"I'm really beginning to feel that Trump is no revolutionary at all"
Just beginning? Really? Holy. shit.
I know, right? I admittedly held out some faint hopes up until his victory in the primary. So maybe he still had to suck up a little to the Republican establishment to stand a chance... fine fine, I get that. But he didn't wink at us at all, he didn't exhibit any perception or intelligence or guile, he just kept up his same stream of consciousness babble as the alliances based on either cronyism (loyalty rewards) or efforts to sooth the Republican establishment/base began to pile up. In a way I do sort of pity the former Bernie supporters who voted for him out of desperation, but holy shit were they not paying attention.
Amazon, and all web retailers, need to understand that they cannot enter binding contracts with minors.
Not strictly true. As I recall, minors generally retain the option to reverse any contract, but they are free to enter into contracts and if they choose to not reverse it then it remains binding on both parties. In this case, with the DLC being so easy to "give back" to Amazon, they of course should have been able to reverse the contract for a full refund.
I don't know why I even fell for that troll. Or have you forgotten what I said in my original post?
He's an airhead who barely pays attention to what he's even saying, a sycophant, a man who was a registered Democrat not that long ago, someone who was able to broach a few important topics that no one else was willing to broach, even if he make a complete mess if it every time he tried to talk sense.
Is that not a reasonable attack on Trump? Do you see ANY insult directed against Hillary there, other than the implied and indirect insult of identifying her with the status quo? Are you really so far gone that if you don't see someone frothing at the mouth, leaping up and down and screaming "Orange Hitler! Orange Hitler!", you assume he's secretly pro-Trump? If that's the case, you really should know that it's people like you who lost the election for her. I know a dozen Trump voters (I was most certainly not one of them), and none of them were racists or even all that enthusiastic about Trump as a person. I think they were just ordinary (if cringingly naive) swing-state voters who didn't see any hand extended to them whatsoever from the mainstream left.
No, I won't, because you sound very much like an AC who was trolling me with "prove your worthiness" and psychoanalytical bullshit over the course of multiple threads a few weeks back. Go register for an account--use a disposable email address if you're feeling lazy. Then maybe we'll talk.
Well, fuck it. I will. Briefly. But I'm not going to get sucked into any further "prove yourself" quibbling unless you make an account. My strongest criticisms of Trump are on the points that most people overlook--the parts where his opinions matter the *least*, the likely parts where he'll do what his Republican masters tell him to do. The scariest prospect of a Trump presidency is that he's just George W. Bush all over again but with zany press conferences. I've articulated this at least a half dozen times, including well before the election. The worst outcome, ironically enough, may well be the one where he turns out to a meek and mild non-populist who mostly obeys his masters, simply with a bombastic public persona.
Other points of serious concern are the supreme court, net neutrality, proposing dumbassed things (a literal wall, as opposed to better surveillance-oriented border control), proposing blatantly illegal things (religious tests for entry, instead of country-based restrictions for which there is both massive precedent and a fair rationale for), and general incompetence.
I'm not going to spend fifteen minutes dissecting giant threads to satisfy the whims of someone who is playing the most childish games instead of literally just taking 3 or 4 sentences to re-state his thesis and our areas of apparent disagreement. Did I actually use the word traitor? Meh. It's conceivable. It's been at least 36+ hours since I've been sober. You want to fucking quibble legalistically about irrelevancies, you picked the wrong fucking day and the wrong fucking topic to do it in, mate.
You are the only one here you attempted to move the goalpost. I was replying to someone talking about American-made guns in American hands... and now you want to shift that goal post to be "American purchased guns in our enemies hands." That's a rather different conversation! And I clarified very early on that I was differentiating American manufacturing vs. American-funded purchasing.
ATF requirements are a separate issue obviously, but they are part and parcel of the narrative of a certain species of leftist (such that tezbobobo appeared to embody), and also the fact that guns tend to be more expensive over here, even if they're imported from elsewhere, runs counter to the narrative tezbobobo was pushing.,, the very same narrative that YOU tried to twist by moving a goalpost (dropping the "in American hands bit" entirely, and glossing over the difference between American-manufactured and American-purchased), in the same post that you insisted I did the same.
