Is it even possible to have a rational conservation about politics with you guys?
Is it even possible to have a rational conservation about politics with you guys?
Hope is the denial of reality
Your first response to me pointing out how Romney called 47% worthless was that he didn't say that exact word. Yet you paraphrase this from Steely's post?Originally Posted by Loki
Coming from the king of single sentence zings and insults.
Last edited by Ominous Gamer; 09-23-2012 at 08:57 PM.
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
Priceless.
The light that once I thought compassion still casting shadows in your action
The words you shared were cold transactions that bring me to curse what you've done
When you're up there absorbed in greatness with such success you've grown complacent
I hope you scorch your many faces when you fly too close to the sun
Enjoy living in your little bubble where only people who disagree with you politically can ever be wrong.
Hope is the denial of reality
LOKI: What Romeny said and what Obama said are just the same!
EVERYONE ELSE: No they're not, and here's why [explanation of how they're different]
LOKI: They're just the same, and if you say they're not, it's because you're being partisan
EVERYONE ELSE: no, but really, they are actually pretty different, look here's the text of what they said [text] and how they're different [how they're different]
LOKI: La la la I can't hear you! They are exactly the same! anyone who says there is being partistan!
Yes. We are truly the ones who are living in a bubble.
The light that once I thought compassion still casting shadows in your action
The words you shared were cold transactions that bring me to curse what you've done
When you're up there absorbed in greatness with such success you've grown complacent
I hope you scorch your many faces when you fly too close to the sun
Everyone else = rabid Democrat-supporters
When you only consider people with the same ideology as you as "everyone else", perhaps you should look in a mirror.
Hope is the denial of reality
Look, I actually subscribe--to some extent--to the view on some of the "causes" of racism/xenophobia, fundamentalism, etc. that Obama expresses in that old quote. I subscribe to the view that it's hard to reach people with a message of hope and change when those people see very little cause for hope in change in their lives. I dunno if that's partisan, but I suppose it might be a bias. It fits with my views on people and on the world, that many of the things I dislike are a result of other negative things.
I can--on some level--grok Romney's notion that people who don't pay federal income tax won't be swayed by promises of lowering federal income taxes. But does anyone here really subscribe to the view that the 47% of Americans who don't pay federal income tax are fairly characterised as having an aversion to taking personal responsibility?
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Isn't it about time someone chained you to a rock and got a snake to drip venom on your face?
The light that once I thought compassion still casting shadows in your action
The words you shared were cold transactions that bring me to curse what you've done
When you're up there absorbed in greatness with such success you've grown complacent
I hope you scorch your many faces when you fly too close to the sun
So the difference between the dismissive and offensive Obama and Romney quotes is that you agree with the Obama one. Got it.Look, I actually subscribe--to some extent--to the view on some of the "causes" of racism/xenophobia, fundamentalism, etc. that Obama expresses in that old quote. I subscribe to the view that it's hard to reach people with a message of hope and change when those people see very little cause for hope in change in their lives. I dunno if that's partisan, but I suppose it might be a bias. It fits with my views on people and on the world, that many of the things I dislike are a result of other negative things.
I can--on some level--grok Romney's notion that people who don't pay federal income tax won't be swayed by promises of lowering federal income taxes. But does anyone here really subscribe to the view that the 47% of Americans who don't pay federal income tax are fairly characterised as having an aversion to taking personal responsibility?
Hope is the denial of reality
And all the other things Minx has mentioned, which you've ignored.
The light that once I thought compassion still casting shadows in your action
The words you shared were cold transactions that bring me to curse what you've done
When you're up there absorbed in greatness with such success you've grown complacent
I hope you scorch your many faces when you fly too close to the sun
They can all be summarized as "Obama and Romney said offensive things, but I agree with what Obama said, therefore Romney is more in the wrong".
Hope is the denial of reality
And the fact that Romney said offensive things about nearly half of all Americans according to a specific criteria: not paying income tax, not just some unspecified dudes in some unspecified small towns, and Obama said what he said in the context of at least trying to be sympathetic and how they have to work to reach out to them, rather than "fuck them, not my problem". In fact, the only similar thing about them is that they said something offensive about some segment of the electorate. In every other respect they are different, and in every other respect what Romney said was worse. This is entirely separate from whether or not one agrees with the sentiment behind what they said.
The light that once I thought compassion still casting shadows in your action
The words you shared were cold transactions that bring me to curse what you've done
When you're up there absorbed in greatness with such success you've grown complacent
I hope you scorch your many faces when you fly too close to the sun
And anyway, I don't particularly agree with Obama: that's not why "they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." Well, maybe the anti-immigrant/anti-trade stuff is accurate: there's usually a connection between a backlash against immigrants and free trade deals and poor economic conditions.
The light that once I thought compassion still casting shadows in your action
The words you shared were cold transactions that bring me to curse what you've done
When you're up there absorbed in greatness with such success you've grown complacent
I hope you scorch your many faces when you fly too close to the sun
So what you're actually saying is that it is offensive to say that bitterness, racism/xenophobia, fundamentalism and the like may be fueled by decades of broken promises to regular folks who keep getting let down and passed by? That it is dismissive to say that they may be hard to reach with a message that they can't connect with--eg. due to their lives making that message seem distant or unrealistic--but that the best you can do--what you should do--is to just go to those supposedly unreachable communities and do your thing anyway? These are examples of "offensive" and "dismissive" to you?
