That's the ticket, we're really just afraid of him and don't actually enjoy his righteous mashing of fools.

.

lol at dvaut trying to spin fly's MO into a nice life lesson about white privilege, he'll love that

the strength of our electoral system is that they're 50 individual elections. luckily for the gop, the trump admin is attempting to centralize as much information about those 50 electoral systems as possible onto an online server that rudy giuliani is in charge of keeping secure

I fully agree with Clovis on some of the things he has said the few last pages wrt having firm grounds for our beliefs.

quote Clovis
1) not being extreme enough; and
/quote


Amen.

It's inbetween or bits of both.

The forum is self-selecting of course and I think Phone Booth (apologise if I have that wrong) made the excellent point that the main target of the technique isn't the right wing but the parts of the liberal left wing that think divisiveness is a bad thing and that politics is a lot more than calling the other sides names.

Why do you think that the first part of your sentence contradicts the second one? The only ways this post makes sense is if:

a) You can't enjoy his 'righteous mashing of fool' while also being afraid of disagreeing with him.

b) It's impossible for some to be afraid of him while others to find him entertaining, as my post.

English isn't my first language and it gives most of you guys an inherent advantage when arguing online in English, but I think your point might be slightly flawed.

Geez guys.

Absolutely. (forgot to mention that this ended up being a thread)



https://twitter.com/charlescwcooke/s...42001591558148

Really? A protracted discussion about whether Sarah ****ing Palin might be a racist? Can't we just table this and go back to making WWE analogies?

It is a nice life lesson about privilege. I'm trading in some of my currency of posting here for whatever, 13 ****ing or something far too long. Such that I could predict a bunch of Clovis's Feral Child defenses before he spent 10 posts making them. At some point you've seen and read everything internet arguments have to offer and to the extent Clovis recognizes that and thinks I'm worth listening to, I make my posts in that spirit: Take it from me. Fly is not uniquely bad. He's common. And actually pretty smart, knowledgeable, funny and witty. Objectively speaking. Contextually -- who Clovis is, how he expects to be treated, that Fly's barbs aren't commonly heard and often catch people off guard. I totally get the offense. BUT ONLY CONTEXTUALLY.

People would be good well to learn the lesson. There are tons of cruel, miserable things said to people on this forum. Tons of misery and sadness in the world at large. That outrage is focused on Fly not because what he says is out of bounds or violates any specific objective norms but simply because the targets aren't accustomed to the disrespect. Whether that's privilege or perhaps some unique bit of temperament from other origins perhaps is debatable but in no ****ing way would I ever grant that Fly is uniquely offensive or beyond the pale. Literally get the **** out of your house or basement or whatever rock you're living under if you think Fly's 2p2 posts are grave dangers set against the Social Contract of propriety. It's a ****ing joke if people are really that myopic or blind to the meanness and cruelty and disrespect happening all around them, every day. The people who carry around literal years long grudges against Fly are simply snowflakes in the common internet parlance of the day. There's no real alternative explanation. Whether they are born like that or got there by being spoiled by society, I guess I have my take but am willing to listen to alternative theories.

I'm saying, my read on you is that you thought you found an angle that would make you appear to be above those of us who like his posting. You got to imply that you're braver than the crowd here.

No one in this thread argued Palin isn't a racist. Clovis received a 'righteous mashing' for suggesting that:

a) There's a difference between being a racist and being a white supremacist
b) Her sharing of an article from some idiotic right-wing 'news site' wasn't a clever attempt to send a code out to her local neo-nazi branch.

Na, a bunch of middling posters jump on Flys bandwagon, as they are wont to do. Fly is basically has the mentality of a bully, and his fanboys are more than happy to get their shots in.

Well, we've officially met Clovis's standard for knowingly pushing white supremacy, so.....................................

One reason Fly's BS bothers me is that it helps to drive away solid posters. It's not like there are 1000 active members on 2p2 politics, so it ticks me off when fly goes rabid on solid posters.

I can grant this, but are a bunch of the people who get super triggered by Fly really consistent opponents of abuse and aggressive rhetoric on the internet?

The answer is no, so like I said: these people aren't upset by the conduct but by the fact they're on the wrong side of it.

