WaPo & ATP&N exposes pure hypocrisy of GOP base

[zinfamous]

It's pretty obvious that a lot of you guys think of yourselves as smarter than the average bear: More informed, more rational, more forward-thinking. Is that not what enlightened means to you?

wisdom is not about thinking one is enlightened, or "more right" It is about understanding and accepting your own failings. And owning up to it, and learning. ...and surviving the fallout and coming back to it a bit wiser.

On the internet, I have found that it is far too easy to double down and defend an indefensible position--anonymity does this. Forums, social media, 140 character-communications divorced from physical communication...detachment from social traits related to cognitive and communal interaction that biology has long fixed into our social-dependent species through selection. and here we are...

Likewise, it is just as easy to pile on and wreck an individual that doubles down on the indefensible; that, through those very same failings of the wholly anti-social beast that is the internet, an individual grants themselves unearned, anonymous confidence--through the mob--to destroy the contrary anonymous soul.

It is, quite simply: a recipe for human extinction. If not physically, certainly mentally. It is this kind of attitude and behavior that gave rise to this fascist cabal that elected a barely-sentient Turnip to lead the most powerful nation in the world, today. It's unfathomable. Think about it: none of this would have happened if the internet, which so poorly informs people that actually need to be informed, never existed.

cray-cray.


I'm still a fan of pcGeek. I hope the public piling-on didn't send him away for good. I honestly think that he's been a good bloke here, despite the nonsense over the years. Perhaps it went over the top here, perhaps not (I'm not going to dictate the mobs' opinion--I can only say that the internet does what it will do), but I do hope that people take no self-satisfaction in simply exposing hypocrisy. That, today, is certainly a good thing. We shouldn't celebrate it before admission is accepted, though. This nation and well, humanity, doesn't really heal from patting itself on the back when it frightens off a fool for forgetting what they thought/said some years ago.

 

[zinfamous]

Well, I'm a center right libertarian leaning free market capitalist. And even I know how dangerous Trump is.

This cult that claims to be right-wing now has nothing to do with capitalism or freedom. It is the cult of fascist crony capitalism and it's being sold as "True American" and all about freedom. It is anything but. The constant lies and distortions coming out of the cultish right-wing media, the anti-intellectualism, the anti-science, the turning on it's head the very ideals of Christianity. It's absolutely mind boggling that they can take a message of peace, love and charity for your fellow man and the least among us, and turn it 180 degrees around into a message of hate, fear, selfishness and war.

Just completely and utterly Orwellian.

And that is how fascism starts. You discredit in your follow man's eyes any factual reality and supplant it with your own. And they started it all off with the most classic of cult lines: Everyone else is lying to you.

100% correct.

This isn't really debatable. <And that isn't opinion.

 

[zinfamous]

Meh, his argument is akin to the "being intolerant of intolerance is bigotry, too!"

maybe.

but at the same time, internet conversations are clearly different than classic, civil, dinner table discussions. It's not like PCgeek is at the table, still, with the chance and pressure to respond. He doesn't even have to walk away, physically.

It's a completely different dynamic. At one one point, there is an obvious point where someone is so clearly wrong and so clearly caught in their own lies where either: they must then socially own up to them, or....just disappear because it is a better option in light of the frankly intolerable and unrestrained piling-on of the opposition.

At the dinner table, the opposition would never have piled on like this. The laws of physics and biology simply forbid it. It's a completely new world and let me tell you: humans are simply not evolved, cognitively, to handle human social interactions over the internet as real humans are supposed to. That is a simple fact that we just need to accept and learn to do with what we do best: adapt.

 

[UberNeuman]

Either you are accountable for what you say and support or maybe you shouldn't talk so much shit without having to back it up.

Is this not common ground that all can agree on?

pcgeek could clear this all up. That's up to him.

