meta-question
 

which would be a question about questions or rather the lack thereof.

the forum seems to have gone all moribund.
why is that?

no new threads, a trickle of posts---has the xmas season taken folk's minds elsewhere?

and where did the conservatives all go? there were quite a few who would play here, but since the election ritual, most have disappeared.

very odd.
perhaps this metathread is an exploratory probe aimed at checking the state of rigor mortis. or perhaps little more than a signal that the stasis of things here is noted.

what to do, comrades?

I have noticed a marked decrease in the number of conservative posters, as well. I've only been here a short while, but there weren't more than a handful to start with. We certainly do need representation from both sides to make a debate.

In a word, overmoderation.

The conservatives will have ample opportunity to nitpick everything the Democrats do, so it isn't the lack of targets.

Also, Ustwo's absence is palpable. Like him or hate him, having him around was entertaining. After he posted that his warning level was at 80%, it was only a matter of time.

Chances are, many other conservatives are tired of being modded to death as well.

Magictoy.....Can you provide examples of conservatives being "modded to death"?

Perhaps, therein lies the problem.....a new found feeeling of persecution?

Perhaps we are just experiencing a "lame duck" pause until the 110th Congress returns in January.

yep, i noticed that there's not been as much barking going on around here for a while. i know that the certain someone mentioned by magictoy has been one the site, i guess he just can't post for a while. that should be an interesting development. but neverfear, i'm sure some new neo-con / "libertarian" / whatever will come along and the whole thing will start over again. i guess this is just a bit of holiday relaxation for all.

I had a couple thoughts

1. The elections are over, the dems haven't taken power yet. There isn't much for them to criticize.

2. They are demoralized from the election

3. There may be a slight shift toward the center from conservatives.


I don't think it is over moderation, please cite specific examples of a conservative posting something that was modded and then a liberal posting something similar that wasn't modded.

It's December, guys. I think everyone has other things to do. I know I do, and I'm about as free-market liberal (in the classic sense, not the modern sense) as can be.

It could just be that everyone is now adopting my "live and let live" ethos, so the argumentative forums are just withering away from a surfeit of brotherhood and good feeling........... <ROFL.........> Or it could just be the season. Yeah, that's it.....

I've been poking around, but too busy at work to really get involved in anything. Also, kind of tired of the same ol that goes on in politics. Maybe when somehting interesting happens or is worth discussing. until then...

Maybe the polarization is finally over...it's a Christmas mericle!!

I think people just got tired of the same old hashing and rehashing of basically the same old subjects to the point of stalemate. The habit of one-offs or back and forths has not really produced any conversation or discussion.

It seems like people just got fed up with posts going nowhere.

Really, we're all guilty. No one has really posted or responded in awhile. It's not like there hasn't been anything going on in the world. Maybe we all got lazy (the whole it's December people are busy is utter hogwash as people have been posting in other threads).

jorgelito, i think you're waxing all dreamy. the cycle shall begin again, after a brief hiatus while everyone does whatever they're doing and gets all re-energized. i really don't know that the basic give and take of the politics forum is going to ever change, but i guess you never know.

Piggy, I don't know what you mean by dreamy but I think my post was pretty clear and straightforward. In any case, I think we just need an injection of energy (posting etc) to get out of our lethargy. New blood would help in that regard as well as old timers (perhaps certain ones-mentioned-by-others-in-this-thread-who-seems-to-have-dropped-off-the-board-lately-but-no-one-is-really-sure-so-we'll-just-have-to-wait-and-see-unless-some-new-so-called-conservative-libertarian-types-decide-to-start-posting-again).
Maybe I will start posting again when I return this afternoon......

Personally, I've just been too busy to visit Politics or any other forums. That's one of the certainties of my life at this time of year, though. Personally, I miss Ustwo's contributions. While some of his points may have been overly sharp, they were at the very least entertaining and generally added to the debate. There are several others that have gone missing in the last 6 months, but it may indeed be the cycle of things. Regardless, I hope for a return of some of the conservative members and an injection of new blood, preferrably new blood that's all pissed off about the midterms and ready to fight hard for their side in '08.

The orgasm of the election has left everyone spent.

When they've had a nap and a smoke, they will be back for more.

Wow, Ustwo got banned? That sucks. I, um... kinda miss him. :eek:

Also, I've noticed that host is posting OUTside of Politics. I think that's the problem... (just kidding host, it's great to read about your non-political side). :thumbsup:

I think it is partly a function of the time of year. For my part, I'm currently embroiled in finals and only check the forums at times of weakness and procrastination.

But I like Charlatan's answer.

U2 is not banned (check his profile). He probably has other things going on right now, or he is a lilly livered righty coward... or something. :)

I don't think I'll need more conservatives here come January because I intend to hold the Dems feet to the fire to get the right things done. That's the fun of being an Indie.