I seriously have no idea what you're expecting to prove here. Congratulations, you're managed to quibble for like 15 posts whilst pointedly refusing to clarify your thesis, refusing to acknowledge that there were two other people involved in that reply chain and by re-entering it in the manner you did you were implicitly supporting their views... *and* you're now trying to pretend your silly handwaving about state/county regulations didn't happen? You didn't "ignore" anything.
Six digit ID? Is it what you *do* around here? Is this what you've done for 15 years (or whatever) ? Serious question.
It's tempting to say "not so bad" (and I've repeatedly come close to saying at much myself), but then you remember about the Republican control of both houses, the empty seats on the SCOTUS, the fact that Trump has been sucking up to the Republican more and more with each passing week and the obvious thinness of his apparent independent-minded bluster.
The dangerous part that most people (not all) miss is this: the worst parts of the Trump presidency might be the most Trump-free parts. I think I'd much rather have a GOP-antagonistic Trump saying outlandish stuff every day than an obedient Trump who gets one or two of his populist pet projects pushed through in exchange for signing every Republican-authored bill that crosses his desk.
The worst outcome is the one that virtually no one is talking about: What if he turns out to be not crazy at all? What if he turns out to be a meek, genial dumbass like Bush II, just with wacky-er press conferences?
That is the shit that is going to keep me awake at night.
Why would anyone want to reform how elections occur if they won using that system. The only candidates who stand for electoral reform are those that the system squeezed out.
That's not quite true. Plenty of people on both sides of the aisle dream of starting their own third party, I'm sure. If enough of them (from both sides) can somehow get together and rebel against their party leadership to get electoral reform passed, they can vent their own frustrations and pursue their own dreams of setting their own agendas.
The problem is, it's tricky as hell and risky as hell. Also, there might not be enough genuine rebels who actually made it into office... I guess a compelling counterargument would be to claim that most people who have such visions get out, or stay out of politics.
Still, though, it's possible at least in theory. And there have been multiple inner-party coalitions (e.g. Blue Dog Democrats) that imply that there are at least a few of 'em that don't have an unwavering loyalty to the party core.
Hahaha. If those people were xenophobes, they wouldn't want to come and live here.
...
Do you actually want a response to that? Was it some bit of profound irony that I missed here? Have you been paying any attention whatsoever to the stats of first, second and third generation migrants in Europe? Are you aware that many/most jihadis arrive legally?
Islamic separatism/exceptionalism is rampant across almost the entire west except in America. Coincidentally enough, America currently has the lowest percentage Muslim population. That doesn't mean don't let people in because they're Muslims; but it does mean it's not a bad idea to pay attention to trends and ideologies or to keep an eye on new arrivals for a while prior to granting them citizenship.
You are the one who is demonstrating a lack of introspection. Let's focus on the one point in particular: You appear to call people xenophobes.... for not wanting to allow *other* xenophobes to come and live here.
You are "othering" people for othering people who are on average much worse[1] on the tolerance front. It's dumb as shit.
(I'm an anti-Trump leftist, in case you're wondering what kind of person you're up against, but I think the left in this country has largely committed suicide by choosing to grow more condescending instead of growing up a little.)
1. Yes yes, there are moderates mixed in with the conservatives and extremists, but by and large I've found that people like you tend to oppose any form of ideological test (not religious test, just broadly ideological--like "do you support, in any way, freedom of religion in the United States of America?") for incoming migrants/refugees.
Ak, ok I did miss that then. I did in fact encourage you to link to whatever your goddamn thesis was, since you've been coyly refusing to re-state it for like 10 replies now.
I stand by my already-articulated claim that "American made" is almost completely irrelevant. "American bought" is another matter entirely, and here we probably do find large swathes of agreement unless you are suggesting that we should abandon the Kurds.
If the insults you handed out are molehills in your mind then your parents failed.
You're a confused twat who sucks at communicating. That's the only insult I'm standing by at the moment. Try to articulate better and maybe I can give you some more fine-grained ones.
