One of my "friends" on Facebook posted this:



I could certainly flame back, but attempting to discuss Keynsian economics with a committed Republican partisan is an exercise in banging my head on a pointy rock. (And this guy happens to have a PhD in psychology and teach that subject at a regional public university. Despite the simplistic text, he's no fool.)

Instead, I'm attempting to back off a bit. I certainly never was friendly with this chap back in the day. Instead, I'm trying (really, really trying) to see this as a window into the mind of the modern American right-wing partisan. He's at least right that "hope and change" was a flash in the pan, but he clearly fails to understand cause and effect in the political process. The core question is whether there's any line of argument that would matter in this discussion. Is it ever going to happen that a guy like this (apparently smart but also apparently deeply in thrall with the propaganda of his party) comes to understand anything of the way that political processes work?

If he's old enough to remember the late 80s/early 90s, I'd throw out the example George H.W. Bush. Republican voters thought they were getting a rock-ribbed conservative who would continue Reagan's policies of lowering taxes and spending*, but instead they got a guy who raised taxes, raised spending, and appointed David Souter to the Supreme Court.

There were probably some Obama voters who really thought Hope and Change would spread throughout the land and solve all of our problems. I expected Obama to struggle to dig us out of the GWB recession, but I also expected him to at least try to pursue expansionary fiscal and monetary policy, neither of which he seems to be interested in doing. He seems to be trying to convince voters that he's trying for these things but is being thwarted by intransigent Republicans, but at this point, I doubt the sincerity of his commitment to Keynesian economics, the social safety net, organized labor, and basically every other pillar of the Democratic party. Functionally, he's about as right-wing as George H.W. Bush, but at least GHWB tried to put on a Republican face -- Obama seems to be embarrassed and ashamed of any Liberalism that's left in him.

Your Facebook friends are right -- there's some genuine buyer's remorse among the members of Obama's base right now, but the idea that there's an appreciable number of them that would choose McCain/Palin in a do-over is preposterous. Hillary, on the other hand...

*No, Reagan didn't really lower taxes or spending, but Republicans at the time thought he did, and that mythology continues to this day.

The approach of “teaching this guy how the political process works” may come off as condescending and put you in the “elitist left camp,” in his eyes.

There are definitely ways to voice your side of the issues at hand without being confrontational. Many of the politic posts on the forum maintain civility while expressing both sides.

While my views lean pretty far to the right I enjoy hearing other view points. Of course many people don’t and just dismiss the opposing view as “God how can he be that stupid.” If the reaction comes from your friend I would suggest dropping the subject, it’s not worth it.

FYI, I updated the image to include more recent comments. You'll notice they're all entirely one-sided. After going to lunch and fuming quietly about this, about the only thing I could think of to post might be "correlation does not imply causation", but that's coming acros as Yoda or something. I really, genuinely, wish I could find a way to have meaningful, non-spiteful, non-confrontational conversation here, but I just don't see a way to do it.

This is one thing (of many) that frustrates me about our current political setup. How does a registered Democrat who is unhappy with Obama legitimately voice their unhappiness in 2012 without wasting a vote? The only real choice today seems to be deregistering and switching parties, since Obama will likely be the primary candidate. Looking back a little, Carter faced some opposition during the primaries, with Ted Kennedy getting 34% of the vote. When was the last time the presidential office remained aligned to a specific party, while also seeing the incumbent president defeated in a reelection attempt?

Though I'm coming from the opposite direction, I have the same problem (not a registered Republican, but I've always voted Republican in the past). My solution is just to give up and not waste effort on politics at all. It doesn't seem like there are any options that really represent me nor any recourse to address this situation.

Regarding OP- I don't think he's trolling, really. It's just that people get invested in their ideals and stop listening to the other side, whatever the issue. It isn't about making a good argument or following the logic- it's about "my side is right, your side is wrong". No one ever really concedes any points to the other side any more or gives credence to a different perspective. People feel like they have to buy in hook line and sinker to whoever they support, and they argue that way no matter what good or bad either "side" does. Makes legitimate conversion futile, I think.

