Herman Cain: Another Country Club Conservative Elitist

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I'm still pulling for Romney. Cain as VP? Maybe but we still need someone who's been a governor as our presidential pick and particularly one who puts other issues such as rebuilding the economy further ahead of religion than most of the others would.

I like Herman Cain. Theres a difference between being in the Senate/House for a couple years and voting, and actually having hands-on administrative experience in the real world.

And since he's black, many people will wrongly and falsely slander him with an "uncle tom" portrait.

I think this is where CORE really needs to ramp up the publicity war - exercise compassionate conservatism in terms of not only putting private capital to further African American causes but, making sure it gets televised and making sure that they set the record strait on the public scale. Being able to front beliefs, narratives, and ideas in a marketing-sexy way is something I think conservatives need to get a lot better at.

The bottom line is that none of this matters. If he gets to the point where he's a serious candidate rather than a "flavor of the week", his 9/9/9 plan will be ripped apart and he'll pretty much be a laughing stock. Have you taken a look at it? He should have his math degree revoked.

Is this a schoolyard taunt? I thought you said you were above such things. Well obviously you’re not. If I were like you I would tell you to grow up.


That’s your mentality, not mine. I don’t fight for the thrill of it. That’s what trolls do. If I say you come across as cocky, that’s my actual perception of you. Take it as an insult and an excuse to troll me if you want. I’m not really interested in playing games with you though.


Well, a lot of American voters DO take Herman Cain seriously. Therefore I think criticism of him is a legitimate topic.

Black voters vote for Democrats because the only other realistic choice is even less interested in courting them. Blacks are not blindly loyal to Democrats, they are merely voting in their best interest by choosing what they feel is the lesser evil. For someone as logical as yourself, I don’t get what’s so hard to understand about it. The problem is the political system which offers no viable alternatives, not blind loyalty.


Fine. You are a minority though as it seems most libertarian leaning people dislike him almost entirely for his economic policies and only throw in civil liberties abuses unrelated to economics to score a few additional points against him.


Well, I don’t think M_P cares about your approval of his catch-phrases. The very fact that you think he should look for your approval is what comes across as a passive-aggressive obnoxiousness. Please just admit that you like trying to goad people and get under their skin by acting cocky. You’re the type of person who likes to pick fights for personal gratification. Basically you’re a troll.


Just drop the silly BS and admit you two are equally in the mud with each other. You both clearly provoke each other, intentionally, due to a personality clash, and now you want to be an ass and provoke me as well. However, I don’t like games or flagrant dishonesty. I’m beginning to understand why you were once banned from this site.


Just looking at how much you’ve written tells me that you aren’t really blowing me off. You’re playing games. You obviously do care about what some people say on the internet or you wouldn’t have such an obsession with “calling people out”.


You see my sympathy as a flaw. Maybe it is. Personally I think this world could use a little more sympathy and a little less “rugged individualism”.



“sport”? You really can’t drop the cheeky tone and talk to me straight? Instead it’s back to schoolyard psychoanalysis games.


No, there are plenty of people who can laud their accomplishments without using them as a political weapon. I’d like you to point out one time I got angry at someone for sharing their accomplishments that wasn’t in the context political posturing, or using their story as a judgmental pronouncement against people who point out the reality that not everyone can “pull themselves up by their bootstraps”. If you can’t come up with one instance I’m going to call your diagnosis a bunch of baloney. I don’t have a problem with people who decide not to focus on external factors that they cannot change and instead focus only on what they can improve. I have problem though when this very positive philosophy gets warped into a negative political attack weapon.


I’ve always appreciated DW_a_mom’s contributions.


Oh wow.

I really don’t have the patience to dig but I’ll point to your claim that blacks are blindly loyal to the Democratic Party based on the fact that they tend to vote overwhelmingly Democratic. A tendency to vote for the perceived “lesser evil” does not logically translate into loyalty.

Your claim that I think my (alleged) "willingness to resort to violence” lends logical credence to my opinions is something you pulled straight out of your ass. I suppose it’s not my fault that you completely misinterpreted my argument, but it’s still irritating as hell. Libertarians have a strong moral reaction and place a strong weight against the initiation of force, even if it is used in the framework of laws. I have a stronger moral reaction to lack of justice in the social sense. If four people are trapped on a small plot of land for some determined amount of time and one person has more than adequate shares of food for himself and the other three, I don’t think he has the right to hoard it all for himself and let the other three starve. I’d say force is justified to bring about a more equitable scheme where everyone at least survives. So basically what I was arguing was that I am just as offended by gross inequality and unfairness as you are offended by the use of force or violence. I was not using violence as a logical justification. I was pointing out a symmetry, that both of our political belief systems are driven by moral axioms that ultimately CAN’T be backed by logic.


What if the stereotypes do have a grain of truth that can be shown in various studies? I already posted such a study.


So do I, if you ever bothered to read posts I’ve made when I was calm. You choose to only focus on my flaws. You only address me when I get angry and you think I’m acting out of line, but generally ignore all other posts of mine. You refuse to engage me in any real arguments that aren’t personal complaints against me. You just have an axe to grind against me because you can’t possibly understand why certain things enrage me and think I’m just being a dick. I’ve already admitted that I have an anger problem and that it’s a personal flaw and a medical issue but that isn’t good enough for you. You have to act like a god damn troll. I suppose the ends justify the means. I am wrong so you are entitled to address me as a troll would address someone and attach false interpretations and psychological motives to me.


