As a matter of courtesy i'll reply lastly to those who've made an attempt at bridging the gap which i must acknowledge considering it is one of my points.
@CamDawg. Although i responded to you pretty matter-of-fact, that was more due to that i believed you indeed made an effort before,in the opening discussion however i personally didn't believe you wanted to push the discussion as a matter of curiosity. "If this is the hill you wish the last shreds of your credibility to die upon, you have chosen poorly." was one of your first replies to me and it was not as if we had a long discussion prior where it got heated, to be frank it seemed out of the blue and i suspect you share the same sentiments as the other more, 'frustrated' posters here that i have talked about.
I personally wasn't interested in discussing with you since in my mind it started off in that way.
@Grond0. A general counsel, chief counsel or chief legal officer (CLO) is the chief lawyer of a legal department, usually in a company or a governmental department.
In a company, the person holding the position typically reports directly to the CEO, and their duties involve overseeing and identifying the legal issues in all departments and their interrelation, including engineering, design, marketing, sales, distribution, credit, finance, human resources, production, as well as corporate governance and business policy. This would naturally require in most cases reporting directly to the owner or CEO overseeing the very business on which the CLO is expected to be familiar with and advise on the most confidential level. This requires the CLO/general counsel to work closely with each of the other officers, and their departments, to appropriately be aware and advise -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_counsel
Never spoke to you before now, but you seem like a nice guy and you were always courteous so it was nice to meet you.
@Balrog99. My vote for Bernie was purely strategic against what i considered to be the establishment in the DNC, my views never aligned with him since i believe his beliefs in socialism were wholly impractical though i think he is a decent guy. It's not really possible to classify me in any particular group because i know i don't share wholly or even in half all the beliefs and attitudes of them, the only caveat is i am sympathetic to the original libertarian ideal, but only that far since it cannot deal with all matters, outside that i mainly just look at past historical precedents in past civilizations such as the Greeks to guide me rather then conceptual ideals.
Considering everyone knows i am not averse to naming names, @Grond0 and @Balrog99 thank you for holding yourself up high, i hope you engage with future 'conservative' or 'right' posters because they'll feel more welcome, and this thread most definitely has not been fair to them, though i doubt there'll be any influx.
Would have been great to see WarChiefZeke , i suspect left for similar reasons.
@Balrog99: I've got to start posting more so I can get ranked. I'm looking forward to seeing how @Mathsorcerer reacts to being put in the center; that placement tells me that you might need more axes. And I can testify that @semiticgod was a moderating voice even before becoming a moderator.
A general counsel, chief counsel or chief legal officer (CLO) is the chief lawyer of a legal department, usually in a company or a governmental department.
In case I wasn't clear before I agree that Chief Counsel can mean the same as CLO, but my point was that (unlike CLO) it gets used in other ways as well. In this case I think it's clear that supporting the activities of a Committee is not equivalent to a government department and the corporate or departmental management structure that the CLO is part of wouldn't exist - hence my view that in this case the Chief Counsel was indeed acting just as a counsel and not CLO. I think that issue's been done to death now though, so won't reiterate the point further.
I find something rather odd about Trump, or rather, how the public opinion of him appears to have changed (at least from what I have seen) since he became a presidential candidate. Before he started running for president he appeared to be known primarily as an eccentric, rich, businessman who was kind of a hard-ass and had funny looking hair. Once he started running for president his image suddenly seemed to change. A great many people suddenly started to speak of him as though he was some sort of abomination incarnate from pure evil and bent on the destruction of all existence-- An anti-Christ, if you will. I find this a little more than unsettling. He certainly has character flaws, I will grant you that, but I don't think he had any more flaws than, say, Obama. Obama seemed to me to be more than a bit full of himself, egotistical, and narcissistic even. He really seemed to relish all the praise that was lauded onto him by many people. Trump has no filter between his brain and his mouth and is still a hard-ass, sure, but evil incarnate he is not. The amount of vitriol I have heard in regards to Trump and even those who support him is, honestly, quite frightening... Vitriol such as "Trump should be assassinated!" (which was said by Johnny Depp, as I recall) is not good or funny, not even as a joke! To be honest, I am quite sick of this vitriol. I was well beyond fed up with it even before the man was elected and it is still going on and on and on ad nauseum.
*sigh* I hate discussing politics primarily because of vitriol, dismissiveness, and double standards. If people could only leave that crap in the toilet where it belongs, maybe politics wouldn't be so painful a topic for so many... Myself included.
Alas, we are all on this side of the vale of tears...
I didn't see people saying he was abomination incarnate from pure evil bent on the destruction of all existence, but I did see Trump pander to his white supremacist base, and if you're throwing in with them, there's something wrong with you. There's a reason Nazis serve as cannon fodder in so many movies, video games, and comic books, and it's not because they're admirable people any reasonable person would want to emulate. Never mind everything else, such as the Access Hollywood tape, the constant lies, the threats to imprison his opponent, etc.
Trump is hated for several reasons. That hatred is not irrational. It has a real world basis. And that basis is what Trump's done and what he continues to do. It's why his approval is so low. I'd consider it a matter of concern if a lot of people actually liked him.