I have to say, I miss UsTwo's contributions, as well. And being a refugee of a sort from another political forum, I think the conservatives I have seen here are top drawer. It's nice to be able to talk about politics without being called horrible names. To talk to people who can put forth a strong viewpoint without resorting to base knee-jerk reactions and radical misrepresentations. From both the left and the right points of view. There are a few people here who I know know what I'm talking about as they were fellow members with me there. Not that everyone was that way, not at all, but there were some pretty nasty, ugly-minded people there. I don't feel like I've fully engaged myself on this forum thus far, but I'm looking forward to when it picks up a little again.

I got sick of the labeling.

Conservatives are racist, stupid rednecks who do not realize they are voting against their own interests. The Conservative leadership are massive power-grabbers who would kill unheard of number of Americans (let alone anyone else) in order to hold onto power living in their own "culture of corruption". Anyone who wishes to fight terrorism is either stupid, a neo-colonist, or racist.

Liberals are America-Hating, racial card playing, UN-appeasing tree-huggers who because they can not manage their own money want to manage yours through income redistribution.

Sadly I can find a post where every one of these insults was thrown. THAT is why I stopped posting.

y'all seem to be assuming a lot - - -Ustwo is not listed as being banned. Perhaps he just has other stuff on his plate lately.

If there's any doubt, ustwo wasn't banned. He's busy with his real life.

I suppose over-moderation is possible, but for my part, I doubt it is the culprit. In fact, I can probably count the number of non-spammers we've banned in the last 9 months on one hand. It just doesn't happen very often. In fact, we don't even warn people very often - it tends to come in spurts, and judging by the warning levels I see on the posters in this thread, it's pretty well distributed.

You can start from the obvious place: some people aren't posting because it isn't rewarding enough to them to seem worthwhile. Working backwards, it's either because they're too busy (coincidence), because there is so little to talk about that they don't bother to make the effort (doubtful), or because discussions here aren't scratching their itch (this one is my guess).

My theory:
Now that the democrats control the house and the senate there are alot less poiting out what the republicans are doing or are not doing.
As a result there is less reaction on the part of conservatives (or maybe republicans) to defend republican actions or inactions.

Just a theory.

i think it should be pointed out that control is a very relative term. While the dems have enough power to STOP the republicans from doing something, they also don't have enough power to necessarily get any legislation passed.

Let's take a for-instance. Congressional democrats try to take the power to randomly declare war away from the president where it should never have rested in the first place. A small majority votes for this proposition. The president vetos. Dems do not have the 2/3rds required to override that veto.

So while we may have a majority, we still don't have all that much power, realistically.

I think it is the lack of anything new. Plus, I come on TFP and for whatever reason the whole site has lost something. this place used to be jumping but now it seems different, not as warm and as welcoming. People don't seem as open to talking anymore, everyone is set in their opinion, not willing to bend, unwilling to truly discuss why they believe what they do etc. Not just in Politics but throughout TFP. It seems it's an argument in all threads, not educating, sharing ideas, truly showing respect and caring about each other.

It's not the moderation (as someone stated above), the mods are easy targets but they aren't any more or less dominant than before.

No, the problem lies within the posts and the members. It just doesn't seem as fun, educating or mind expanding as it used to.

As for the "conservatives", I think there is a great amount of soul searching. I think they spent a lot of time defending policies and actions they didn't truly agree with and now that the country is shifting left they are reevaluating their stances.

I'm sure there are some "hard core" that would disagree, but when you have someone like Rumsfield talking about how sorry he was that Abu happened and there were many a conservative on here that defended it....... well, your defense was just blown to shit.

You had people defending the war and being so vapid, then everyone around Bush and highly regarded Conservatives come out and say it is a losing proposition with no true planning...... again the defenses of it become hollow and the defenders lost credibility.

I just think that the Conservatives are looking at what they truly believe and the true direction of the country.

The liberals, well, they have nothing to cry about right now and the signs are, that the leaders in the House and senate are truly going to fuck things up and this maybe a very short lived reign if they don't prove themselves out of the gate.

But those are just my opinions.

pan - you're just nicing out with that smoking ban? ;) seriously, i got through times like that with tfp all the time. sometimes i'm gone for weeks or months, and then something happens that brings me back in. usually a function of what's going on in real-world as much as anything. i think the place is over-modded at all - the only thing i wish is that some of the mods were more present, as posting members, than they are...but i guess that's part of the evolution of the board and life in general.

Well passion does get the best of us at times.... :p


That is true, I have seen it in posters, that when they become mods their whole attitudes change, their posting styles change, they aren't here as often as just posters. I don't know if it is the label and they are afraid to talkas themselves because they feel they havce an "example to set" or if the responsibility burns them out.