Right now I'm mainly just accusing you of being incoherent and excessively terse, and also not understanding that a reference to the ATF means your state/county bit was obviously misplaced.
Random shit about charges to modify imported equipment which may as well have been car parts for all the relevance to anything you were replying to.
Quote mine away if you want. I addressed ALL of the issues that the OP brought up. His "American made" bit definitely hinted at some broader leftist nuttery re: violence and the best ways to deal with it , which I endeavored to preemptively defuse. If you want to call that off-topic, fine, but I *did* address every goddamn thing he said in my original reply.
Says the person who doesn't understand what the ATF is, and purposefully or accidentally mischarctarized what tezbobobo was saying.
There's no strawman. Pretending that I'm talking about your views, when I'm obviously talking about the person I was replying to (and whom you were implicitly aligning yourself with), is utterly inane.
You really want to turn this into a pedantic pissing match? Because if so, you are going to *lose*, mate. But I'm still perfectly willing to start from first principles, if you wish.
Well, you jumped in the middle of an existing argument with at least two and probably three other people, without clarifying what your stance was at all, but vaguely insinuating an agreement with tezbobobo's line. What did you expect me to say? You've had like seven opportunities to explain your position re: this debate but instead you just quibble with these three-sentance posts, exhibiting a much-undeserved arrogance as you repeatedly misunderstand/distort my and tezbobobo's posts.
I thought I made it very clear above - Daash/ISIL and many others are heavily armed with US made guns,
No, no you did not make that clear. Are you under some kind of impression that I'm studiously reading all 2500+ posts in this thread? Please see if you can keep it a bit more linear than that. You can link to other posts you've made if need be.
Ok let's review what your VERY FIRST CONTRIBUTION to this conversation was:
Yes, yes - you "win" thanks to a goalpost shift. Once you've finished wandering off into that topic of whatever regulations your state or county has how about we get back onto those American made and paid for guns that are shooting at people we are allied with.
And you're standing by it all? While emphasizing that you're not the AC? Sooooo.... you're mocking me for shifting the goalpost as literally your first post, without even mentioning what that goalpost is. That's insanity. We need to invent a new logical fallacy of debate for that one. I can't move a goalpost if you (implicitly) disavow the views of the people I was talking to prior to your arrival. So, what's the goddamn goal post?
I did not write much and it should be very simple and obvious what my stance is on that very narrow topic.
Holy shit... you sound like someone doing a bad Clinton impression. (Either one.)
Given what you've said so far, I have almost no idea whatsoever what your stance is, or even what that "very narrow topic" is. Some kind of criticism for "arming our enemies", perhaps, but you haven't even made that clear. (And it certainly wasn't clear in that initial post.)
Notice how I'm not harping on how wrong-headed your first post was with its nonsensical emphasis on state/county regulation (this coming immediately after I had mentioned the ATF and the importing process specifically.) That's because I'm more interested in communicating ideas and having a real debate than I am in trying to make mountains out of misunderstanding-molehills. Please, feel free to join me.
Let me get this right - being critical of arming our enemies is "anti-Western"?
Yes or no.
Of course not. "Being critical" is a pretty expansive phrase, though. You really need to narrow it down a bit.
For example, the below quote from tezbobobo (the person I was originally replying to before you jumped in accusing me of goalpost-moving) has that slickly progressivist pallor of righteous anti-Westernism... yeah, let's be sure to mention and emphasize only the blood on our hands, instead of mentioning the fact that most of the people who died in Iraq only did so because we kicked a hornets' nest. They killed each other. To some extent we're responsible and should feel guilty (mostly, I think we should feel stupid and act differently), but obviously 90%+ of the responsibility, if indeed a moral quantification in these matters is even possible, must fall on the shoulders of the "insurgents" of Iraq and the leftovers of Saddam's regime.
It should be pointed out that hawkish behaviour under the Bush regime meant a LOT of people didn't survive the Bush regime (literally bombed and shot to death).,,,
People in the US need to realise that US guns in US hands kill a LOT of people around the world.