I would say Trump most assuredly has more character flaws than Obama. This isn't hard to see, and there's been reams of articles written about it since the election. I am not saying Obama is perfect, which apparently I need to clarify before someone twists my words again. What I am saying is that many of us could see that Trump would be bad for the US prior to the election, and his record only serves to confirm that. Trump will be at best no better than Obama at many things, and is already significantly worse at many other things.
Also, courting white supremacists isn't a character flaw, in the same way shooting someone to death on 5th avenue wouldn't be a character flaw.
Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh... Trump is no Nazi. Not even close. Pandering is also not courting. Those are two different words with different meanings. Also I was unaware of him being a part of a "white supremacist base". I strongly suspect you are exaggerating and misinterpreting, at the very least a little bit. Perhaps I was also exaggerating a bit when I said people viewed him as an antichrist, but saying he has thrown in with Nazis seems to me to be a FAR greater exaggeration, perhaps even irrational. Hitler and his Nazis are far worse than Trump. To compare Trump to Hitler is highly irrational in my humble opinion. I do not see concentration camps in this country. I do not see any SS or gestapo here. Never mind thousands of people being carted off, tortured, and killed. Yet many people DO compare him to Hitler. If you do not find this irrational than that is a matter we will just have to disagree on.
@CamDawg. Although i responded to you pretty matter-of-fact, that was more due to that i believed you indeed made an effort before,in the opening discussion however i personally didn't believe you wanted to push the discussion as a matter of curiosity. "If this is the hill you wish the last shreds of your credibility to die upon, you have chosen poorly." was one of your first replies to me and it was not as if we had a long discussion prior where it got heated, to be frank it seemed out of the blue and i suspect you share the same sentiments as the other more, 'frustrated' posters here that i have talked about.
Fair enough. The credibility comment was based more on the fact that I just had to slog through three pages of circular comments on LGBT rights w.r.t. Clinton and Obama, in which you posted the same video twice. My overall impression was that you were baiting the liberal posters and/or not posting in good faith (which you confirmed tonight). Had it resulted in three pages of insightful--or even mildly interesting--debate, I probably would have shown more patience.
I was also genuinely surprised to have someone double down (and triple and quadruple and ... n-tuple) on the debunked Clinton-Watergate firing story, especially when it can be presented in an incredibly damaging fashion without having to lie about it.
The most effective criticisms of Clinton, or Trump, or Obama, or <your political target of choice>, are always the ones based on truth. Clinton, in particular, has so much for which she can be legitimately criticized I've never understood the need to manufacture more.
edit: just realized the post ate my brackets, interpreting it as HTML
Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh... Trump is no Nazi. Not even close. Pandering is also not courting. Those are two different words with different meanings. Also I was unaware of him being a part of a "white supremacist base". I strongly suspect you are exaggerating and misinterpreting, at the very least a little bit.
No, I'm not exaggerating or misinterpreting.
I didn't say Trump was a Nazi. I said he was pandering to and courting white supremacists. Do you think it was an accident that he appointed Steve Bannon as Chief Strategist? Do you think it was a mistake when he said "both sides had very fine people" about Charlottesville? Did he just slip and fall on his scaremongering about Mexican immigrants? Did his pen just leak Muslim bans three times while he wasn't looking?
I didn't say he was part of a white supremacist base. I said he has a white supremacist base.
But given his public statements and actions he's taken, I'm pretty comfortable saying that yes, Trump is a white supremacist himself. If not in thought, then certainly in deed.
Perhaps I was also exaggerating a bit when I said people viewed him as an antichrist, but saying he has thrown in with Nazis seems to me to be a FAR greater exaggeration, perhaps even irrational. Hitler and his Nazis are far worse than Trump. To compare Trump to Hitler is highly irrational in my humble opinion. I do not see concentration camps in this country. I do not see any SS or gestapo here. Never mind thousands of people being carted off, tortured, and killed. Yet many people DO compare him to Hitler. If you do not find this irrational than that is a matter we will just have to disagree on.
Okay so:
* I didn't compare Trump to Hitler. * Concentration camps didn't happen until several years into Hitler's reign. Using the lack of concentration camps now as evidence that there's no fascism going on is not a convincing argument. * Same applies to the SS and the Gestapo.
What I did say is that Trump panders to his white supremacist base, and I said that courting white supremacists isn't a character flaw. I also said there's a reason that Nazis are predominantly portrayed as villains in media, and Nazis are a subset of white supremacists.
I'll put it more bluntly: Trump courts actual, literal fascists, whether they call themselves alt right, alt light, identitarian, white nationalist, white supremacist, KKK, proud boys, Identity Evropa...whatever. He plays to them and has played to them since he campaigned for office.
The fact that he does this, along with the rise of white supremacists in the mainstream inevitably leads to comparisons to the rise of the Nazi party in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s. This isn't an irrational comparison.
I'm not a lone voice in the wilderness on this topic. I am not just pulling this out of thin air. It's not hard to find plenty of articles and even books about Trump that discuss this in detail. Perhaps you could try to have an informed opinion on this topic rather than simply dismiss it as "irrational." I don't think you can judge anything as irrational when you lack so many of the facts.
Marriage does confer specific civil rights - which is a major reason why gay couples historically have sought it. I don't know the law in the US, but in the UK the civil rights provided by marriage are identical irrespective of the partners being married (and essentially identical to the civil partnerships which were offered earlier to gay couples). My assumption has been that marriage also applies equally to everyone in the US, but I'm happy to be corrected on that if necessary.