I feel if you are a mod it is because your posts and style allowed you to be, so why change and if it's burnout, quit go back to being just a poster and having fun here..... don't get so caught up in the "label" and "power" that you lose who you are, your smile and what you believe in.

i think that there is something other than seasonal factors and the disappearance of the cadre from the right for me at least--i wondered about what it is exactly as i decided to post this kind of thread rather than simply putting up something about, say, the baker report and/or the new rounds of lunacy in and around iraq.

but i am not sure what it is, this something other.

i found myself repeating myself here more than i would like, as if roachboy had become a little machine and that machine developed characteristics and began preforming its characteristics as much or more than exploring new avenues for thinking about stuff in the world.

maybe this is a function of the non-cumulative nature of debates in this kind of space.
maybe it is a reflection of these degenerate ideological times.
maybe it is a limitation of messageboards as forms.
maybe all the above.
maybe it is also a function of the strange state of my personal 3-d land--but it is odd to think that others may find themselves in parallel 3-d lands, with parallel features. i cant tell if i am simply projecting, but there seems a kind of malaise abroad out there, a kind of thickness in the air that slows you down if you think with a wide compass, makes it feel difficult to move your focus like there is some weight you work from under.

but the worlds, mine and the big one, feel like they are drifting, and drifting does not necessarily make for good commentary, it just is, in a kind of bland, grey way, what it is.

and within that, the machinery of argumentation shaped by the machinery of repetition doesnt seem a generative as it has in the past.

There is a sense in which the repetition has gotten stale.

Take the Baker report, for example. Given that its recommendations (and its modified assumptions) contain basically nothing new, and that this is all stuff critics of the war have been shouting from the rooftops all along... there seems very little left to discuss about it. Those who opposed such ideas will continue to oppose them. Others will be glad that the political space is now open for some change to take place.

Ironically, I'm not sure that the report's work has actually changed anyone's mind about what's happening in Iraq, which probably should have been one of its functions.

Maybe the forum has simply gone too long with a particular configuration of actors and viewpoints such that we've exhausted the interesting possibilities for discussion of the current state of affairs. The solution to this would seem to be either new blood, or topics of debate that have heretofore gone unnoticed.

Exactomundo. It seemed that nearly every political discussion boiled down to conservative vs. liberal wherein a flame war flowed in its wake, more often than not. It became tiresome.
Precisely. I think Charlatan was right when he stated that we are having sort of a letdown from the election.

I am generally conservative. I am not depressed and all that other stuff people have posted. I still post my views at the same rate as before the election.

What I have found is that there are more personal attacks than in the past. I recall a recent post when people tried to tell me that the view that I presented was not sincere. Others have taken the role of trying to read my mind and to make "straw man" arguments on points not in dispute. I have also noticed that when some are proven wrong or challenged directly they tend to ignore those points and back off, often picking something trivial to respond to. I often find it all amusing.

I'm with Ace on this one.

Also I don't suffer from cognitive dissonance as Pan attempted to pin on us "conservatives", inferring that I do is rather amusing.

Exactly. It doesn't seem to happen too much here but on other forums you'll see some dude become a mod and you'd think he'd just been crowned King of England or something. It's the friggin' internet for god's sake. Chill out. Mods are here to make sure the board stays nice and pleasant for the rest of us, and to help people who don't know as much about foruming as they do. The only example they need to set is not breaking the board's rules.

The inequality goes all the way back to phredgreen--it's hardly "newfound." Google the site for "banned" and you'll get your answer, if you care to see it.

Here is a perfect example of overmoderation. There was no reason to close this thread, and it's one of yours:

Soy thread

Magic.....but I'm not a conservative :)

what ever happened to old phred? haven't seen him post in years, it seems. i still don't think that over modification has much to do with any slump in posting - dc can re-open that thread if he wants to.

Discussion threads can only get so big and will tend to slow down under the weight of their own posts, as all available viewpoints are aired and discussed. It follows that the same thing will occur on the board as a whole. There comes a time in every member's stay when they start to feel like they've "heard it all before." I'm going through a period like that right now.

I won't be going anywhere soon. Beyond the function of this board lies a lot of personal connections that I've made and will continue to maintain, but it's getting harder for me to add to discussions. Maybe I just need to try harder.

One last thing. Threads are physically displayed in two dimensions (one?) as a line from the top, moving down (or up depending on your settings) as time goes on. This cannot reflect the thought processes of our brains. Maybe when OS' are fully 3D like in Minority Report, TFP can be a fully three-dimensional forum and threads can branch more effectively. I don't have the answers...I just sense the physical limitations.

magictoy... That isn't overmoderation. Did you read the mod's post? The thread isn't closed forever. It is closed as per the rules. If the OP would care to PM a real discussion point then it will be reopened.

This is not a new rule and it's been happening since the board was born.


