Trump pardoning war criminals...

Well, this thread represents another high quality discussion... It's a wonder Duuck didn't shut it down.

Seriously, this illustrates a problem we have with our politics these days. I have a right wing friend who in most ways is a good, honest man. But we don't discuss politics because we can't agree on the facts. No point in discussing anything further if you can't agree on what's real. So we talk about cars, sports...anything but politics.

Guys, can we avoid the name calling and ridicule? If we all accept responsibility for what we post we can improve the quality of our discourse.... No matter how odd or misguided you might find the other guy, he might have a point. And at bare minimum, his essential humanity still deserves your respect.

Don

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n7axw wrote:Well, this thread represents another high quality discussion... It's a wonder Duuck didn't shut it down.

Seriously, this illustrates a problem we have with our politics these days. I have a right wing friend who in most ways is a good, honest man. But we don't discuss politics because we can't agree on the facts. No point in discussing anything further if you can't agree on what's real. So we talk about cars, sports...anything but politics.

Guys, can we avoid the name calling and ridicule? If we all accept responsibility for what we post we can improve the quality of our discourse.... No matter how odd or misguided you might find the other guy, he might have a point. And at bare minimum, his essential humanity still deserves your respect.

Don

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It would seem that it is you and your fellow travelers who are causing this thread to degenerate.

TFLYTSNBN wrote:

n7axw wrote:Well, this thread represents another high quality discussion... It's a wonder Duuck didn't shut it down.

Seriously, this illustrates a problem we have with our politics these days. I have a right wing friend who in most ways is a good, honest man. But we don't discuss politics because we can't agree on the facts. No point in discussing anything further if you can't agree on what's real. So we talk about cars, sports...anything but politics.

And that is how reality denying bubbles of propaganda succeed. Everyone decides not to try to burst them because it's... uncomfortable. So they go uncontested. And they fester, unchallenged, becoming accepted even more strongly as truth because nobody tells the people immersed in it differently. So they develop the impression *everyone* knows their little alternate reality bubble is the real truth.

And the next thing you know you have 30-40% of the country, many of them the kind of "good, honest people" you are talking about who think every word out of Trump's pathologically lying mouth is the uncontested truth and the entire world's media except Fox News and OANN are engaged in a conspiracy of lies against them and their savior who is saving the country on a daily basis because... he says so! I mean all those thousands of factories opening (that in reality don't exist), and miles and miles of beautiful new wall being built (that in reality is previously scheduled replacement of existing fencing).... and the greatest economy in history (that in reality is growing slower than under Obama while racking up massive deficits)!

And then those "good, honest people" end up supporting someone like Trump, the polar opposite of good or honest. Some people wonder how it happens, but it's not hard. THIS is how it happens.

Here's the thing. You can't just surrender FACT because the other side doesn't want to accept it. That way lies... well, exactly what is unfolding in the country right in front of us right now. Trump and the GOP leadership think they can get away with a brazenly obvious criminal cover up because they are banking that their base voters have been sufficiently inoculated against reality that they will just go along with what Fox News tells them is happening no matter what.

And the scary thing is, it's not a real long odds bet. They've spent decades conditioning right wing base voters to automatically and viscerally reject any information that does not come from their own approved sources as lies and fake news. And they did it so they could reach this point.... immunity from the consequences of any misconduct they engage in.

And this "no point discussing reality with that group because it's hard" attitude is a big part of what let them do it.

I mean FFS, Rivera was on Fox News a while back talking to Hannity and he said, and I'm going from memory... "Sean, you're the difference between Trump and Nixon".

Nixon. Was. Uncontestedly. Guilty.

What he is saying there is that if they had had Fox News then they could have KEPT A GUILTY CRIMINAL IN THE WHITE HOUSE. Because that is what Fox News and the rest of the right wing media ecosystem was built to do. It was one of those "oops said the quiet part out loud" moments.

I am not saying that there should be no one standing up for what they believe in. What I am saying is that trashing the other guy with name calling or personally directed contempt doesn't make anyone's argument more convincing and should be out of bounds.

In my own defense, in response to an earlier remark, I very earnestly try to follow my own exhortation. At the same time, I'm sure there have been occasions when I've gotten carried away. I make no pretence at perfection.

