for debate in itself--whci would constitute a real improvement in the level of debate within these forums--but rather to remove it from any possibility of debate.
my sense is that a recurring explanation for the frustration and irritation that flares up in this forum is the flat refusal of conservatives to enter into meaningful discussion about their system of thinking as a system.
this does not happen with folk who oppose them--but the assymetry turns out to be equally annoying across the board--conservatives think they are put upon, others think they are being obtuse. and things get snippy from that point.
that is how is went here, that is how it has gone in any number of other threads and that is probably how things will always go in this or any other space like it so long as this mode of argument coming largely from the right is confused with something legitimate.
i know that i am not the model of willingness to compromise in this space--but i will say that on some issues my position has moved as a result of discussions here--toward a more mixed view of gun control, for example--and the other way as well, in response to types of arguments that i find myself reading through.
but i have seen almost no movement on the part of folk who play here from the right--but maybe i dont see it for some reason--so perhaps i am wrong (let me know if i am--i am always up for being surprised.)
but if you really believe as you seem to in that last post, ustwo (and others from the right), then what on earth for you is the point of engaging in discussion at all?
there is no discussion: there is an exchange of monologues.
and this is why i am growing increasingly weary of this space in general.