Fair enough man. As always, your site. I abide.
Gman may be a paid shill, he may be immature, he may be subversive and misled, and mislead others. But he is mostly polite. If this were my forum (and I’ve owned forms bigger than this one), I would not ban him. I commend Tom for his patience.
Responses to Gman should be concise, pointing out a single erroneous statement. That prevents things from being derailed on tangent after tangent.
You’re probably right, but the right-leaning libertarians aren’t going to vote for Democrat values any time. They’re much of a muchness.
I think that perhaps part of the problem with political stuff today is the automatic attempt to describe any idea as “Democratic” or “Republican” values. That kind of thing automatically creates a tribalism that supercedes normal human rationality.
I think that most folks, regardless of political persuasion, have similar moral and ethical foundations, and just talking about ideas outside the scope of “what does my team think about this” has a better chance of coming to some reasonable compromise.
Civility over honest discourse, then?
I don’t think most people are calling for his account to be closed because of his beliefs. “Owning the libs” may be the reasoning for various political actions for the /r/The_Donald crowd, but that doesn’t actually make it a political belief. It’s just trolling. Refusing to engage with ideas or express your true beliefs so that you can score points for the angry responses or volume of responses seems like a pretty good reason to close an account.
Gman does not refuse to engage. That would be the folks who drop in to post something inane bull then never respond when called on it.
It’s hard to not respond, i know, but if you don’t respond to something you find offensive, or who is posting in bad faith, or who fails to debate with you in good faith and/or is just scoring points… eventually they’ll stop posting.
If things are so far gone that debating the equivalent of someone who listens/reads/writes Fox News every day is the equivalent of allowing Nazism to exist, we may as well split the country now, close the P&R shop and be done with it, because a good 25-40% of the country are Nazi-esque then.
I haven’t met any Nazis and i still feel there is a path through the conservative bubble that has been built by hammer at those sources of information that can be pierced before they turn into Nazis. Well, you have one here.
He refuses to engage with ideas. He certainly engages in gotcha attacks, smug civility, and whataboutism. What he doesn’t do is attempt to honestly wrestle with the actual topic the way, say, you do. This is someone who attempted to claim that Trump doesn’t minimize Russian meddling because “the Trump DOJ” just handed down indictments. That’s not some outlier among his responses, it’s par for the course. There’s simply no attempt at intellectual debate there, just trolling.
That’s why you just need to keep things concise. It gives less crap to twist around and work with.
Pick one thing, hammer on it.
I will never not get a kick out of the irony of people accusing me of not engaging with “ideas,” when 90% of replies to me are harassment and pathetic attempts at intimidation. (Which is apparently all okay because eventually after weeks of it, I snapped and called someone obviously very sensitive about his weight a fatty?).** I also love the idea that to be a “valid” member of this forum, you need to post a lot more in the Games section. Missed that when I signed up.
**For the record, I apologize to wumpus for insinuating that he is overweight. I will note that he has not apologized for accessing private information to harass me repeatedly for my political views, and mischaracterizing the identity of my employer.
Also, what is “smug civility”? Is that not doxing people and constantly harassing them? I’ll take more of that!
I believe Trump’s views of whether Russia meddled in the election are different from his views of whether Mueller is running a witch hunt. He has treated the idea of whether Russia meddled in the election more seriously than he has taken Mueller’s probe. If that is a controversial idea, I’d refer you to the Trump quotes I linked you, and invite a reply other than “lol liar” or “TELL US YOUR EMPLOYER NOW!” It’s fine if you don’t want to engage with that argument, as Tom did. That’s far more respectable than what’s going on here.
It is very clear to me that posters here are politically very intolerant. Intolerance is the desire to intimidate, and harass people who disagree with you. If liberals have a version of the famed “playbook,” this is it – silence and harass those who do not conform.
This explains a ton.
My point, which should’ve been clear, was whether or not you troll P&R or if you actually contribute to other discussions in other forums here. If the former, I’m more inclined to support giving you the boot.
Conservatives (excuse me, REPUBLICANS) must post in the games forum more! New rule
Don’t forget to dip that cross in the tears of baby jesus before you drive the final nail in.
Mueller’s probe is into Russian meddling in the election.
This is true, but it has ensnared several people in crimes unrelated to Russian collusion or meddling. To be clear, I don’t care that (alleged) criminals were incidentally caught in the probe, and I think it’s dumb that Trump is bothered by it. But it’s simply factually inaccurate to say he’s as bothered by the idea that Russia meddled, as he is about Mueller pursuing charges for things unrelated to meddling.
Ever since he got here, Gman has been engaged in a long-form demonstration of the Russia meddling issue by skillfully demonstrating how easy it is to destabilize a functioning community and cause its members to turn against one another. Brilliant!
Are you really so intolerant that an opposing viewpoint is destabilizing to you? Dear god. Almost no one here agrees with me, and the most I can be accused of is “smug civility.”
This is false. All of the indictments thus far have been related to Russian involvement in the election.
How is Manafort’s work in the Ukraine from 2006 to 2015, and hiding that money, relevant to Russian collusion or meddling in the 2016 election? The indictment doesn’t say anything on that.