See, this is the sort bullshit that has given us the alt-right. By all means, let's PLEASE criticize Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz Rove until the cows come home. I fucking hate what those assholes did to this country and to Iraq. But I don't accept the self-flagellation approach, and neither does most of America. Almost the entire alt-right rests on a foundation of a rejection of all self-flagellating postures (the remainder being actual avowed white nationalist types, of course.) If a Sunni suicide bomber kills thirty Shia in Iraq tomorrow, that's LARGELY due to the fact that some really fucked up ideologies are in dangerously influential positions over there. And I'm saddened we kicked the hornet's nest, of course I am, but it's not like Saddam's regime was perfectly stable or fair or durable.
If you want an even livelier debate, by the way, I rather strongly rebuked your assertion that there is no sharia in Iran elsewhere. At least, I think it was you. Too lazy to check at the moment.
(One last thing, about "arming our enemies"... the Kurds are not our enemies. Arming them is very, very different from arming Arabic-speaking Syrians who claim to be moderate. Now, about the Kurds....I really, really don't like some of their lingering attitudes re: clitorises and I'm not really sure what to make of their conflict with Turkey, but on the whole I'd push back on most criticisms of arming them. Those wouldn't necessarily have to be "anti-Western" criticisms, though.)
Well, upon checking, this little tangient began with my reply to Tezbobobo. Then an AC replied to me, then I replied to the AC, and that seems to be when you first replied to me complaining about changing goalposts. Were you the AC, perhaps?
I'm not certain either of us has a very good idea of what the others' stance is, but I would like to float the idea that, as the apparent newcomer to this little conversation here, it's largely up to you to make this clear instead of opening with some "move the goalpost" nonsense in your very first post.
(Or maybe there's another branch to this thread that I've missed?)
I had forgotten that any criticism about the stupidity of shooting ourselves in the foot was "anti-Western".
That was criticism I repeatedly, explicitly joined you in. But please, feel free to distance yourself from me and not engage. Clearly, the biggest problem in this election is the mainstream left wasn't nearly as snobbish and condescending as it could've been.
You have misrepresented me and put words in my mouth - easy to build a clueless strawman when you are cowardly enough to argue with pretend people instead of calmly discuss things with real ones. I'm not clueless - I was just discussing something that you moved the goalposts from to avoid.
I was broadening a discussion, not moving a goalpost. If you want to quote fallacies all day long, I should point out that you're strawmanning me pretty hard right now... you're pretending that I don't agree with you on the specific "giving guns to people is bad" point. (At the moment, I do make at least one exception for the Kurds, but not even that situation is entirely peaches and cream.)
The discussion needs to be broadened because most of America, including most of the people who voted for Trump, agree with you! To some extent. They can surely see the widespread misery and backfired plans that have come from Iraq. But if you insist on framing it in unreasonably self-flagellating terms, you instantly turn off a lot of those people who were just agreeing with you.
It's like the entire goddamn mainstream left in this country has a death wish. This election should have been so, so easy for us to win.
And with that, you utterly disqualify yourself from the conversation.
Sharia only means "law", with the implication being law from Islam, obviously. Sharia is what you make of it.
Iran doesn't practice any of the four major schools of Sunni jurisprudence, *obviously*, but they absolutely have a shit ton of very nasty laws that are enforced and were taken from the Qu'ran or Hadith. To pick an issue completely at random, women must have some form of headscarf in public in Iran (although, as I recall, it doesn't have to be as all-encompassing as the hijab), and as I recall miniskirts and tight pants are banned as well.
Women forced to wear what Islam says they should wear and clerics literally running their government... but no no, clearly this has nothing to do with sharia, presumably because you read some factoid on some airhead progressive's blog that disingenuously equated "sharia" with only the more commonly known Sunni schools of jurisprudence.
it's just a few Kingdoms
It's easily over a dozen nations that have *some degree* of nasty stuff ripped straight from the Qu'ran. Does the USA have nasty stuff ripped straight from the Bible? Sure, but we're nowhere near as bad as even a "moderate" Muslim country like Turkey, which has taken to foisting undisguised Islamic blasphemy law on their own press.
