What is it with Liberal Progressives Anyways

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@ Dox:
sometimes, punching a punching bag is fun. It's almost like that's what it's there for.

Maybe so, it just seemed like some people were taking the exercise a bit too seriously, hence my query.

Cute, however it looks like you have lost the argument. Care to explain why Fox News is the only outlet in with a net positive when it comes to trust in the United States. So with that in mind it looks like I have in fact been using a credible source. CNN came in second place but has a -2 net when it came to trust.

The cute thing is that you actually seem to believe you are "winning" any of these debates. Even ask Dox: he is always ready to call out the liberals on this board and defend conservatives, and he has pointed out to you repeatedly that you're just embarrassing yourself and your movement with your weak arguments.

I'll let you in on something. Nobody here care what news source the "American People" trust most. If you were to have a poll in 1933 Germany the numbers would show that the majority of Germans trusted Adolf Hitler. That the masses will believe nonsense is nothing new.

So because leftwing media critics claim that Fox News is a notorious yet effective propoganda outlet that takes advantage of people's trust to further lies and polls prove that Faux is the "most trusted name in news" of 49% of the American people, somehow the leftwing media critics are wrong?

What strange, non-classical system of logic do you use, Inuyasha?

I only spoke up to Inuyasha at all because I couldn't tell if he was genuinely trying to engage in debate and was just hopelessly outgunned in here, but based on his responses I have to conclude that he's beyond my help. I even brought up epistemic closure, one of the more damaging attacks on conservatives in general in trying to crack his cocoon, to no avail. I suppose I should be grateful that at least I don't have another blood feud on my hands, trying to show people how much they're shooting up their own feet can get pretty messy in here.

I'd like to take the opportunity to reiterate that if I seem to go after liberal arguments on here more than conservative ones, it's not so much that I'm more sympathetic to the conservative cause as it is that the liberal side is much better represented here and seldom needs defending. I'll readily cop to liking to back the underdog, if nothing else it can be a good intellectual challenge and helps keep this place from echoing too much. That, and being from Seattle I've seen a lot more liberal bullshit up close and personal than the conservative variety, so I'm more sensitized to it. Being from Ohio and all Orwell, I'm sure you can sympathize in the opposite direction.

Yeah, it probably is a fairly similar experience in reverse. I haven't had to see quite as many stupid liberals, so when I do encounter them it is more of a curiosity and less grating.

I guess I just have trouble seeing Inuyasha as the underdog despite him being outnumbered. Despite how much his fallacious arguments can annoy me, I'm inclined give him more credit than you do. He's not a weakling. He doesn't let the opposition get under his skin. He doesn't ever really whine about getting getting ganged up on or beat up by the big bad liberals. He's not like a lot of the other conservatives who have come and passed. He takes the hits, or actually it's more like he endlessly bobs and weaves, but the point is he never quits or changes his tune. When the argument isn't going his way he just baits and changes the topic. His actual arguments are terrible but he still manages to have control just by infuriating everyone. It's about like I'd imagine having a real life political debate with Sean Hannity or Glenn Beck in person would be like. I sure as hell don't feel sorry for either of those two just because their arguments are weak.

Maybe it is a waste of time and energy to get worked up over him, but we all have our vices. As for me, I had surgery just a few days ago and am off school, off work, and mostly couch-ridden. So basically it's pretty hard to pull myself away from this forum at this juncture. Unless I can find something better to do on the internet.

@Marshall

Actually, Inuyasha does posses the persecution complex so many Fundamentalist Christian Conservatives to have visited this form had. From the start he accused the left of being "intolerant" of him and "bigoted" and viewed himself as a hero fighting the "Alinskian tactics" of the left (no doubt, Inuyasha problem hasn't read anything by Alinsky or knows anything about him that isn't spoon-fed by the Chalkboard conspiracist or other propogandistic ideologues of the American Right).

