Intelligent, Respectful Political Discourse, RIP

I don't expect respectful or honest or reasonable debate here any more. Those days are over.

It's much easier and far more interesting in real life, where it matters, and that's what I'm talking about.
You do seem a bit "burned out" from what I remember... What... Six, seven years ago? I mean holy hell, you were really good back then. I actually remembered who you were. And to be honest... You are one of only two that I can remember that are still here and posts. You had a positive impact on me.

I don't blame you for that ( being a bit burned out ) ***if that is the case***... Years of this will take a toll on anyone. I'm not really trying to say anything here, just an observation.
I think I see things a little differently. Not in terms of issues, but in terms of communicating.

I used to think that anyone could break out of an ideological shell, drop the talking points, be honest and have value as a contributor to a conversation that might lead to improvements. But I no longer feel that way.

Y'know how you stumble across and idea or a question that really sticks with you? About three years ago I read a piece in which the author asked, "has it been so long since we communicated honestly and like adults that we've actually forgotten how?"

Holy crap, that really scared me. It was around then that I realized that there are some people who are not going to be a part of constructive conversation, or the innovation that can come from it. So those who can't, or won't, just need to be marginalized so that the rest can do it.

I also know it's much easier in real life, where I'm involved locally. MUCH easier. So I don't expect much here at this point. I'll just observe behaviors and belch out my opinion when it strikes me. That's enough.
 
Yikes, stumbled on to this discussion between two guys from opposite ends of the political spectrum, William F. Buckley and Noam Chomsky.

Intelligent, respectful, stimulating, thoughtful disagreement.

So what happened to us? Aside from, "it's all the other tribe's fault"?



Civility during political discourse was about completely obliterated when one of the most popular leaders of one party (a lawyer) decided he was above the laws against purjury, then lied under oath and his fucktarded minions went out of their way to justify the crime.
 
My position has remained the same since he was elected. I do not like Trump, but I find the knee jerk reaction AGAINST Trump to be more of a problem than Trump, himself. The enormous apparatus of our media and the Democratic party apply itself with the singular purpose of deposing the man is a far greater threat to our principles than the man, himself.

Actually, quite the contrary. Our system is supposed to have several mechanisms to protect itself against a guy like Trump.

The electoral college
Congress Confirming the election
the 25th Amendment to remove a president who is psychologically unfit for office.
Impeachment is that person is caught committing a crime.

The problem is, all the safeguards that are meant to protect us from a guy like Trump have failed.

Now here we are, 160,000 dead, 5 million sick, 30 million unemployed, 33% drop in GDP, riots in the streets...

By any objective measure, a president who has failed this badly wouldn't even try to run for a second term.
 
Civility during political discourse was about completely obliterated when one of the most popular leaders of one party (a lawyer) decided he was above the laws against purjury, then lied under oath and his fucktarded minions went out of their way to justify the crime.

Naw, man, the problem there was the fucking sheer hypocrisy of guys with mistresses trying to impeach him for having a mistress. Henry Hyde, Livingstone, and Gingrich, all cheated on their wives, and insisted THOSE were family matters.
 
There used to be a fellow around here called Mac1958 who showed promise by way of understanding this, but then he caught the TDS virus and turned all woke. I miss the days when this fellow talked about the way the left assigns various identities to classes of either oppressor or oppressed and then reacted to these assumptions accordingly. Nowadays, he is one of the chief practitioners of this very process.
I've tried to impress that very same thing on him many times... he's denied it.

I have as well. Mac and I had many discussions, most worthwhile and useful. That person is gone. He denies it, but TDS has erased all rationality. Now he is one of the worst marginalized hacks on the board.

And Mac, I breathlessly await your thanks or funny to this post. :thup:
No shit...He piously decries "wingers" while having thrown in with the very worst of them.

Once again giving evidence to my oft made observation that self-awareness is completely absent from the left.

