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[Classic]

Idiots People who deeply respect authority figures are also the easiest to convert.

[Brentai]

Teamakers take an unexpected lead in the "not fucking getting it" race.

“Our teas are like the teas they threw in, because a lot of them come from China and are black teas,” said Mike Harney, owner and vice president of Harney and Sons Tea.

Harney added that if the protesters were going for authenticity, Harney and Sons would be a good choice.

As a matter of fact, “I’d like to encourage them to toss the tea in the rivers,” he said.

If the protesters were to throw the tea into the rivers, they would have to go out and purchase more tea to drink, Harney said.

THEY DID NOT BUY THE TEA BEFORE THEY THREW IT.

[Shinra]

You need to treat them like children. Small, ignorant, mean little brats. In public.

These men should be stripped of all dignity. Not by a ravening lynch mob with barrels of tar in tow, but by wise parents condescending as they would to a wailing spoiled child.

By all means, hasten the demise of civilized discourse. Why debate your opponents in search of a more sophisticated understanding of the issues, when you can simply condescend to them, provoking them to still greater outbursts of ideological insecurity, until only half of the picture can be taken seriously?

Good policy does not emerge from attaching yourself to a perspective and undermining all its rivals, but from permitting ideas to suffer criticism and defense from all perspectives until a satisfactory shared understanding of its risks and benefits can be established, at which point all that remains is for voters or representatives to identify their priorities.

Perhaps this makes me naïve, but I don't think there's anything to be gained from attacking a position through the idiots among its supporters.

The problem with this logic is that all people who hold the position are idiots. So by attacking the idiots, you are cutting to the very core.

Anyone in America who makes less than 2 million dollars has no reason to complain about these tax hikes because the only thing they're doing is raising the taxes back to the level they used to be at for the upper 1%. Everyone else in america is getting a tax cut. If I'm paying over 20% of my income in taxes (which I am) and I'm below the poverty belt, why shouldn't Bill Gates? Is the money he's making magically not as valuable to the government? It's certainly not as valuable to Bill Gates, which you'd think would be all the more reason to take more from him, whereas the 3k-5k a year I lose in taxes would feed me for the year.

What you and people like you, Bongo, are trying to tell us, is that the fat kid on the playground who already eats too much should pay less for his lunch than all of the skinny kids, and that if the two pay the same amount, or god forbid, maybe making the fat kid eat a little less so the emaciated starving kids around him could eat a little more is tantamount to socialism. If that's what socialism is, making sure that the lower and middle class americans aren't suffering for the benefit of the upper class, than so be it. Let's murder the bourgeois in their beds and let the streets run red with their blood. I'm sick and fucking tired of the delusion that 'Fiscal Conservatism' and 'Small Government' benefit anyone in America. We're a democracy. Policy should work for the people, not the people putting my kids through college with fat donation checks.

[Friday]

I've said this before here I think, but you know how you might drop a penny while fumbling for some change and not bother to bend over to pick it up?

Yeah, Bill Gates does that, ratio wise, with 10,000 dollars.

EDIT: actually I read that article some years ago, so the actual figure he can drop and not give a shit is larger now.

[Arc]

Note to self: Follow Bill Gates around, buy rocket boots.

[Mongrel]

Nor, don't you understand?

Fox News isn't the problem. The legions they purposely whip into a furor are!

Why can't you see the truth!?

Ahaha. Is this a snideways response to my post?

Let me be blunt then.

A huge portion of the population of the United States is for want of a better term, fucking retarded. They are not helping. If Fox news died tomorrow. If the GOP turned on a dime tonight, and if Bush recanted everything he'd done in office this very afternoon, it might help, but it sure wouldn't solve things.

P.S. There are plenty of retards elsewhere, you have no special license on them, and this isn't a U MERIKINS R SO DUM thing, but other countries' retards are for the most part irrelevant to this discussion.

You need to treat them like children. Small, ignorant, mean little brats. In public.

These men should be stripped of all dignity. Not by a ravening lynch mob with barrels of tar in tow, but by wise parents condescending as they would to a wailing spoiled child.

By all means, hasten the demise of civilized discourse. Why debate your opponents in search of a more sophisticated understanding of the issues, when you can simply condescend to them, provoking them to still greater outbursts of ideological insecurity, until only half of the picture can be taken seriously?

Good policy does not emerge from attaching yourself to a perspective and undermining all its rivals, but from permitting ideas to suffer criticism and defense from all perspectives until a satisfactory shared understanding of its risks and benefits can be established, at which point all that remains is for voters or representatives to identify their priorities.

Perhaps this makes me naïve, but I don't think there's anything to be gained from attacking a position through the idiots among its supporters.

I think perhaps you misunderstood what I meant.

