This is not a complete explanation by any means. I didn't go to Auburn but I am very, very familiar with the town. It's basically just a college town. 60,000 residents, 35,000 of which are the types of students you would find in any large public university. It's not a hotbed of political extremism, especially by the standards of the deep South. I would guess that it splits very close to 50/50 in presidential elections.

Except they all have Beemers and Audis.

Huh?

That was my experience visiting Auburn in the 90s. Never seen so many nice cars at a college.

I don't know where you were driving. Auburn is certainly not perceived as the in state school for rich kids. It's an ag school for ****'s sake, derisively referred to as a cow college by Alabama fans.

I wish there was a Veterans of Forum Wars (VFW) around where old timers can hang out and reminisce about the small parts we played fighting the forces of Libertopia. It was horrible and harrowing, but one never felt so alive.

Well, to be fair, it's probably not. It's the out-of-state fallback school for rich kids from suburban Atlanta.

Yes lots of people I met were from Georgia, MS and FL. My friend was dating some dude was in the Auburn version of Skull and Bones - Spades. He was in the rich kid frat I think.

But then we hung out with her editor at the school newspaper (who eventually became her husband) at his frat - which was supposedly the alternative frat. But also everyone had money and wasn't very alternative. Facial hair apparently = radical at 1992 Auburn.

The initial car impression was from her apartment she shared with 3 other girls in a building that had all students. I'd never seen so many nice cars in one place full of college kids. I had a beat up K-car and was worried it might get towed.

Maybe I just missed all the poor parts of Auburn. Also I went to college in Kirksville, MO - so my experience might have been skewed a little toward beat up pickups and Chevy Novas.

This. Exactly.

I suppose I'm guilty of having been part of the much-maligned AC JV crew, although I didn't post with that much volume compared to some others. I guess you could say I'm still pretty committed to the kind of methodological individualism that leads one to find the idea of AC appealing - I just keep it to myself now.

Around spring 2008 (iirc), I entered a kind of post-political state that I remain in today and probably will forever. In fact, I think DVaut essentially referred to people like me in a recent post, although he did so derisively. I definitely fall into the group of young, not-financially-stressed white males who are not offered much by politics - other than entertainment, of course. And that entertainment generally only consists of elections and the accompanying horse race.

I used to really care deeply about finding the "correct" point of view and then evangelizing to everyone about it, but now the absolute last thing in the world I want to do is try to influence or persuade anyone about anything. Somewhere along the line, I guess it occurred to me that it emphatically does not matter what I believe, and not only that, but basically no one (in the real world) holds any beliefs that are remotely what you might call "well-considered" - including me. I just spent the last 3 days trying to convince my girlfriend that it is a safe activity for her to ride in a hot air balloon this weekend - seems like a waste of time to also be trying to convince her of the wisdom of school vouchers or whatever. I've become really focused on the things I actually control, which when you get right down to it, isn't very much (or if you're Sam Harris, absolutely nothing). Even thinking about something like who I would support to be President just seems like kind of a ridiculous question now. Might as well ask me which planet is the best one in the solar system. Who cares? That said, I'm definitely "rooting" for Trump for the entertainment value, obv. (I would be too embarrassed to tell anyone but my closest friends that in real life.) I haven't missed a minute of a Republican debate yet, with the exception of fast-forwarding through Carly, Christie, and Kasich during the last one. Maybe there are otherwise disinterested people out there who are "rooting" hard enough to pull the lever for Trump? Not me. Like pretty much everyone else, I thought Trump-mania would have subsided long ago, and didn't think he would run at all before that - it's been a fascinating ride. It still wouldn't surprise me one bit if he finds some pretext to drop out, perhaps unexpectedly or even as a favorite to win the nomination.