 

[Paratus]

wisdom is not about thinking one is enlightened, or "more right" It is about understanding and accepting your own failings. And owning up to it, and learning. ...and surviving the fallout and coming back to it a bit wiser.

On the internet, I have found that it is far too easy to double down and defend an indefensible position--anonymity does this. Forums, social media, 140 character-communications divorced from physical communication...detachment from social traits related to cognitive and communal interaction that biology has long fixed into our social-dependent species through selection. and here we are...

Likewise, it is just as easy to pile on and wreck an individual that doubles down on the indefensible; that, through those very same failings of the wholly anti-social beast that is the internet, an individual grants themselves unearned, anonymous confidence--through the mob--to destroy the contrary anonymous soul.

It is, quite simply: a recipe for human extinction. If not physically, certainly mentally. It is this kind of attitude and behavior that gave rise to this fascist cabal that elected a barely-sentient Turnip to lead the most powerful nation in the world, today. It's unfathomable. Think about it: none of this would have happened if the internet, which so poorly informs people that actually need to be informed, never existed.

cray-cray.


I'm still a fan of pcGeek. I hope the public piling-on didn't send him away for good. I honestly think that he's been a good bloke here, despite the nonsense over the years. Perhaps it went over the top here, perhaps not (I'm not going to dictate the mobs' opinion--I can only say that the internet does what it will do), but I do hope that people take no self-satisfaction in simply exposing hypocrisy. That, today, is certainly a good thing. We shouldn't celebrate it before admission is accepted, though. This nation and well, humanity, doesn't really heal from patting itself on the back when it frightens off a fool for forgetting what they thought/said some years ago.

On the first paragraph I totally agree. One of the easiest ways to gain credibility is to actually acknowledge when you're wrong instead of doubling down on an error.

 

[zinfamous]

Either you are accountable for what you say and support or maybe you shouldn't talk so much shit without having to back it up.


Is this not common ground that all can agree on?

Of course.

My only point is that these are issues that were settled in minutes over the dinner table, generations ago. People actually learned, and actually changed their minds when they communicated as humans evolved to communicate: socially.

This just doesn't happen anymore. The lack of interaction, the complete and total divorce from society that...my ability to respond to you in seconds across some magic electrons...has totally confounded our normal selective pressures. It's fucking nuts and our neurons can't goddamn handle it.

We evolved over 125k years to communicate in person, physically first, and verbally, with language, second. The internet is maybe...30 years old. Think about that.

This actually matters. And, of course, all of us will stubbornly reject that notion.

 

[Younigue]

@Jhhnn , @ivwshane , and @Younigue , thanks for your replies. I'll continue to observe and revisit my opinion on this. I'll admit that part of my motivation for speaking out is due to the disquiet at the massive amounts of hate that everyone, not just here but across the country, seems to be directing as their fellow countrymen. I am still an American foremost, and I find myself occasionally gripped with a sense of dread about where this is all going. I don't see it ending well.

I have the same feelings at times. I truly felt heartbroken when that thing won the Presidency. For three days I was utterly stunned but not because of him it was because of what it said about the people who voted for someone like him. I still have moments of wanting to shake them in to some sense... hence the reason I give myself permission to go to town on the ones who show up here.

 

[Jhhnn]

@Jhhnn , @ivwshane , and @Younigue , thanks for your replies. I'll continue to observe and revisit my opinion on this. I'll admit that part of my motivation for speaking out is due to the disquiet at the massive amounts of hate that everyone, not just here but across the country, seems to be directing as their fellow countrymen. I am still an American foremost, and I find myself occasionally gripped with a sense of dread about where this is all going. I don't see it ending well.

There is no analog on the Left for the spite & hatefulness of the Limbaughs, Hannitys, Coulters, O'Reillys & Trumps of America. There is no analog for the disinformation of Breitbart, Newsmax, World Nut Daily, Cernovich style Alt-troll armies or Trump's twitter account, not to mention the ever popular whacked out conspiracy theories of Alex Jones or the astounding insincerity of Jerry Falwell Jr.