Heck, I feel that way- every Republican I know expects me to be Republican and join in their rants against whatever. I feel I have to buy in or get out, so I choose the latter. I suppose I suffer from being too idealistic.

I think Kennedy's 34% might be the high water mark as far as primary challenges to incumbents go. Pat Buchanan made some noise against Bush Sr. in 1992, but ended up with just a tiny portion of the nominating votes.

Trying to nominate an insurgent Democrat against Obama would be quixotic, and probably has more of a chance of backfiring (by making him take "friendly fire" and spend money on it) than it does of moving his own policies substantively to the left. He is what he is, and I don't know that a Hail Mary primary challenge will change that. Obama's going to be the Democratic nominee.

Now, maybe a progressive "wave" congressional election of true-blue supporters of pro-growth, demand-side, stimulative economic policy might give Obama breathing room to let his inner Paul Krugman out -- maybe he really does believe that stimulus works when there's idle capacity in the form of double-digit unemployment, but is scared to stake out a position so far toward the left pole of the debate. In that case, adding more lefties in congress moves the center of the debate, and lets him come down closer to Bill Clinton than to Grover Norquist. But there are a lot of "ifs" there.

I know I'll be backing progressive Democrats in 2012, and I'll probably be backing Obama as well. The difference between "making things worse very quickly" and "not making things better fast enough" is certainly worth my vote.

Certainly, the next time somebody says "see, they're all the same and you should vote for a third party" (the argument often used to favor Nader in the Bush v. Gore race of 2008), you'll be able to argue persuasively that, in fact, "they're not all the same". In the American political system, only the Democrats and Republicans matter. That's just how it is.

Obama is certainly in trouble, at least versus a "generic Republican" candidate. He's taken a shellacking from the right ("Communist!") and the left ("he abandoned progressivism!"). There will be less enthusiasm for him than four years ago. There will (likely) still be high unemployment. Obama's not going to get any love from the Republican congress for any sort of jobs program since it's going to require stimulative spending. All of those indicators say that Obama is going to have a hard time.

Conversely, once you switch from "generic Republican" to any of the people actually likely to run, Obama probably still has a chance. Maybe Huntsman could have crossover appeal, but the others are all competing to see who can be as right wing as possible. Really, it's a race between depressed left-wing turnout and increased right-wing partisanship, making the "middle" into target that's moving rightward. The open question is exactly where this middle ground exactly is. It will determine whether Obama wins in 2012.

I think the answer is simple. Un-friend them.

I'm not wanting to get to the point you are, but could see myself there soon (regarding effort on political things). I personally have never registered with either party since I perceive doing so as being part of the larger broken system problem. I haven't voted cleanly with each major political party either when it comes to all levels of elections, and my presidential vote tends to be against who I perceive to be the worst. I just wish I could see signs of the larger system changing, but this seems highly unlikely. Every time I try to dig into the little details, it always seems to come back to a flaw in the current dual party setup.

I do appreciate the discussions here much like others do, mostly for the perspective. I just don't know if I want to get to the level Tony C is with keeping up with it all, since it would just frustrate me further.

It doesn't seem like anyone really wants whoever the major party candidate is anymore. They just vote for them because they think who they really want won't get enough votes and the other party will get in.

That's why I would rather just not have the parties at all.



That's where I am at. Even if I voted for the person I really wanted and they got elected they whole thing is so messed up it's not like it would make any difference.

You guys vote _for_ candidates? I always vote _against_.

The scariest news to surface in a while is the survey that reported 63% of respondents thought Sarah Palin was not qualified to be president.

What's the matter with these people? Does that imply that 37% of them believe that she IS?

No wonder the country is such a mess.

tanstaafl.

Looking back, that would imply you think/believe history would have been the same, or at the very least similar, had Al Gore won back in 2000 instead of GW Bush...

While I agree that practice seldom lives up to promise, I still think there's a difference to be had with one direction over another. Voting against, as Tom and Robotic put it, isn't necessarily a bad way to go. It's how I voted in the Canadian election this spring.

There is no real way of knowing without putting him in the same situation.