Re: having empathy for people who are not like me - I have empathy for people I know. Well, actually, not even all of them - I have empathy for the people I know the best. Most of them are like me, a few aren't. *shrug* It honestly blows my mind how some people apparently have deep feelings about total strangers they've never been within 10,000 miles of, but hey, everybody's different. If I did have empathy for everyone out there in America and elsewhere who was getting a raw deal in some way, I would find that to be quite a burden. Nothing in reality would be different, other than I would be profoundly unhappy thinking about how powerless I was to do anything to help. Somewhere deep inside me, there lies a future OP where we've discovered alien life, and some of the aliens are being mean to some of the other aliens 20 million light years away - how responsible are we for that? To what extent should we try to intervene to stop the Mean Aliens? I'll probably never post it. You're welcomed.

Phone Booth made a post back in the good old days about why he never really espoused any beliefs himself, or something to that effect - it was really good. I think I've unintentionally adopted a dumber, less empathetic version of that philosophy.

BTW, what was the great SMP invasion of 2014-15?? I think I missed that. Link? Is there a Wikipedia article on it?

I'm just here for the polls and the lols.

There's no single thread that covers all of it. Basically, a mod of SMP went on a racist tirade after some of us politics posters mocked some of his posts. Then he was de-modded. This lead to ~a year and a half of a wave of SMP posters inexplicably trying to derail various politics threads with unrelenting babbling. I really can't even explain why the SMP guys came here or what they were trying to accomplish.

This might be a starting point.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/55...rucez-1470818/

ah Trolly much as it's over I cant resist correcting one clear mistake among that rather partial summary of yours. There was no such SMP mod.

Bill if you're interested there's a lot of threads to read but much is also in the private mod forum. I for one wont be going through it all again as it was over so long ago but good luck if you really care. It was quite the Fiasco.

I don't know what to tell you. I didn't go to Auburn, but I know the town very, very well from back in the 1980s and 1990s. It's pretty hard for me to conceive of Auburn as some sort of de facto private school for rich kids. Alabama is one of the poorest states in the union. And how many rich kids want to go to a school that is mainly known for agricultural sciences, the veterinary school (esp large animal like cows), and maybe engineering?

There are more out of state students at Auburn than at some state schools, but that's largely a function of geography, as Auburn is right on the Georgia border. You see the same thing at Arkansas and Clemson, both of which also are very close to state borders.

Anyway, I'll stop as this is a total derail.

Correction: he was a probability mod who frequented SMP.

As always, chez, never forget that this whole thing would have blown over in a week and your friend would still be around if you guys had just left the politics forum well enough alone.

Good to see you still trying to apologise.

At least after how long is it now? you have a fact correct

bold 1: if it is strictly entertainment to you, then i don't know what to say. if you are so comfortable in your little bubble, they stay the hell out of politics entirely.

bold 2: try it sometime. it isn't nearly the burden you make it out to be. who knows, you might experience some personal growth.

As we speak, 18 months later, he is STILL in unchained tone policing that racists are sometimes called racist.

Yesterday he complained I wasn't nice to a poster who literally said all Muslims were "7th century barbaric pedophile rapists"

I vaguely remember this. The deliberate obtuseness of the Mises/Rothbard/Rockwell apologists is just stunning.

Speaking of wordy dudes, Phone Booth still posts sometimes, always excellently, but I do wonder what DrModern is doing these days.

Empathy for aliens isn't far-fetched. Even if they're fictional and lived a long time ago in a galaxy far far away.

You write pretty well. I enjoyed reading your post. It reminds me of YA fiction. Maybe you'll never be John Green, but you could try writing some to develop your puny empathy muscles.

Fwiw, that thread is full of golden moments from top to bottom and should probably be required reading for all new accounts. I think my favorite moment was the Mason Malmuth megapost which was something along the lines of "defending chattel slavery is an inevitable consequence of logical thinking and intellectual rigor, also I used to work at the Census where all my co-workers were dumb, so I'm pretty sure that makes me right about everything."

i read it (and the surrounding threads) while i was still lurking. it certainly made for interesting reading.

Ya, what little respect I had for the reds pretty much evaporated after that thread.

He still posts occasionally. http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...ostcount=17870