meta-question - Page 2 - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

Willravel · 12-18-2006, 10:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by matthew330

You make 2+2 sound more complicated than the theory of relativity, and host throws out the entire internet to prove....something. It was only a matter of time before you entertained yourselves to complete boredom.

There is a difference between something being complicated and some people being unable to devote a few minutes to read every word of a post. I don't see responses to roach or Host like, "Can you elaborate on this?" or "What do you mean?". I actually read every word of Host's posts. I've been doing it long enough to know that he will post articles two or three times because people simply ignore them. He tried to put in bold the important parts and he's still ignored. It's facinating to see people making fun of Host because most of his posts are long and include numerous citations to back his arguments and conclusions. Instead of people focusing on his statements, they focus on how long it is. The same thing happens to a far lesser degree with roach, as he doesn't use capitolization.

What happened to TFPolitics? Simple. Most people jumping around the internet develop iADHD (internet attention deficit hyperactive disorder), and no longer have the ability to sit and read something online for extended periods of time. A lot of people can't read page after page of articules because they are used to jumping around from e-mail to porn to myspace to porn to tfp and inevitiably back to porn. People are unable to pay attention to one thing for long, are hyperactive (clicking on different things quickly, jumping from page to page), and impulsivity (ooh, I'll click on this! oh no wait, I'll click on this!!). TFPolitics is not for the weak minded or the impulsive, inattentive, hyper web-surfer. This automatically weeds out a lot of people. Also, TFPolitics tends to bring out very, very strong emotions. I've sat at the computer typing for hours, staring down my screen, trying to put my million and one thoughts down on the page. I've gotten really mad. I've felt the joy of success and learning, and I've felt the pain of being proven wrong or meeting my antagonist in literary combat. That takes dedication, energy, and stamina.

Or, it could just be that the Dems control the house, and the white house has been less horrible lately.

pig · 12-19-2006, 04:32 AM

I personally find it highly unlikely that either host's nefarious linking style, or roach's dastardly habit of using the entire english language have thrown tfpolitics into a downward spiral. its been discussed before, and has been stated before: if you don't like or can't cope with a particular poster, then what happens is people simply ignore the post. i think, and its just my wild zany guess, but i think we're just in a downside of the natural posting cycle, combined with post-election afterglow, combined with holiday slumber. it seems to me, matt, that if there is a 3:1 ratio of libs to conservatives (conservatively speaking, of course) - and the vast majority of the liberals presumably do their best to translate their guttural grunts and hand gestures into internet speak as opposed to the verbose dialogue of their idols - then wouldn't the conservatively outnumbered conservatives have a pretty liberal number of liberals with which to politically spar in politics? Its not like the other liberals simply sit back and say "yeah, you get 'em roach. that's right, link that shit. tell 'em host." in short, while i found the style of your post to be pretty humorous, i found the content to be erroneous.

host · 12-19-2006, 09:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by matthew330

that's funny. I'll give it a go. there's a fundamental difference, clearly, in the way the liberal mindset works as opposed to someone more "normal", like myself for instance......

It could be that the more "normal" folks have been influenced by the recent election results to begin to take the first tiny steps in the painful process of examining how they "know what they know".....they are an unquestioning, thoroughly resolute "bunch".....you hafta be....if you support the notion of pre-emption, and a "long war on terror", because, otherwise, you might ask yourself questions....questions like, "where would the US be today if it's government had responded to the 9/11 attacks with....no response, (save for finding out where the USAF was....that morning.....) if it had opted for restraint and the sympathy, solidarity, and support of other nations. Nations like France....

Quote:

http://www.slate.com/id/2088113/

......Remember? The French newspaper Le Monde, never one for trans-Atlantic sentimentalism, proclaimed, "We are all Americans." The band outside <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/09/14/nbrit114.xml">Buckingham Palace</a> played "The Star-Spangled Banner" during a changing of the guard, as thousands of Londoners tearfully waved American flags. Most significant, the European leaders of NATO, for the first time in the organization's history, <a href="http://www.nato.int/docu/basictxt/treaty.htm#Art05">invoked Article 5</a> of its charter, calling on its 19 member-nations to treat the attack on America as an attack on them all—a particularly moving gesture, as Article 5 had been intended to guarantee American retaliation against an attack on Europe.

But the Bush administration brushed aside these supportive gestures—and that may loom as the greatest tragedy of Sept. 11, apart from the tolls taken by the attack itself.........

If being less "normal", is being like me....born in the same state as George W Bush....and raised in and around his birthplace, and the place where he received his college education....New Haven, and Yale University, but not having any interest in seeing his presidential "library" built in the city of his birth, I seem to enjoy plenty of company, including Bush, himself:

Please consider that the more "normal" may no longer post much in this forum, because they have been fed so much bullshit by the "leaders" who they trusted and supported, that they don't "know what they know". Take for instance, what they have been told about Iraq:

Quote:

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002182.php
DoD Report Spins Water Shortage in Iraq
By Justin Rood - December 19, 2006, 11:05 AM

Water is hardly a topic that holds one's attention for long, until you don't have any.

As it happens, Iraq is short on drinkable water. Although you might not pick up on that fact by reading the paltry two sentences on the topic in the Defense Department's <a href="http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/pdfs/9010Quarterly-Report-20061216.pdf">new report</a> on the country, "Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq."

"New projects have added capacity to provide access to potable water to approximately 5.2 million Iraqis—an increase of 1 million people since the August 2006 report," the document reports in a somewhat boosterish tone, giving no benchmark to compare those numbers to. The report acknowledges that "direct measurement of water actually delivered to Iraqis is not available."

A GAO document <a href="http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d0730r.pdf">released</a> Friday on the same topic tells a slightly different story. While reconstruction efforts are more than half-completed in areas like energy generation, oil production -- even school rebuilding and train station renovations -- the amount of potable water currently produced in Iraq is at less than half the target amount. Like the DoD report, GAO notes that such water statistics are inaccurate; unlike the DoD report, it says why: "U.S. officials estimate that 60 percent of water treatment output is lost due to leakage, contamination, and illegal connections."

But didn't the Pentagon state that rebuilding efforts are providing water to 5.2 million Iraqis now? Read it closer: DoD says efforts have boosted "capacity to provide access to potable water" to 5.2 million Iraqis. Can we assume that such "capacity" is what's measured before 60 percent of the usable water is lost to the problems identified by GAO?

For the less "normal", in Bush's birthplace, Connecticut, it has been a "no brainer", from the start. Connecticut voted for Gore in 2000 and for Kerry, in 2004. For the more "normal", there seems to be some stirring....and IMO, it's about fucking time!

Quote:

http://www.insidehighered.com/index....2006/12/18/smu
Dec. 18
Scholarly Archive or Ideological Center?

.....But now, as President Bush prepares to decide among SMU, Baylor University and the University of Dallas, a new issue has emerged. Professors at SMU are circulating an open letter calling for the university to have a full discussion of the implications of being host to the Bush library. Several recent press reports have quoted Bush advisers as saying that SMU has the edge and that the library’s affiliated think tank will encourage scholarship with a specific political agenda........

Quote:

http://www.reporterinteractive.org/m...9/Default.aspx
Letters To The Editor
The George W. Bush Library: Asset or Albatross?

For some time administrators and trustees of Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas, have pursued the George W. Bush Presidential Library, competing with close contenders, especially Baylor University in Waco, Texas.

We respect SMU’s present leaders and their remarkable achievements. At the same time, we want to raise questions we regard as healthy for public conversation. While in this piece we speak for ourselves, we know that the SMU faculty resents and does not support the prospective Library. Just what does it mean when an administration ignores its greatest asset: the abiding loyalty of its own faculty?

Some say a presidential library is not about the specific policies and practices of a given administration, or about the outcomes and consequences of those policies. Rather the issue is said to be the provision of a permanent historical repository for presidential papers, documents and artifacts. Presumably such a library becomes a prestigious center where scholars, historians and interested citizens can study, participate in programs and conduct serious research and inquiry. This is to say nothing of enhancing area tourism and thus the local economy.

In spite of these expectations held by some, we are concerned with short- and long-term implications of the prospective library for the city of Dallas and the University alike.

Much has been said and written about Dallas becoming a world-class city of charm and culture, attractive to domestic and international tourists. At this very moment, the Dallas Arts District is coming further alive with new facilities that will enhance the city as a respected center for the performing arts; exciting and extensive downtown revitalization is underway.

Given the extent to which the vast majority of the world resents and resists the Bush administration, we believe the library will be a step backward in terms of international respect for the city and the university. Does the city really want in its midst a throwback to the mentality of U.S. Manifest Destiny in a world that so desperately needs global cooperation?

On another note, we wonder if it is prudent for a university to situate on its campus a symbolic magnet for would-be international terrorists or small-time copycats. Because of intense global disdain of Bush, this library may never enjoy respect equal to that for other presidential libraries, besides being an ongoing security risk to the campus and surrounding neighborhood.

The Bush library raises additional ethical issues. What does it mean for universities bidding for a particular presidential library to claim that the outcomes of a given administration are inconsequential to the value of that library for their campus?

What does it mean ethically for SMU trustees to say that a pre-emptive war based on false premises and destined to cost more American lives in Iraq than 9-11 is beside the point?