I agree that the ultra libertarian stance would be to say everyone should do what they like, but there aren't many ultra libertarians around. I think things like childcare arrangements and inheritance provisions are needed to help society function smoothly and marriage is a convenient tool for that purpose.
There's an ongoing debate though about the extent to which government should seek to promote marriage (particularly through the use of taxes and benefits) and whether similar arrangements should be used to promote stable (but not married) partnerships. I don't have strong views on that, but if institutions are in place (with attendant rights and responsibilities) I do think they should be available across society rather than be restricted to particular groups.
As an addendum to the question of the civil rights extending to marriage, two Irish men have married purely for tax purposes.
Perhaps you could try to have an informed opinion on this topic rather than simply dismiss it as "irrational."
Did I dismiss you? No. I said I thought a comparison that was often made (not necessarily by you) between Trump and Hitler was irrational. This is not the same as dismissing you. No, dismissing someone looks more like this:
I don't think you can judge anything as irrational when you lack so many of the facts.
That is what I would call being dismissive. What makes you think I am incapable of expressing my observations and beliefs effectively here? Just because I have a healthy level of skepticism? Just because I don't believe everything told to me by articles and books?
Books can be wrong. Articles can be wrong. So called facts presented by one person or group can be, and often are, wrong. I fully acknowledge that I know few facts about Trump and that I can bring fewer still to the table. I do assert, however, that I can bring an impressive amount of logic and reason to the table and at the same time share my own opinions on things. Yet I see you have already dismissed me because my simple observations do not agree with your "facts"... Very well. I will leave.
Donald Trump has always been loathsome. The reason it became a bigger issue (his character) is because a US Presidential race is the biggest magnifying glass on Earth, aside from the one put on the actual President.
Donald Trump is a con-man. He and his father were fined for refusing to rent to African-Americans in the '70s. He is straight-up guilty of housing discrimination. He has been stiffing construction contractors for decades, as a matter of business practice because he knew he had more legal resources than they did. He is almost certainly not just sexist, but a misogynist.
Obama, from a character stand-point, was everything the right CLAIMED they wanted during the Clinton years. A loving, faithful husband and father. Almost always polite, calm, gregarious and funny. People, even after a year will look at the pictures or video of the Obamas in the White House, and lament what was lost and where we are now. They KNEW they had to be 5x better at these functions of state and the (somewhat) superficial optics of the office because of the burden of being the first African-American family to live in that building. They were, again, everything the right-wing has been preaching about what the black nuclear family should be for decades. And they were hated for it anyway. And they replaced them with the Romanovs. An Administration that is nothing but a nepotistic grift.
Beyond that, a poll came out the other day that showed Hillary Clinton's approval rating at 36%. And my immediate reaction was......approval of WHAT?? The way she plays Lego with her granddaughter?? Where she takes walks?? She doesn't have a job or position that can be approved or disapproved of, unless you disapprove of the very idea that she continues to exist. If someone asked me what my thoughts on Michael Dukakis or Mitt Romney was in a poll, I'd respond "what the hell are you talking about"?? And this is nothing but a reflection of the fact that the right-wing media has been covering the LOSER of the Presidential Election for an entire year afterwards as if she actually won. Because, more than any other politician I have ever seen, Donald Trump can only exist as a successful entity if he has a domestic political foil. He is defined by being a hate conductor.
I'm looking forward to seeing how @Mathsorcerer reacts to being put in the center; that placement tells me that you might need more axes.
I don't mind being in the center. My focus is on solving problems, not adhering to a political party or ideology. Too many people quantify themselves by saying "I am a member of the x Party" and then proceed to follow blindly the official party platform without putting any more thought into the situation. The people who define their politics as "I must oppose y at all times and by any means necessary" are just as bad--politics driven by a lack of thought.
I'm looking forward to seeing how @Mathsorcerer reacts to being put in the center; that placement tells me that you might need more axes.
I don't mind being in the center. My focus is on solving problems, not adhering to a political party or ideology. Too many people quantify themselves by saying "I am a member of the x Party" and then proceed to follow blindly the official party platform without putting any more thought into the situation. The people who define their politics as "I must oppose y at all times and by any means necessary" are just as bad--politics driven by a lack of thought.
I'm amused that someone posted about Hillary again, but instead of 'why are we posting about Hillary again', it got upvoted because it was defending Hillary, the ridiculous partisanship is over the top here.
I realized i forgotten @Semiticgod. All thing's considered on the nature of this boards, i think you've done a good job, the boards is primarily about a game so unfortunately it was not going to have the discipline,experience rigor or framework that would allow something as polarizing as politics to be discussed well, at least in the long-term.
Evidently your aware of the political 'leanings' of this thread in general, back when there was more diverse opinions, moderation seemed more fair and applied across the spectrum, but i suspect that after so many left in disgust, the left-over posters being of like-mind have taken over the place and you've kind of resigned to their type of posting rather then moderate it.
Despite all that, Merry Christmas and i hope no one gives you as hard a time as i have.