I honestly don't understand this point. Context matters. Virtually any amount of antagonism is fine when directed at David Duke. A little more politeness is probably warranted when dealing with someone whose views are more thoughtful and nuanced, even if you disagree with those views.

DVaut, I agree with you a lot, and I think you are a great poster, but GTFO with this shepherd-leading-his-flock crap.

Doesn't bandwagon imply that Fly has only recently become beloved? He's an established poster, not a sports team that finally made the playoffs.

In the abstract, sure. Who can quibble with politeness? I'm not suggesting Fly stumbled onto an ideal way to talk to people here.

But the real world is full of rudeness. People tolerate it all the time. It's part of the mosaic of human behavior. You can couple that with the fact anyone who has been on the internet for a while implicitly understands that when you go chatting on a forum, it's going to be a little more rough and tumble than say a face to face interaction. A little bit of Stoicism can take these people a long way.

So sure, a little bit of politeness might be a good idea but when the norm is violated and these guys get talked down to -- it's not a ****ing crisis. And it's time for those guys to get a grip. It's a common human experience. Get over yourselves.

Clovis seemed to call me out in his goodbye, so I was trying to use what influence I ostensibly had over him to tell him no, it's really you, not Fly. And here's why. I wanted to say both, hey, well, if you seem to respect me -- here's what I really think. And I wanted people to know it wasn't schtick or sarcasm, like just an FYI if you're going to sing my praises, here's some food for thought and I ain't ****ing around: get some thicker skin.

Jamelle Bouie's Slate piece on Trump's speech is spot on. I saw a few conservatives and "regular" journalists defending defending the speech, or at least reporting that the WH was quite pleased with it, which was shocking.

By calling people out on their errors and bs? Solid posters aren't shrinking violets who can't take some heat when they're wrong, imo.

and a lot of the 'triggered' stuff is just part of the same <cough> 'extrapolation'

Is Fly 'triggered' every time he does his stuff? Are the flybies really that sensitive when the method they support gets treated with the reverence it deserves?

The key to gettin the country back is turning out your voters and middles. Being nice to racists is a losing strategy.

One thing I find absolutely astounding is that David Sklansky is almost unquestionably the most derided and abused person on this forum, often times unjustifiably. Sometimes rightfully. It's a mix. Still, I am sure people are way overly mean to David.

But in any case, David is a 60 something year old man who didn't grow up on the internet and who should find the tone and attitude far more outside of bounds than younger guys who ostensibly grew up in this. And I assume he has some sort of ownership stake in the sight (the incentives cut both ways: he doesn't want to chase away the traffic and benefits if he becomes a spectacle; but he might understandably not want to host a parade of people insulting him). And his identity is necessarily public. And in terms of contributions back to us, he has written some very valuable books on poker, or just strategy you can extrapolate out to other parts of your life, I assume most of us have read and took some stuff from, and made money from it, or improved our lives or thinking.

And he gets **** on a bunch. Way more than anyone save maybe long departed guys like ikestoys or Nielsio. And he trucks on with really very little complaining. None of that I've ever seen.

So on a lot of variables, he should tolerate very little of the abuse.

OTOH you have these people who are likely 15-35 year old guys and grew up on the internet and lose their **** consistently, are highly wedded to pedantic and arbitrary tone policing, and whose principle hobby on the forum seems to be following Fly around to try to recapture some of their stolen dignity.

People should study this phenomenon. In any event, I can't believe I'm saying this: but these people should post more like David ****ing Sklansky. He's proof positive you can have all of the pointless navel gazing and ham-handed right-winger assumptions and post lots of half-baked thoughts and you can live happily paying very little attention to Fly. Give it a try everyone.

Yeah, it's almost ripe for satire. Being offended by unjustified personal assults is merely a reflection of white privilege. Universal solvent. (Why Popper emphasized falsification as the demarcation between science and BS.)

Funny thing is, given 100 random people, Clovis' views are probably closer to Dvauts than 98, but the people's front for the popular liberation of palistine is always going to spend it's efforts attacking the popular front for the people's liberation of palistine.

Actual politics, of the kind that gets **** done, is more about avoiding purity than emphasizing it.