What moral justification supports providing a haven for environmental predation and outright denial of global warming, for shameful exploitation of gay rights, along with the most critical erosion of habeas corpus in memory? Given the secrecy of the Bush administration and its refusal to engage with those holding contrary opinions, how can there be any confidence in the selection of presidential papers turned over to the library? Our conviction is that these ethical issues transcend partisan politics.

SMU does not need a presidential library in order to host renowned scholars and events whose purpose is to analyze the Bush legacy. The University already has the prestigious Maguire Center for Ethics and Public Responsibility which sponsors first-rate conferences on key issues and promotes ethical inquiry into complex contemporary concerns.

Asset or albatross? The question deserves open debate and dialogue among residents of Dallas; faculty, staff, students, and alumni of SMU; and others -- far and near--who love Dallas and the University. Democratic and academic principles alike will be well-served, regardless of the outcome of such dialogue.

William McElvaney,
Professor Emeritus of Preaching and Worship, SMU
Dallas, Texas

Susanne Johnson,
Associate Professor of Christian Education, SMU
Plano, Texas

Posted on Monday, December 11, 2006 @ 3:46:47 PM (Archive on 12/25/2006)

Quote:

http://www.reporterinteractive.org/m...9/Default.aspx
Letters To The Editor
Methodism, torture and the Presidential Library

Methodism began as an 18th century spiritual renewal movement in the Church of England. At the time of the American Revolution only a few hundred Americans identified with Methodism. By the Civil War, Methodism was by far the largest church in the United States with one in three church members calling it their faith community. No other institution has done more good in shaping the ethos of American religion and culture than the Methodist Church.

Southern Methodist University is one of 123 educational institutions that are related to the modern day United Methodist Church. SMU is the only major university that has Methodist in the name. Because of this fact we were particularly troubled to read the Nov. 27, 2006, report by United Press International that associates of George W. Bush are in the process of raising $500 million for his presidential library and think tank at SMU.

Anyone who thinks that the name Methodism or Southern Methodist University should be associated with George W. Bush needs to read the book, Oath Betrayed: Torture, Medical Complicity, and the War on Terror by Dr. Steven Miles, professor of medicine at the University of Minnesota.

Professor Miles has based this volume on painstaking research and highly-credible sources, including eyewitness accounts, army criminal investigations, FBI debriefings of prisoners, autopsy reports and prisoners’ medical records. These documents tell a story strikingly different from the Bush administration version presented to the American people, revealing involvement at every level of government, from former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to prison health-care personnel. The book also shows how the highest officials of government are complicit in this pattern of torture.

While much of the use of torture by the Central Intelligence Agency and Special Forces troops remains concealed, Dr. Miles documents how 19 prisoners have been tortured to death by American military personnel.

Up to 90 percent of the prisoners detained in the Bush “war on terror” have been found to be unjustifiably imprisoned and without intelligence value. In addition, much of the hideous work of torture is out-sourced by the Bush administration to countries like Uzbekistan, Syria and Egypt, where torture is a long-standing and common practice. In July 2004, the British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, who grew up in a devout Methodist home, protested the Uzbek intelligence service's interrogation practices: "Tortured dupes are forced to sign up to confessions showing what the Uzbek government wants the U.S. and U.K. to believe. . . . This material is useless -- we are selling our souls for dross."

Torture is a crime against humanity and a violation of every human rights treaty in existence, including the Geneva Conventions which prohibit cruel and degrading treatment of detainees. Torture is as profound a moral issue in our day as was slavery in the 19th century. It represents a betrayal of our deepest human and religious values as a civilized society.

David Hackett Fischer describes in his Pulitzer Prize winning book, Washington's Crossing, how thousands of American prisoners of war were “treated with extreme cruelty by British captors,” during the Revolutionary War. There are numerous accounts of injured soldiers who surrendered being murdered and Americans dying in prison ships in New York harbor of starvation and torture.

After crossing the Delaware River and winning his first battle at Trenton, New Jersey, on Christmas Day, 1776, George Washington ordered his troops to give refuge to hundreds of surrendering foreign mercenaries. "Treat them with humanity," Washington instructed his troops. "Let them have no reason to complain of our copying the brutal example of the British army."

Contrast this with the Sept. 15, 2006, Washington Post lead editorial titled “The president goes to Capitol Hill to lobby for torture.” “President Bush rarely visits Congress. So it was a measure of his painfully skewed priorities that Mr. Bush made the unaccustomed trip yesterday to seek legislative permission for the CIA to make people disappear into secret prisons and have information extracted from them by means he dare not describe publicly.”

If the Bush Library and think tank are placed at SMU, the United Methodist Church should withdraw its association from the University and demand that the good name of Methodism be removed from the name of the school. If the United Methodist Church cannot take a stand against the use of torture and those who employ it, including President Bush, what does it stand for?

Dr. Andrew J. Weaver,
United Methodist minister, research psychologist and
graduate of Perkins School of Theology, SMU
New York City, NY

Fred W. Kandeler,
Retired United Methodist pastor, former district superintendent and
graduate of Perkins School of Theology, SMU
New Braunfels, Texas

Posted on Monday, December 11, 2006 @ 3:54:29 PM (Archive on 12/25/2006)

Last I looked, polls show that the more "normal", those who presumably, still back the policies, pronouncements and the actions of the worst president in US history are down to about....30 percent of respondents, but they are still a steadfast bunch who never question, how they "know....what they know". If they did....would that make them less "normal", like.....me??

loquitur · 12-19-2006, 10:25 AM

host, if you didn't take the 2004 elections as a reason to question what you "know," why should people who don't agree with you take the 2006 elections that way?

Elections are very blunt and crude instruments and thus their outcomes can carry multiple meanings. Don't read too much into any one particular result. Especially since this last one was in many states quite close. A trend that will persist over time is much more meaningful. Historically, the most meaningful trend of American politics in the last 50 years is a preference for divided government.

BTW, I try to keep my posts rather short. I practice law for a living, and though most people think lawyers are verbose, I find that if I can't get my point across simply and quickly, I have lost the listener. That's because judges are busy people. Around here most people are busy, too.

aberkok · 12-19-2006, 10:49 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by loquitur

BTW, I try to keep my posts rather short. I practice law for a living, and though most people think lawyers are verbose, I find that if I can't get my point across simply and quickly, I have lost the listener. That's because judges are busy people. Around here most people are busy, too.

That's just one style, and it's closer to the one I generally choose, but there's room for far more elaborate posts...especially on a forum like this.

As Willravel put so well, attacking host's posting style tends to reveal more about the person (not) reading it than it does about host himself.

The_Jazz · 12-19-2006, 10:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by willravel

What happened to TFPolitics? Simple. Most people jumping around the internet develop iADHD (internet attention deficit hyperactive disorder), and no longer have the ability to sit and read something online for extended periods of time. A lot of people can't read page after page of articules because they are used to jumping around from e-mail to porn to myspace to porn to tfp and inevitiably back to porn. People are unable to pay attention to one thing for long, are hyperactive (clicking on different things quickly, jumping from page to page), and impulsivity (ooh, I'll click on this! oh no wait, I'll click on this!!). TFPolitics is not for the weak minded or the impulsive, inattentive, hyper web-surfer. This automatically weeds out a lot of people. Also, TFPolitics tends to bring out very, very strong emotions. I've sat at the computer typing for hours, staring down my screen, trying to put my million and one thoughts down on the page. I've gotten really mad. I've felt the joy of success and learning, and I've felt the pain of being proven wrong or meeting my antagonist in literary combat. That takes dedication, energy, and stamina.

I, for one, welcome the reintroduction of boobies into the world of politics if it will reinject (pun intended) new life into this forum. Ah, the halycon days of Janet Jackson, Monica Lewinsky and pictures of Ann Coulter giving a statue of Ronald McDonald a blowjob. Today the only spice is whether or not the latest head of the Moral Majority got a hummer from an inter-racial tranny. Maybe we could accelerate host and Bobby towards each other at speeds approaching the speed of light and end up with a supermember who intersperces diatribes on the economics of global warming effects on trout fishing guides in Western Montana with pictures of K-Fed banging Britney.

It's just an idea, and I don't have a spare particle accelerator around. Then again, maybe I'm the problem, not the solution.

pan6467 · 12-19-2006, 10:56 AM

In the end it all boils down to opinion. You can post the longest of essays and people will get out of it only what they desire to. People can opinionate facts and warp them into whatever they want, and 9/10 times make rationalizations that they hold onto. By attacking these rationalizations, you are attacking them, thus they go into a mode in which they refuse to take in new information and hold more firmly onto what they believe.

You cannot shove your beliefs (no matter how much "proof" you have) down other people's throats and expect them to disavow their beliefs. You can present facts, give your opinion and let them decide. If the person feels they have freedom of choice and feel they are not pressured into believing one way or another, than they may change their beliefs. However, again, if you push your belief onto them.... they will consider it an attack, hold onto their beliefs and attack yours.

That is the big problem here and in most places when it comes to Politics. You have 2 camps demanding that their beliefs are the only truth out there, when in actuality.... the only "truth" is what a person wants it to be.