@CamDawg My posting of the Democrat party and Hillary had a dual-purpose, if it was the case that people were accepting of the anti-trump skewed posting, then my posts would merely bring balance to a thread that is so heavily anti-republican/Trump, however since it was evidently unwelcome due to partisanship, it clearly demonstrated the double-standards existing here. All my posts however were relevant to what i responded to, i simply chose to highlight the political party that is oft-ignored for the other on any given issue.
I don't recall reading much of your posts before, Given you were frustrated quite quickly, if you also posted regularly in frustration against the anti-trump posting that has been occurring for more then a year then i applaud your lack of partisanship, however i definitely don't recall or see that so your response is more indicative of the problem rather then the other way around.
Despite that i also considered your posting somewhat partisan, its not a big issue to me because everyone is to some extent, but there's a difference between sometimes partisan posting, and derailing a thread for more then a year.
No, partisanship is not why your anti-Hillary posts have been heavily criticized. It's because you were pushing falsehoods.
There is plenty to criticize Clinton for, but abandoned political stances and lies about firing her from the Watergate thing aren't two of them.
People posting factual criticisms of Trump in a political thread isn't the problem. It isn't a problem. It means the thread's working as intended. It is beyond belief that you want criticism of the president of the united states to stop, and yet here you are complaining about it.
There's been plenty of anti-trump/anti-republican articles put forth in this thread that were debunked as matter of fact, hardly however were these posters criticized even though its been going on for more then a year+.
So in fact your just proving the partisanship rather then anything else.
Regardless, i believe it, i respect that you do not, i will argue my case and i will respect your arguments in turn. However to presume lying, or to rest your argumentation on presumed authority or 'settled matter' indicates a lack of substance in ones argument.
There's been plenty of anti-trump/anti-republican articles put forth in this thread that were debunked as matter of fact, hardly however were these posters criticized even though its been going on for more then a year+.
So in fact your just proving the partisanship rather then anything else.
So for the first paragraph: Citation needed. Also, I would ask if in those cases (if they actually exist) did the poster keep arguing for three pages that they were actually right and the debunker was wrong? Because if not, then the situations are simply not comparable to what you've been doing, which is promoting falsehoods as truth.
For the second paragraph: If you come into a political thread expecting that no one will be partisan, you're hopelessly naive. Accusing people of partisanship is a vapid criticism, with literally no content or meaning. So what if people have political leanings? That's perfectly normal. Constantly hectoring people for having political leanings is just plain weird, though.
Finally, did you forget that you admitted you weren't participating in good faith? Because that has a significant impact on how others will view your arguments.
Finally, did you forget that you admitted you weren't participating in good faith? Because that has a significant impact on how others will view your arguments.
No, for any issue and where there was criticism of the republican party over an issue i merely highlighted that the democrat party had also done that in the past.
Nothing wrong with that, and in fact in a political discussion that is considered healthy, i chose to highlight the Democrat party precisely because of the unbalanced and skewed focus on the Republican side, and simply to a question.
For example, where you had criticized the Republican party over attitudes or past actions against homosexuals, very well, someone asked if the Democrats or the left had done anything like that, i simply posted that the Democrat party once made federal legislation against homosexual marriage as well.
Perfectly on-topic and accurate.
That will be my clarification of my posts which is the last lingering question mark, good day to you.
Finally, did you forget that you admitted you weren't participating in good faith? Because that has a significant impact on how others will view your arguments.
No, for any issue and where there was criticism of the republican party over an issue i merely highlighted that the democrat party had also done that in the past.
Nothing wrong with that, and in fact in a political discussion that is considered healthy, i chose to highlight the Democrat party precisely because of the unbalanced and skewed focus on the Republican side.
For example, where you had criticized the Republican party over attitudes or past actions against homosexuals, very well, i simply posted that the Democrat party once made federal legislation against homosexual marriage as well.
Perfectly on-topic and accurate.
That will be my clarification of my posts which is the last lingering question mark, good day to you.
Correction: You tried to argue that Obama and Clinton were permanently anti-LGBTQ because of attitudes they changed over time. You tried to argue that Clinton held a stance that she changed in 2006 and further changed in 2013. You refused to acknowledge any and all evidence to the contrary of your claims.
I was criticizing the Republican party over present actions against LGBTQ people. If I had wanted to focus on past actions, I'd start with the Reagan administration's poor handling of the HIV crisis in the 1980s. But since I was talking about the present, I focused on the Trump administration's anti-LGBTQ actions.
I did also point out that a non-trivial number of religious right figures have expressed a desire to execute all LGBTQ people, because I think that is relevant when discussing the right wing's attitudes toward LGBTQ people.
I am still curious whether you think you'll ever earn the benefit of the doubt again.
My posting of the Democrat party and Hillary had a dual-purpose, if it was the case that people were accepting of the anti-trump skewed posting, then my posts would merely bring balance to a thread that is so heavily anti-republican/Trump, however since it was evidently unwelcome due to partisanship, it clearly demonstrated the double-standards existing here.
This is... a very strange test. You decided in advance that, if you posted something negative about Clinton and anyone disputes it for any reason, the only possible explanation is that they're biased and partisan and exhibiting a double standard? If that's the test you were trying to make, it's impossible to pass.
What would people have to say to pass your test of partisanship? Agree with you?