If only you understood irony. You rat people became exactly like the 'leftists'. Completely lacking self awareness. Too afraid to call out those of your own tribe. Exactly the same. Different sides of the same shit pile.
I'm an anarcho-capitalist/agorist, dumbfuck....I pretty much don't have a tribe,

But thanks for helping to demonstrate my point.
 
My position has remained the same since he was elected. I do not like Trump, but I find the knee jerk reaction AGAINST Trump to be more of a problem than Trump, himself. The enormous apparatus of our media and the Democratic party apply itself with the singular purpose of deposing the man is a far greater threat to our principles than the man, himself.

Actually, quite the contrary. Our system is supposed to have several mechanisms to protect itself against a guy like Trump.

The electoral college
Congress Confirming the election
the 25th Amendment to remove a president who is psychologically unfit for office.
Impeachment is that person is caught committing a crime.

The problem is, all the safeguards that are meant to protect us from a guy like Trump have failed.

Now here we are, 160,000 dead, 5 million sick, 30 million unemployed, 33% drop in GDP, riots in the streets...

By any objective measure, a president who has failed this badly wouldn't even try to run for a second term.
25th Amendment again....Boy you fucktards never cease to make me LMAO!
 
FOX is allowed to be the pressure release for Non Progs by the globalists. Most other modern TV production is Prog agenda motivated.
I disagree... All I want is the facts. Don't try to do a damn thing with them. Don't leave them out on purpose, don't add what you can't prove. Every station should be TRYING to do this, and they *still* won't come to the same conclusions. But at least then they are trying to be journalists, and a conversation can actually happen.

Prime example:


There should be more. There is a market for it.
 
There should be more. There is a market for it.
I know there is a market for it... Give people what they need, not what they want.

Bush and Obama fucked'm over. They didn't get the schooling to know what's important.
 
Certainly is kind of so many to jump in to illustrate my point for me.

Again.

:laugh:
How many times over the years have I told you to duck if you want to stand in no mans land.

My points still stand.
My side of the fence is clear: I'm against ideological fundamentalism. Nutters.

I can't help the fact that this is too complicated for you.
How is it complicated...........your party is targeting and killing police.......destroying shit.......and burning the country down............throwing piss and feces at officers.........

And we are the problem............cool story bro........in the FICTION section.
 
I don't expect respectful or honest or reasonable debate here any more. Those days are over.
With your side ........that is correct......

Real life........murdered police...........massive damage to cities........urine being thrown into people's faces by animals.

Sorry.........we don't negotiate with Terrorists...........YOUR SIDE CREATED THEM.....THEY ARE ALL YOURS......
 
Media types were in awe of Buckley's intellect and he was tolerated as an amusing conservative. Chomsky was a radical leftie so he always got a pass. Today's media is nothing but a mean spirited agency dedicated to overthrow the Trump administration and they make no bones about ti. The Barr hearings are a distraction to keep the A.G. at a disadvantage while the administration is investigating the very real allegations of an attempted political coup.
 
what happened to us

You see the results of the convergence of multiple tendencies. Among other things, there is the breakdown of 200+ year old constitutional norms, enormous privilege contradicted by precarious economic conditions and socio-political powerlessness, the collapse of communities, war as standing policy, increasingly bitter class hostilities and a blight of iconoclasm. By that I mean great swathes of people are borderline nihilists. The institutions and processes of state have no more relevance to them than did the First Estate in 1789. The mantra of that 'great, glorious future' is perpetually postponed -- ever just around the corner of the next election cycle. There is simply nothing left to be believed. National narratives presented for consumption are heard with muted contempt. As many see it, everything around them is a lie, a fraud, a hoax. The working masses are disillusioned, disoriented and exhausted. Rage grows and their fear of annihilation recedes. The state is unresponsive. Nonsense is elevated to a level near divinity. Bluntly stated -- America's gods have abandoned them and the ground is shaking beneath our feet.