For me, now, that would not be the answer. My wife has pointed out that I tend to “write people off” if I see them as flawed in some way (talk too much, tend to be opinionated, self-centered ...etc.). She reminded be that I am definitely not perfect so why should I expect that in others. I'm tying to overlook annoyances in others but sometimes it's pretty hard.

I think it's certainly not worth writing people off over political differences, or even displayed ignorance. I think most people have a bias about something and will display their ignorance if you ever hit that topic, politics or otherwise. I think it's better to find common ground and let that be the general tone of your conversations, and only tread into disagreement if there is mutual respect and a willingness to grow through discussion.

Of course, if the other person is such that they simply cannot exist without shoving their different opinion in your face in an aggressive and uncomfortable way, it's probably not worth hanging around them. You just may have compatibility issues- nothing wrong with that.

But if I wrote off everyone who I thought made silly arguments about stuff, I wouldn't know many people. And I'd probably have to write myself off if I was honest about it.

It's easy enough to be more diplomatic than that on FB. You can hide their posts in your news feed, for example, or compile lists of friends whose posts you *do* want to see and then read the list's feed instead of the main page.
Certainly, if one's visits to FB include the occasional nerve-grating post, these can be avoided in order to have a calmer experience on the site.

Yeah, it's often infuriating, but I think the underlying issues are important enough to be worth what it's doing to my blood pressure.

Re: the two party system, it's true that the two big political parties have managed to consolidate so much power that it's almost impossible for fresh ideas to seep in from outside, but sometimes insurgencies can take over, or at least shift the direction of the debate significantly. The Tea Party is certainly doing that nowadays, and, while the massive amount of GOP establishment coin they take in disqualifies them as a conventional insurgency, they've managed to make themselves a force to be reckoned with, possibly enough of a force that they could secure their own funding stream if the Koch Brothers and Pete Petersons of the world decided to cut them off.

It's a shame that this sort of thing has to happen by infiltrating one of the two parties, rather than forming new parties that can operate independently, but that's not changing until we adopt a preferential voting system, and I don't see that happening any time soon. So, for better or worse, the Tea Party probably provides a good strategy template for how to make change happen within the two party system. I don't know that the Democratic party would be as fertile a ground for this rapid change as the GOP was for the original Tea Party crowd, but it's certainly got a better chance of success than what's been tried before.

As for why I follow this stuff closely: politics matters, and the elections matter, even when they're a choice between "a douche and a turd sandwich" (thanks Trey and Matt.) Maybe the turd sandwich supports extending unemployment benefits! Maybe the douche promises unequivocally to close Guantanamo Bay! These issues matter to me, and being underinformed on them is a bad thing. The last time I stopped following politics, I ended up falling for Bush's justification for the Iraq war. I certainly wasn't the only left-leaning person on the planet to do so, but it's still something I'm deeply ashamed of, and the kind of thing I'm determined not to repeat.

I have my doubts. The R party is a tightly controlled, vote-in-lockstep party, so once there's a potential disruption of that lockstep vote (as was threatened by a few TP people), the GOP has to respond quickly to retain any semblance of control or risk fragmenting into oblivion. The D party, by contrast, seem to be more like a collection of cats. If you have the right food, they'll mostly stick together, and come running, but no matter what food you offer, there are always a few persnickety ones who'll go their own way, and no-one really seems to care.

Yeah, that's my concern as well, though there's also evidence that the Democrats, having had a large tent full of so many different points of view for so long, are better-equipped to herd all of those cats, whereas the GOP is much more vulnerable to a fissure along ideological lines developing into an all-out civil war, precisely because they expect the insurgents to follow orders, and won't know what to do when they disobey.