Slashdot Mirror
"I'm really beginning to feel that Trump is no revolutionary at all" Just beginning? Really? Holy. shit.
I know, right? I admittedly held out some faint hopes up until his victory in the primary. So maybe he still had to suck up a little to the Republican establishment to stand a chance... fine fine, I get that. But he didn't wink at us at all, he didn't exhibit any perception or intelligence or guile, he just kept up his same stream of consciousness babble as the alliances based on either cronyism (loyalty rewards) or efforts to sooth the Republican establishment/base began to pile up. In a way I do sort of pity the former Bernie supporters who voted for him out of desperation, but holy shit were they not paying attention.
Still a more grown up pursuit than golf, in my estimation.
Yes you clearly, clearly did. No one mentioned county or state regulations other than yourself.
You're straight up hallucinating now. I didn't call anyone a traitor and I didn't threaten you.
Amazon, and all web retailers, need to understand that they cannot enter binding contracts with minors.
Not strictly true. As I recall, minors generally retain the option to reverse any contract, but they are free to enter into contracts and if they choose to not reverse it then it remains binding on both parties. In this case, with the DLC being so easy to "give back" to Amazon, they of course should have been able to reverse the contract for a full refund.
He's an airhead who barely pays attention to what he's even saying, a sycophant, a man who was a registered Democrat not that long ago, someone who was able to broach a few important topics that no one else was willing to broach, even if he make a complete mess if it every time he tried to talk sense.
Is that not a reasonable attack on Trump? Do you see ANY insult directed against Hillary there, other than the implied and indirect insult of identifying her with the status quo? Are you really so far gone that if you don't see someone frothing at the mouth, leaping up and down and screaming "Orange Hitler! Orange Hitler!", you assume he's secretly pro-Trump? If that's the case, you really should know that it's people like you who lost the election for her. I know a dozen Trump voters (I was most certainly not one of them), and none of them were racists or even all that enthusiastic about Trump as a person. I think they were just ordinary (if cringingly naive) swing-state voters who didn't see any hand extended to them whatsoever from the mainstream left.
I however, doubt you will
No, I won't, because you sound very much like an AC who was trolling me with "prove your worthiness" and psychoanalytical bullshit over the course of multiple threads a few weeks back. Go register for an account--use a disposable email address if you're feeling lazy. Then maybe we'll talk.
Well, fuck it. I will. Briefly. But I'm not going to get sucked into any further "prove yourself" quibbling unless you make an account. My strongest criticisms of Trump are on the points that most people overlook--the parts where his opinions matter the *least*, the likely parts where he'll do what his Republican masters tell him to do. The scariest prospect of a Trump presidency is that he's just George W. Bush all over again but with zany press conferences. I've articulated this at least a half dozen times, including well before the election. The worst outcome, ironically enough, may well be the one where he turns out to a meek and mild non-populist who mostly obeys his masters, simply with a bombastic public persona.
Other points of serious concern are the supreme court, net neutrality, proposing dumbassed things (a literal wall, as opposed to better surveillance-oriented border control), proposing blatantly illegal things (religious tests for entry, instead of country-based restrictions for which there is both massive precedent and a fair rationale for), and general incompetence.
Nothing at all to do with guns in the hands of Dassh/ISIL - a petty distraction on your part that should be far beneath you.
Then why did YOU bring it up?
I'm not going to spend fifteen minutes dissecting giant threads to satisfy the whims of someone who is playing the most childish games instead of literally just taking 3 or 4 sentences to re-state his thesis and our areas of apparent disagreement. Did I actually use the word traitor? Meh. It's conceivable. It's been at least 36+ hours since I've been sober. You want to fucking quibble legalistically about irrelevancies, you picked the wrong fucking day and the wrong fucking topic to do it in, mate.
You are the only one here you attempted to move the goalpost. I was replying to someone talking about American-made guns in American hands... and now you want to shift that goal post to be "American purchased guns in our enemies hands." That's a rather different conversation! And I clarified very early on that I was differentiating American manufacturing vs. American-funded purchasing.