It's all designed to create the sort of mindless tribalism that sets people to voting for trickle down economics, over & over again.

 

[crashtech]

On the first paragraph I totally agree. One of the easiest ways to gain credibility is to actually acknowledge when you're wrong instead of doubling down on an error.

I don't see this happening very often. Hell, I ought to mark my calendar when it does.

As to the rest of the replies, @zinfamous, @Younigue , @Jhhnn , and others, I find some things to agree with and others to not agree with, but interesting reading nonetheless. Thanks.

 

[Moonbeam]

I don't see this happening very often. Hell, I ought to mark my calendar when it does.

As to the rest of the replies, @zinfamous, @Younigue , @Jhhnn , and others, I find some things to agree with and others to not agree with, but interesting reading nonetheless. Thanks.

In my opinion what you know and may not be able to articulate is that what goes around comes around, that the wisdom of treating people well in all circumstances fosters the same response when it's you who are in error. People who need to gloat about being right, have no real inner faith in their own rectitude

pcgeek is a text book example of a person who rationalizes and can maintain illogical positions. It is as obvious as it can get. He doesn't have to be fed his own words to know this and what kind of bull shit is being owned. That's all the product of insecure ego and fear of the insanity of others.

If we are going to deal with insanity, we should start with our own.

 

[Moonbeam]

More importantly (you would think) would be that these people don't seem interested in reflecting on why they have changed their opinions so radically despite no significant change in the situation other than what party controls the presidency. They routinely call others liars, hacks, etc and don't seem to notice that they're doing everything they accuse other people of. It's not like this is an isolated case either.

People are weird, they prize tribal identity over facts, I imagine that's what's happening in this case. The question I have now though is why tribal identity is so much stronger among conservatives than among liberals?

One answer that neuroscientists propose is that our social evolution, tribal, made tribal loyalty a virtue with survival value. It is known that conservatives have a much larger pallet of moral concerns than liberals do and these moral beliefs are defended at an instinctual level. Conservatives know that tribal unity is a virtue, that societies would have been screwed without it, and they are it's moral defenders. You can thank them for the persistence of the human race.

This, I think, also has great bearing on other tangents in this thread, the bad treatment by liberals of people who have a larger range of moral issues than they do, morals that are of tremendous value. How long, for example would you imagine a child who did whatever he wanted survive in our original primitive state? How long will you survive if you're lazy, if you reject your elders, if you try to pet every wild thing you encounter? Conservatives are the moral bank in which traditional values with vital survival potential are kept. They are also generally emotionally happier. These are the folk we kick in the teeth on this forum on a regular basis, because their irrational loyalties, when misapplied become very dangerous and scary. And now that they own the country and have the levers of power, we want to provoke them to rage. Liberals can also be dumb, in my opinion. I think it was tribal loyalty in fact that gave us Clinton.

 

[MrSquished]

Fuck you, you god damn liar.

http://www.portvapes.co.uk/?id=Latest-exam-1Z0-876-Dumps&exid=thread...n-syria-is-path-to-war.2223221/#post-32934670

http://www.portvapes.co.uk/?id=Latest-exam-1Z0-876-Dumps&exid=thread...ndsey-graham-say.2227571/page-2#post-33034094

http://www.portvapes.co.uk/?id=Latest-exam-1Z0-876-Dumps&exid=threads/world-exclusive-iran-will-send-4-000-troops-to-aid-bashar-al-assad’s-forces-in-syria.2325663/#post-35148500

http://www.portvapes.co.uk/?id=Latest-exam-1Z0-876-Dumps&exid=threads/world-exclusive-iran-will-send-4-000-troops-to-aid-bashar-al-assad’s-forces-in-syria.2325663/page-2#post-35151151

http://www.portvapes.co.uk/?id=Latest-exam-1Z0-876-Dumps&exid=threads/world-exclusive-iran-will-send-4-000-troops-to-aid-bashar-al-assad’s-forces-in-syria.2325663/page-2#post-35151291

Once Obama was denied by Congress is when your tune changed. You are such a partisan hack!

wow unbelievable ownage. great post.

pcgeek is who he thought he was.