We are trying to make the world black and white, when in reality, there are more shades of gray areas than there are black and white areas combined. Thus we find no compromise, thus we find "you're either with us or against us", theus we have "you are either for this or you are not a true patriot". Sadly, this attitude comes from leadership and filters its way down on both sides.

The biggest problem here, in TFP Politics, is the same as the biggest problem confronting our nation..... we refuse to let our beliefs grow and change, and we refuse to listen to others and we refuse to work together to find better ways to working out the problems.

roachboy · 12-19-2006, 11:39 AM

i have to say that matthew's post above is one of the funniest i have seen in a long time.

i wonder if i should apologize for my vocabulary.......um......no.

i wonder if it is really a problem that not every viewpoint is easily packaged into nice, tidy little soundbytes outfitted for a type of consumption that is so close to passivity as to be indistinguishable from it.......um......no.
sometimes less is less.

============
and i dont agree with you, pan.

i dont think it is even rational to imagine that the range of political options we as consumers are spoonfed are such that reasonable people are required to find some compromise in the middle somewhere. to think that is to ignore the problems--and there are many many such--of how information is mediated, how it is structured.
you cannot seriously believe that the range of views that make it onto the prechewed little world you see on television is the range of acceptable political positions at any given time---and the situation is not a whole lot better in the american print media.

i dont subscribe to the busby berkley school of political thinking. i just dont.

and that does not mean that it follows that i or anyone else understands what they say as being necessarily correct at all points--politics is a space of argument--arguments can be more or less compelling---that one rejects the space of argument as it is posited for you by the dominant media does not mean that one is convinced of one's own correctness--it just means that your game, pan, is not the only one in town.

and it seems that if anyone is rigid about their game, it's you: because you consistently attribute all kinds of made-up motivations to folk who do not play by your rules.

what could be more self-righteous than deciding--arbitrarily i might add--that rejection of the present degenerate state of political debate means that one is or is not a particular way, that one must be because if that wasn;t true, that person would agree with you?

if you make arguments, you are exposing your position to criticism. you can choose to defend it or not. arguments are effectively experiments.

you confuse tone with motive.
that is naive.

pan6467 · 12-19-2006, 11:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

i have to say that matthew's post above is one of the funniest i have seen in a long time.

i wonder if i should apologize for my vocabulary.......um......no.

i wonder if it is really a problem that not every viewpoint is easily packaged into nice, tidy little soundbytes outfitted for a type of consumption that is so close of passivity as to be indistinguishable from it.......um......no.
sometimes less is less.

and i dont agree with pan.
i dont think it is even rational to imagine that the range of political options we as consumers are spoonfed are such that reasonable people are required to find some compromise in the middle somewhere. to think that is to ignore the problems--and there are many many such--of how information is mediated, how it is structured. you cannot seriously believe that the range of views that make it onto the prechewed little world you see on television is the range of acceptable political positions at any given time---and the situation is not a whole lot better in the american print media.

i dont subscribe to the busby berkley school of political thinking. i just dont.

and that does not mean that it follows that i or anyone else understands what they say as being necessarily correct at all points--politics is a space of argument--arguments can be more or less compelling---that one rejects the space of argument as it is posited for you by the dominant media does not mean that one is convinced of one's own correctness--it just means that your game, pan, is not the only one in town.

and it seems that if anyone is rigid about their game, it's you: because you consistently attribute all kinds of made-up motivations to folk who do not play by your rules.

what could be more self-righteous than deciding--arbitrarily i might add--that rejection of the present degenerate state of political debate means that one is or is not a particular way, that one must be because if that wasn;t true, that person would agree with you?
all this without argument, btw. just assertions. read your post. there is no argument in it.
if you make arguments, you are exposing your position to criticism. you can choose to defend it or not. arguments are effectively experiments. you confuse tone with motive. that is naive.

And thus, this is why this country will continue to spiral downward. How is finding compromise a way of ignoring the problems? Actually, I find in life if I have problems with a co-worker, my boss, Lady Sage and we air them out and come to compromise.... things work easier. If I dictate my way, they dictate their way.... less gets down, resentments and hatred builds and there is nothing good that comes of it.

I have read my post, I typed it and I re-read it and it says exactly what I want it to.

I find the way you talk to me actually proves my point. I didn't have to attack anyone, I didn't have to shove anything down anyone's throat all I had to do was give my opinion and watch how you react, so defensive, so attacking, so just full of hate and refusal to even discuss what was said... instead you want to find hidden agendas and yell about my intelligence and ATTACK ME PERSONALLY.

I rest my case on why "politics" is dying here.

roachboy · 12-19-2006, 12:21 PM

pan, pan, pan: it really was not my intention to offend. ah well.

we have no power. we are not solving anything here. we have no access to policymakers, we have no access to anything. this is a debate forum on a messageboard. i dont know why you prefer to imagine this as a kind of committee that gets together to actually solve problems in the world. it isn't.

further, this is not the same as interpersonal relations in 3-d life.
the parameters are totally different.
think about it.
do you feel like you know roachboy?
do you feel like you know me, the person behind roachboy?
you dont know me. at all.
you might know roachboy: but he repeats himself because this space repeats itself.
the main thing the two of us--roachboy and i--have in common is a growing boredom with this---tempered to some extent with a vague hope that things might start moving again--but boredom nonetheless.

so there we are.

loquitur · 12-19-2006, 01:26 PM

I actually have never ever found anyone change their mind about politics based on a discussion with someone they disagree with. Especially not on a discussion board. At least not in terms of overall position; perhaps some detail might get rethought, but that's about it.

I have found, however, that discussions sharpen my thinking and make me account for things I might not have thought of. It also points out to me which arguments work and which don't.

The main reason for the lack of persuasion is that people in different "camps" find different kinds of considerations persuasive. That means that to a large degree lefties and righties are talking past each other. One can accept every fact the other posits and still come to different conclusions.

mixedmedia · 12-19-2006, 01:32 PM

I used to be so completely wrapped up with my own political beliefs. I was addicted to television news and the information that was fed to me which fueled my absolute conviction that I was right, I understood the subtleties and complexities of every issue I had an opinion on and that everything I opposed was absolutely, verifiably, incontrovertibly wrong.

Then I bought my first issue of The Economist.

I stopped watching television news and talking head bitchfests of any sort and I read - books, magazines, newspapers. It changed my life in so many ways.

There is a middle way. And when you're in the middle it becomes obvious that from one's former position on the far right or left it is impossible to open yourself up to multi-hued complexity of reality because you are so busy trying to make all available information conform to your pre-conceived notion of it. If you spend a lot of time on forums whose sole emphasis is on political discussion you see this. You see both sides take the same information - the !!Breaking News!! of the day - and use it to quantify their arguments. It's bizarre.

Now I'm not trying to say that I have this perfect, crystal clear vision with an unshakeable grasp on what is real, I realize that what I know is only as valid as the reliability of the information I have read. And I have relapses and I sometimes feel myself spiraling back down into abject partisanship. But now I am aware of it when it is happening...and it doesn't feel good. It feels egotistical and trifling. Like I'm taking these issues that are of life and death importance to the people living with them every day and using them to pad my selfish, petty, insignificant yammerings.

I don't know what this has to do with anything...blah, blah, blah, blah, blah...just thought I'd share.

loquitur · 12-19-2006, 01:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aberkok

That's just one style, and it's closer to the one I generally choose, but there's room for far more elaborate posts...especially on a forum like this.

As Willravel put so well, attacking host's posting style tends to reveal more about the person (not) reading it than it does about host himself.

Aberkok, I certainly wasn't intending to attack host. Host, I'm sorry if you or others read it that way. What happened was simply that someone else was commenting on short attention spans, and I was responding to that in terms of what I try to do when I post . Look, host, you do a lot of work for your posts and believe me, I'm not criticizing you for it. If anything, you deserve credit for the effort.

Quote:

Originally Posted by mixedmedia

There is a middle way. And when you're in the middle it becomes obvious that from one's former position on the far right or left it is impossible to open yourself up to multi-hued complexity of reality because you are so busy trying to make all available information conform to your pre-conceived notion of it.