I can see some of this happening with the Tea Party freshmen. The GOP leadership expects its members to fall in line and obey Reagan's 11th commandment, and to do what a rational politician would do to keep their jobs and win the war, not just a few battles. But the freshman Tea Party class isn't playing the long game -- they seem to be thinking this is their bite at the apple, and they're going to swing for the fences, damn the torpedoes. (I loves me some mixed metaphors.) What's scarier is that the establishment GOP leadership can't really do much about it now that House rules forbid earmarks -- if someone was off the reservation before, the speaker could offer them a bridge project or defense appropriation to get them back, but what leverage do they have now? The leadership also can't use sticks instead of carrots, because Boehner's grip on the leadership over Tea Party-friendly Eric Cantor is tenuous at best, even after eating Obama's lunch on the debt deal.

I still think the GOP are in a much more advantageous position, especially with the very difficult (for the Democrats) Senate map in 2012. But the mixture of corporate-friendly establishment GOP old hands and upstart nihilistic Tea Party newbies is a really volatile mix that could blow up at any time, whereas the Democrats are actually more ideologically cohesive than they've ever been after losing many of their purple seats in the 2010 elections.

I was revisiting this old thread today, when staring at some more one-sided Facebook comments from my "friends." Nothing's really changed in the political world and nothing's really changed in the online world.

To the extent that my own behavior has changed, I've adopted a new rule for myself. If all the discussion is one sided and I'm the only guy on the other side, then it's not worth my time. If others chime in and something resembling a debate emerges, then it's more fun to stick around and be part of it. Also, I've conceded that there are some people, like the fellow who I quoted at the top of this thread, that I just don't bother engaging with, while there are others who are just as strident but far more fun. They'll drag concessions out of you and you out of them without either side descending into ad hominem attacks.

My least favorite debating tactic that I've ran into in this world would be the "mushy ball of entangled arguments" -- hundreds of words, in a single paragraph, offering several disparate arguments toward an inconclusive point. If you attempt to tease out the individual arguments for discussion, you get back another mushy ball. For those, I hereby surrender.

(EDIT: fixed grammar issue after seeing it quoted below... sigh.)

Yes! I hate those. Well said, and I'm going to quote you on this if I come across it again

The rule I've adopted a long time ago was, as soon as people start talking politics, ignore the discussion. Nothing ever happens in those discussions that changes anything and they just serve to piss me off. I like not being pissed off.

That is what I do too. It seems you can never sway anyone from their opinion so it just turns into a grudge match especially on the internet.

I'm not so sure about that. I remember some of the best discussions we have ever had on this bbs, where Jeff Sylvester was pretty much by himself on one side of the religion issue and acquitted himself admirably. Anybody who skipped that because "...it's not worth my time." missed out on a lot.

tanstaafl.

I apologized to Jeff for not getting more involved and letting him be the Lone Ranger, but quite often he expressed my viewpoint more effectively and quickly than I could and I simply had nothing to add.

That said, it seems we silently lost a lot of forum members during that era of political and religious discussions. Perhaps that's just due to the nature of a discontinued product and a dwindling interest, but I can't help but suspect...

The number of active posters to the site has pretty much been in a steady decline for a long while, even prior to the big religious and political discussions around 2008. I tried to pin down specific reasons (and at one point was really stressing out about it) before just letting it not bother me too much. Overall, I've preferred the way things have gone, to the alternative where this site grew and had so many users it lost the unique feel. At one point I had given heavy consideration to trying to include all the Rio portable players. Thankfully riovolution.org came along and filled that gap.

Who knows what the future will hold for the site. For now, I'm just trying to avoid being on the defensive too much when participating in a discussion. Fell into that trap recently on a Google+ discussion. I'm also trying to be more self aware of my own comments that puts others on the defensive as well. The previous big discussions here have slowly helped me get better with both aspects, and I look forward to more in the future.

I do miss some of the voices who don't hang out here any more, but I still keep this board around, versus several others I've dropped over the years. We're still a good community. And we've all grown up a bit over time.

I actually wasn't very involved during 2008, so it's surprising to me to hear people left over political and religious topics at that time. I've always bragged on this board for being such a great place to understand opposing points of view. But most of the religious stuff I remember was way before 2008. TBH, I really felt like the ground had pretty much been covered way before then.

I do wish I hadn't gotten so involved I poker and posting in poker forums that I let my involvement here drop. But such is life- I'm glad there are still a lot of familiar voices around.