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RE: Partisanship and Rational Thought - Incompatible? - 2/16/2009 3:40:00 AM   
MmeGigs


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quote:

ORIGINAL: FirmhandKY
Rain.  Parade.


Not at all.  That this person who responded to that article had issues with the experiment doesn't invalidate it. 



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RE: Partisanship and Rational Thought - Incompatible? - 2/16/2009 4:28:27 AM   
MmeGigs


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quote:

ORIGINAL: Hippiekinkster
quote:

ORIGINAL: OrionTheWolf
Your comments are good examples of what the OP states.

I know. Horrible of me, ain't it?


Yep.  It kind of looks like you do it partly because you think it's fun to stir things up.  I find that pretty frustrating.  Too many threads that could yeild some interesting discussion get hijacked by this kind of crap. 

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RE: Partisanship and Rational Thought - Incompatible? - 2/16/2009 4:47:22 AM   
MmeGigs


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quote:

ORIGINAL: corysub
I think the passion shown here reflects the frustration many of us feel with a government that has always been bloated but over the past ten to twenty years has become more and more dysfunctional. 


Most people are able to express their passion and frustration without hysterical ranting.  The ranters are actually a pretty small group, they're just really loud and seriously overrepresented political discussion, particularly online.

As a whole, we're not as politically polarized here in the US as we've been led to believe.  More of us are "Other/Unaffiliated" than are either Democrats or Republicans.  An awful lot of us don't vote all one party.  Some of the big news this past election cycle was that people are tired of the partisan crapola.  This "Let's line up on opposite sides of this wall and lob manure at each other" stuff is old and tired and counterproductive. 

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RE: Partisanship and Rational Thought - Incompatible? - 2/16/2009 5:43:05 AM   
corysub


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I think your right. When in power, both parties seem corrupted by that power and forget that they were sent there by the voters to represent them not business interests or social agenda driven interests, represented by people who get paid a lot of money to lobby and gain the favor or our representatives.  Lobbying serves a useful purpose in bringing expertise to an issue for our representatives to consider...it's when it becomes "play for pay" that Americans get screwed.  Witness this new Bill.  Obviously, the democrats are in power and so the "outies" are critiquing the "innies"..but...the Senate/House Conference found it inspired wisdom to add $6 billion to the railroad component for a rail line between Los Angeles and Las Vegas (Guess where the soft spoken country boy Majority Leader of the Senate hails from) while reducing $2 Billion for new hospitals for Veterans to ZERO!!  The next time a democrat tells me how much they love our military and support the troops...or bring up the shame of poor after care for our veterans...Shame on them...all this rhetoric about the poor hospital care for our armed forces and a rail line between Disneyland and the Casino's is three times as important!  Shame on them...  This has nothing to do with partisanship...I would feel thesame way if republicans had sponsored this sham of a stimulus package..and every republican should bring it to the attention of the three idiots that voted for this legislation in the Senate and the one Independent from Connecticut.  My phonoe calls to Spector's office have been made and my letter is not quite in the mail yet.

< Message edited by corysub -- 2/16/2009 5:44:40 AM >

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RE: Partisanship and Rational Thought - Incompatible? - 2/16/2009 8:15:39 AM   
TheHeretic


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quote:

ORIGINAL: MmeGigs
Too many threads that could yeild some interesting discussion get hijacked by this kind of crap. 



         That is true, Gigs, but political chair-throwing is far from the only way potentially interesting conversation gets dragged out into the weeds and sodomized.  It seems like every discussion of space exploration ends up getting chucked downstairs when the Beavis and Butthead Brigade chimes in about Uranus (hehehehe - that means your ass! hehehehe).

       Keep in mind also, this is a forum where sadists and masochists hang out.  Do you expect people who like to get naked and play rough are going to sip tea, and wear white gloves, when they talk about social and political affairs?   I'm convinced some of our chairslingers are only doing it for the humiliation that will follow.

      Want more conversations that are diverse and interesting?  Click the "New Post" button.  Find a topic that is sliding silently towards obscurity, and give it a bump from a new angle.  And do feel free to scroll right past those who like to get high on their own partisanship and prejudice.

      

_____________________________

If you lose one sense, your other senses are enhanced.
That's why people with no sense of humor have such an inflated sense of self-importance.


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RE: Partisanship and Rational Thought - Incompatible? - 2/17/2009 5:01:31 AM   
MmeGigs


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quote:

ORIGINAL: TheHeretic
      Keep in mind also, this is a forum where sadists and masochists hang out.  Do you expect people who like to get naked and play rough are going to sip tea, and wear white gloves, when they talk about social and political affairs?   I'm convinced some of our chairslingers are only doing it for the humiliation that will follow.
 

If this was part of the reason for it, you'd expect to see folks go nasty and name-call-y all over these discussion forums about all kinds of things.  We don't really see that.  Folks are able to discuss things they feel deeply about and disagree strongly about, and still remain fairly civil. 