Precisely -- and well put. The best way to avoid letting yourself become doctrinaire is to do a lot of reading, from a lot of sources. Also to read history - not just your own country's but other countries' too. Sadly, we homo sapiens as a group often make the same mistakes over and over again.

roachboy · 12-19-2006, 02:58 PM

there are two entirely different processes being crunched together in the last couple posts--reading, gathering information, working through often interally contradictory and/or complex material and finding yourself (maybe) generating interpretations that seem to move through the middle of the informational cluster you have assembled--and another, which is positioning oneself as a centrist in the contemporary american political context.

as for the former, i don't really understand any particular value in this abstract notion of a "golden mean"--i would expect that where you end up in the interpretation of information can and should vary, often quite wildly, depending on the issue, the kind of information you have available, the types of expertise you can bring to bear on it, etc.. add to that the problematic character of source materials, and the requirement that you read critically...and the idea that by assembling a collage of information, you are safest finding a line somewhere down the middle seems...well....pretty self-limiting.

assemble the information, think about the sources, draw on your types of expertise and make your own conclusions. the people who write articles are often not as smart or as informed as those who read them, so why assume their authority--as function of proper names situated in a particular media outlet context--should function as parameters that necessarily have to guide what and how you think?

if you are going to give yourself the freedom to research, to read etc, why would you not also give yourself the freedom to think about what you find, what you collage? sometimes you will be in the middle, sometimes not: who cares?
develop your own arguments and take your own chances with them.
geez, it's not like there will be an exam at the end of the semester on this.
and if you cant dare take chances in a space like this, where can you do it?
anywhere?
ever?

as for the latter....well.....the space between the variants of conservatism that pass as a political spectrum in the united states is a pretty small place to hang out in, isn't it? it's like being an a very large city but only wanting to hang around in a tiny park. but i dunno, maybe some think the shubbery is nice there: but it seems claustrophic to me.

but i would imagine that'd be fine so far as centrists were concerned, yes?

what possible basis could you have for objecting to the fact that what you find to be cozy others find to be claustrophic? if anything, you in the center should be pleased that there are others well to the left of you. your position as centrist relies on others---that is where you get one of the sides of the drawing from, the one that you split with a line down the center, which you then follow.

anyway, these last statements concern an aesthetic question---whether you position yourself between the two variants of conservatism that fob themselves off as a coherent political spectrum in america---like which interior lighting you like and whether that can or can not incude lava lamps or which peanut butter you prefer--on the same order.

loquitur · 12-19-2006, 03:57 PM

Roachboy, I think you're right that the middle isn't necessarily "correct." Some decisions are binary, meaning that one side or the other is correct. But I don't think that's what people here were talking about. I think they meant "middle" as "neither uniformly in one camp or the other" - so that on some issues they'd come out with a "left" answer and on others with a "right" answer. That's a diff concept of middle than coming out somewhere between right and left on individual issues.

Mayhaps we flatter ourselves, but it's hardly an idiosyncratic conceit that we fancy ourselves as sufficiently independent of mind to be able to think through any particular issue for ourselves. And I remain convinced that the more well-read you are, the more knowledgeable you are about any particular type of problem, the better your judgment will be. That's why history is important. That's why it's important to read more than one newspaper.

However, people do have general overall approaches, and those approaches will determine what sorts of arguments are convincing, which facts are significant and which chains of logic are persuasive. The key is not to get into a "team" mentality, where one believes that things done by those one agrees with are necessarily correct, and that things done by those one disagrees with are venal, motivated by evil or based on stupidity. Neither proposition is usually true - most of the time it's honest disagreement based on different perspectives.

loquitur · 12-19-2006, 03:57 PM

Roachboy, I think you're right that the middle isn't necessarily "correct." Some decisions are binary, meaning that one side or the other is correct. But I don't think that's what people here were talking about. I think they meant "middle" as "neither uniformly in one camp or the other" - so that on some issues they'd come out with a "left" answer and on others with a "right" answer. That's a diff concept of middle than coming out somewhere between right and left on individual issues.

Mayhaps we flatter ourselves, but it's hardly an idiosyncratic conceit that we fancy ourselves as sufficiently independent of mind to be able to think through any particular issue for ourselves. And I remain convinced that the more well-read you are, the more knowledgeable you are about any particular type of problem, the better your judgment will be. That's why history is important. That's why it's important to read more than one newspaper.

However, people do have general overall approaches, and those approaches will determine what sorts of arguments are convincing, which facts are significant and which chains of logic are persuasive. The key is not to get into a "team" mentality, where one believes that things done by those one agrees with are necessarily correct, and that things done by those one disagrees with are venal, motivated by evil or based on stupidity. Neither proposition is usually true - most of the time it's honest disagreement based on different perspectives.

mixedmedia · 12-19-2006, 04:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

*snip*as for the former, i don't really understand any particular value in this abstract notion of a "golden mean"--i would expect that where you end up in the interpretation of information can and should vary, often quite wildly, depending on the issue, the kind of information you have available, the types of expertise you can bring to bear on it, etc.. add to that the problematic character of source materials, and the requirement that you read critically...and the idea that by assembling a collage of information, you are safest finding a line somewhere down the middle seems...well....pretty self-limiting.

assemble the information, think about the sources, draw on your types of expertise and make your own conclusions. the people who write articles are often not as smart or as informed as those who read them, so why assume their authority--as function of proper names situated in a particular media outlet context--should function as parameters that necessarily have to guide what and how you think?

if you are going to give yourself the freedom to research, to read etc, why would you not also give yourself the freedom to think about what you find, what you collage? sometimes you will be in the middle, sometimes not: who cares?
develop your own arguments and take your own chances with them.
geez, it's not like there will be an exam at the end of the semester on this.
and if you cant dare take chances in a space like this, where can you do it?
anywhere?
ever?*anip*

I'm not sure if this is directed at my comments, but if so, what in my post contradicts any of this? All I am saying is that, in my mind, experience, observation, what have you, that that truthy feeling most usually resides somewhere in the middle of the two extremes - not always - especially in matters that are pretty much the consequence of personal opinion, most notable for me the social issues of American life. It's not a conscious choice to find an answer in the middle. After all, that would again, simply be using information to conform to a pre-conceived, or desired notion. It is a realization that the concepts of liberalism and conservatism as it pertains to American politics is a shallow and limiting way to view world affairs and a decidedly selfish one at that. Or something like that, lol.

<editing>
My beliefs usually end up on the leftish side of issues...but I have learned things from conservative ideology, most esp. neo-conservative views, that reside quite well alongside them and I don't allow knee jerk reactions to limit my conclusions.

loquitur · 12-19-2006, 04:29 PM

Self-awareness is an important part of the analysis, too. It allows you some distance to try to evaluate things with some modicum of dispassion. I'm not sure if that's what you mean by coming out in the middle, MM, but it's the way I would define it.

roachboy · 12-19-2006, 04:54 PM

mm: i think i reacted to what i saw as a kind of defaulting into the middle in the previous post of yours.

thinking of the same thing now, i would probably opt for a more cheery approach to the same basic point: this can be a space to try out arguments, to take chances with them, see if they work, see why they dont, if they dont.

that is why the repetition in roachboy's posts bugs me--and why repetition in the context, in the posts that are available to bounce off of, bothers me: they give plant food to the boredom weed--which grows at a healthy rate without it.

a short defense of longer posts:

i am dispositionally still kind of marxist: i dont think you can separate economic activity from social activity in general; the notion of mode of production is pretty powerful; class remains a significant category, even if its political valences are no longer obvious; ideology critique is a fundamental political activity, etc. none of this can get started without a view of history. the only real problem with making this style of argument is that it is not easy to be pithy. things have to be explained simply because the usual ideological framing of questions is an element of the problem, an extension of it, or worse is the enabling condition of the problem (x, whatever)...so you have to move outside that frame to get started, and the first move is generally to relativize the ideological claims--and then from there to chipping away at how variables are defined, hierarchies determined, etc. you can be pretty precise about what you are doing, why and how: but it is hard to do anything interesting in short form, i find. power point stylee doesnt cut it. less is in fact less.
so i dont.

i understand that folk are busy--i am too--but, seriously, less is just less.
explain your positions. you think it anyway when you write short things. just say it. if folk are pressed, they dont have to read it. if they aren;t, maybe they will. no sense in presuming everyone always operates at a single rate. not even assembly lines manage that.

loquitur · 12-19-2006, 05:47 PM

Well, Marx's error was in presuming that economics is everywhere and always determinative, and that changing economics therefore would change people. That's just not true. But your riff off that, that social and economic issues aren't easily separable, and influence each other, is in my view 100% correct - which is why I normally default to freedom as my preferred mode, both in economics and in social issues (the shorthand description for this is usually "libertarian," but I'm not uniformly libertarian). Is that a "middle" position? Not really - even though lefties would call me an economic royalist and lover of the rich, and righties would call me a libertine and tolerator of immoral activity.

mixedmedia · 12-19-2006, 06:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

mm: i think i reacted to what i saw as a kind of defaulting into the middle in the previous post of yours.

thinking of the same thing now, i would probably opt for a more cheery approach to the same basic point: this can be a space to try out arguments, to take chances with them, see if they work, see why they dont, if they dont.

that is why the repetition in roachboy's posts bugs me--and why repetition in the context, in the posts that are available to bounce off of, bothers me: they give plant food to the boredom weed--which grows at a healthy rate without it.

I was almost certain that this was your perception which is why I wanted to counter it.

It certainly is not my aim to proffer my views as static, unchangable precepts written in stone. I'm always open to the opportunity to have my ideas picked apart, adapted to acquired knowledge and put back together again. I do this all the time with myself 'cause it's not always easy to find someone to play with, lol. At the forum I spent two years at getting to the place I am now if you didn't have a definite left or right point of departure for your views, then you weren't as liable to engage people in dialogue because the point was not to discuss. It was an excercise in mental masturbation, to put it quite crassly, yet succinctly.

Personally, I would like nothing better than to transcend the limiting parameters of left and right ideology altogether and discuss things on a more practical, common sense level. Ideology is not conducive to rational thought. Eventually, even the most intelligent and worldly of minds will be warped by it. This is another fact that history has taught us.