ATF requirements are a separate issue obviously, but they are part and parcel of the narrative of a certain species of leftist (such that tezbobobo appeared to embody), and also the fact that guns tend to be more expensive over here, even if they're imported from elsewhere, runs counter to the narrative tezbobobo was pushing.,, the very same narrative that YOU tried to twist by moving a goalpost (dropping the "in American hands bit" entirely, and glossing over the difference between American-manufactured and American-purchased), in the same post that you insisted I did the same.
I seriously have no idea what you're expecting to prove here. Congratulations, you're managed to quibble for like 15 posts whilst pointedly refusing to clarify your thesis, refusing to acknowledge that there were two other people involved in that reply chain and by re-entering it in the manner you did you were implicitly supporting their views... *and* you're now trying to pretend your silly handwaving about state/county regulations didn't happen? You didn't "ignore" anything.
Six digit ID? Is it what you *do* around here? Is this what you've done for 15 years (or whatever) ? Serious question.
It's tempting to say "not so bad" (and I've repeatedly come close to saying at much myself), but then you remember about the Republican control of both houses, the empty seats on the SCOTUS, the fact that Trump has been sucking up to the Republican more and more with each passing week and the obvious thinness of his apparent independent-minded bluster.
The dangerous part that most people (not all) miss is this: the worst parts of the Trump presidency might be the most Trump-free parts. I think I'd much rather have a GOP-antagonistic Trump saying outlandish stuff every day than an obedient Trump who gets one or two of his populist pet projects pushed through in exchange for signing every Republican-authored bill that crosses his desk.
The worst outcome is the one that virtually no one is talking about: What if he turns out to be not crazy at all? What if he turns out to be a meek, genial dumbass like Bush II, just with wacky-er press conferences?
That is the shit that is going to keep me awake at night.
Why would anyone want to reform how elections occur if they won using that system. The only candidates who stand for electoral reform are those that the system squeezed out.
That's not quite true. Plenty of people on both sides of the aisle dream of starting their own third party, I'm sure. If enough of them (from both sides) can somehow get together and rebel against their party leadership to get electoral reform passed, they can vent their own frustrations and pursue their own dreams of setting their own agendas.
The problem is, it's tricky as hell and risky as hell. Also, there might not be enough genuine rebels who actually made it into office... I guess a compelling counterargument would be to claim that most people who have such visions get out, or stay out of politics.
Still, though, it's possible at least in theory. And there have been multiple inner-party coalitions (e.g. Blue Dog Democrats) that imply that there are at least a few of 'em that don't have an unwavering loyalty to the party core.
Hahaha. If those people were xenophobes, they wouldn't want to come and live here.
...
Do you actually want a response to that? Was it some bit of profound irony that I missed here? Have you been paying any attention whatsoever to the stats of first, second and third generation migrants in Europe? Are you aware that many/most jihadis arrive legally?
Islamic separatism/exceptionalism is rampant across almost the entire west except in America. Coincidentally enough, America currently has the lowest percentage Muslim population. That doesn't mean don't let people in because they're Muslims; but it does mean it's not a bad idea to pay attention to trends and ideologies or to keep an eye on new arrivals for a while prior to granting them citizenship.
You are the one who is demonstrating a lack of introspection. Let's focus on the one point in particular: You appear to call people xenophobes.... for not wanting to allow *other* xenophobes to come and live here.
You are "othering" people for othering people who are on average much worse[1] on the tolerance front. It's dumb as shit.
(I'm an anti-Trump leftist, in case you're wondering what kind of person you're up against, but I think the left in this country has largely committed suicide by choosing to grow more condescending instead of growing up a little.)
1. Yes yes, there are moderates mixed in with the conservatives and extremists, but by and large I've found that people like you tend to oppose any form of ideological test (not religious test, just broadly ideological--like "do you support, in any way, freedom of religion in the United States of America?") for incoming migrants/refugees.