 

[ivwshane]

@Jhhnn , @ivwshane , and @Younigue , thanks for your replies. I'll continue to observe and revisit my opinion on this. I'll admit that part of my motivation for speaking out is due to the disquiet at the massive amounts of hate that everyone, not just here but across the country, seems to be directing as their fellow countrymen. I am still an American foremost, and I find myself occasionally gripped with a sense of dread about where this is all going. I don't see it ending well.

Don't confuse frustration with hate. I don't hate pcgeek, I hate his lying and hypocrisy and I'm frustrated by his inability or unwillingness to acknowledge facts and reality. In fact I'm sure if you ask the people posting in this thread if they are frustrated by the fact that the right keeps voting for politicians and policies that will harm them, they will tell you yes. I would also take a guess that most posting in this thread would genuinely welcome real debate from people with alternative viewpoints. The reason that rarely happens is because the right has this nasty habit of denying reality and facts and this thread, specifically pcgeek, illustrated this perfectly.

 

[DarthKyrie]

You seem to forget Obama went to Congress for a new AUMF so he could act and Republicans refused.

Then they went on Fox and bitched that Obama wasn't doing anything forgetting to mention that the reason Obama wasn't doing anything was because they were blocking him.

@Jhhnn , @ivwshane , and @Younigue , thanks for your replies. I'll continue to observe and revisit my opinion on this. I'll admit that part of my motivation for speaking out is due to the disquiet at the massive amounts of hate that everyone, not just here but across the country, seems to be directing as their fellow countrymen. I am still an American foremost, and I find myself occasionally gripped with a sense of dread about where this is all going. I don't see it ending well.

This is because history is repeating itself again in the United States, this and the fact that the country has unresolved issues with itself that date back to the American Revolution and the Civil War was never truly settled. This country is destined to break apart.

 

[ch33zw1z]

Crashtech, while I somewhat agree with you, the conservatives on this forum don't typically go for intellectual debates.

Pcgeek was subject to own age of the year by IW. Boo hoo.

Cons love to play the victim. Hypocrisy exposure in this thread was awesome, and when it's that complete, it's not going to go unnoticed.

 

[trenchfoot]

Crashtech, while I somewhat agree with you, the conservatives on this forum don't typically go for intellectual debates.

Pcgeek was subject to own age of the year by IW. Boo hoo.

Cons love to play the victim. Hypocrisy exposure in this thread was awesome, and when it's that complete, it's not going to go unnoticed.

When they have very little or nothing of substance to defend Trump's and the GOP's habit of exclusively favoring and being obedient to the very wealthy, then playing the victim is pretty much the only play they have.

The insolvable problem they have with being that way is that they're actually victimizing themselves and blaming everyone else for it.

 

[cyclohexane]

If and when pcgeek returns - the response to all of his posts should be to link to this post

 

[brycejones]

If and when pcgeek returns - the response to all of his posts should be to link to this post

Not needed until he starts claiming he always tells the truth....

Then link away.

 

[Jaskalas]

I'd be curious to know if those posts and that position on Syria was actually known... and remembered.
Human memory can be a hell of a faulty thing. There's a good faith reason this possibly happened... or not.

 

[dank69]

I think this entire thread is a counterproductive way of behaving. It's illustrative of one of the reasons why I don't want to participate more in discussions here. Mob rule and the dehumanization of your ideological opponent is not the mark of the enlightened.

Saying this thread is counterproductive implies that it was intended to be productive in the first place. I can't speak for everyone else but I gave up on trying to be productive a long time ago. It isn't possible to be productive when the right isn't interested in facts and possess unlimited ability to torture the shit out of logic to avoid admitting their policies are shit or that most of the world's ills that they blame on liberals are actually their fault.