But don't mind me, half the time when I am talking this way, even I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about. It just tastes like something interesting way back there....sometimes I think I'm onto something.

pan6467 · 12-19-2006, 10:17 PM

I have had some interesting debates with some people in these threads. Ace, Stevo... they gave their point of view I would give mine and in the end, we both learned something and whether they admit it or not, I usually saw a middle ground where if we put away our differences and truly worked together for the purpose of betterment, we might actually get somewhere.

RB has a point to some degree, this is just a "forum" where we are just faceless. However, my belief is that if Stevo and I or Ace and I (usually 2 polar opposites) can come to understand each other; without having to insult, call names, pull out dictionaries and encyclopedias; then we accomplished something.

And if we can accomplish something in this little slice of our realities, we maybe able to convey what we learned to others we talk to and get more people to see compromises and middle grounds (sometimes more to the right sometimes more to the left politically) they can speak up and maybe in the end some politicians start listening.

I tend to believe that while the bullshit partisan politics, hatred, "elitism" and so on start at the top of BOTH parties, the positive changes have to come from the grass roots, and that simply put is us.

RB, be as full of hate, one sided, "I'm better than you and my way of thinking is the only way" and allow your own hatred and self righteousness destroy you.

To answer you as for "do I think I know RB?"

I never laid claim that I knew you, nor do I want to know you. Have no desire to. I, personally, do not believe you have anything positive to add into my life based on your posts here. Doesn't mean you are a bad person or whatever, just means I don't think we'd truly have anything in common and I find you too one sided and unwilling to see someone else's point of view.

I look at my posts when I first joined and I see immense growth, I see that in many others also. And they (I) post/posted to seem to learn from each other and provide rational discourse as they (I) grew.

Yet, I also see some who hold onto hate, self righteous, hate mongering bs, who seem to post just to stir the pot up, to flame, to pass off superiority over others. And these people have destroyed this board, taken politics and attitudes to other threads and have hurt TFP and destroyed politics here.

It can be rebuilt, but people get tired of the negativity. They jump online to avoid stress and being attacked for what they believe and post.

Some can say that is what I am doing.... maybe, but in my mind I am simply stating what I see and believe. My opinion, right or wrong it is mine and mine only.

pig · 12-20-2006, 05:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pan6467

RB, be as full of hate, one sided, "I'm better than you and my way of thinking is the only way" and allow your own hatred and self righteousness destroy you....Yet, I also see some who hold onto hate, self righteous, hate mongering bs, who seem to post just to stir the pot up, to flame, to pass off superiority over others. And these people have destroyed this board, taken politics and attitudes to other threads and have hurt TFP and destroyed politics here.

whoa tiger!!! i almost posted something earlier to this thread, but popped the back button. for starters pan, you know i love you and all...but don't you think this is a little strongly worded? how is roach full of hatred? his perspective is definitely skewed out of the normal playing field of american political discourse, so is it his rejection of the language and framing inherent in most political discussion? is self-righteousness a result of a (potentially) over-educated lexicon? i'd really have to take umbrage with the concept that roach only posts to "flame and and pass off superiority to others." i don't think he's any more guilty of that than any of us have been. i just went back and re-read the posts in this thread, and while i can see where you could come to a statement like that you just made, i also think you have to bring some negativity with you to arrive at that conclusion. to a certain extent, i think everyone is so programmed to see insult when they get into political discussions that you start to imagine it a bit where it isn't. i don't think roach is any more arrogant about his positions than anyone else who thinks they have a valid point.

i also think you hit the other idea i had earlier about this thread...and that is that some come to these boards looking for conversation to help them shoot the shit throughout the day, and some come looking for discussion to probe and understand issues. i think the contrast between the two desires of the posters causes some of the issues on a board like politics. some people just want to vent from the political positions, but others want to take some time with it. so longer posts (hey host

) become annoying with all the information or constant backtracking of assumptions (roach). it just depends on why people are posting. i don't know, i've never seen tfpolitics exist in any significantly different form than the current one. however,

i'd like to think we can arrive at a place such as m^2 is shooting for...where the labels get finally get boring. i think with the same characters hanging around, and as the posts become repetitious...there is a chance that people will break out of the traditional posting style just because its boring to tears to argue the same horseshit over and over. maybe it would be more fun to argue basic positions for a while, maybe not. the reposts from cnn / the ap and the ensuing standard arguments from the left/right angle are pretty much predictable, in my opinion.

roachboy · 12-20-2006, 09:03 AM

tore it down.

smooth · 12-21-2006, 12:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

tore it down.

evidently.

matthew330 · 12-21-2006, 02:06 PM

"As Willravel put so well, attacking host's posting style tends to reveal more about the person (not) reading it than it does about host himself."

Host, I'm not one to ask favors, but you and I go way back. Could you by any chance link all of the posts in the last say, 2 years, where one complained about UsTwo's posting style, and not the content of his posts?

Take all the space you need. Thanks brotherman!!!

...if you think that UsTwo says nothing, at the very least it doesn't take 45 minutes to figure that out.

BTW - there was a post in here some time ago that mentioned how you tend to make "unwelcome" friends when posting. Sorry UsTwo, not trying to be "that guy". You've just been more active than others here so your really the only one to reference.

roachboy · 12-21-2006, 02:24 PM

i was going to reply to pan, but it all seems so far out of whack, what he says about roachboy, so unrelated to anything i understand either myself or roachboy to be, to do or to say that there was really no point in it.

fighting someone else's projections is always a waste of time.
and while it is of course kind of awkward to find oneself dressed up in someone else's psychological garb as a Persecuting Other, i suppose there are worse fates for a pseudonym.

political debate can be as much a space for the outlining of one's pathologies as it can be one of making arguments.
there is a whole history of political microgroups that demonstrates even distinguishing one from the other can be a problem at times.

so even here, nothing is being invented: except perhaps an unattractive virtual outfit that roachboy's phantom double can be paraded about while wearing.

i would complain about pattern, color, cut and even lighting: but pan's isnt my movie.

so it goes, i guess.

matthew330 · 12-21-2006, 02:38 PM

you totally won that one roach. It was the "phantom double"... that was real nice. Sweet language.

Seriously, you may have answered you own question with this: "fighting someone else's projections is always a waste of time"...in another way. Fighting your own projections of someone else, perhaps that's the prob.

smooth · 12-21-2006, 03:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by matthew330

"As Willravel put so well, attacking host's posting style tends to reveal more about the person (not) reading it than it does about host himself."

Host, I'm not one to ask favors, but you and I go way back. Could you by any chance link all of the posts in the last say, 2 years, where one complained about UsTwo's posting style, and not the content of his posts?

Take all the space you need. Thanks brotherman!!!

...if you think that UsTwo says nothing, at the very least it doesn't take 45 minutes to figure that out.

BTW - there was a post in here some time ago that mentioned how you tend to make "unwelcome" friends when posting. Sorry UsTwo, not trying to be "that guy". You've just been more active than others here so your really the only one to reference.

evidently, you have something in mind so why don't you just post some examples you think illustrate the point you're trying to make.

I can't think of a single example where someone chastised ustwo for his "style" that wasn't directly related to the (negative) content he was posting...but whatever, I'm certainly not going to trawl through two years of posts to get at something I don't even think exists. while you're at it, you could even type a line or two as to how ustwo's posting style or content is relevant to this discussion...

or yours for that matter

roachboy · 12-21-2006, 03:02 PM

i should have noted---and probably would have had my computer not crashed in the meantime (windows--gotta love it) that insofar as the blurring of the line between political argument and mapping pathologies is concerned, the same holds for me--or anyone else.

and self-awareness is a project, not a state.
sometimes it is elusive.

i am not sure that i see any good place for this to go now.
anyway, off to do other things in 3-d.

mixedmedia · 12-21-2006, 03:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

political debate can be as much a space for the outlining of one's pathologies as it can be one of making arguments.

nope, this is the one that did it for me...

somebody get me my smelling salts, I think I'm in love....

matthew330 · 12-21-2006, 03:29 PM

"I can't think of a single example where someone chastised ustwo for his "style" that wasn't directly related to the (negative) content he was posting...but whatever, I'm certainly not going to trawl through two years of posts to get at something I don't even think exists."

Of course you can't, and of course you won't.

Willravel · 12-21-2006, 04:02 PM

It's a matter of fact that host is mostly attacked for style, and Ustwo is mostly attacked because he attacked first. If you want proof, simply look in any thread about 9/11 where he has posted. I suspect that personal attacks and generally rude behavior do not help TFPolitics, either in content or attracting interest.

filtherton · 12-21-2006, 05:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by matthew330

"I can't think of a single example where someone chastised ustwo for his "style" that wasn't directly related to the (negative) content he was posting...but whatever, I'm certainly not going to trawl through two years of posts to get at something I don't even think exists."

Of course you can't, and of course you won't.

Why don't you trawl through the last two years of roachboy's posts and quote every instance where he used a word with more than three syllables.

Of course you won't, therefore you are wrong.

QED

Elphaba · 12-21-2006, 05:38 PM

My "voice" has been relatively silent of late in the world of politics, but I must say that this topic encourages me to believe that the tfp politics forum is about to evolve into something better than it has ever been.