Ak, ok I did miss that then. I did in fact encourage you to link to whatever your goddamn thesis was, since you've been coyly refusing to re-state it for like 10 replies now.
I stand by my already-articulated claim that "American made" is almost completely irrelevant. "American bought" is another matter entirely, and here we probably do find large swathes of agreement unless you are suggesting that we should abandon the Kurds.
If the insults you handed out are molehills in your mind then your parents failed.
You're a confused twat who sucks at communicating. That's the only insult I'm standing by at the moment. Try to articulate better and maybe I can give you some more fine-grained ones.
Random shit about charges to modify imported equipment which may as well have been car parts for all the relevance to anything you were replying to.
Quote mine away if you want. I addressed ALL of the issues that the OP brought up. His "American made" bit definitely hinted at some broader leftist nuttery re: violence and the best ways to deal with it , which I endeavored to preemptively defuse. If you want to call that off-topic, fine, but I *did* address every goddamn thing he said in my original reply.
Says the person who doesn't understand what the ATF is, and purposefully or accidentally mischarctarized what tezbobobo was saying.
There's no strawman. Pretending that I'm talking about your views, when I'm obviously talking about the person I was replying to (and whom you were implicitly aligning yourself with), is utterly inane.
You really want to turn this into a pedantic pissing match? Because if so, you are going to *lose*, mate. But I'm still perfectly willing to start from first principles, if you wish.
I thought I made it very clear above - Daash/ISIL and many others are heavily armed with US made guns,
No, no you did not make that clear. Are you under some kind of impression that I'm studiously reading all 2500+ posts in this thread? Please see if you can keep it a bit more linear than that. You can link to other posts you've made if need be.
Yes, yes - you "win" thanks to a goalpost shift. Once you've finished wandering off into that topic of whatever regulations your state or county has how about we get back onto those American made and paid for guns that are shooting at people we are allied with.
And you're standing by it all? While emphasizing that you're not the AC? Sooooo.... you're mocking me for shifting the goalpost as literally your first post, without even mentioning what that goalpost is. That's insanity. We need to invent a new logical fallacy of debate for that one. I can't move a goalpost if you (implicitly) disavow the views of the people I was talking to prior to your arrival. So, what's the goddamn goal post?
I did not write much and it should be very simple and obvious what my stance is on that very narrow topic.
Holy shit... you sound like someone doing a bad Clinton impression. (Either one.)
Given what you've said so far, I have almost no idea whatsoever what your stance is, or even what that "very narrow topic" is. Some kind of criticism for "arming our enemies", perhaps, but you haven't even made that clear. (And it certainly wasn't clear in that initial post.)
Notice how I'm not harping on how wrong-headed your first post was with its nonsensical emphasis on state/county regulation (this coming immediately after I had mentioned the ATF and the importing process specifically.) That's because I'm more interested in communicating ideas and having a real debate than I am in trying to make mountains out of misunderstanding-molehills. Please, feel free to join me.
Let me get this right - being critical of arming our enemies is "anti-Western"? Yes or no.
Of course not. "Being critical" is a pretty expansive phrase, though. You really need to narrow it down a bit.
For example, the below quote from tezbobobo (the person I was originally replying to before you jumped in accusing me of goalpost-moving) has that slickly progressivist pallor of righteous anti-Westernism... yeah, let's be sure to mention and emphasize only the blood on our hands, instead of mentioning the fact that most of the people who died in Iraq only did so because we kicked a hornets' nest. They killed each other. To some extent we're responsible and should feel guilty (mostly, I think we should feel stupid and act differently), but obviously 90%+ of the responsibility, if indeed a moral quantification in these matters is even possible, must fall on the shoulders of the "insurgents" of Iraq and the leftovers of Saddam's regime.
It should be pointed out that hawkish behaviour under the Bush regime meant a LOT of people didn't survive the Bush regime (literally bombed and shot to death). ,,,
People in the US need to realise that US guns in US hands kill a LOT of people around the world.