Trotsky said that Capitalism toboggans toward disaster with its eyes shut. Today, Trotskyists say that we are tobogganing toward disaster with our eyes wide open. And there isn't a thing that can stop it. We cannot even admit the enormity of the encroaching disaster -- let alone agree on a solution. What one man calls 'medicine,' another calls 'poison.' The November elections, presuming they occur [which is questionable] will resolve absolutely nothing that matters to the 90%. We have entered a decade of war and revolution. The state cannot speak authoritatively because it is held in contempt under any administration. And whatever regime may eventually emerge from the upcoming 'election' travesty will of necessity turn more and more to armed force to 'enforce' its diktats. Things empires do abroad inevitably penetrate back into the homeland. Do not be surprised when tanks roll on our streets or helicopter gunships rain hell from the skies. You put someone in front of a microphone. You declare whole regions lost to the republic. And you order them taken.

The political class has no answer and offers no defense against any of this. So instead, a great cacophony of static is generated. There can be no serious discussion. Indeed in the US, the unwritten rule is that the more desperately needed free and open discussion of some crises is -- the less admissible it is to civic discourse. People recognize that there is no future in any of this. And the more they do, the more desperate the regime becomes to 'hold it together' just a little longer ... to siphon off the last few drops of worker blood. Nowhere in the US can a political figure take a podium and speak to the working class or to youth in a way that commands respect. All that a terminal society can muster is demagoguery and death.

Dismiss this out of hand if you will [and many will], this speech is authoritative where many working class Americans live. They're through with this. They recognize the racket for what it is. Their allegiance was squandered. Now they refuse to be bought.

What actually happened?

It really doesn't matter. But where such conditions exist, the 'static madness' that characterizes what now passes as discourse is the very best that the regime can muster. And it knows this. Which is why such times bring forward the reactionaries and the demagogues.

-- Trotsky's Spectre --

Edit: Subject-verb agreement and syntactical improvements.
 
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Certainly is kind of so many to jump in to illustrate my point for me.

Again.

:laugh:
How many times over the years have I told you to duck if you want to stand in no mans land.

My points still stand.
My side of the fence is clear: I'm against ideological fundamentalism. Nutters.

I can't help the fact that this is too complicated for you.
How is it complicated...........your party is targeting and killing police.......destroying shit.......and burning the country down............throwing piss and feces at officers.........

And we are the problem............cool story bro........in the FICTION section.
Actually, I'm not.

But, precisely as I predicted, what I said was too complicated for you.

This is why I no longer bother.
 
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Yikes, stumbled on to this discussion between two guys from opposite ends of the political spectrum, William F. Buckley and Noam Chomsky.

Intelligent, respectful, stimulating, thoughtful disagreement.

So what happened to us? Aside from, "it's all the other tribe's fault"?



Civility during political discourse was about completely obliterated when one of the most popular leaders of one party (a lawyer) decided he was above the laws against purjury, then lied under oath and his fucktarded minions went out of their way to justify the crime.


It was well before that. Democrats were calling Republicans racist back in the Reagan administration, which is as far back as I remember. There is no civility or conversation when they're calling us racists. That ends civil discussion and conversation.

Mac1958 is full of shit. Of course he won't blame Democrats, but they have done it for 40 years that I remember. Of course he doesn't remember it, he only notices when Republicans do it back
 
It was well before that. Democrats were calling Republicans racist back in the Reagan administration, which is as far back as I remember. There is no civility or conversation when they're calling us racists. That ends civil discussion and conversation.

Maybe you can try not being racist.

The reason people called you all racist in the 1980's because Reagan was out there talking about "Welfare Queens" and "Young Bucks".

@Mac1958 is full of shit. Of course he won't blame Democrats, but they have done it for 40 years that I remember. Of course he doesn't remember it, he only notices when Republicans do it back

I am actually going to defend Mac here. He criticized Democrats all the time. He's constantly whining about political correctness and the regressive left.

The ironic thing about Mac is he'd like a party that is economically conservative and socially liberal. But the country itself is actually economically liberal and socially conservative. The way Republicans keep getting in is by playing on the social issues, so we all forget they have no idea what they are doing on the economy.
 
