Another handicap I have in debating with most folks on here is that everyone seems to have immersed themselves in the "progressive" "socialist" talking points. It doesn't matter whether you listen to MSNBC or watch PBS or read most books either on a college campus or in a bookstore like Barnes and Noble, they ALL share the same talking points on just about any issue that has been argued and discussed thoroughly. The folks at EVC have memorized all those liberal talking points and can pull out a link at a moments whim to butress any point they are making that is in contradiction to the conservatives points of view.
Some viewpoints are better supported by facts and arguments than others.
FY writes:
This is extremely frustrating for an inarticulate guy like me....
The only cure for inarticulacy is practise. Debating here will give you that.
FY writes:
....who knows instinctually what he believes but cannot put it succinctly into words.
Perhaps the issue here is that what you instinctively believe to be true is not supported by the facts or superior arguments?
Instinctively deciding that things are true is a notoriously unreliable method of determining what is true.
So I suggest you keep practising in debates and do some research on the issue you debate on.
I am giving your post a cheer, because I see it as a straightforward and open expression of how you see your participation here.
That said, I also think that you are mistaken in your view of what motivates those who disagree with your posts. Some of the other responses to Message 673 offer good suggestions.
Fundamentalism - the anti-American, anti-Christian branch of American Christianity
Having a minority opinion can be infuriating but if I am responded to with respect and not treated like an idiot, I do ok being on the minority side.
Really? You're on the internet in a debate forum that YOU decided to join and now you're complaining that everyone is debating against you? You are a fucking idiot.
There is no reason to try an be nice to a person that goes around jeering in the most ridiculous fashion like an angry little child. What, you think you're the first person here to have a minority opinion? Check the threads dip shit. Most of us here have been in the minority on a number of threads. You think ICANT doesn't get frustrated? You think Buzsaw didn't get frustrated? Of course they did, as I have and most of us have. It's par for the course.
You have your opinion, others have theirs. It's a debate forum where your opinions are - but not in all cases - in the minority. So what? Deal with it like an adult, and have fun debating. None of this matters at all. We're all here to enjoy ourselves. Stop making it out to be a matter of life and death and try to make yourself a victim; none of this is about you - the forum isn't called "Foreveryoung is wrong."
But, as always, if you don't like it here and you don't like that your opinions seem to be in the minority, you can fuck off. You have that option.
"This is extremely frustrating for an inarticulate guy like me who knows instinctually what he believes but cannot put it succinctly into words."
ringo writes:
That's a pretty long oxymoron.
Reads more like a tautology to me.
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)
The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal and hasten the resurrection of the dead. William Lloyd Garrison.
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Frederick Douglass
I was thinking it was 'ironic' (in an Alanis Morrisette kinda way) that such an articulate sentence was created by someone claiming to be inarticulate.
"There is no great invention, from fire to flying, which has not been hailed as an insult to some god." J. B. S. Haldane
The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. - Francis Bacon
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." - John Rogers
A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But, on the other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity. — Albert Camus
"...the pious hope that by combining numerous little turds of variously tainted data, one can obtain a valuable result; but in fact, the outcome is merely a larger than average pile of shit." - Barash, David 1995.
Yeah no I agree. I am not really sure what he did before the obstreperous mocking of the hall monitor's authority and the heavy suspension just made it all the funnier. It is like you threw him under the bus and now we can all point and laugh at his unjustly mangled corpse.
Juxtaposed against BD's 24hr suspension for essentially the same offence adds a nice touch of salt to the wound.
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