The Demonization of the Opposition

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Originally posted by SignyM:
So you see, unless you explain to me what you mean when you say "people", "life", "free", I really DON'T know what you mean!

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I am at a point, after dealing with exactly this kind of thing, to be a bit tired of these games. I have written rather extensively here, on these subjects, in English, which I would assume is your native language as well.

Yes you are being nitpicky. You are trying to show something about edges which is irrelevant. If you ain't near the edges, whether they are crystal or not, is irrelevant. And since you have already accused me of evasion, really what is the point in even asking?

You are trying to tell me that this shades of grey thinking is somehow superior to being able to reduce them to black and white. And yet this is a perfect example of why your concept fails. You can't tell the difference between a cup and a bowl, and you want to tell me your way of dealing with reality is superior?

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Drakon, Soupcatcher- I think the question is not whether the ends justify the means, it's whether the ends justify ANY AND ALL means. Drakon's ends- freedom, security, liberty, whatever- are still undefined. Until I know what the ends are, I won't know whether the means are justified, or even likely to be effective.

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And youi probably never will. Lets cut the garbage. You don't know what freedom means, what a person is, whether you are alive or not, you are a perfect illustration of the problem with "shades of grey" You get bogged down in nitpicking, whether you claim that is not your thing or not, is irrelevant. You make it impossible to communicate with you, and when I give up on your games, I am being "evasive".



"Wash, where is my damn spaceship?"

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Drakon--

It doesn't bother me that you have a different set of political beliefs from mine. It doesn't bother me that you view the world in terms of black and white. It doesn't bother me that you feel the war in Iraq is both just and necessary. A lot of people think that way and I'm not going to say you or they are wrong--difference of opinion is one of the greatest aspects of a democratic society.

What bothers me is that you feel the need to belittle and demean EVERY single point that someone else makes if you don't agree with it. I've read many posts that use perfectly valid debate techniques which you've dismissed as being invalid arguments. Just because someone doesn't agree with you doesn't mean their argument is invalid, Drakon.

And going back to one of your original statements, the minority party ALWAYS demonizes the majority party, whether that means democrats attacking republicans (which is what we currently have) or republicans attacking democrats (the Clinton era and Carter era are two recent examples). If you want historical examples, look at the Lincoln era or the Roosevelt (FDR) era. It is unfortunate that this occurs, but it is unavoidable--after all, each party wants to appear better to the voters than the other, and it's always easier to criticize from the outside than the inside.

In closing, I want to share a quote which I find very relevant today. You may be surprised by the author:

"The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else."

Teddy Roosevelt, from the "Kansas City Star", May 7, 1918

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Drakon,

You have split this into black and white, as if there are only "good guys" and "bad guys" in your world. Furthermore, your posts indicate that you believe that since they are "the bad guys," by definition we must be "the good guys" -- and as such are incapable of doing bad ourselves.

You are arguing against my points as if I ascribe to that same immature 'philosophy' and your stance boils down to a belief that I am taking the side of the "bad guys." This greatly misrepresents what I've said. By taking this stance, you have missed entirely everything that I've tried to convey to you.

I attempted to bring this conversation with you to a slightly more intelligent level, but I've obviously failed. Since apparently we're down to beating a dead horse, I won't be discussing this with you any further.

"You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him think."

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My, you ARE in a pissy mood today, aren't you?

Drakon, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking- "Well, everybody KNOWS what we mean when we say !"

There are two things about your posts that are seriously flawed:

a) You use emotive, abstract words in different contexts without explaining what you mean. When I ask you to explain or define the basis, the core, the absolute fundamentals or your viewpoint, enshrined in YOUR WORDS, you can't be bothered. It's "nitpicking".

I'll point out an example further down of your uses of the words "free" and "freedom" and show you why I don't undersdtand what you mean.

b) You CONSISTENTLY use the word "we" in place of "I". There's a lot of interesting psychological things I could say about that, but I'm not going to. Suffice it to say that you really should excise that word out of your postings unless you really have a specific "we" in mind. You're certainly not representing me- so who is this "we", kemosabe?

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Drakon's uses and implications of the words "free" and "freedom"


The reason being, is that people are free to associate and form whatever political parties they want.
= unconstrained by law or fear?

You don't mind having a strong military to protect and defend your rights and freedoms
= rights granted by law? (e.g privacy?)

Sometimes it is necessary to give up some freedom in order to not get killed.
= privacy? due process?

