Join Date: Nov 2008
Posts: 4,861
The idea is this: Reflect awhile and try to identify one Politics forum poster -- among all the ones you remember coming across -- who in your mind is linked with the strongest negative associations. It can be someone with whom you've had heated arguments, or whom you've quietly read with great disdain, or whatever.
Then try to come up with the strongest piece of genuine, non-sarcastic praise that you can muster about that person as you know him. Can it be done, I ask you!
I was thinking a sample reply could look like this:
1. [Name of "archenemy"]
2. [Reasons he elicits such negative associations in your mind](optional)
3. [Piece of genuine praise]
Maybe this is lame, has been done is some fashion before, or is too flammable to succeed -- but I'll go first obviously.
1. nick_van_exel
2. Seems to sincerely believe and champion every syllable of the half-baked, rabble-rousing soundbites and hysterical chatter that demagogues like Hannity and Beck manufacture for profit and in the service of conservative elites.
3. He belongs to and engages with this Politics forum, rather than shutting himself off entirely in a rigidly ideological forum attached to some partisan political organization. This means I'm somehow off the mark about (2), since nick_van_exel is here, evidently subjects himself to a mix of viewpoints, many of which violently disagree with him, and yet nick_van_exel persists. The experience can't be too pleasant. I don't know how long I could last in his shoes before running off to more comfortable territories. He's probably tougher than me.