Just help me out here man, I'm having a hard time believing that you actually believe this. What would, to you, be a less offensive and dismissive take on bitterness, racism/xenophobia and religious fundamentalism? Like, if you'd been Obama's speech-writer for that particular occasion. You are a rational man who can tackle difficult subjects without giving undue offense, so please give me an example of a fundamentally different and non-offensive way to discuss the subject Obama was trying to clumsily discuss. This is your moment to shine, let's hear it. Same for the rest of you, how would you have phrased it in a non-offensive and non-dismissive way?
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
The less dismissive thing would be to NOT CLAIM that people dislike you because they're racist, religious, fundamentalists.
Hope is the denial of reality
I don't think it should come as a surprise to you that, where there is ambiguity and uncertainty, I have a preference for the approach I believe conforms to a more humane/empathetic/sympathetic worldview. It's part of the rosy-eyed left-wing liberal hippie schtick that helps me live in a world and an internet full of people who sometimes seem to be jerks (myself included).
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Your rosy-eyed shtick is to assume that people you disagree with are some combination of racist, stupid, uneducated, extremist, and psychopaths?
Hope is the denial of reality
True, which is why
The gist of that is not that people in small Pennsylvanian towns are skeptical towards Obama because they're racist religious fundamentalists. The gist is that people in those small towns who are racist religious fundamentalists may be so for much of the same reasons that they're skeptical towards Obama's promises and message, ie. that there is a common root cause. It's a clever way to frame the whole thing, because it tries to plant the notion that you can tackle things like bitterness xenophobia and fundamentalism by succeeding in bringing about other positive social changes rather than by continuing to fail these withering small towns.But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there’s not evidence of that in their daily lives.
You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
Of course that might be incredibly offensive to a Pennsylvanian person who's really racist because he thinks black people suck and is skeptical towards Obama because he really thinks Obama's policies suck.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
No. Put crudely, it's that people who are assholes are probably assholes for various reasons, some of which may be that their experiences in life simply haven't been all that amazing or similar to mine. I'm kinda struggling to explain to myself the great difficulty you seem to have with parsing the English language.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Again, the claim Obama was making was that the reason those people "needed to be persuaded" (i.e. why they weren't already supporting him) was because they were racist, extremist, religious fundamentalists. He might have gone on to claim that it's not entirely their fault that they're racist, extremist, fundamentalists, but Romney makes the same claim about the people not paying taxes. And I don't know about you, but I'd prefer to be called lazy than to be called racist, extremist, and fundamentalist.
More broadly, it's pretty obvious that both candidates were playing up to their base by exaggerating the negative attributes of their opponents. Both probably believe what they said to some extent, but I doubt they believe the entirety of their statements. Both played up the stereotypes of their opponents to get more money from their supporters. The fact that you're refusing to see this and make one failed attempt after another to justify Obama's statement is telling.
Hope is the denial of reality
OBAMA: So, it depends on where you are, but I think it's fair to say that the places where we are going to have to do the most work are the places where people feel most cynical about government. The people are mis-appre...I think they're misunderstanding why the demographics in our, in this contest have broken out as they are. Because everybody just ascribes it to 'white working-class don't wanna work -- don't wanna vote for the black guy.' That's...there were intimations of that in an article in the Sunday New York Times today - kind of implies that it's sort of a race thing.
Here's how it is: in a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long, and they feel so betrayed by government, and when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about government, then a part of them just doesn't buy it. And when it's delivered by -- it's true that when it's delivered by a 46-year-old black man named Barack Obama (laugher), then that adds another layer of skepticism (laughter).
But -- so the questions you're most likely to get about me, 'Well, what is this guy going to do for me? What's the concrete thing?' What they wanna hear is -- so, we'll give you talking points about what we're proposing -- close tax loopholes, roll back, you know, the tax cuts for the top 1 percent. Obama's gonna give tax breaks to middle-class folks and we're gonna provide health care for every American. So we'll go down a series of talking points.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
I fail to see how that goes against anything else that's been said in this thread. I realize that mental gymnastics is fun, but it's not a real sport.
Hope is the denial of reality
For sod's sake, you big pile of ruined plant fibre, can you not read?
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
This may clarify things:
Loki's hypothesis: "ObamaClaim=X"
Method: examine transcript in which the value of ObamaClaim can be found
Result: ObamaClaim=(1/X)
Discussion: Result goes against Loki's hypothesis. ObamaClaim is in fact the inverse of X.
Conclusion: hypothesis was incorrect.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Yeah, who knew that if you completely ignore the actual quote about guns and religion and point to a completely different part of the speech, you might get a different result.
How does that say anything other than "poor white people who don't like me are racist, extremist, fundamentalists"? Sure, he excuses that on the grounds that they were mistreated, but how does it change the actual statement?You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.
And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
Hope is the denial of reality
No, it's offensive to call people bitter, racist fundamentalists for resisting a political agenda. FFS.
Not when that agenda is consistent with Minx's worldview.
Hope is the denial of reality
I'd say so, considering you're under the impression that this topic has been Loki vs everyone else rather than (in the last 24 hours) Loki, Veldan, Dread and myself against you and Minx with an interjection or two by OG and Rand. It takes some real distortion to change 4:2 or 5:3 to 1:everyone.
Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"
Incidentally, since when has the number of people on each side determined the accuracy of an argument?
Hope is the denial of reality
The only issue I have is the percentage. I do believe there is a sizable group of folks who don't take personal responsibility and expect the government to take care of them. They believe they are victims and actually prefer to be considered victims as opposed to failures.
I can--on some level--grok Romney's notion that people who don't pay federal income tax won't be swayed by promises of lowering federal income taxes. But does anyone here really subscribe to the view that the 47% of Americans who don't pay federal income tax are fairly characterised as having an aversion to taking personal responsibility?
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