[Itse]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

Someone's feisty.

Considering how much you rant about "toxic discussion habits" it's really quite funny how terrible your own manners are.

If you've been paying attention and can't see it I'm not sure what I could do to "prove" it to you. Your answer seems to be "Donald Trump exists" - yes, and is basically being accused in every way of being a bigot, both in contexts where he actually is and those where he isn't really, as a way to discredit him... instead of pointing to the actual reasons he's totally unqualified.

This discussion has been had in the New American Politics thread, and I'm not really interested in going through it again. We're not going to suddenly agree on this.

Last night a crazy person said things about me that you acknowledged were totally non-representative of me or my view of the world, but that was fine with you and did no real damage, because I'm here and people can read my words and speak for myself and it's not stopping me from talking, as if that were a satisfactory answer; "see? There's no problem here." As if these sorts of smears don't have reputational consequences when done on a larger scale than a forum board.

First of all, a weak man fallacy. Taking the worst examples of certain behavior and taking them as representatives of the whole issue is poor argumentation.

Second, I did not make a generalized claim that any and all such comments in all contexts are okay. I simply said that no, I don't think Crumpy-Gunt in this thread is an actual problem.

Third, considering how worried you claim to be about "smears", maybe you should try doint it less yourself? You know, all those constant attempts at put downs. It's genuinely quite toxic.

I guess what I'm saying is that I'm skeptical that your position on this is defeasible and consequently don't much see the point. Which is why my first post in this thread was:

The point of a discussion for you is the possibility of defeating someones position?

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

so the ad populum isn't doing anything other than giving me enough of a statistical sample to satisfy me that I'm not crazy and this isn't just all our heads, as Itse seems to think. So it's not functioning as a logical argument or anything.

I don't think you're crazy for thinking how you think. I even totally understand why people have such ideas. However, it does not follow that it's not all in your heads.

What I'm trying to do here is to get you to question your presumptions, because I think those presumptions are fundamentally wrong and the root of people's misconceptions.

Also, a lot of this is IMO just lack of perspective, historically, globally and socially. Certain loud and obnoxious liberals seem like the biggest deal ever if you're very close to it or keep paying attention to them, but if you take a step back you will notice that actually it's quite easy to mostly ignore them, and you will IMO inevitably notice that there is so much more going on.

Plus the height of the SJW crusades seems to be pretty much over already. A couple of years ago I might have agreed with you that they are a big problem, but there's really a lot less of it already.

And again, when I look around I see a huge amount of discussion and "politically incorrect" opinions. How many threads are there right now where people are saying that Islam in itself is a problem? How exactly has that debate been chilled at all by this supposed monster of "regressive left"?