Elmarnieh wrote:
Or his account has been hacked by someone who wants to troll and is familiar with the board enough to know whose account to attempt to hijack.
No, it's me.
Again, the glade is not a part of my regular rotation. So, I don't always get back to chat. Also, what some call "debate" others see as a witch hunt or just a gang bang. Some things can't be debated here. A recent republican laid it out pretty clearly. He'd been beaten in his primary for having the audacity to rightfully say that there were no death panels in the health care reform legislation. Anyway, he said that the country was being divided in a manner not so different than Shia and Sunni. That tribalism is illustrated beautifully on the Glade. So no, I am not going to respond to every thread I post in. I'm going to say my piece, and if someone has something intelligent to say in response, I may or may not respond.
For example, there is no way on god's green earth that a large group of posters here will ever admit that HIGCC is actually real, that it's dangerous, that it represents a very real threat to our national security and our economic well being, not to mention our well being as a species. This is a fact, yet, here, it's considered to be a hoax. No amount of debate, no amount of scientific information will ever outweigh the few industry funded or intensely ideological voices that say otherwise. They *cannot* admit this, they cannot accept the overwhelming scientific consensus on the matter, because if they accept it, their ideology must face the reality of a severe and species-threatening externality. This does not mesh with their idea that all government regulation is inherently evil. Furthermore, it does not mesh with their idea that the market can fix everything. Because it *caused* this problem in many ways. That doesn't compute. That's the trouble with an outlook that's so utterly fixated on an intellectual consistency based on an irrational premise.
Not only must the fundamentalists be correct, but in order for them to be correct to their satisfaction, everyone else must be absolutely incorrect, and no amount of evidence to the contrary will ever convince them otherwise.
It's a result of the echo chamber, among other things. All voices screaming the same things, backing it up with an oversimplified intellectual consistency, never daring to imagine the horror that the DFH's are correct. Ever. It gets so bad that Tea Party conservatives now elected to the board of education in Texas have decided to just rewrite history to suit a more comfortable, conservative-friendly version - changing "slave trade" to "triangle trade" and claiming that McCarthy's big brother police state unamerican activities witch hunts were vindicated. It's so bad that in the last 10 years we actually had to debate weather or not torture was acceptable. It's so bad that in the last 10 years Republicans were cheering on a massive expansion of the deficit and off-the-books war funding. It's so bad that when an African American wins the Presidency in a country that used to enslave people with his skin color, a country that used to deny men of his color the right to vote, it's not even considered to be a historic event. In fact, it's so non historic that we have to have a thread talking about how it's no big deal. It's so bad that when a single unsubstantiated rumor that the aforementioned black man was born in Kenya pops up, it's held up as a very serious accusation - so serious that it changes the principle of the burden of evidence from the state to the accused. It's endlessly, breathlessly debated as some sort of legitimate constitutional question.
And why is it that bad? Because everything in the world is less important than hating Dirty **** Hippies. Everything. Liberals are the
enemy, and everything they say or do is wrong, even if the facts support it. Any theory, no matter how outlandish,
must be correct assuming it in some way attacks the DFH's. Any act of violence against liberals is ignored or swept under the rug. Any call for violence or revolution are greeted with loud cheers and adulation, when just 18 months ago such a call would have been greeted with pearl-clutching howls of "anti-American!" and "Al Qaeda Sympathizer!".
It never changes.
IOKIYAR. So long as the people calling for the dissolution of the United States of America are Republicans or Conservatives or Tea Party Activists (Which are just conservative republicans), it doesn't matter how much you hate on America. It doesn't matter if you send mixed signals to our enemies by viciously criticizing the President in a time of war. Of course, before 1/20/09, such calls were greeted with vicious accusations of treason from the *very same people* that now call for open, armed revolution. "Water the tree of liberty" and "We came unarmed - this time" are common themes at conservative protest rallies these days. Once upon a time, those conservatives would look at liberals with similar messages and call for investigations and police round-ups. And while you might not see that happen here directly (although it has, from time to time, definitely happened here), the attitude is clear and present. It didn't get kinder or gentler around here after I took a break. In fact, it got even worse. It got downright vicious for a while, looking back over the threads.
So, if it wasn't me that caused all the vitriol and hate, then it begs the question - what caused all the vitriol and hate?
_________________
It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show