Don

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n7axw wrote:I am not saying that there should be no one standing up for what they believe in. What I am saying is that trashing the other guy with name calling or personally directed contempt doesn't make anyone's argument more convincing and should be out of bounds.

That's a nice and very liberal sentiment.

The problem is that no matter how nice and understanding you are, if the person on the other side is provably not occupying the same reality you are and has been conditioned to see everything on the left of him as evil and un-american, they will not listen to you.

The E wrote:

n7axw wrote:I am not saying that there should be no one standing up for what they believe in. What I am saying is that trashing the other guy with name calling or personally directed contempt doesn't make anyone's argument more convincing and should be out of bounds.

That's a nice and very liberal sentiment.

The problem is that no matter how nice and understanding you are, if the person on the other side is provably not occupying the same reality you are and has been conditioned to see everything on the left of him as evil and un-american, they will not listen to you.

And that's assuming you are dealing with the honest actors who are simply being mislead and lied to... and not dealing with the willful liars who are engaged in misleading the honest actors who not only won't listen to you but will use every dishonest rhetorical trick in existence to actively attack anything you say to discredit it.

Not naming names...

The E wrote:

n7axw wrote:I am not saying that there should be no one standing up for what they believe in. What I am saying is that trashing the other guy with name calling or personally directed contempt doesn't make anyone's argument more convincing and should be out of bounds.

That's a nice and very liberal sentiment.

The problem is that no matter how nice and understanding you are, if the person on the other side is provably not occupying the same reality you are and has been conditioned to see everything on the left of him as evil and un-american, they will not listen to you.

So it seems to me as well... But if I call the other fellow names and intimate to him that he is a brainless twit, does my real point become in any way more convincing? I am an old duffer. I remember when we could be civil with these discussions.

I frankly do see this as coming mostly from the right. They apparently hate us and feel threatened by our point of view. But it has turned into a vicious circle. What I would like to do is blow a whistle and yell stop! The other guy isn't going to listen if what I am trying to do is run over him with my freightliner. All that does is make him more angry, just as I feel when I sense I am being treated that way.

So how do we break the fever? Dunno. I don't claim to have the answers. But we need some. All I am sure of is that what we are doing isn't working.

Don

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n7axw wrote:So it seems to me as well... But if I call the other fellow names and intimate to him that he is a brainless twit, does my real point become in any way more convincing? I am an old duffer. I remember when we could be civil with these discussions.

Yes, I do too, but that is no longer the reality we're in. I grew up in an environment where there were only a small number of authoritative sources of news that everyone either read, watched or listened to and that formed a basic picture of reality that everyone was at least aware of. That part of the world is seemingly gone irrevocably; now you have people like TFLY and smr only take in news that they know will never upset them or their worldview (Our resident FLY quoting often from a site proudly calling itself "The conservative Treehouse" while, at the same time, sneeringly contemptuous of the idea of a "safe space").

I am open to the idea that there can be civil discussion on these matters. But, at least in US politics, it is always expected that it is the liberals who will make the first step, to approach the other side with an open hand and a willingness to compromise, and that's not a dance that can be danced that often. Personally, I say enough is enough. When conservatives call the other side "demoncrats" without a hint of irony, when they call people's rights to their own identity into question, when they openly ignore civil rights issues and descend into open defiance of the constitution they pretend to hold up as the highest truth, it is past time for them to step back and ackknowledge that we're all in this boat together and that you can only lean to one side so far before you fall overboard.

n7axw wrote:
So it seems to me as well... But if I call the other fellow names and intimate to him that he is a brainless twit, does my real point become in any way more convincing? I am an old duffer. I remember when we could be civil with these discussions.

I frankly do see this as coming mostly from the right. They apparently hate us and feel threatened by our point of view. But it has turned into a vicious circle. What I would like to do is blow a whistle and yell stop! The other guy isn't going to listen if what I am trying to do is run over him with my freightliner. All that does is make him more angry, just as I feel when I sense I am being treated that way.

So how do we break the fever? Dunno. I don't claim to have the answers. But we need some. All I am sure of is that what we are doing isn't working.

Don

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Well stated.

I may not be an "old duffer" but when did "rhetoric" and "debate" become such toxic things?

Sometimes I think we're back on a third-grade playground...