The stasis of the forum that was driven primarily by "us vs. them" appears to have been broken by a number of forces. New members, a new congress, and a greater willingness to listen, discuss and disagree in an intelligent manner are all factors that I see present now.

I am passionate about the political influences that affect my world, and I want to discuss these issues with those that choose to educate themselves on specific matters. I have no interest in participating in a forum that tags and mocks it's members by another member of a differing viewpoint. I view that response as an insult to my intellect, no matter how uninformed I might be on a particular subject.

My interest in this forum is primarily one of a source of information. I learn here, thanks to those that make the effort to share their knowledge and resources. I am fully capable of evaluating and further researching what is offered here, and I reject spoonfed ideology. To echo Host, I also want to know how we think that we "know."

matthew330 · 12-21-2006, 07:05 PM

I am passionate about the political influences that affect my world, and I want to discuss these issues with those that choose to educate themselves on specific matters. I have no interest in participating in a forum that tags and mocks it's members by another member of a differing viewpoint. I view that response as an insult to my intellect, no matter how uninformed I might be on a particular subject. "

ehh - why stop now? We're on a roll right?

This is primarily what bothers me about the politics board. My issues with roach and host aside, you have elphaba and pan to follow. The "other" 25% if you will: "feed me seymour, i'm here to learn and make friends"...WHAT??!, YOU OIL SPILLING, HUMMER DRIVING FREAK!!!, oh, i didn't mean that...i'm totlly middle of the road...my passion totally gets the best of me.

Yeah - so back to the original post...and my mathematical theory. Someone who doesn't agree with you is not only obligated to read the internet in its entirety (courtesy of host), paruse (sweet word if the spelling is on) dictionary.com (courtesy of roach), but deal with elphaba and pan's manic impulses as well, middle of the road as they are.

"I learn here, thanks to those that make the effort to share their knowledge and resources. I am fully capable of evaluating and further researching what is offered here, and I reject spoonfed ideology"

Elphaba, I was here long before you showed up. You haven't changed a bit since your first post. How far has your ideology been bent? How much have you learned? Just curious.

Willravel · 12-21-2006, 07:13 PM

Well I'm bonkers (9/11 conspiuracy theorists are hardly middle of the road types) but I still am effected by both sides, and I know I effect both sides.

Elphaba · 12-21-2006, 10:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by matthew330

I am passionate about the political influences that affect my world, and I want to discuss these issues with those that choose to educate themselves on specific matters. I have no interest in participating in a forum that tags and mocks it's members by another member of a differing viewpoint. I view that response as an insult to my intellect, no matter how uninformed I might be on a particular subject. "

ehh - why stop now? We're on a roll right?

This is primarily what bothers me about the politics board. My issues with roach and host aside, you have elphaba and pan to follow. The "other" 25% if you will: "feed me seymour, i'm here to learn and make friends"...WHAT??!, YOU OIL SPILLING, HUMMER DRIVING FREAK!!!, oh, i didn't mean that...i'm totlly middle of the road...my passion totally gets the best of me.

Yeah - so back to the original post...and my mathematical theory. Someone who doesn't agree with you is not only obligated to read the internet in its entirety (courtesy of host), paruse (sweet word if the spelling is on) dictionary.com (courtesy of roach), but deal with elphaba and pan's manic impulses as well, middle of the road as they are.

"I learn here, thanks to those that make the effort to share their knowledge and resources. I am fully capable of evaluating and further researching what is offered here, and I reject spoonfed ideology"

Elphaba, I was here long before you showed up. You haven't changed a bit since your first post. How far has your ideology been bent? How much have you learned? Just curious.

Hmmm...I don't think I've told you or anyone else to stfu and go back to looking at the tits forum since my first post to you. I've changed that much.

PS: How's the tits forum?

pan6467 · 12-21-2006, 10:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by willravel

Well I'm bonkers (9/11 conspiuracy theorists are hardly middle of the road types) but I still am effected by both sides, and I know I effect both sides.

Yes, yes you do Will.

Matthew, as for me being "manic" there are some issues that yes, I am very passionate about. But I, again, reiterate, I have had IMHO, extremely great debates that may not have changed my view, but made me see areas where compromises could be made, see where the other person comes from and I can thus understand that viewpoint better, and in one or two cases seen holes in my own thinking and had to go back and look at why I believe the way I do on that issue.

My life as a whole is neither left nor right nor in between, my life is based on what I believe to be right or wrong, looking at how my child and grandchildren will live and how I can survive in this world in the best possible way, loved, admired and valued by self and those I respect. That's how I live my life, that's how I choose "my side" for issues.

What's right for others? That's up to them to decide. Maybe when they get answers we can swap ideas and find better ways to live.

filtherton · 12-21-2006, 11:40 PM

This is only tangential, but is anyone else's browser doing the whole "let's render this page super fucking obnoxiously wide" thing? Every time i look at this thread i have to manually remove post 13 to make it so i don't have to scroll to the right to read the posts.

12-19-2006, 04:32 AM	#42 (permalink)
pig pigglet pigglet Location: Locash	I personally find it highly unlikely that either host's nefarious linking style, or roach's dastardly habit of using the entire english language have thrown tfpolitics into a downward spiral. its been discussed before, and has been stated before: if you don't like or can't cope with a particular poster, then what happens is people simply ignore the post. i think, and its just my wild zany guess, but i think we're just in a downside of the natural posting cycle, combined with post-election afterglow, combined with holiday slumber. it seems to me, matt, that if there is a 3:1 ratio of libs to conservatives (conservatively speaking, of course) - and the vast majority of the liberals presumably do their best to translate their guttural grunts and hand gestures into internet speak as opposed to the verbose dialogue of their idols - then wouldn't the conservatively outnumbered conservatives have a pretty liberal number of liberals with which to politically spar in politics? Its not like the other liberals simply sit back and say "yeah, you get 'em roach. that's right, link that shit. tell 'em host." in short, while i found the style of your post to be pretty humorous, i found the content to be erroneous. __________________ You don't love me, you just love my piggy style

12-19-2006, 10:56 AM	#47 (permalink)
pan6467 Lennonite Priest Location: Mansfield, Ohio USA	In the end it all boils down to opinion. You can post the longest of essays and people will get out of it only what they desire to. People can opinionate facts and warp them into whatever they want, and 9/10 times make rationalizations that they hold onto. By attacking these rationalizations, you are attacking them, thus they go into a mode in which they refuse to take in new information and hold more firmly onto what they believe. You cannot shove your beliefs (no matter how much "proof" you have) down other people's throats and expect them to disavow their beliefs. You can present facts, give your opinion and let them decide. If the person feels they have freedom of choice and feel they are not pressured into believing one way or another, than they may change their beliefs. However, again, if you push your belief onto them.... they will consider it an attack, hold onto their beliefs and attack yours. That is the big problem here and in most places when it comes to Politics. You have 2 camps demanding that their beliefs are the only truth out there, when in actuality.... the only "truth" is what a person wants it to be. We are trying to make the world black and white, when in reality, there are more shades of gray areas than there are black and white areas combined. Thus we find no compromise, thus we find "you're either with us or against us", theus we have "you are either for this or you are not a true patriot". Sadly, this attitude comes from leadership and filters its way down on both sides. The biggest problem here, in TFP Politics, is the same as the biggest problem confronting our nation..... we refuse to let our beliefs grow and change, and we refuse to listen to others and we refuse to work together to find better ways to working out the problems. __________________ I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?" Last edited by pan6467; 12-19-2006 at 11:00 AM..

12-19-2006, 11:39 AM	#48 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	i have to say that matthew's post above is one of the funniest i have seen in a long time. i wonder if i should apologize for my vocabulary.......um......no. i wonder if it is really a problem that not every viewpoint is easily packaged into nice, tidy little soundbytes outfitted for a type of consumption that is so close to passivity as to be indistinguishable from it.......um......no. sometimes less is less. ============ and i dont agree with you, pan. i dont think it is even rational to imagine that the range of political options we as consumers are spoonfed are such that reasonable people are required to find some compromise in the middle somewhere. to think that is to ignore the problems--and there are many many such--of how information is mediated, how it is structured. you cannot seriously believe that the range of views that make it onto the prechewed little world you see on television is the range of acceptable political positions at any given time---and the situation is not a whole lot better in the american print media. i dont subscribe to the busby berkley school of political thinking. i just dont. and that does not mean that it follows that i or anyone else understands what they say as being necessarily correct at all points--politics is a space of argument--arguments can be more or less compelling---that one rejects the space of argument as it is posited for you by the dominant media does not mean that one is convinced of one's own correctness--it just means that your game, pan, is not the only one in town. and it seems that if anyone is rigid about their game, it's you: because you consistently attribute all kinds of made-up motivations to folk who do not play by your rules. what could be more self-righteous than deciding--arbitrarily i might add--that rejection of the present degenerate state of political debate means that one is or is not a particular way, that one must be because if that wasn;t true, that person would agree with you? if you make arguments, you are exposing your position to criticism. you can choose to defend it or not. arguments are effectively experiments. you confuse tone with motive. that is naive. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite Last edited by roachboy; 12-19-2006 at 11:46 AM..

