[rubecube]

Originally Posted by Mr.Coffee

Oh I definitely know I have biases and live and operate in the same sort of echo chambers, that's fair. I didn't reply to your response on the CPC thing because I asked for evidence and you provided it? That was the point of asking you, there was nothing to reply to about it- you were right.

Definitely not narcissistic to think that living in a place shapes people's viewpoints. Weird opinion there. I also didn't make comment that I am above such predispositions or biases, I think you made that up.

I apologize if I read too much into it. Tone gets lost in text, and the tone I got from that post was super arrogant and patronizing.

That's really awesome you have travelled, experienced the world and made lifelong friends in various places. I actually genuinely mean that and am not being sarcastic. Me too actually. Are any of those relationships with people in Africa or Asia? Or are they all mostly European, western world places?

The only continents I haven't visited are Africa and Antarctica. However, I do have friends who emigrated from various areas of Africa. Sadly, no penguin friends yet.

I don't think it's "intellectually lazy" to think that if someone is a straight up communist their opinions should be taken with a grain of salt. That's a pretty extreme viewpoint. It'd be like me saying I believe in fascism, would you all of a sudden think that my opinions henceforth had as much merit as previous to knowing that? Obviously not, so it's not quite so "outrageous" an opinion to hold actually. And I'm glad to hear you're not communist, I must have misread that previously or misunderstood a previous point you made, i can't recall when or why I thought that and obviously that assumption was wrong. However, you must admit that your general opinions on the majority of topics tend to be (I'd say "very", but whatever) left leaning.

I think equating communism to fascism is bit much, especially considering communists are usually among the first groups to be persecuted by fascism. That said, I wouldn't dismiss someone's opinion just because they were a fascist. My dad's a fascist, and I still have to tolerate his bull####. I still think there's value in trying to figure out which threads someone followed to get to that point.

Sorry if my post bothered you, I tell my brother the same thing regarding west coasters and he gives me the same eye roll you probably just did for what it's worth and you shouldn't (and I'm sure don't) take me too seriously. It's just an opinion formed after reading years of west coast people's opinions, like on this site and elsewhere, etc.

I didn't take it super personally. It's just frustrating from a debate standpoint. I was very conservative in my late teens and early 20s. I've arrived at the positions I have through years of education, lived experiences, etc., so reducing that all to just be a product of where I lived diminishes the debate, and it really does you a disservice because it gives you a cognitive excuse to not try to learn anything from what I post.

Don't get me wrong, 90% of what I post is trash, but every once in a while I stumble across a few decent points.