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United Kingdom10026 Posts
On March 06 2020 21:26 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On March 06 2020 21:20 Jockmcplop wrote:
I stopped participating in this particular argument around the time i realized GH's mission is literally to save the entire world so there's not much reasonable back and forth to be had any more. I'm just trying to do my little part, and don't want to lay on my death bed knowing I could have easily done a lot more not to doom so many of those innocent and helpless people that are left. I still use disposable water bottles, plastic straws, and gadgets with minerals mined by hand by kids in Africa sometimes, so again, I'm no Messiah lol. If my mission was to literally save the world I'd probably be hopeless, I'm just fighting the good fight trying to be on the right side of history.
Don't get me wrong I agree with alot of what you say, I just think your premises are not conducive to healthy discussion. Honest discussion yes, but it will always end up with people hating you and arguing nastily, because in your eyes everyone who isn't fully on your side is the problem, and not the problem with the forum, but the problem with the world.
That's never going to end happily.
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The issue I have always had is the way that GH's persistence and evident free time dominates the thread. I found it noticeably more interesting to read when he was banned, solely because a wider range of subjects could be discussed without being diverted back to his pet topics.
Given that the thread has had to flow around GH for a very long time, it's not surprising that most people who remain either support him to some degree or get a kick out of sniping at him. It's self-selecting. The people who found this tiresome have already left.
I'm not suggesting he be banned again, nor that constant sniping at him is productive, but I do think there's a conversation to be had about the way his presence and level of activity has warped the discussion. I've always valued the fact that TL is not an echo chamber, but USpol has felt more and more that way in recent times.
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On March 06 2020 21:34 Jockmcplop wrote:Show nested quote +On March 06 2020 21:26 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 06 2020 21:20 Jockmcplop wrote:
I stopped participating in this particular argument around the time i realized GH's mission is literally to save the entire world so there's not much reasonable back and forth to be had any more. I'm just trying to do my little part, and don't want to lay on my death bed knowing I could have easily done a lot more not to doom so many of those innocent and helpless people that are left. I still use disposable water bottles, plastic straws, and gadgets with minerals mined by hand by kids in Africa sometimes, so again, I'm no Messiah lol. If my mission was to literally save the world I'd probably be hopeless, I'm just fighting the good fight trying to be on the right side of history. Don't get me wrong I agree with alot of what you say, I just think your premises are not conducive to healthy discussion. Honest discussion yes, but it will always end up with people hating you and arguing nastily, because in your eyes everyone who isn't fully on your side is the problem, and not the problem with the forum, but the problem with the world. That's never going to end happily.
The lesson from MLK (when you go beyond the revisionist white washing) imo is that it doesn't matter how you say it. I'm a softy as far as radicals go and largely determinist in my views so I don't (when you get down to it) really blame individuals or think of them as 'the problem'. Not even billionaires.
Again I lean on Baldwin's articulation of the struggle:
When ... any white man in the world says “give me liberty, or give me death,” the entire white world applauds. When a black man says exactly the same thing, word for word, he is judged a criminal and treated like one and everything possible is done to make an example of this bad ni**er so there won't be any more like him.
On March 06 2020 21:40 Belisarius wrote:
The issue I have always had is the way that GH's persistence and evident free time dominates the thread. I found it noticeably more interesting to read when he was banned, solely because a wider range of subjects could be discussed without being immediately diverted back to his pet topics.
Given that the thread has had to flow around GH for a very long time, it's not surprising that most people who remain either support him to some degree or get a kick out of sniping at him. It's naturally self-selecting. The people who found this tiresome have already left.
I'm not suggesting he be banned again, nor that constant sniping at him is productive, but I do think there's a conversation to be had about the way his presence and level of activity has warped the discussion. I've always valued the fact that TL is not an echo chamber, but USpol has felt more and more that way in recent times.
I can appreciate this criticism and thought my Blog was a very fair compromise.
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Norway28923 Posts
GH is not monologuing, the discussions happen because people respond to him.. I thought the recent discussion between Christian and GH was really good personally, and I myself had a reasonably heated argument with neb / gh a couple pages back, which I also enjoyed..
I also think there's more overlap politically between myself and Jimmy than there is between me and GH (we're all leftists, GH is revolutionary, I'm not, probably due to a combination of being attached to my own privilege and interpreting history in a way that makes few revolutions appealing, especially on anything resembling a short term time frame), and whenever Jimmy is not posting about or towards GH then I absolutely consider him a quality poster. But this discussion, again, happened because Jimmy is strawmanning GH really hard and trying to make him respond to questions he either has already responded to or that aren't relevant at all because they don't relate to GH's political positions.
I also think it's great that GH manages to fight his own nature and contribute towards the type of negative peace he otherwise seems to abhor through not responding. 
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On March 06 2020 21:47 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On March 06 2020 21:40 Belisarius wrote:
The issue I have always had is the way that GH's persistence and evident free time dominates the thread. I found it noticeably more interesting to read when he was banned, solely because a wider range of subjects could be discussed without being immediately diverted back to his pet topics.
Given that the thread has had to flow around GH for a very long time, it's not surprising that most people who remain either support him to some degree or get a kick out of sniping at him. It's naturally self-selecting. The people who found this tiresome have already left.
I'm not suggesting he be banned again, nor that constant sniping at him is productive, but I do think there's a conversation to be had about the way his presence and level of activity has warped the discussion. I've always valued the fact that TL is not an echo chamber, but USpol has felt more and more that way in recent times. I can appreciate this criticism and thought my Blog was a very fair compromise.
I did too, for the record.