This is... a very strange test. You decided in advance that, if you posted something negative about Clinton and anyone disputes it for any reason, the only possible explanation is that they're biased and partisan and exhibiting a double standard? If that's the test you were trying to make, it's impossible to pass.
What would people have to say to pass your test of partisanship? Agree with you?
By unwelcome, i did not mean merely criticism of my post, after all i criticize peoples posts where i think there's incorrectness.
What i saw was clear and expressed posts not only saying they wished the discussion to stop and talk about other things, but asking others to stop as well when interacting with me over these things, all in derisive terms, where it pertained to Hillary/DNC, and of course any posts defending them is instead encouraged.
It simply echoed my criticism of the year+ flood of anti-trump article posting, however i was fully prepared to accept and retract my earlier criticism if i saw an acceptance of criticism of Hillary posting, not agreement with it, but toleration to do it.
"I may not agree with what you say but i will defend your right to say it".
Even i was prepared to accept the rationale 'Hillary is the past', however evidently very recent posts defending Hillary, out of the blue, is encouraged, so that 'reasoning' is evidently arbitrarily used.
What i saw was clear and expressed posts not only saying they wished the discussion to stop and talk about other things, but asking others to stop as well when interacting with me over these things, where it pertained to Hillary/DNC, and of course any posts defending of Hillary is instead encouraged.
This is not true.
I just read the last three pages, which discussed Clinton--the scope of your supposed Clinton test--and not a single poster told you to stop bringing up Clinton. All they did was dispute your claim.
This has now just turned into some twisted game, and I would say me and @BelleSorciere and @smeagolheart should just go to bed at this point, or literally do ANYTHING else but continue to feed whatever the hell is going on here.
Good day Semiticgod, i don't consider there to be any point in the discussion further, since this was only a few pages back.
And i was merely answering a question too from that discussion.
Never did i say i put forth a 'test' just recently with my discussion with @CamDawg as what i was referring too, my comment was general in my experience,in fact if you go back to this post of mine https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/935868/#Comment_935868 where i explicitly laid it out, i was addressing jjstraka34 and not CamDawg at all.
This has now just turned into some twisted game, and I would say me and @BelleSorciere and @smeagolheart should just go to bed at this point, or literally do ANYTHING else but continue to feed whatever the hell is going on here.
Good day Semiticgod, i don't consider there to be any point in the discussion further, since this was only a few pages back.
He didn't tell you to stop bringing up Clinton. He suggested to smeagolheart and myself that we just go to bed and let the discussion die. He said this because the discussion was purely circular. You responded to every debunking of your claims with a reiteration of those claims. New information would be swept aside or simply ignored.
So, again, you misrepresent something someone else said.
This has now just turned into some twisted game, and I would say me and @BelleSorciere and @smeagolheart should just go to bed at this point, or literally do ANYTHING else but continue to feed whatever the hell is going on here.
Good day Semiticgod, i don't consider there to be any point in the discussion further, since this was only a few pages back.
That was my opinion after we had engaged in a circular back and forth for over two hours, and was nothing but a suggestion to keep the thread from falling even DEEPER into mutual animosity. Beyond that, I don't control @BelleSorciere and @smeagolheart. I didn't drug them so they passed out. We had been having the same argument for hours.
I just read the last three pages, which discussed Clinton--the scope of your supposed Clinton test--and not a single poster told you to stop bringing up Clinton. All they did was dispute your claim.
And the test I complained about was about Clinton:
My posting of the Democrat party and Hillary had a dual-purpose, if it was the case that people were accepting of the anti-trump skewed posting, then my posts would merely bring balance to a thread that is so heavily anti-republican/Trump, however since it was evidently unwelcome due to partisanship, it clearly demonstrated the double-standards existing here.
What i saw was clear and expressed posts not only saying they wished the discussion to stop and talk about other things, but asking others to stop as well when interacting with me over these things, all in derisive terms, where it pertained to Hillary/DNC, and of course any posts defending them is instead encouraged.
It simply echoed my criticism of the year+ flood of anti-trump article posting, however i was fully prepared to accept and retract my earlier criticism if i saw an acceptance of criticism of Hillary posting, not agreement with it, but toleration to do it.
That was my opinion after we had engaged in a circular back and forth for over two hours, and was nothing but a suggestion to keep the thread from falling even DEEPER into mutual animosity. Beyond that, I don't control @BelleSorciere and @smeagolheart. I didn't drug them so they passed out. We had been having the same argument for hours.
Your explanation seems proper, however i fail to believe in it when your post was dripping in derogatory language, it strikes me as not being honest with intentions now, perhaps if your suggestion was applied to all involved in the discussion and not simply to 'your supporters against me' then i could believe it.
Something like 'i think we've all made our points clear and there's no need discuss this further since were retreading the same ground' i would believe it.
You also kind of failed to realize every time you defend that, you simply validate my earlier statements of the anti-trump posting that has derailed the thread.
In all our discussion's, it has definitely gotten heated, we are very opinionated and don't budge easily, something i think everyone can agree with.
But never once in our discussions once it started have i ever tried to shut it down, let alone in that way, no matter how loud, emotional or long it became, that's the respect i always accorded to you when you started talking to me, that is the one thing i respected about us.
@semiticgod. I linked my post to where one of the discussion highlighted was relevant, that discussion did indeed contain Hillary and the Democrat party so your post is rather confused.