12-19-2006, 12:21 PM	#50 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	pan, pan, pan: it really was not my intention to offend. ah well. we have no power. we are not solving anything here. we have no access to policymakers, we have no access to anything. this is a debate forum on a messageboard. i dont know why you prefer to imagine this as a kind of committee that gets together to actually solve problems in the world. it isn't. further, this is not the same as interpersonal relations in 3-d life. the parameters are totally different. think about it. do you feel like you know roachboy? do you feel like you know me, the person behind roachboy? you dont know me. at all. you might know roachboy: but he repeats himself because this space repeats itself. the main thing the two of us--roachboy and i--have in common is a growing boredom with this---tempered to some extent with a vague hope that things might start moving again--but boredom nonetheless. so there we are. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

12-19-2006, 01:32 PM	#52 (permalink)
mixedmedia has all her shots. Location: Florida	I used to be so completely wrapped up with my own political beliefs. I was addicted to television news and the information that was fed to me which fueled my absolute conviction that I was right, I understood the subtleties and complexities of every issue I had an opinion on and that everything I opposed was absolutely, verifiably, incontrovertibly wrong. Then I bought my first issue of The Economist. I stopped watching television news and talking head bitchfests of any sort and I read - books, magazines, newspapers. It changed my life in so many ways. There is a middle way. And when you're in the middle it becomes obvious that from one's former position on the far right or left it is impossible to open yourself up to multi-hued complexity of reality because you are so busy trying to make all available information conform to your pre-conceived notion of it. If you spend a lot of time on forums whose sole emphasis is on political discussion you see this. You see both sides take the same information - the !!Breaking News!! of the day - and use it to quantify their arguments. It's bizarre. Now I'm not trying to say that I have this perfect, crystal clear vision with an unshakeable grasp on what is real, I realize that what I know is only as valid as the reliability of the information I have read. And I have relapses and I sometimes feel myself spiraling back down into abject partisanship. But now I am aware of it when it is happening...and it doesn't feel good. It feels egotistical and trifling. Like I'm taking these issues that are of life and death importance to the people living with them every day and using them to pad my selfish, petty, insignificant yammerings. I don't know what this has to do with anything...blah, blah, blah, blah, blah...just thought I'd share. __________________ Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats. - Diane Arbus PESSIMISM, n. A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile. - Ambrose Bierce

12-19-2006, 10:25 AM	#44 (permalink)
loquitur Junkie Location: NYC	host, if you didn't take the 2004 elections as a reason to question what you "know," why should people who don't agree with you take the 2006 elections that way? Elections are very blunt and crude instruments and thus their outcomes can carry multiple meanings. Don't read too much into any one particular result. Especially since this last one was in many states quite close. A trend that will persist over time is much more meaningful. Historically, the most meaningful trend of American politics in the last 50 years is a preference for divided government. BTW, I try to keep my posts rather short. I practice law for a living, and though most people think lawyers are verbose, I find that if I can't get my point across simply and quickly, I have lost the listener. That's because judges are busy people. Around here most people are busy, too.

12-19-2006, 01:26 PM	#51 (permalink)
loquitur Junkie Location: NYC	I actually have never ever found anyone change their mind about politics based on a discussion with someone they disagree with. Especially not on a discussion board. At least not in terms of overall position; perhaps some detail might get rethought, but that's about it. I have found, however, that discussions sharpen my thinking and make me account for things I might not have thought of. It also points out to me which arguments work and which don't. The main reason for the lack of persuasion is that people in different "camps" find different kinds of considerations persuasive. That means that to a large degree lefties and righties are talking past each other. One can accept every fact the other posits and still come to different conclusions.

12-19-2006, 02:58 PM	#54 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	there are two entirely different processes being crunched together in the last couple posts--reading, gathering information, working through often interally contradictory and/or complex material and finding yourself (maybe) generating interpretations that seem to move through the middle of the informational cluster you have assembled--and another, which is positioning oneself as a centrist in the contemporary american political context. as for the former, i don't really understand any particular value in this abstract notion of a "golden mean"--i would expect that where you end up in the interpretation of information can and should vary, often quite wildly, depending on the issue, the kind of information you have available, the types of expertise you can bring to bear on it, etc.. add to that the problematic character of source materials, and the requirement that you read critically...and the idea that by assembling a collage of information, you are safest finding a line somewhere down the middle seems...well....pretty self-limiting. assemble the information, think about the sources, draw on your types of expertise and make your own conclusions. the people who write articles are often not as smart or as informed as those who read them, so why assume their authority--as function of proper names situated in a particular media outlet context--should function as parameters that necessarily have to guide what and how you think? if you are going to give yourself the freedom to research, to read etc, why would you not also give yourself the freedom to think about what you find, what you collage? sometimes you will be in the middle, sometimes not: who cares? develop your own arguments and take your own chances with them. geez, it's not like there will be an exam at the end of the semester on this. and if you cant dare take chances in a space like this, where can you do it? anywhere? ever? as for the latter....well.....the space between the variants of conservatism that pass as a political spectrum in the united states is a pretty small place to hang out in, isn't it? it's like being an a very large city but only wanting to hang around in a tiny park. but i dunno, maybe some think the shubbery is nice there: but it seems claustrophic to me. but i would imagine that'd be fine so far as centrists were concerned, yes? what possible basis could you have for objecting to the fact that what you find to be cozy others find to be claustrophic? if anything, you in the center should be pleased that there are others well to the left of you. your position as centrist relies on others---that is where you get one of the sides of the drawing from, the one that you split with a line down the center, which you then follow. anyway, these last statements concern an aesthetic question---whether you position yourself between the two variants of conservatism that fob themselves off as a coherent political spectrum in america---like which interior lighting you like and whether that can or can not incude lava lamps or which peanut butter you prefer--on the same order. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

12-19-2006, 03:57 PM	#55 (permalink)
loquitur Junkie Location: NYC	Roachboy, I think you're right that the middle isn't necessarily "correct." Some decisions are binary, meaning that one side or the other is correct. But I don't think that's what people here were talking about. I think they meant "middle" as "neither uniformly in one camp or the other" - so that on some issues they'd come out with a "left" answer and on others with a "right" answer. That's a diff concept of middle than coming out somewhere between right and left on individual issues. Mayhaps we flatter ourselves, but it's hardly an idiosyncratic conceit that we fancy ourselves as sufficiently independent of mind to be able to think through any particular issue for ourselves. And I remain convinced that the more well-read you are, the more knowledgeable you are about any particular type of problem, the better your judgment will be. That's why history is important. That's why it's important to read more than one newspaper. However, people do have general overall approaches, and those approaches will determine what sorts of arguments are convincing, which facts are significant and which chains of logic are persuasive. The key is not to get into a "team" mentality, where one believes that things done by those one agrees with are necessarily correct, and that things done by those one disagrees with are venal, motivated by evil or based on stupidity. Neither proposition is usually true - most of the time it's honest disagreement based on different perspectives.

12-19-2006, 03:57 PM	#56 (permalink)
loquitur Junkie Location: NYC	Roachboy, I think you're right that the middle isn't necessarily "correct." Some decisions are binary, meaning that one side or the other is correct. But I don't think that's what people here were talking about. I think they meant "middle" as "neither uniformly in one camp or the other" - so that on some issues they'd come out with a "left" answer and on others with a "right" answer. That's a diff concept of middle than coming out somewhere between right and left on individual issues. Mayhaps we flatter ourselves, but it's hardly an idiosyncratic conceit that we fancy ourselves as sufficiently independent of mind to be able to think through any particular issue for ourselves. And I remain convinced that the more well-read you are, the more knowledgeable you are about any particular type of problem, the better your judgment will be. That's why history is important. That's why it's important to read more than one newspaper. However, people do have general overall approaches, and those approaches will determine what sorts of arguments are convincing, which facts are significant and which chains of logic are persuasive. The key is not to get into a "team" mentality, where one believes that things done by those one agrees with are necessarily correct, and that things done by those one disagrees with are venal, motivated by evil or based on stupidity. Neither proposition is usually true - most of the time it's honest disagreement based on different perspectives.

12-19-2006, 04:29 PM	#58 (permalink)
loquitur Junkie Location: NYC	Self-awareness is an important part of the analysis, too. It allows you some distance to try to evaluate things with some modicum of dispassion. I'm not sure if that's what you mean by coming out in the middle, MM, but it's the way I would define it.