See, this is the sort bullshit that has given us the alt-right. By all means, let's PLEASE criticize Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz Rove until the cows come home. I fucking hate what those assholes did to this country and to Iraq. But I don't accept the self-flagellation approach, and neither does most of America. Almost the entire alt-right rests on a foundation of a rejection of all self-flagellating postures (the remainder being actual avowed white nationalist types, of course.) If a Sunni suicide bomber kills thirty Shia in Iraq tomorrow, that's LARGELY due to the fact that some really fucked up ideologies are in dangerously influential positions over there. And I'm saddened we kicked the hornet's nest, of course I am, but it's not like Saddam's regime was perfectly stable or fair or durable.
If you want an even livelier debate, by the way, I rather strongly rebuked your assertion that there is no sharia in Iran elsewhere. At least, I think it was you. Too lazy to check at the moment.
(One last thing, about "arming our enemies"... the Kurds are not our enemies. Arming them is very, very different from arming Arabic-speaking Syrians who claim to be moderate. Now, about the Kurds....I really, really don't like some of their lingering attitudes re: clitorises and I'm not really sure what to make of their conflict with Turkey, but on the whole I'd push back on most criticisms of arming them. Those wouldn't necessarily have to be "anti-Western" criticisms, though.)
Well, upon checking, this little tangient began with my reply to Tezbobobo. Then an AC replied to me, then I replied to the AC, and that seems to be when you first replied to me complaining about changing goalposts. Were you the AC, perhaps?
I'm not certain either of us has a very good idea of what the others' stance is, but I would like to float the idea that, as the apparent newcomer to this little conversation here, it's largely up to you to make this clear instead of opening with some "move the goalpost" nonsense in your very first post.
(Or maybe there's another branch to this thread that I've missed?)
I had forgotten that any criticism about the stupidity of shooting ourselves in the foot was "anti-Western".
That was criticism I repeatedly, explicitly joined you in. But please, feel free to distance yourself from me and not engage. Clearly, the biggest problem in this election is the mainstream left wasn't nearly as snobbish and condescending as it could've been.
You have misrepresented me and put words in my mouth - easy to build a clueless strawman when you are cowardly enough to argue with pretend people instead of calmly discuss things with real ones. I'm not clueless - I was just discussing something that you moved the goalposts from to avoid.
I was broadening a discussion, not moving a goalpost. If you want to quote fallacies all day long, I should point out that you're strawmanning me pretty hard right now... you're pretending that I don't agree with you on the specific "giving guns to people is bad" point. (At the moment, I do make at least one exception for the Kurds, but not even that situation is entirely peaches and cream.)
The discussion needs to be broadened because most of America, including most of the people who voted for Trump, agree with you! To some extent. They can surely see the widespread misery and backfired plans that have come from Iraq. But if you insist on framing it in unreasonably self-flagellating terms, you instantly turn off a lot of those people who were just agreeing with you.
It's like the entire goddamn mainstream left in this country has a death wish. This election should have been so, so easy for us to win.
Also not even Iran enforces Sharia law
And with that, you utterly disqualify yourself from the conversation.
Sharia only means "law", with the implication being law from Islam, obviously. Sharia is what you make of it.
Iran doesn't practice any of the four major schools of Sunni jurisprudence, *obviously*, but they absolutely have a shit ton of very nasty laws that are enforced and were taken from the Qu'ran or Hadith. To pick an issue completely at random, women must have some form of headscarf in public in Iran (although, as I recall, it doesn't have to be as all-encompassing as the hijab), and as I recall miniskirts and tight pants are banned as well.
Women forced to wear what Islam says they should wear and clerics literally running their government... but no no, clearly this has nothing to do with sharia, presumably because you read some factoid on some airhead progressive's blog that disingenuously equated "sharia" with only the more commonly known Sunni schools of jurisprudence.
it's just a few Kingdoms
It's easily over a dozen nations that have *some degree* of nasty stuff ripped straight from the Qu'ran. Does the USA have nasty stuff ripped straight from the Bible? Sure, but we're nowhere near as bad as even a "moderate" Muslim country like Turkey, which has taken to foisting undisguised Islamic blasphemy law on their own press.