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RE: Partisanship and Rational Thought - Incompatible? - 2/17/2009 6:55:45 AM   
TheHeretic


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quote:

ORIGINAL: MmeGigs

If this was part of the reason for it, you'd expect to see folks go nasty and name-call-y all over these discussion forums about all kinds of things.  We don't really see that. 



      Yes we do, Gigs, but you have to look quickly.  The Mods step on such behavior in a hurry, and the posts go away. 

    

_____________________________

If you lose one sense, your other senses are enhanced.
That's why people with no sense of humor have such an inflated sense of self-importance.


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RE: Partisanship and Rational Thought - Incompatible? - 2/17/2009 7:29:05 AM   
cjan


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The two party system has failed us in the U.S.. It has become a process for distraction of the electorate while real issues are decided by the lobbies and big contributors to both parties. Nothing will change until fundamental campaign financing reform is adopted. I won't hold my breath.

In the meantime, I support Obama not because he is a Democrat or a liberal, but because he seems more of a pragmatist than an idealogue. For now, it's the lesser of two evils. But, as has been said before, when the choice is between the lesser of two evils, , at the end of the day, evil still wins.

_____________________________

"I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A bird will fall ,frozen , dead, from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself."- D.H. L

" When you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks in to you"- Frank Nitti



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RE: Partisanship and Rational Thought - Incompatible? - 2/17/2009 8:02:18 AM   
UncleNasty


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A great post.

While the OP deals solely with "political" type stuff the same dynamic happens in other areas of our lives as well. It is common for people to be unbalanced in terms of "ration" and "emotion," usually inclining more towards one than the other, and sometimes completely excluding one in favor of the other.

I find I make my best decisions when I'm drawing on each of those, and the closer to equal consideration the better. I use one to inform the other.

Even in knowing these things, and striving for the best balance between them, an analysis of any given day in my life still can pull out numerous examples of less than exemplary behavior on my part. But knowing these things also makes it easier to spot folks who have no recognition whatsoever of their own imbalance, and their total reliance on only one of these aspects.

I heard a funny quote several months ago. Can't remember who to attribute for it. But I found it hilarious.

"I'm a completely balanced person. I have a chip on both shoulders."


Uncle Nasty

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RE: Partisanship and Rational Thought - Incompatible? - 2/18/2009 5:07:13 AM   
MmeGigs


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quote:

ORIGINAL: corysub
I think your right. When in power, both parties seem corrupted by that power and forget that they were sent there by the voters to represent them not business interests or social agenda driven interests, represented by people who get paid a lot of money to lobby and gain the favor or our representatives.
 

This isn't about the behavior of political parties or lobbyists, it's about the behavior of individuals.   

quote:

The next time a democrat tells me how much they love our military and support the troops...or bring up the shame of poor after care for our veterans...Shame on them...all this rhetoric about the poor hospital care for our armed forces and a rail line between Disneyland and the Casino's is three times as important!  Shame on them...  This has nothing to do with partisanship...


Sure it does.  I'm sure you'd be mad about the cut regardless, but the blamethrowing and such is all about partisanship.  The stimulus package was a group effort, despite the fact that only 3 Rs voted for it.  The Republicans have been insisting that spending that is not directly related to economic stimulus - no matter how worthy or important the project or how urgent the need - be stripped from the bill.  They say that these things should be considered as part of a budget/spending bill or on their own, not as part of the stimulus, and they have a point.  The Democrats have taken a lot of these things out in order to try to get Republican votes for the bill.  The report from the conference committee didn't say anything about who suggested taking out the $2 Billion for VA construction, or about who argued for or against the idea.  You're suggesting that it's all on the Democrats, but there doesn't appear to have been an uproar from Republicans about this particular cut when the bill went to the floor, and I haven't seen it mentioned in editorials about why the bill sucks.  You're suggesting that this $2 Bil was taken away to build the railroad.  How do you know that the railroad money didn't come from the $16 Bil for school construction that was cut, or the $40 Bil that was cut from aid to the states?  How do you know they didn't take the $2 Bil away and give it to NASA - they got $2 Bil, or take it out to preserve tax cuts?  Truth is, there probably was no direct tradeoff in any of these things.

You've found a way to blame Reid for this and extending the blame not just to the Democrats in Congress but to the entire Democratic rank and file.  That's irrational.  I think that you'd be hard pressed to find anyone out there who is completely happy with the stimulus bill.  Actually, I think you'd have a hard time finding anyone who isn't pissed off about it, at least a bit.  There are definitely parts of it that I don't like.  The left (the actual left, not the Democrats) aren't too pleased with it.  I think that most folks would agree with you about the VA cut, but I'm betting we'll see that project come up again soon, along with a lot of the other stuff that was cut.

So basically, you really don't know who is responsible for cutting this out of the stimulus bill, but you're lashing out at 1/3 of the population for it, most of whom are most definitely not responsible and probably don't like it any more than you do.  Does that make sense to you?

(in reply to corysub)
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