As it stands, i am aware of your past public warnings to posters which i disagreed with and made my views known, and your continued wish to discuss this but lack of addressing similar posts with, lets be frank, exactly the same sort of language is making me think less of the moderation.
Considering you will need to moderate this thread in the future, i don't see a point in continuing this discussion since it will devolve in me addressing moderation itself, and i have no wish to impair your future efforts.
If you want to discuss this further, feel free to message me.
Also the silly upvoting game unfortunately has made me conclude you've fallen into tribal mentality, so i don't even believe this discussion is done with honest intentions any longer.
But never once in our discussions once it started have i ever tried to shut it down, let alone in that way, no matter how loud, emotional or long it became, that's the respect i always accorded to you when you started talking to me, that is the one thing i respected about us.
You specifically asked me to keep jjstraka34 from posting in this thread, amid more general demands to keep liberal posts out of the thread:
To be quite frank i'd suggest: -Splitting off another thread called 'criticism and why you hate Trump' so people can at least post in a thread that is honest with their intentions. -Start a new clean thread, because many people don't want to touch this thread with a 10 foot pole with its absurd bias, spam and tribal posting. -Stop participating in threads you moderate because you give the semblance of a conflict of interest -Tell people to knock off the obvious spam to evidently derail a thread so badly that literally no other other country or their politics has a chance of discussion because the intent is to flood it with so much anti-trump articles no one can read or talk about anything else.
Why must we keep going over this and over this? This thread is not for discussing or criticizing your fellow forumites; this thread is for discussing politics.
Comments
@CamDawg. Although i responded to you pretty matter-of-fact, that was more due to that i believed you indeed made an effort before,in the opening discussion however i personally didn't believe you wanted to push the discussion as a matter of curiosity.
"If this is the hill you wish the last shreds of your credibility to die upon, you have chosen poorly." was one of your first replies to me and it was not as if we had a long discussion prior where it got heated, to be frank it seemed out of the blue and i suspect you share the same sentiments as the other more, 'frustrated' posters here that i have talked about.
I personally wasn't interested in discussing with you since in my mind it started off in that way.
@Grond0.
A general counsel, chief counsel or chief legal officer (CLO) is the chief lawyer of a legal department, usually in a company or a governmental department.
In a company, the person holding the position typically reports directly to the CEO, and their duties involve overseeing and identifying the legal issues in all departments and their interrelation, including engineering, design, marketing, sales, distribution, credit, finance, human resources, production, as well as corporate governance and business policy. This would naturally require in most cases reporting directly to the owner or CEO overseeing the very business on which the CLO is expected to be familiar with and advise on the most confidential level. This requires the CLO/general counsel to work closely with each of the other officers, and their departments, to appropriately be aware and advise
-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_counsel
Never spoke to you before now, but you seem like a nice guy and you were always courteous so it was nice to meet you.
@Balrog99.
My vote for Bernie was purely strategic against what i considered to be the establishment in the DNC, my views never aligned with him since i believe his beliefs in socialism were wholly impractical though i think he is a decent guy.
It's not really possible to classify me in any particular group because i know i don't share wholly or even in half all the beliefs and attitudes of them, the only caveat is i am sympathetic to the original libertarian ideal, but only that far since it cannot deal with all matters, outside that i mainly just look at past historical precedents in past civilizations such as the Greeks to guide me rather then conceptual ideals.
Considering everyone knows i am not averse to naming names, @Grond0 and @Balrog99 thank you for holding yourself up high, i hope you engage with future 'conservative' or 'right' posters because they'll feel more welcome, and this thread most definitely has not been fair to them, though i doubt there'll be any influx.
Would have been great to see WarChiefZeke , i suspect left for similar reasons.
Merry Christmas to you.
In case I wasn't clear before I agree that Chief Counsel can mean the same as CLO, but my point was that (unlike CLO) it gets used in other ways as well. In this case I think it's clear that supporting the activities of a Committee is not equivalent to a government department and the corporate or departmental management structure that the CLO is part of wouldn't exist - hence my view that in this case the Chief Counsel was indeed acting just as a counsel and not CLO. I think that issue's been done to death now though, so won't reiterate the point further.
quite frightening... Vitriol such as "Trump should be assassinated!" (which was said by Johnny Depp, as I recall) is not good or funny, not even as a joke! To be honest, I am quite sick of this vitriol. I was well beyond fed up with it even before the man was elected and it is still going on and on and on ad nauseum.
*sigh* I hate discussing politics primarily because of vitriol, dismissiveness, and double standards. If people could only leave that crap in the toilet where it belongs, maybe politics wouldn't be so painful a topic for so many... Myself included.
Alas, we are all on this side of the vale of tears...
Trump is hated for several reasons. That hatred is not irrational. It has a real world basis. And that basis is what Trump's done and what he continues to do. It's why his approval is so low. I'd consider it a matter of concern if a lot of people actually liked him.
I would say Trump most assuredly has more character flaws than Obama. This isn't hard to see, and there's been reams of articles written about it since the election. I am not saying Obama is perfect, which apparently I need to clarify before someone twists my words again. What I am saying is that many of us could see that Trump would be bad for the US prior to the election, and his record only serves to confirm that. Trump will be at best no better than Obama at many things, and is already significantly worse at many other things.
