and directed at @popobawa4u, despite the quote attributed to moi 
[since fixed]
I hope when he unclutches his pearls and returns from the fainting couch we will be be able to give him the vapors. Anything to not back down an inch from a factually unsupportable statment?
I believe the problem is that I have told him he was incorrect, and utter bastard that I am, I did so incorrectly.
I believe we are now on a slippery slope.
You know, if we bundled them togetherâŚ
An armed society is a polite society. Have you tried fondling a gun?
I think this thread and subject is too full of Captain Moroni, and needs a captain more in line with the headline:
I guess Iâm sort of, working my way up to it.
What I am interested in is not so much personal courtesy, but clarity. My experience is that when people decide to get personal, that clarity suffers. Grilling me over âwho are the militant left?â does not present a disagreement, it ask an open question, which I answered. I said that I donât know who they are. Politeness also can also prevent being held to different standards than other people, because the discussion is more formal, and not about the personalities.
I am not implying anything. Whatever standard of politeness result in maximum clarity. You I can usually understand, but some others allow their personal feelings to overwhelm their specific criticisms.
Damn straight! Rhetoric is who we are, and what we do. Among other things!
The fact that you believe things may be a problem in itself! No, I am not incorrect, I am not anything. I posited something which you happened to disagree with. So what? You donât need to agree with it. I donât even need to agree with it. There does not seem to be any compelling reason to make it a personal matter.
I have stated explicitly that I am included in the category of âmilitant leftistsâ. So if you choose to rant that that is bullshit ot factually unsupportable, then I see that as your own problem rather than mine. And I think that you sound entirely far too agitated about it. Do I need to offer some special âproofâ to verify this with you? And would this not subject me to a double standard when the conservatives and liberals above require no such validation? If you find it so troubling, then I assume that you can prove the credentials of your political philosophy and activismâŚ
Yes, I was speaking in very general terms in regard to why someone would watch the show I was thinking of. I was not stating that all liberals or all conservatives are all identical. TV and movies are often discussed in terms of the types of audience they draw. I was attempting to speak at that level of granularity. Sorry if I offended you or anyone else. That wasnât my intention.
Sorry they deleted your side thread, I think your concerns are valid. My personal experience is that people are more like than different IRL and it can take some time to even figure out what an individuals thoughts are on all the hot topic subjects.
Online it is often flipped such that you know where someone stands on the hot topics before you know them as a person. It makes it easy to just lump all of the gun owners, the rich, the poor, the religious, the gay, liberal college student, etc. into their own little boxes. When in fact there is variation in each of those groups.
I have noticed here and on my FB which is mostly liberal that half just want to treat the conservatives the way that conservatives have typically treated liberals. During the Bush years if you protested, a common response was, if you donât like America, then leave. If you did an extended protest then you were attacked for being a lazy, jobless welfare communist. So now in Oregon with this group, itâs really easy to use all of the old GOP attacks.
The other half want to have an intelligent conversation but have mired themselves in endless arguments with the first group about the definition of particular words. One thread on FB raged for a good week if not more and ended with some very like minded friends of mine ceasing to be friends online or off.
My point being, not everyone has they same goal. Some just want to insult at a high level while others want to dissect and go deep into a topic.
@popobawa4u keep posting like you do. I donât always agree with you but even then I get where you are going and appreciate it. Cheers.
Me: Rhetorical questions are rhetorical.
You:
Like I have said before, I enjoy engaging with you rhetorically.
So⌠is this some way of saying that you have no intention to honestly engage with what I say? So then, why reply at all? Again, I hate to say it, but some people here seem more eager to try characterizing me instead of engaging in real discussion.
I answered your questions in good faith, so at least I met you halfway.
I refuse to believe that you donât know what a rhetorical question is.
What it is? Or how I interpret your use of it?
I assumed that you intended it as a way to imply that your questions should be left unanswered. But giving the phrase a static definition would itself constitute poor rhetoric, I think, so I made the effort anyway. Itâs the same courtesy I would hope for when trying to engage in conversation. You could take or leave my answers, of course, without even remarking upon them. You often accuse me of lacking clarity, yet should I infer that youâd prefer the stilted posturing of us asking questions of each other which we are not to answer? I am not convinced that this has the makings of effective dialectic. But, of course, I am always willing to acknowledge that I could be mistaken.
What if nobody really knew what a rhetorical question was?
That would be interpreted as a reason to use deadly force. Which is not the same as being deadly force.
I think that words have particular meanings. I think that when you are discussing laws, you should try to use the right words to say what you mean, especially when the plain English meaning is essentially correct. I am having trouble understanding where the confusion between force and threats comes from. Deadly force is force that is deadly, this is not a difficult concept to grasp.
And why is that? Well, because it is a threat of imminent deadly force to which they would be legally allowed to respond to with the sameâŚ
Yes, it is a threat of deadly force. Which is not the same as being deadly force. Which is what I said. No, this is not a trivial or pedantic distinction. Nor is it difficult to understand. It is the difference between telling someone that you are going to kill them, and actually killing them.
I think youâre making a distinction that most folks, including cops, wonât make.
Like I said, they will shoot you. But they will not write in the incident report that you used deadly force against them. Can you see the difference? Saying that the Bundys used deadly force is essentially accusing them of a murder that never happened. Can you see that actually killing people crosses a line that threatening them doesnât?