12-19-2006, 04:54 PM	#59 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	mm: i think i reacted to what i saw as a kind of defaulting into the middle in the previous post of yours. thinking of the same thing now, i would probably opt for a more cheery approach to the same basic point: this can be a space to try out arguments, to take chances with them, see if they work, see why they dont, if they dont. that is why the repetition in roachboy's posts bugs me--and why repetition in the context, in the posts that are available to bounce off of, bothers me: they give plant food to the boredom weed--which grows at a healthy rate without it. a short defense of longer posts: i am dispositionally still kind of marxist: i dont think you can separate economic activity from social activity in general; the notion of mode of production is pretty powerful; class remains a significant category, even if its political valences are no longer obvious; ideology critique is a fundamental political activity, etc. none of this can get started without a view of history. the only real problem with making this style of argument is that it is not easy to be pithy. things have to be explained simply because the usual ideological framing of questions is an element of the problem, an extension of it, or worse is the enabling condition of the problem (x, whatever)...so you have to move outside that frame to get started, and the first move is generally to relativize the ideological claims--and then from there to chipping away at how variables are defined, hierarchies determined, etc. you can be pretty precise about what you are doing, why and how: but it is hard to do anything interesting in short form, i find. power point stylee doesnt cut it. less is in fact less. so i dont. i understand that folk are busy--i am too--but, seriously, less is just less. explain your positions. you think it anyway when you write short things. just say it. if folk are pressed, they dont have to read it. if they aren;t, maybe they will. no sense in presuming everyone always operates at a single rate. not even assembly lines manage that. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

12-19-2006, 05:47 PM	#60 (permalink)
loquitur Junkie Location: NYC	Well, Marx's error was in presuming that economics is everywhere and always determinative, and that changing economics therefore would change people. That's just not true. But your riff off that, that social and economic issues aren't easily separable, and influence each other, is in my view 100% correct - which is why I normally default to freedom as my preferred mode, both in economics and in social issues (the shorthand description for this is usually "libertarian," but I'm not uniformly libertarian). Is that a "middle" position? Not really - even though lefties would call me an economic royalist and lover of the rich, and righties would call me a libertine and tolerator of immoral activity.

12-19-2006, 10:17 PM	#62 (permalink)
pan6467 Lennonite Priest Location: Mansfield, Ohio USA	I have had some interesting debates with some people in these threads. Ace, Stevo... they gave their point of view I would give mine and in the end, we both learned something and whether they admit it or not, I usually saw a middle ground where if we put away our differences and truly worked together for the purpose of betterment, we might actually get somewhere. RB has a point to some degree, this is just a "forum" where we are just faceless. However, my belief is that if Stevo and I or Ace and I (usually 2 polar opposites) can come to understand each other; without having to insult, call names, pull out dictionaries and encyclopedias; then we accomplished something. And if we can accomplish something in this little slice of our realities, we maybe able to convey what we learned to others we talk to and get more people to see compromises and middle grounds (sometimes more to the right sometimes more to the left politically) they can speak up and maybe in the end some politicians start listening. I tend to believe that while the bullshit partisan politics, hatred, "elitism" and so on start at the top of BOTH parties, the positive changes have to come from the grass roots, and that simply put is us. RB, be as full of hate, one sided, "I'm better than you and my way of thinking is the only way" and allow your own hatred and self righteousness destroy you. To answer you as for "do I think I know RB?" I never laid claim that I knew you, nor do I want to know you. Have no desire to. I, personally, do not believe you have anything positive to add into my life based on your posts here. Doesn't mean you are a bad person or whatever, just means I don't think we'd truly have anything in common and I find you too one sided and unwilling to see someone else's point of view. I look at my posts when I first joined and I see immense growth, I see that in many others also. And they (I) post/posted to seem to learn from each other and provide rational discourse as they (I) grew. Yet, I also see some who hold onto hate, self righteous, hate mongering bs, who seem to post just to stir the pot up, to flame, to pass off superiority over others. And these people have destroyed this board, taken politics and attitudes to other threads and have hurt TFP and destroyed politics here. It can be rebuilt, but people get tired of the negativity. They jump online to avoid stress and being attacked for what they believe and post. Some can say that is what I am doing.... maybe, but in my mind I am simply stating what I see and believe. My opinion, right or wrong it is mine and mine only. __________________ I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"

12-20-2006, 09:03 AM	#64 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	tore it down. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

12-21-2006, 02:06 PM	#66 (permalink)
matthew330 Banned	"As Willravel put so well, attacking host's posting style tends to reveal more about the person (not) reading it than it does about host himself." Host, I'm not one to ask favors, but you and I go way back. Could you by any chance link all of the posts in the last say, 2 years, where one complained about UsTwo's posting style, and not the content of his posts? Take all the space you need. Thanks brotherman!!! ...if you think that UsTwo says nothing, at the very least it doesn't take 45 minutes to figure that out. BTW - there was a post in here some time ago that mentioned how you tend to make "unwelcome" friends when posting. Sorry UsTwo, not trying to be "that guy". You've just been more active than others here so your really the only one to reference.

12-21-2006, 02:24 PM	#67 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	i was going to reply to pan, but it all seems so far out of whack, what he says about roachboy, so unrelated to anything i understand either myself or roachboy to be, to do or to say that there was really no point in it. fighting someone else's projections is always a waste of time. and while it is of course kind of awkward to find oneself dressed up in someone else's psychological garb as a Persecuting Other, i suppose there are worse fates for a pseudonym. political debate can be as much a space for the outlining of one's pathologies as it can be one of making arguments. there is a whole history of political microgroups that demonstrates even distinguishing one from the other can be a problem at times. so even here, nothing is being invented: except perhaps an unattractive virtual outfit that roachboy's phantom double can be paraded about while wearing. i would complain about pattern, color, cut and even lighting: but pan's isnt my movie. so it goes, i guess. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

12-21-2006, 02:38 PM	#68 (permalink)
matthew330 Banned	you totally won that one roach. It was the "phantom double"... that was real nice. Sweet language. Seriously, you may have answered you own question with this: "fighting someone else's projections is always a waste of time"...in another way. Fighting your own projections of someone else, perhaps that's the prob.

12-21-2006, 03:02 PM	#70 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	i should have noted---and probably would have had my computer not crashed in the meantime (windows--gotta love it) that insofar as the blurring of the line between political argument and mapping pathologies is concerned, the same holds for me--or anyone else. and self-awareness is a project, not a state. sometimes it is elusive. i am not sure that i see any good place for this to go now. anyway, off to do other things in 3-d. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

12-21-2006, 03:29 PM	#72 (permalink)
matthew330 Banned	"I can't think of a single example where someone chastised ustwo for his "style" that wasn't directly related to the (negative) content he was posting...but whatever, I'm certainly not going to trawl through two years of posts to get at something I don't even think exists." Of course you can't, and of course you won't.

12-21-2006, 04:02 PM	#73 (permalink)
Willravel ... a sort of licensed troubleshooter.	It's a matter of fact that host is mostly attacked for style, and Ustwo is mostly attacked because he attacked first. If you want proof, simply look in any thread about 9/11 where he has posted. I suspect that personal attacks and generally rude behavior do not help TFPolitics, either in content or attracting interest.

12-21-2006, 05:38 PM	#75 (permalink)
Elphaba Deja Moo Location: Olympic Peninsula, WA	My "voice" has been relatively silent of late in the world of politics, but I must say that this topic encourages me to believe that the tfp politics forum is about to evolve into something better than it has ever been. The stasis of the forum that was driven primarily by "us vs. them" appears to have been broken by a number of forces. New members, a new congress, and a greater willingness to listen, discuss and disagree in an intelligent manner are all factors that I see present now. I am passionate about the political influences that affect my world, and I want to discuss these issues with those that choose to educate themselves on specific matters. I have no interest in participating in a forum that tags and mocks it's members by another member of a differing viewpoint. I view that response as an insult to my intellect, no matter how uninformed I might be on a particular subject. My interest in this forum is primarily one of a source of information. I learn here, thanks to those that make the effort to share their knowledge and resources. I am fully capable of evaluating and further researching what is offered here, and I reject spoonfed ideology. To echo Host, I also want to know how we think that we "know."

12-21-2006, 07:05 PM	#76 (permalink)
matthew330 Banned	I am passionate about the political influences that affect my world, and I want to discuss these issues with those that choose to educate themselves on specific matters. I have no interest in participating in a forum that tags and mocks it's members by another member of a differing viewpoint. I view that response as an insult to my intellect, no matter how uninformed I might be on a particular subject. " ehh - why stop now? We're on a roll right? This is primarily what bothers me about the politics board. My issues with roach and host aside, you have elphaba and pan to follow. The "other" 25% if you will: "feed me seymour, i'm here to learn and make friends"...WHAT??!, YOU OIL SPILLING, HUMMER DRIVING FREAK!!!, oh, i didn't mean that...i'm totlly middle of the road...my passion totally gets the best of me. Yeah - so back to the original post...and my mathematical theory. Someone who doesn't agree with you is not only obligated to read the internet in its entirety (courtesy of host), paruse (sweet word if the spelling is on) dictionary.com (courtesy of roach), but deal with elphaba and pan's manic impulses as well, middle of the road as they are. "I learn here, thanks to those that make the effort to share their knowledge and resources. I am fully capable of evaluating and further researching what is offered here, and I reject spoonfed ideology" Elphaba, I was here long before you showed up. You haven't changed a bit since your first post. How far has your ideology been bent? How much have you learned? Just curious.

12-21-2006, 07:13 PM	#77 (permalink)
Willravel ... a sort of licensed troubleshooter.	Well I'm bonkers (9/11 conspiuracy theorists are hardly middle of the road types) but I still am effected by both sides, and I know I effect both sides.

12-21-2006, 11:40 PM	#80 (permalink)
filtherton Junkie Location: In the land of ice and snow.	This is only tangential, but is anyone else's browser doing the whole "let's render this page super fucking obnoxiously wide" thing? Every time i look at this thread i have to manually remove post 13 to make it so i don't have to scroll to the right to read the posts.