I agree with most of the points by rehster. What exactly have Bush done that is conservative other than anti abortion and say he believes in God. For all the conservative Christians, how would Jesus feel about the current administration, isnt' that a pretty good guide for how Chrisitan should vote?
I think that what has happened to the D&D is that we live a world where everone is scared & angry...they come here to share that, let off the steam of it all
I'm not scared nor am I angry. I think a bulk of the participants of this forum are at the age where civil unrest and parental dissent comes natural.
This is exactly how many of us feel about the "support for the troops" many on the Left claim to have. While at the same time proclaiming support for the troops, many seem to take a sort of morbid glee in reporting rising numbers of deaths, problems and scandals involving our soldiers. When confronted about this they say the same thing..."show me where I've said I want the troops to fail." It's not that they've come out and explicitly said it but rather that they seem to secretly take secret pleasure in the failures of our troops because it thereby reflects poorly on the president (whom is the real object of their ire). That's what so many of us have tried to get accross as our point. Some of the posters here have such a hatred of Bush that it seems like anything that makes him look bad is a good thing for them regardless of what it means to our servicemen and women overseas. They just don't come out and say so.
basically everyone falls into one of 2 categories these days: 1. neocon, racist, Bush-loving, Muslim-hating, pro-life, pro-gun, Bible-thumping chickenhawk 2. Bush-hating, race-baiting, pro-choice, anti-gun, anti-Christian, terrorist-sympathizing, politically correct flagburner
Did you even look at my comments in the context of the quote provided? Please at least do me the favor of trying to understand what I'm saying as opposed to simply trying to dismiss my position backhandedly without actually articulating a response to the point of view I've laid out.
On the one hand you started the thread asking why the forum has degenerated into a mud flinging contest but then in the same breath you admit to feeling that the left wants America to fail in its foreign endeavours. How can we promote intellectual discourse if anyone who dissents or opposes this government's policies is basically written off as "taking secret pleasure in the failures of our troops?"
I think what you really mean to say is that we categorize each other in one of those two categories. I doubt most here really fit into either one...
And some of us cross categories because I love my guns so I can prevent the Fed from taking away my right to burn the Flag while I thump my Bible, Qu'ran on alternating weeks, and while I sympathize with the terrorists am too much of a chickenhawk to actually join them.
Damn straight I haven't. [edit: toning it down ] Huh? Since Saddam was pretty much a secular (despite his posing) dictator, I'm not sure what he has to do with Islam - as such your point is a bunch of hooey. I believe you're refering to some of my threads about violence and Islam, but saying there is a problem with Islam no more equates to saying Muslims are bad than saying there is a problem with the PRC government equates to saying Chinese are bad. Imagine that. Muslims blow up the WTC and someone might ask if there is a connection between Islam and violence. Wow, what a knee-jerk response!
I can see the difference. "A poster like this" is pathetic because he so strongly thinks of himself as a better person and denies others the right to view their own opinions as heartfelt, too, just because they do not keep carrying a "I am holier than thou" sign in front of them all day, but rather use entertaining ways to make their point. I don't want to deny that Batman Jones' posts represent his heartfelt opinion, but at the same time, it disgusts me to see that he and some others think so highly of themselves and their own opinions that when someone has a strongly different position, and perhaps even expresses it in a sarcastic or provocative way, they are automatically the devil or something. Do I agree with Trader_Jorge, bigtexxx and basso all the time? Surely not. However, I think they have much less of a "I am the better person than you" approach, and I prefer that. I got bored by all the bullcrap, and I have better things to do than to read the lengthy, verbose nonsense this guy is posting. It was entertaining for a while, but Clutch was right, the "I am Jesus" thing could just not be topped - and apparently also settled the debate whether anything else that fraudster said was for real. After that, "MacBeth" himself apparently knew nobody was taking his lies seriously here anymore, so he just quit in shame.
I was going to generate a "backhanded" comment like the one above, but I guess I will tear this one apart. In one sentence, you drag the D&D further into the muck you decry at the start of the thread. You insinuate that "many on the Left" do not support the troops at all. I assume that is to mean the people who don't agree with Bush's policies with regards to the war in Iraq and, though I do not consider myself "on the Left" (that would be my father), I fit in that category. When it comes down to it, everyone I know is in absolute agreement that the troops are spectacularly brave, worthy only of the maximum praise we can heap on them, and are the true pillars of our community (as opposed to the basketball players we have come together in this place to worship). When you say that "many on the Left" only CLAIM to support the troops, you are giving a direct slap in the face to those of us who see the troops as the true backbone of this society and your slap is repeated over and over every single time you or those of your ilk repeat these slanderous and hurtful refrains. This one sentence is disgusting. Why has the D&D devolved? Because some of us choose to use language like this. You and those who believe this are doing some serious projecting. Reporting the facts and wanting people to be accountable for problems involves absolutely ZERO "morbid glee," at least for me. You must be buying in to O'Reilly's vitriol if you actually think that a single person in this country has taken any "glee" at all over the scandals or the troop deaths. It must be pretty freaking secret, because even the hardest left people I know (and I work in academia, so there are plenty) have expressed nothing but disappointment and sorrow for the events you describe, at least where the troops are concerned. They want the people who are accountable to be held as such, but nobody (even my father, whose favorite pundit is Molly Ivans) has expressed even an inkling of "pleasure." If nobody I know has even hinted at such a "secret pleasure," the only thing I can surmise is that people like you have made that up in your own minds. Take a reality pill, dude. There are plenty who have a pretty intense hatred of Bush, some of them have some pretty good points and others are simply partisan. Again, nobody that I know thinks things like Abu Ghirab or troop deaths are "a good thing," but at least they, as much as you would protest the contrary, are looking for accountability from the top and are not debasing the troops in the least. The only ones who are talking about people taking pleasure from these events are conservative blowhards who have no grip on reality. I apologize for the strong language if you fit in that category, but that is reality.