Also, courting white supremacists isn't a character flaw, in the same way shooting someone to death on 5th avenue wouldn't be a character flaw.
I was also genuinely surprised to have someone double down (and triple and quadruple and ... n-tuple) on the debunked Clinton-Watergate firing story, especially when it can be presented in an incredibly damaging fashion without having to lie about it.
The most effective criticisms of Clinton, or Trump, or Obama, or <your political target of choice>, are always the ones based on truth. Clinton, in particular, has so much for which she can be legitimately criticized I've never understood the need to manufacture more.
edit: just realized the post ate my brackets, interpreting it as HTML
I didn't say Trump was a Nazi. I said he was pandering to and courting white supremacists. Do you think it was an accident that he appointed Steve Bannon as Chief Strategist? Do you think it was a mistake when he said "both sides had very fine people" about Charlottesville? Did he just slip and fall on his scaremongering about Mexican immigrants? Did his pen just leak Muslim bans three times while he wasn't looking?
I didn't say he was part of a white supremacist base. I said he has a white supremacist base.
But given his public statements and actions he's taken, I'm pretty comfortable saying that yes, Trump is a white supremacist himself. If not in thought, then certainly in deed. Okay so:
* I didn't compare Trump to Hitler.
* Concentration camps didn't happen until several years into Hitler's reign. Using the lack of concentration camps now as evidence that there's no fascism going on is not a convincing argument.
* Same applies to the SS and the Gestapo.
What I did say is that Trump panders to his white supremacist base, and I said that courting white supremacists isn't a character flaw. I also said there's a reason that Nazis are predominantly portrayed as villains in media, and Nazis are a subset of white supremacists.
I'll put it more bluntly: Trump courts actual, literal fascists, whether they call themselves alt right, alt light, identitarian, white nationalist, white supremacist, KKK, proud boys, Identity Evropa...whatever. He plays to them and has played to them since he campaigned for office.
The fact that he does this, along with the rise of white supremacists in the mainstream inevitably leads to comparisons to the rise of the Nazi party in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s. This isn't an irrational comparison.
I'm not a lone voice in the wilderness on this topic. I am not just pulling this out of thin air. It's not hard to find plenty of articles and even books about Trump that discuss this in detail. Perhaps you could try to have an informed opinion on this topic rather than simply dismiss it as "irrational." I don't think you can judge anything as irrational when you lack so many of the facts.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/23/two-heterosexual-irish-men-marry-to-avoid-inheritance-tax-on-house
Books can be wrong. Articles can be wrong. So called facts presented by one person or group can be, and often are, wrong. I fully acknowledge that I know few facts about Trump and that I can bring fewer still to the table. I do assert, however, that I can bring an impressive amount of logic and reason to the table and at the same time share my own opinions on things. Yet I see you have already dismissed me because my simple observations do not agree with your "facts"... Very well. I will leave.
Donald Trump is a con-man. He and his father were fined for refusing to rent to African-Americans in the '70s. He is straight-up guilty of housing discrimination. He has been stiffing construction contractors for decades, as a matter of business practice because he knew he had more legal resources than they did. He is almost certainly not just sexist, but a misogynist.
Obama, from a character stand-point, was everything the right CLAIMED they wanted during the Clinton years. A loving, faithful husband and father. Almost always polite, calm, gregarious and funny. People, even after a year will look at the pictures or video of the Obamas in the White House, and lament what was lost and where we are now. They KNEW they had to be 5x better at these functions of state and the (somewhat) superficial optics of the office because of the burden of being the first African-American family to live in that building. They were, again, everything the right-wing has been preaching about what the black nuclear family should be for decades. And they were hated for it anyway. And they replaced them with the Romanovs. An Administration that is nothing but a nepotistic grift.
Beyond that, a poll came out the other day that showed Hillary Clinton's approval rating at 36%. And my immediate reaction was......approval of WHAT?? The way she plays Lego with her granddaughter?? Where she takes walks?? She doesn't have a job or position that can be approved or disapproved of, unless you disapprove of the very idea that she continues to exist. If someone asked me what my thoughts on Michael Dukakis or Mitt Romney was in a poll, I'd respond "what the hell are you talking about"?? And this is nothing but a reflection of the fact that the right-wing media has been covering the LOSER of the Presidential Election for an entire year afterwards as if she actually won. Because, more than any other politician I have ever seen, Donald Trump can only exist as a successful entity if he has a domestic political foil. He is defined by being a hate conductor.
I realized i forgotten @Semiticgod.
All thing's considered on the nature of this boards, i think you've done a good job, the boards is primarily about a game so unfortunately it was not going to have the discipline,experience rigor or framework that would allow something as polarizing as politics to be discussed well, at least in the long-term.
Evidently your aware of the political 'leanings' of this thread in general, back when there was more diverse opinions, moderation seemed more fair and applied across the spectrum, but i suspect that after so many left in disgust, the left-over posters being of like-mind have taken over the place and you've kind of resigned to their type of posting rather then moderate it.
Despite all that, Merry Christmas and i hope no one gives you as hard a time as i have.