Yikes, stumbled on to this discussion between two guys from opposite ends of the political spectrum, William F. Buckley and Noam Chomsky.

Intelligent, respectful, stimulating, thoughtful disagreement.

So what happened to us? Aside from, "it's all the other tribe's fault"?



Civility during political discourse was about completely obliterated when one of the most popular leaders of one party (a lawyer) decided he was above the laws against purjury, then lied under oath and his fucktarded minions went out of their way to justify the crime.


It was well before that. Democrats were calling Republicans racist back in the Reagan administration, which is as far back as I remember. There is no civility or conversation when they're calling us racists. That ends civil discussion and conversation.

Mac1958 is full of shit. Of course he won't blame Democrats, but they have done it for 40 years that I remember. Of course he doesn't remember it, he only notices when Republicans do it back

I do love shoving the words of nutters back down their throats.

Just do a simple of search of my many squabbles with the Regressive Left and PC and you'll find this: Search results for query: regressive left pc

I also love the way you folks feel you have to lie about me. That's all you have. Nice.

It really would be much smarter for you not to say ANYTHING. :laugh:
 
I do love shoving the words of nutters back down their throats.

Just do a simple of search of my many squabbles with the Regressive Left and PC and you'll find this: Search results for query: regressive left pc

I also love the way you folks feel you have to lie about me. That's all you have. Nice.

It really would be much smarter for you not to say ANYTHING.

Again, Mac, what you want are two corporate owned parties that don't stand for anything. Most of us actually don't want that.
 
There used to be a fellow around here called Mac1958 who showed promise by way of understanding this, but then he caught the TDS virus and turned all woke. I miss the days when this fellow talked about the way the left assigns various identities to classes of either oppressor or oppressed and then reacted to these assumptions accordingly. Nowadays, he is one of the chief practitioners of this very process.
I've tried to impress that very same thing on him many times... he's denied it.

I have as well. Mac and I had many discussions, most worthwhile and useful. That person is gone. He denies it, but TDS has erased all rationality. Now he is one of the worst marginalized hacks on the board.

And Mac, I breathlessly await your thanks or funny to this post. :thup:
No shit...He piously decries "wingers" while having thrown in with the very worst of them.

Once again giving evidence to my oft made observation that self-awareness is completely absent from the left.

If only you understood irony. You rat people became exactly like the 'leftists'. Completely lacking self awareness. Too afraid to call out those of your own tribe. Exactly the same. Different sides of the same shit pile.
I'm an anarcho-capitalist/agorist, dumbfuck....I pretty much don't have a tribe,

But thanks for helping to demonstrate my point.

My, how woke and hip you are.
There used to be a fellow around here called Mac1958 who showed promise by way of understanding this, but then he caught the TDS virus and turned all woke. I miss the days when this fellow talked about the way the left assigns various identities to classes of either oppressor or oppressed and then reacted to these assumptions accordingly. Nowadays, he is one of the chief practitioners of this very process.
I've tried to impress that very same thing on him many times... he's denied it.

I have as well. Mac and I had many discussions, most worthwhile and useful. That person is gone. He denies it, but TDS has erased all rationality. Now he is one of the worst marginalized hacks on the board.

And Mac, I breathlessly await your thanks or funny to this post. :thup:
No shit...He piously decries "wingers" while having thrown in with the very worst of them.

Once again giving evidence to my oft made observation that self-awareness is completely absent from the left.

If only you understood irony. You rat people became exactly like the 'leftists'. Completely lacking self awareness. Too afraid to call out those of your own tribe. Exactly the same. Different sides of the same shit pile.
I'm an anarcho-capitalist/agorist, dumbfuck....I pretty much don't have a tribe,

But thanks for helping to demonstrate my point.

Is that a tedious woke and hip way to say 'I'm a right wing asshole that doesn't vote but can't fully commit to libertarianism'? Way to make a stand, sport. Probably best to let the memes define you instead. Americans like you are useless as tits on a bull to the political environment.
 

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