 

[bshole]

I'd be curious to know if those posts and that position on Syria was actually known... and remembered.
Human memory can be a hell of a faulty thing. There's a good faith reason this possibly happened... or not.

I won't address the misremembering.

The obvious reason for him to have opposed Syrian intervention was because Obama favored it. The obvious reason to now support Syrian intervention was because Trump favored it. Since Obama hadn't favored intervention in years, it is possible that he slowly morphed his position to oppose Obama and flipped completely when Trump became President.

What is ultimately discouraging in all of this is that apparently around half of Republicans will only oppose war if a Democratic President supports it. The material facts of a particular incident are apparently irrelevant. They need only two facts, is the President Democratic and does that President want to go to war.

 

[kage69]

lol, this thread. One of the many reasons I'm no longer a conservative, critical thinking and self reflection is so rare with that crowd.

Too true. The preaching of ideals they don't give a shit about and placing party dogma above the country was what did it for me. Turning a blind eye to science for a mixture of financial and/or religious motives made it happen faster. This alt-right white supremacist shit and the rise of those that can vote for someone like Dump feels like ongoing validation for that decision too.

I'd also like to second brycejones' mention of Indivisible. Worth listening too.

 

[crashtech]

Saying this thread is counterproductive implies that it was intended to be productive in the first place. I can't speak for everyone else but I gave up on trying to be productive a long time ago. It isn't possible to be productive when the right isn't interested in facts and possess unlimited ability to torture the shit out of logic to avoid admitting their policies are shit or that most of the world's ills that they blame on liberals are actually their fault.

It's also impossible to be productive when your interlocutor has already made their mind up about you. As someone who is marginally right of center, I have to take your statement as warning not to bother; based on your sweeping marginalization of everyone on the right, even if I had a reasonable argument, you would not hear it. I think your opinion is almost universally held here, and is a good reason for me and others with differing opinions just to stay out of it, at least those who like to make good use of their time. So continue to have your sport with those too foolish not to just leave, you'll only see me in rare times of indiscretion.

 

[Younigue]

It's also impossible to be productive when your interlocutor has already made their mind up about you. As someone who is marginally right of center, I have to take your statement as warning not to bother; based on your sweeping marginalization of everyone on the right, even if I had a reasonable argument, you would not hear it. I think your opinion is almost universally held here, and is a good reason for me and others with differing opinions just to stay out of it, at least those who like to make good use of their time. So continue to have your sport with those too foolish not to just leave, you'll only see me in rare times of indiscretion.

At this point it's beginning to feel like you came here only to scold. If your purpose is only to tell people why you won't be posting here on the regular, you've made your point. Bad Dems, bad progressives tsk tsk. If you wanted to prove that conversation with progressives is fruitless, you've done that in as much as it suits you to believe so. Though I think the conversation has moved fluidly.

Again I haven't been here long but in this thread you've revealed nothing about your beliefs other than gang mentality bad <--- that applies to both sides of the aisle. This is just one forum. If I went to a conservative leaning forum I'm confident my brain butthole would take a gang related beating. I would bet money that any amount of thoughtful scolding from me would result in my brain butthole feeling violated.

 

[dank69]

It's also impossible to be productive when your interlocutor has already made their mind up about you. As someone who is marginally right of center, I have to take your statement as warning not to bother; based on your sweeping marginalization of everyone on the right, even if I had a reasonable argument, you would not hear it. I think your opinion is almost universally held here, and is a good reason for me and others with differing opinions just to stay out of it, at least those who like to make good use of their time. So continue to have your sport with those too foolish not to just leave, you'll only see me in rare times of indiscretion.

No, it's actually really simple. Don't post misinformation and don't post logical fallacies. I pretty much only engage when people do one or both, and as you can see, lifer is in my rear view awhile now.