@CamDawg My posting of the Democrat party and Hillary had a dual-purpose, if it was the case that people were accepting of the anti-trump skewed posting, then my posts would merely bring balance to a thread that is so heavily anti-republican/Trump, however since it was evidently unwelcome due to partisanship, it clearly demonstrated the double-standards existing here. All my posts however were relevant to what i responded to, i simply chose to highlight the political party that is oft-ignored for the other on any given issue.
I don't recall reading much of your posts before, Given you were frustrated quite quickly, if you also posted regularly in frustration against the anti-trump posting that has been occurring for more then a year then i applaud your lack of partisanship, however i definitely don't recall or see that so your response is more indicative of the problem rather then the other way around.
Despite that i also considered your posting somewhat partisan, its not a big issue to me because everyone is to some extent, but there's a difference between sometimes partisan posting, and derailing a thread for more then a year.
There is plenty to criticize Clinton for, but abandoned political stances and lies about firing her from the Watergate thing aren't two of them.
People posting factual criticisms of Trump in a political thread isn't the problem. It isn't a problem. It means the thread's working as intended. It is beyond belief that you want criticism of the president of the united states to stop, and yet here you are complaining about it.
So in fact your just proving the partisanship rather then anything else.
Regardless, i believe it, i respect that you do not, i will argue my case and i will respect your arguments in turn.
However to presume lying, or to rest your argumentation on presumed authority or 'settled matter' indicates a lack of substance in ones argument.
For the second paragraph: If you come into a political thread expecting that no one will be partisan, you're hopelessly naive. Accusing people of partisanship is a vapid criticism, with literally no content or meaning. So what if people have political leanings? That's perfectly normal. Constantly hectoring people for having political leanings is just plain weird, though.
Finally, did you forget that you admitted you weren't participating in good faith? Because that has a significant impact on how others will view your arguments.
Nothing wrong with that, and in fact in a political discussion that is considered healthy, i chose to highlight the Democrat party precisely because of the unbalanced and skewed focus on the Republican side, and simply to a question.
For example, where you had criticized the Republican party over attitudes or past actions against homosexuals, very well, someone asked if the Democrats or the left had done anything like that, i simply posted that the Democrat party once made federal legislation against homosexual marriage as well.
Perfectly on-topic and accurate.
That will be my clarification of my posts which is the last lingering question mark, good day to you.
I was criticizing the Republican party over present actions against LGBTQ people. If I had wanted to focus on past actions, I'd start with the Reagan administration's poor handling of the HIV crisis in the 1980s. But since I was talking about the present, I focused on the Trump administration's anti-LGBTQ actions.
I did also point out that a non-trivial number of religious right figures have expressed a desire to execute all LGBTQ people, because I think that is relevant when discussing the right wing's attitudes toward LGBTQ people.
I am still curious whether you think you'll ever earn the benefit of the doubt again.
What would people have to say to pass your test of partisanship? Agree with you?
What i saw was clear and expressed posts not only saying they wished the discussion to stop and talk about other things, but asking others to stop as well when interacting with me over these things, all in derisive terms, where it pertained to Hillary/DNC, and of course any posts defending them is instead encouraged.
It simply echoed my criticism of the year+ flood of anti-trump article posting, however i was fully prepared to accept and retract my earlier criticism if i saw an acceptance of criticism of Hillary posting, not agreement with it, but toleration to do it.
"I may not agree with what you say but i will defend your right to say it".
Even i was prepared to accept the rationale 'Hillary is the past', however evidently very recent posts defending Hillary, out of the blue, is encouraged, so that 'reasoning' is evidently arbitrarily used.
I just read the last three pages, which discussed Clinton--the scope of your supposed Clinton test--and not a single poster told you to stop bringing up Clinton. All they did was dispute your claim.
And i was merely answering a question too from that discussion.
Never did i say i put forth a 'test' just recently with my discussion with @CamDawg as what i was referring too, my comment was general in my experience,in fact if you go back to this post of mine https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/935868/#Comment_935868 where i explicitly laid it out, i was addressing jjstraka34 and not CamDawg at all.
So, again, you misrepresent something someone else said.
Something like 'i think we've all made our points clear and there's no need discuss this further since were retreading the same ground' i would believe it.
You also kind of failed to realize every time you defend that, you simply validate my earlier statements of the anti-trump posting that has derailed the thread.
In all our discussion's, it has definitely gotten heated, we are very opinionated and don't budge easily, something i think everyone can agree with.
But never once in our discussions once it started have i ever tried to shut it down, let alone in that way, no matter how loud, emotional or long it became, that's the respect i always accorded to you when you started talking to me, that is the one thing i respected about us.
@semiticgod. I linked my post to where one of the discussion highlighted was relevant, that discussion did indeed contain Hillary and the Democrat party so your post is rather confused.
As it stands, i am aware of your past public warnings to posters which i disagreed with and made my views known, and your continued wish to discuss this but lack of addressing similar posts with, lets be frank, exactly the same sort of language is making me think less of the moderation.
Considering you will need to moderate this thread in the future, i don't see a point in continuing this discussion since it will devolve in me addressing moderation itself, and i have no wish to impair your future efforts.
If you want to discuss this further, feel free to message me.
Also the silly upvoting game unfortunately has made me conclude you've fallen into tribal mentality, so i don't even believe this discussion is done with honest intentions any longer.