The E wrote:

n7axw wrote:So it seems to me as well... But if I call the other fellow names and intimate to him that he is a brainless twit, does my real point become in any way more convincing? I am an old duffer. I remember when we could be civil with these discussions.

Yes, I do too, but that is no longer the reality we're in. I grew up in an environment where there were only a small number of authoritative sources of news that everyone either read, watched or listened to and that formed a basic picture of reality that everyone was at least aware of. That part of the world is seemingly gone irrevocably; now you have people like TFLY and smr only take in news that they know will never upset them or their worldview (Our resident FLY quoting often from a site proudly calling itself "The conservative Treehouse" while, at the same time, sneeringly contemptuous of the idea of a "safe space").

I am open to the idea that there can be civil discussion on these matters. But, at least in US politics, it is always expected that it is the liberals who will make the first step, to approach the other side with an open hand and a willingness to compromise, and that's not a dance that can be danced that often. Personally, I say enough is enough. When conservatives call the other side "demoncrats" without a hint of irony, when they call people's rights to their own identity into question, when they openly ignore civil rights issues and descend into open defiance of the constitution they pretend to hold up as the highest truth, it is past time for them to step back and ackknowledge that we're all in this boat together and that you can only lean to one side so far before you fall overboard.

What you refuse to recognize is that your few "authoritative" news sources have become so profoundly biased that anyone capable of thinking for themselves has to reject them. I don't know how many times I have read mainstream news about some "renewable" energy project that can generate "250 megawatts per year!". Obviously; the writer doesn't understand the difference between units of energy and units of power. More importantly; the purveyors of these green boondoggles encourage this idiocy to conceal the fact that that greenie weenie wet dream is about ten times as expensive as coal or natural gas fired generation. They also discourage these "authoritative journalists" from taking notice of the actual capacity factor of these alternative energy sources. The Columbia gorge is despoiled by hundreds of giant windmills that don't produce diddly shit about 90% of the time then hammer the generators in our hydroelectric plants when the do produce momentary bursts of power.

This is but one example. Global warming theology is another. Liberals enjoy spewing about "peer review" when they know damn well that the peer review process has been corrupted by money and politics. This should have been apparent to everyone when the TTAPS Nuclear Winter "study" was published without the normal peer review concurrently with massive publicity campaign. Some of us actually checked the math. The calculation of atmospheric dust loading from a hypothetical counterforce strike was particularly egregious. Those charlatans used the crater dimensions from a surface burst combined with the maximum fireball height from an airburst to substantiate the presumption that massive quantities of fin dust would be lofted into the atmosphere. Max fireball height is much lower for surface burst than airbust and only a tiny fraction of the crater volume gets lifted to significant altitude. (An astute student would calculate the rim volume and subtract from the crater volume to estimate maximum net ejecta lifted to altitude. Don't get me started on prompt fallout of course debris.)

These are just two of the issues that your "authoritative sources" are so profoundly biased about that any rational person must seek alternatives. Right now the political journalistic complex is feeding us a bunch of shit about so called "assault rifles" being responsible for America's murders. If they would peruse the FBI statistics (which I continue to trust excluding homicided by law enforcement because I have checked the numbers where possible and have been on a first name basis with some of the statisticians for years) they would know that rifles of any type are used in only two to three percent of homicides. The number and percentage has been on a steep decline for decades and rifles are almost never used to commit murder in the cities with the highest homicide rates. When the Beltway Sniper started killing people, it was the first time in over a decade in which a homicide (except by police) had been committed in Washington DC in over a decade! This is one of the reason aside from the reasonable marksmanship that provoked my astonishment when the perpetrators turned out to be black.

Of course it is politically incorrect to discuss the fact that African-Americans who are only 1/8 of America's population commit over half of all homicides and nearly two-thirds of all gun homicides. It is also politically incorrect to discuss the casitive correllation between abysmally low arrest rates and high crime rates because it is the jurisdictions with the largest populations of black people who have the lowest arrest rates.

The problem is that by and large it is you liberals who are ignorant but you are to bigoted to acknowledge the truth even when confronted with irrefutable, objective facts. Rather than engage in civil, rational discourse, you spew arguments that have no basis in fact while refusing to even peruse data that is brought to your attention. Even worse, it is you liberals who are the hate mongers. This is evident in your comments on this forum where you arrogantly justify your hatred by branding conservatives as Nazis.