I meant that you guys need to stop taking people with barely two neurons to rub together and who make their living off of artificially created RAGE seriously. You need to RAISE the level of debate and leave them behind.

You need to quit feeding all the goddamned trolls.

[Doom]

You need to quit feeding all the goddamned trolls.

This will be a breeze because I actually secretly own every newspaper and news broadcast in America.

[Mongrel]

You need to quit feeding all the goddamned trolls.

This will be a breeze because I actually secretly own every newspaper and news broadcast in America.

So, have you guys totally abandoned all pretense of living in the land of democracy and capitalism then?

Are you going to tell me that the individual is powerless and that only a mighty leader can make things right?

[Royal☭]

I am going to go out right now and personally provide the welfare programs, job creation, and financial restructuring this country needs.  RIGHT NOW.

[Brentai]

If the media are trolls, then they're less Yyler and Guildenstern and more eloH and Demogorgon.  If you ignore them, they don't give up and move on, they get progressively nastier until they try to force a response by actively trying to hurt you.

[Norondor]

So, have you guys totally abandoned all pretense of living in the land of democracy and capitalism then?

WHERE THE FUCK HAVE YOU BEEN THE LAST TEN YEARS--

oh, right. Canada.

[Doom]

You labor under the delusion that the moron can be reasoned with. I'd rather just cut the source off, but good luck with that.

That is to say that we've rather been broadcasting the truth for a good eight years now and all we've learned is that the moron does not find what he never seeks.

Perhaps we could simply walk from door-to-door with a chart illustrating that the rich are not your friends and these political actions would totally help you out, but that would be an unusual amount of effort to derive from a tired debate in which we can't even convince one person that the guys wearing Snidely Whiplash mustaches are in fact up to no good.

[Norondor]

If the media are trolls, then they're less Yyler and Guildenstern and more eloH and Demogorgon.  If you ignore them, they don't give up and move on, they get progressively nastier until they try to force a response by actively trying to hurt you.

Which is why i keep saying we should ban them.

[Mongrel]

Okay. So the situation is hopeless then. Or nearly so. The morons cannot be reasoned with. The wealthy and the corporations own everything, the leadership of the left has failed and the right is a silent movie villain.

What do you guys think is a real practical solution?

Blood in the streets and quotations from Thomas Jefferson all 'round?

Do go on. I am interested in your replies.

[Doom]

I was pretty content to just let the party in charge of both wings of the legislative branch and the guy in charge of the executive branch do what they think is right and ascertain whether or not it was a good idea in the future.

[Brentai]

I'm not pissed at all.  I want as much attention as possible called to the Tea Party Protests.  I want every fucking person in the world to know about this.  I will not be happy unless the Teabaggers are the laughingstock of the entire rest of the world.

The next step is some sort of separate classroom for Remedial Life.

[Royal☭]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6G3fvNhdoc0

When confronted with the information that Obama's tax plan is actually going to help him, the guy practically shuts down.  This really gets to the heart of why this whole thing is ridiculous.  It's made up of a majority of lower/middle class Republicans who are protesting a plan that include tax cuts for them.


Side note, this segment cuts out the Obama Hitler picture from the same segment.

[Doom]

  THIS IS A MAJOR BREAKTHROUGH

But yeah, what. Let's just go with my Door-to-Door idea, then.

[Bongo Bill]

Shinra, I already said I'm not having that debate. Opening by stating your strong conviction that everybody that doesn't see things your way is stupid doesn't do much to make me think it might be productive.

I think perhaps you misunderstood what I meant.

I meant that you guys need to stop taking people with barely two neurons to rub together and who make their living off of artificially created RAGE seriously. You need to RAISE the level of debate and leave them behind.

You need to quit feeding all the goddamned trolls.

People are obviously concerned about it. I'm not yet convinced that fools and supervillains have a monopoly on the position.

I agree that there's probably nothing to be gained from talking to people who think that taxation becomes tyranny when a Democrat does it. Pretending that this describes everybody who doesn't oppose the protests doesn't get us anywhere, though.

[sei]

You need to quit feeding all the goddamned trolls.

This will be a breeze because I actually secretly own every newspaper and news broadcast in America.

So, have you guys totally abandoned all pretense of living in the land of democracy and capitalism then?

Are you going to tell me that the individual is powerless and that only a mighty leader can make things right?

The present philosophy is that what people decide to consume is a matter of individual preference.

I can, as an individual, withhold my dollar/viewership from things I disapprove of.  I can not, however, readily convince all of the morons* within an N mile radius to do so as well.  Some people eke out a living that way.  This is probably how we get our Jon Stewarts (ignoring his career as a comedian, but more the position he fills on TDS) but on the other hand, it is also responsible for our Olbermanns and O'Reillys.

*Not even the ones related to me.