You are incredibly biased. You refuse to take notice when I do participate in intelligent debate.

You’re also making accusations of hypocrisy based on a false equivalence. I generally don’t judge people who don’t first judge others. People don’t get a free-pass on having a judgmental attitude because the attitude is a built-in component of their ideology. Ignorance is also not an excuse.


I fail to see how his being homeless supposedly makes his opinion more credible. He seemed to argue that because he was able to overcome adverse circumstances, everyone should be able to overcome their circumstances. That seems positive on the surface, but when you look at the actual statistics, others are not so fortunate. How can one justify the existence of those who aren’t able to overcome their circumstances without judgment, if you think everyone should be able to overcome their circumstances? Did they merely not try hard enough?

Fnord also states repeatedly that he has no patience for people who “self-pity” and looks down at a certain relative of his with contempt. How constructive is that kind of attitude? What did this person do to deserve contempt? What if “self-pity” is a symptom of a mental illness. Maybe he finds it frustrating that he can’t get someone to “snap out of it”, so strong is his conviction that he’s seen the light and has been able to banish his “self-pity”, but does anyone really deserve contempt for a possible mental illness?


I didn’t accuse him of malice, but there’s no way for me to not find some of his attitudes offensive and upsetting.


He mentioned his charitable work as a defense against criticism of his views. If not bragging, it was certainly about improving his image in the face of people who would say that some of his views appear heartless. I probably jumped to a premature conclusion concerning Fnord though as his actions of helping the homeless seem very noble. The issue is I’ve seen a lot of upper-middle-class conservatives use their charitable giving as a defensive shield while pointing their finger at someone working a minimum wage as if they could possibly afford to give as much in charity. My irritation from past debate experiences in this exact same political context lead to a pre-mature pavlovian response on my part. I know you have a vested interest in trying to keep me thinking that you honestly believe your “inferiority complex” theory though.


I may not be able to control my emotions, but I can tell when someone is being phony. Again, I’m not interested in playing games. If you want full sincerity or reconciliation stop addressing me as a troll.

Last edited by marshall on 05 Oct 2011, 11:15 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Trolls are out to grief people. Enjoying debate doesn't make one a troll...

Deliberately baiting people over issues your really don't care about for the lulz, however, is trolling.

I was gonna just sit back and enjoy this dogfight in silence but I just could not resist a few of these observations.

marshall wrote:

Are you sure you don’t have Dox confused with me??



So one guy comes prepared and the other three don’t. Sort of like an ant vs. grasshopper scenario ‘cept this time the grasshoppers forcibly steal from the ant.
A simple but classical case of collectivism.


When was this??? I must have had to take the dog out to pee that minute.

There, now I feel better.
Enjoy.....

For some reason this brings to mind a particular situation from the US Civil War. The various states of the Confederacy were very unwilling to share with each other. To this end some states hoarded things from ammunition to uniforms to boots. The end result was the failure of the Confederate military campaign. Had the CSA Federal government coerced the state governments to cooperate fully for the cause of independence they may have stood a better chance. This is the argument that "the Confederacy died of State's Rights". Stubborn individualism has a place in ensuring personal survival but in some cases can be a liability when not looked at in the big picture. It could be the "ant & the grasshopper" situation or it could be more complicated than that (more likely). Not that I'm advocating collectivism. The idea of living in some kind of collective commune sounds like a hippie nightmare to me

In the situation Marshall described, it is pretty basically reasonable. I mean, nobody is going to stick to property rights if adherence means death. The issue is that this simple analysis doesn't match reality that well. At the same time, grasshopper vs ant doesn't match the reality that well either.

Hording of resources is typical of any bureaucracy; trust me I deal with it five days a week.
And the War of Northern Aggression isn't the touchy spot with me like you'd like to think it is.
Nice try, though

Whatever...........
The facts of that scenario weren’t spelled out, either.
If all four were yanked out of thin air and placed on a small desolate island or whatever then it stands to reason that none of them would have much more than what’s in their pockets. Maybe a few with backpacks with a laptop and a few snickers or bars or whatever at best.

On the other hand if there was a known potential to be stuck someplace like that it’s on the individual to be prepared. Then they can pool their resources to increase survivability.

We can pick flysh!t out of pepper all day and come up with nutty scenarios but I’ve just stated the only two remotely logical ones.

No. You don't have the pretense of acting like moderator while simultaneously "pwning" me.


There's no assumption that any party was more prepared than the other. It's all capricious happenstance. Imagine a plane crash on a deserted island. Everyone loses all their belongings other than clothes. One person lucks out and stumbles upon a cache of food with enough for everyone. Is he entitled to claim it all for himself and hoard it? Maybe you think violence is wrong but clearly this guy is being an antisocial dick.


Or you just didn't have the attention span to notice. Seeing as you only seek out opportunities for one-liners and partisan banter. I'm not going to be too anal and criticize your style though. It's okay for comic relief when you, inuyasha, jakobvirgil, and pandabear go back and forth.

No, this just goes to show that I was right in saying racism is alive and well on the left and most people on the right think that racism is pointless.

Not addressing Dox47 with the following comment:
You get that you nuts on the left, I don't like Obama because of the fact he is a left-wing socialist ideologue, and really don't give a damn if he is white, black, or plaid.

I watched the video. I saw a bunch of people on one side of politics using stereotypes to attack the stereotypes used by the other side.

Or like a typical military experience!

Ironic, given how opposed "hippie" values are next to those of the army!