We give up the freedom to fire our guns indiscriminantly, but we all benefit by not getting shot by a stray bullet
= unconstrained by law or fear

You can try to maintain your freedoms while they are trying to kill you, but it doesn't work in the real world of suicide bombers and hijackers
= privacy? due process? religious rights?

Dead people ain't freeto do anything
= capable of (yes, I know, this was a rhetorical flourish)

but with terrorist attempting to use our freedoms and rights against us...
= privacy laws? due process? religous tolerance?

you are perfectly free to ignore them
=unconstrained by law or force?

OJ got off scott free
= unimprisoned, without due consequence

looking at each proposal individually, seeing how they affect security and freedom
= privacy? due process? ownership rights? freedom of expression? religious rights?

If freedom means the freedom to get blowed up
false choice

Look, people are free
= uncontrained? unimprisoned? have the right of privacy, due process, religious tolerance, right to vote....?

deny folks the freedom to do just that (rape, murder, talking in movies)
= uncontrained choice?

You appear to see freedom as an end unto itself. I see life and happiness as the end all of it all
= prosperity?

I am happier with less rules
= less rules?

They know that democracy and freedom is their death knell
= democracy?

you would be one of the first to complain if one of these terrorists were set free
= unimprisoned

what we got going here, in terms of rights, freedoms and the like as a pretty good and workable system
=???

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You appear to several definitions of FREEDOM.

a) not in prison
b) without constraint by law, lawless
c) without constraint by force or fear
c) rights granted by law (eg.privacy,due process)
d) democracy
e) capability
f) prosperity

So, when you say "People [in Iraq] are free" what do you mean? "People" in Iraq are certainly still in prison. "Due process" wasn't recognized by the USA occupation (see Abu Ghraib). Iraqis have not yet had a chance to vote for their government, are fearful of rampant lawlessness, and suffer from intolerable unemployment rate. They have an interim consitution, but over 100 edicts from the CPA (which, among other things, limits taxation on foreign companies and allows 100% ownership of previously nationalized resources- such as oil and water).

What I would say is that the

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I think the U.S. should seriously explore the idea of Majority Preferential Voting.

In that scheme, when voting for an executive position (ie, President, Governor, Mayor, etc), the voter chooses their candidates in order of preference.

For example, in 2000 my ballot would have looked like this:

1. Ralph Nader
2. Al Gore
3. Donald Duck
4. etc.

After the first tally of votes, if no candidate had achieved more than 50% of the vote, all ballots where the number one slot was filled in with a non-major candidate (let's say all those who received less than 5% of the vote) would have line one scratched and line two would become the vote from that ballot. You keep doing this, moving down the list as necessary until you have a candidate with a clear majority. This method is also referred to as the Automatic Run-off Ballot or something like that.

It's NOT a complex system. What it IS is a far more democratic system than the winner-take-all electoral college method. Majority Preferential Voting elects leaders that more accurately reflect the actual (not supposed) desires of the people. It also allows people to vote for their third party choices without fear and/or intimidation from the main two parties.

I believe I read that New Zealand actually elects their leader this way (any Kiwi Browncoats out there who can verify this?).



If we citizens truly wish to allow third parties to influence our Congressional bodies, we need to look into a Proportional Representation system which is a bit more complex. In a Prop. Rep. system, districts vote for parties not candidates. The parties are rewarded seats proportional to their election results (get 5% or more of the vote... receive 5% or more of the seats in congress or the state house, etc.). The parties then hold conventions and decide who to send, a process the average citizen can also participate in if they stay involved with their party after election day. When in effect, a multi-party congressional body would need to form coalitions and share ideas to pass legislation.


Since I'm ranting... (sorry!)... I'll also add that I think it's loooooong overdue that we have Binding National Referendums in the U.S. I, for one, would have LOVED to vote "No!" on NAFTA before our short-sighted politicians signed our nation up for that.

I would limit national referendums so as to NOT include the ability for the citizenry to take away existing or theoretical constitutional guarantees (as Bush & Co. are now trying to with the derisive defense of marriage amendment). However, if we citizens so chose to give ourselves MORE freedom (short of legalizing violence) I am not opposed to that. I would love to see guaranteed universal healthcare put up for referendum in my lifetime. The U.S. is so far behind the rest of the industrialized world on that score that it is embarassing.


Finally:
* We need to minimize the influence/importance of the Electoral College if not outright abolish it.
* We need to make legislative "riders" illegal. Too many sinister changes are making their way into law via such riders.


The tools for building a better U.S. are out there... the test run / experimental phases of such changes were conducted (thankfully, some would say) by braver nations than ours... and the successes are on record along with the pitfalls.