I would say that an intellectually bleeding heart liberal approach to dealing with disingenious GOP operatives is much less effective than my angry leftist approach.

Inuyasha's persecution complex isn't really personal. It's just him repeating right wing talking points. I can tell when people are genuinely upset. Inuyasha seems pretty impervious.

Anyways, I actually agree with you. Dox seems to think it looks bad for all of us to be attacking someone "below us", but that kind of assumes that debating is about proving intellectual prowess or rhetorical skills. It's not about that for me. I don't have anything to prove. I simply find inuyasha's ideology rather irritating, even dangerous, especially since he isn't the only one. It's pretty hard not to respond when he posts what I think is a lot of nonsense, and dangerous nonsense at that. Is it a waste of time to engage with him? I don't know.

On second deliberation, I think you're right.



EDIT: Initally I just listed two sound reasons and said "two sound reasons". Later I added a third without correcting the verbal numerical reference. I have finally gotten around to doing that.

There's actually three pretty sound reasons to debate someone who's ideas are self-evidently absurd and will not bend to reason.

1) Sometimes there are observers who'd agree the guy is wrong, yet can't verbalize what's so intuitively laughable about the opponents claims. Verbalizing what's wrong with absurd things will help others identify the deeper reason a given ideologue is wrong rather than just "it's obvious".
2) Some people, those who follow intellectual style follows the Peripheral route of persuasion, actually will (fallaciously) be convinced by the "last guy replying" as an index of correctness. There's a lot more people like this than many arch-intellectualists would like to think. Repetition has been proved as an effective method to make even the most inane of ideas "common knowledge".
3) Almost all ultraconservative ideologues I have dealt with hit a point where they think "you know what, I've had enough of you rhetorically fighting back, let's de-escalate this and I'll try to be more reasonable".

I wasn't speaking to Inuyasha specifically when I spoke of underdogs, but to conservative arguments and principle in general on WP PPR. The liberal position is much better represented here than the conservative one, so I tend to critique liberals more often due to the disparity in opportunity as much as any personal feeling on the matter. I could and sometimes do critique conservatives and their ideas, but generally the rest of the board does a perfectly good job of that without my help. I'm sure that if this forum had a conservative bent, I'd soon be tagged as the board liberal for the same reasons I'm sometimes thought to be conservative here. I'm also not talking about conservatism at large in the world, just conservatism here in this forum. I'm certainly not suggesting that you feel sympathy for conservative (or any other brand) commentators, they know what they've signed up for.

I view Inuyasha (but not just him) personally as the political equivalent of a script kiddie hacker, he doesn't seem able to formulate original points and positions but rather deploys the arguments of others (not even good arguments either) and then uses more C&Ps to defend them. His "ability" to stay on message and deflect criticism isn't a strength but rather a compensating mechanism for a weakness, namely that he seems lost if dragged off of a fairly narrowly defined ideological framework. He may stay focused, but what is he accomplishing with it other than pissing off liberals? He's certainly personifying some of the worst conservative stereotypes with his insistence on the infallibility of Fox News, defense of torture, hypocrisy on big government, etc, so I can't imagine that anyone who doesn't already share his beliefs taking him at all seriously. Being very focused and energetic in an ineffective pursuit is still not being effective.



Hmm, I don't know if PPR is the best option for a peaceful recovery... Hopefully you'll be back on your feet soon though, the couch bound thing can be a real drag. I wasn't judging or anything, I was just sort of surprised that one guy was dominating the board so completely for the last couple weeks, and with so little actual content. Then again, I've gotten pretty good at compartmentalizing when talking politics, so maybe I just don't get the whole thing.

Vocal conservatives have gotten away with making many loudmouth threads that go away. If there ever was a "liberal" position on the board, it has long since been diluted into irrelevance by the hordes of vocal conservatives who've came on here since.

Probably there are more liberals on the board, but the conservatives are loud enough that they are probably represented at least as well.