As for moderation in Politics, it's not an easy thing to do.

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.

mathematically speaking, liberals outnumber conservatives here at least 3 to 1, at any given time conservatively speaking (no pun intended). When it comes to matters that we really philosophically disagaree on, one thought by a conservative will result in, conservatively, 3 replies by the left (very conservative estimate).

So let's take a topic on which we've found agreement, the OP, and apply the above mathematical theory: the politics board has gone nowhere in quite some time.

There we have it. It didn't require a question about questions of metathreads during the xmas season resulting in a moribunded trickle of threads probing the exploratory nature of the election ritual....or something.

You an Host have accomplished what you wanted. Succesfully created your own language that the other 75% have tolerated just because they know they agree with you. So don't step back now and wonder where everyone has gone, like you wanted more.

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.

That's what happened to the politics board.

Ha ha, Host and Roach did it! Scared everyone away!

:rolleyes:

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.

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.

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....
<b>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:</b>

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:
<b>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!</b>

<b>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??</b>

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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. :)

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.

Precisely -- and well put. The best way to avoid letting yourself become doctrinaire is to do a <I><B>lot</i></b> 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

tore it down.

evidently.

"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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

"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.

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.

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

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."

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.

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.

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. :lol:

PS: How's the tits forum?

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.

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.

Mine does that at work but not here at home - just on this thread. Could not begin to tell you why.

"PS: How's the tits forum?"....consistently entertaining.

Consider what is suggested by the OP in two current threads...

"Socialist regulators are killing freedom in America"

"A looming call for violent revolution against the wealthy is just and necessary"

Perhaps these over-reactionary tomes are what are driving people away from discussion here.

Gimme a fucking break! Why discuss such nonsense?

In the words of Arnold...."I'll be back" when the discussions return to practical political issues of the day.

Whether something is reactionary or not is really a matter of perspective, and TFP is all about an amalgam of perspectives from all over the world. To some people, a growing number of people, things like the richest of the rich coming together to fuck over everyone are a call to arms. Here we discuss that. If it's nonsense to you, that's cool. Just check out other threads. I've thought a few threads on Politics were nonsense a few times, but I still come back.

Yup....it isn't "nonsense" to create and conduct the stealth campaign financed for $!85 million by America's 18 richest families, to influence legislation to eliminate inheritance taxes......but it is "nonsense" to react to it by discussing it on a thread here.

I suppose that it is nothing to react emotionally about......because our "revolution" should always be conducted withing the "form", right??
dc_dux, consider the reaction of the masses in Stockholm , or in Paris, Berlin, or even in Tokyo, to awakening one day to find the state of economic inequality, and the trend toward even more of it.....which we currently look forward to, in the US. Would my post and the discussion that followed in my thread, really be that "radical"?

You apparently make your livelihood from the principle of "compromise solution" in national US politics in the US. If you haven't noticed, dc_dux, that principle and process had been pre-empted, bought out....it no longer exists, and it didn't as far back as 1933.

We experience a radicalized time of "takeover" by the rich. They've destroyed our unions by exporting the jobs out from under them. They never stop their endeavor for advantage, for control. They do this by any means neccessary, including by aggressive pre-emptive war. They play by no rules and resort to violence when it suits them.....but for us to talk about a critical mass, resulting from the success of their efforts.....is enough to drive you away from here, in protest? Who do you really serve, dc_dux?

I think it a little strange to suggest that pure evil is being wreaked upon us by the rich and then support violent revolution against them in the same breath. It's not that I don't see the potentials and actuals at play as to the disparity between the poor and wealthy in the world, it just seems ideologically extreme to suggest that our recourse is to take up arms and kill people, not to mention hypocritical.

Will, I agree on the amalgam of perspectives. I just dont find it personally productive to engage in a discussion when the premise is based on (in the words of Goldwater) "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice" whether it comes from the left or the right. I suspect others may share my disinterest in such discussions (just an observation on the recent the lack of discussion..*shrug" but who knows?)

Host.I am full capable of separating my strong personal beliefs from the obligations of my livelihood...and I made my feelings known on our current tax policy, the widening wealth gap, and the danger of the unsustainable exploding growth of our national debt in other threads. I agree with your assessement and respect your passion, but dont believe in your suggested solution.

And, who do I really serve?
My secret is out :eek:

I was a charter member of the DC branch of "Billionaires for Bush"...

Billionaires for Bush is a grassroots network of corporate lobbyists, decadent heiresses, Halliburton CEOs, and other winners under George W. Bush's economic policies. Headquartered in Wall Street and with over 60 chapters nationwide, we'll give whatever it takes to ensure four more years of putting profit over people. After all, we know a good president when we buy one.

....but have been pretty much inactive since our second coronation ball in Jan 2005. (you can find me in there somewhere) :)

Happy New Year to all!