Trying nothing new here in the "envy of the world" (yeah, right!) is, I'm afraid no longer an option.

Okay, I'm done rambling.

Stay gold! Keep Flying!

mattro

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SigynM: Well having to deal with pseudo intellectuals like yourself for too long, its bound to put folks in a pissy mood as you describe it. I have written at length, even in this tread, enough that seems to me would make that meaning clear to anyone who is an English speaker, and has half a brain. Or who is not playing some BS word game and really trying to understand what I am saying. I answered your questions for a while, until it just simply got too ridiculous any more.

You don't know the meaning of life. Not in any philosophic context, but the meaning of the bloody word "life". Now tell me again this is any kind of honest attempt on your part to understand what is said. And I leave it up to you to convince me that this is not some silly little game you are playing.

As for your psychological comments about my use of the word "we", I doubt very much that you are alone in your views, just as I am not alone in mine. I represent a side in this debate. Just as you represent a side. So thanks for you "concern", but again, I figured that it was something too simple to dwell on, and that someone so intelligent as yourself, would understand it all too quickly.

Yes I lost my temper. The stupidity pretending to be wisdom on display by your side is maddening. The arrogance that can not even tell the difference between a cup and a bowl, or who sees everything as shades of grey, and attempts to pass this off as somehow useful, it is bothersome.

I can be bothered if I even suspected you were listening. But you weren't. You just want to play silly little games, trying to show off that superior intellect of yours. It didn't work and I called you on it. Forcefully, and probably impolitely, but that is life.

"Wash, where is my damn spaceship?"

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Originally posted by Honey:
Drakon,

You have split this into black and white, as if there are only "good guys" and "bad guys" in your world. Furthermore, your posts indicate that you believe that since they are "the bad guys," by definition we must be "the good guys" -- and as such are incapable of doing bad ourselves.

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Sigh... This is a perfect example of why I was in a "pissy mood" this morning.

Yes, i have broken it down to bad guys and good guys. Call me daft but I think killing 3,000 people by crashing airlines into skyscrapers is a bad thing. To me that is a very black and white issue. Why more folks cannot grasp that, I have no clue. It has nothing to do with who is what, or even what we are capable of. It does have to do with what we do with that capability.

Have their been bad things that happen? Yes, its war. Bad things happen in war. But I look at all the charges, accusations, ankle biting trivia, and I have come to the conclusion that there is no moral equivalence here. Feeding someone feet first into a plastics shredder is a bad thing to do to another person, generally speaking. Hooking up electrodes to a body and threatening to pull the switch, may not be good, but is still far better than the first example. Court marshalling the folks who ran Abu Ghraib still makes us better than those who ran the prison before. And ignoring all of the good that came about from removing Saddam, some of it still unfolding as we speak, to consentrate on what will be little more than a minor footnote, I don't see as a useful exercise.

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You are arguing against my points as if I ascribe to that same immature 'philosophy' and your stance boils down to a belief that I am taking the side of the "bad guys." This greatly misrepresents what I've said. By taking this stance, you have missed entirely everything that I've tried to convey to you.

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Well there seems to be a lot of that going about. Yes, I do see you as siding with the bad guys. I don't think that is your intentions, but it matters not. I doubt you even realize it. Actions have consequences and we don't get to pick and choose them. If those consequences end up bad, well, again, what you intended is irrelevant. And in this case, in this war, those consequences can be very bad indeed.

You worry about the rights of terrorist who want to kill us and don't mind dying in the process. Like a flock of lawyers is going to scare them out of committing their next atrocity. You seem oblivious to the fact that habeus corpus can negatively impact our ability to garner intelligence.

Home front morale, especially in a democracy is important as well. Democracies can vote, decide collectively whether to continue, or give up. As Vietnam proved, one can win militarily on the battlefield and have all those lives and resources wasted, if the public gives up on the war before the enemy does. The political left, not the North Vietnamese won that war, by convincing enough Americans to give up on South East Asia. And the words 'boat people' came into our lexicon.

When the French took over, there was no fleeing. And when the Japanese invaded during WW2, the Vietnamese did not run. But when the North finally invaded south Vietnam, and the US refused to lift a finger to help, that is when the vietnamese people started fleeing.

Only this time it isn't some far off Oriental country. Its here at home that we are fighting for. Our lives, our freedoms, our ability to have these discussions no matter how heated they may be.

Earlier the term baby killers was brought up, and you said nobody was doing that. And after I read your words, I read a story out of Seattle about a veteran wearing their medals during a 4th of July parade and getting exactly those terms and those remarks directed at him. I don't think you knew of it at the time, but still it is happening again.

You apparently fail to see how this constant harping on Abu Ghraib impacts all this. And I am at a loss to explain it any better than I have already.

I do quibble with

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Originally posted by TomSmeagol:
What bothers me is that you feel the need to belittle and demean EVERY single point that someone else makes if you don't agree with it. I've read many posts that use perfectly valid debate techniques which you've dismissed as being invalid arguments. Just because someone doesn't agree with you doesn't mean their argument is invalid, Drakon.

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Sigh.

I actually feel I have been more than patient here. And I see what I have done is arguing against their points, rather than 'belittling' them. Granted my last few posts have been a bit "pissy" but frankly I feel justified somewhat, considering the stuff that has been spewed my way.

Chalk it up to fatigue if you like. Trying to explain things to some people, who instead want to play word games, can be tiring.

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And going back to one of your original statements, the minority party ALWAYS demonizes the majority party, whether that means democrats attacking republicans (which is what we currently have) or republicans attacking democrats (the Clinton era and Carter era are two recent examples).

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Funny, this was one of my original points. But I also think there is a reason why the minority party is the minority party, and that is they are not effectively convincing the American populace. I have read what they write, what they put out. And I can see why they are having difficulty, but it is apparent to me that many of them simply don't care.

Critisism is one thing, and can be a good thing. But that is not what we are getting here. We are not getting an honest debate, we are getting word games, charges, innuendo, ad hominum attacks. Even presenting a logical, if forceful, argument does not get the argument addressed, it gets the argument dismissed as 'belittling' (as just one example).

In Farenheit 911, one of the charges Moore makes is that the present administration smuggled out bin Ladan's relatives right after 9-11. Even putting aside factual errors concerning timing, or that Richard Clarke, no Bush lover, has claimed responsibility for those flights, there is a big problem with that charge.

I got a little brother. And when we were growing up, sometimes he would do something and I would get in trouble because of it. "Why didn't you stop him?" my mom would yell. And I am sure other sibling have had similar experiences.

But then my brother never killed 3,000 people in a single day.

With emotions the way they were shortly after 9-11, it is reasonable to assume that after the death and destruction of that day, some rather angry folks might not have been too discriminating as to which bin Ladan they lynched. And so, it seems prudent to get his relatives out of harms way as soon as possible. Yet this is taken as an example of something bad, something that should not have been done.

I don't know what Moore or his supporters would recommend, consentration camps and torturing them for information seems out. Allowing them to be lynched by an angry mob does not appeal to me either, and I doubt it would to most folks. So I am left with the fact that Moore is charging the Bush administration with preventing the lynching of folks whose only tie to 9-11 was an accident of birth. And this is supposedly a bad thing.

This is the kind of stuff I am dealing with here. It makes no sense. And before we dismiss Moore as someone who does not speak for the DNC, it should be noted that Congress shut down, so the Democrats in congress could go to Moore's film, that the chairman of the DNC embraces Moore and is quoted as "believing" Moores charges.

This cannot work out well for the Democrats. If the general perception of the Democratic party is that it is unpatriotic, it won't get elected. People are basically self interested, and are not going to vote people in power who give the impression that they do not like the electorate, think the populace is stupid, or would give any other nation a veto on our right to defend ourselves.

And that is probably the real danger involved. While I may be a Repub

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If someone tells you to go get the "cup", you're not likely to pick up a ladle, a pot, or a spoon. But what if there are Japanese teacups, coffee cups, and glasses all in one cupboard? Would you know what the other person was referring to? Probably not.

So what about words that are abstract- like "freedom"?? How can we have a conversation when we can't discuss what those words mean?

You've used the words "free" and "freedom" many times in different ways. You use it, you talk around it, you give examples (security, prison, tyranny) of its opposite or refer to what it produces (prosperity) but you've never defined it. I don't think you can. I think you're challenged by the very thought. I think you use words... like "we" and "people" and "life" AND "cup" ... unconsciously, presuming a consensus that doesn't exist.

I used the word "life" simply as an example, like the word "cup". I KNOW the meaning of "life" (BTW, I meant "life" not "human life"). I also know that there are examples where the definition breaks down. (What about viruses? What about prions? What about mycoplasma?) Recognizing that definitions have limits doesn't mean wiping out all distinctions. (There's that either/or thinking again!) It simply recognizes that the universe doesn't conveniently fit itself into our neat little mental boxes.

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