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On March 06 2020 21:27 Aquanim wrote:
And here comes the brigade. It sure has been something, guys. Peace.
lol, don't be a pussy mate. You can dish it out but can't take it?
Why are you even on this site by the way? Haven't seen you post once in non-politics threads, while I usually recognize most of the others from at least somewhere.
As someone who's basically in the same situation as the lurker guy, with the difference being that I have an actual account, I do want to say that I'm basically in the same boat as him as far as the thread is concerned.
Especially during the first 2 months of JimmiC entering the politics forum a mod should have told him that that was not the way people should post in US pol. However, nobody did so now we're 1.5 years later and he's still asking completely inane questions every day.
I don't know whether it's the dyslexia that makes it so difficult for JimmiC to understand GH's posts or whether there's some other reason, but he has shown time and time again to just simply lack the capabilities to do so. Then certain mods and posters go and blame GH for that which is just completely insane, when he's definitely in the top 5 of people tryharding at least a part their posts in US Pol.
Like, I legitimately do not understand how you can argue that GH is arguing in bad faith when he both takes more time than most other people and clearly cares about most other people in the thread.
At the same time I also do want to emphasize that a lot of posters in the thread are very quick to throw out the bad faith moniker. Especially 3-4 years ago a lot of the left wing posters would gangbang the right wing posters with bad faith accusations till the right wing posters left, which was kinda ironic to say the least. Sure, I'll give you that xDaunt has never made a good faith post in his life, but someone like Danglars actually argued stuff, was consistent and in my opinion a good guy to have in the thread.
Also, if we're doing some character assassinations by describing people, let me join in.
JimmiC: I've seen JimmiC post for way longer than any of you guys, since I was/am a regular in the TL LoL subforum and later LiquidLegends. In the 8 years that I've seen JimmiC post I haven't had a single time where I thought "oh wow, what a thoughtful/intelligent/interesting post". Honestly, I don't think I even remember a single one.
GH: Say we're in a project group and we get a 6/10 (C- I think). Then afterwards you say to the rest of us "if we had done it my way we could've gotten at least an 8/10 (B?). However, you haven't done any work in the entire project except telling other people how they should do stuff. You're that kid.
Seeker: Whenever I hear that MLK quote of the white moderate being the biggest challenge for the Civil Rights Movement, I think of you.
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It's interesting cause I have almost the exact opposite reaction as Belisarius. I remember very clearly a time where GH was on his blog with a few others, and in my perception the main thread was just someone posting about a bad thing Trump had said or done, and everyone agreeing that it was bad until someone else posted some new similar thing to elicit the same reaction.
Of course it's my memory influencing that, I don't believe that it was exactly like this. But I know I was personally way less interested in posting in the main thread when it was sanitized like this.
Fildun: I think the opposite as well lol. I think xDaunt was posting in good faith, and Danglars wasn't.
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United States44439 Posts
On March 06 2020 21:20 Jockmcplop wrote:
I stopped participating in this particular argument around the time i realized GH's mission is literally to save the entire world so there's not much reasonable back and forth to be had any more.
In fairness he does live on the world so it’s not unreasonable for him to care. Can’t be mad about rational self interest.
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United Kingdom10026 Posts
On March 06 2020 21:59 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On March 06 2020 21:20 Jockmcplop wrote:
I stopped participating in this particular argument around the time i realized GH's mission is literally to save the entire world so there's not much reasonable back and forth to be had any more. In fairness he does live on the world so it’s not unreasonable for him to care. Can’t be mad about rational self interest.
Sure, and I don't want him to stop, I just can't be arsed with those kind of arguments.
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Seeker
Where dat snitch at?37124 Posts
On March 06 2020 21:54 Fildun wrote:
Seeker: Whenever I hear that MLK quote of the white moderate being the biggest challenge for the Civil Rights Movement, I think of you.
I don’t understand what you mean by this. Can you clarify?
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On March 06 2020 22:16 Seeker wrote:Show nested quote +On March 06 2020 21:54 Fildun wrote:
Seeker: Whenever I hear that MLK quote of the white moderate being the biggest challenge for the Civil Rights Movement, I think of you. I don’t understand what you mean by this. Can you clarify?
Aight I was kinda just being mean for the sake of it but there is a reason why I wrote that.
I'm very curious whether you have a goal for the US pol thead and if so, what it is.
To me it looks like you (and by extension the other moderators who decide over the thread) want to ideally keep the arguments very civil, to a (to me) extreme degree. The best way to do this in general is to just simply try to keep the argument in the centre of the political spectrum.
Now I personally think that most interesting discussions happen when an "extremist" person is involved, say GH or danglars. However, to me it looks like that kind of discussion isn't particularly liked by the moderators, and there are of course obvious reasons for that.
There's also another form of extremism that I think isn't valued that much anymore, which is the extremely well-informed poster. Basically the only poster who I'd trust on a decent range of topics is Drone, while for financial things Kwark seems to be well-informed.
I think we should nurture these kinds of posters when they're posting about their specialities. However, I don't see TL doing that at all for basically the last 7 years or so. (this is also the main reason I haven't been posting in forever, but that's for a different time)
The way to do this for me is to both reward well-informed posters and crack down on uninformed posters. The whole thing concerning links needing summaries was a good first step and while it helped, it was definitely only a first step.
The main problem for me is that for serious posts, posting standards have dropped very far. In old TL you'd get your face flamed off if you were being a fucking retard and while there are obvious downsides to that, such as being called a fucking retard, I think we've also lost the positives that went along with it, which is a shame.
Well that was a bit of a tangent, but the TLDR is basically that it feels to me like moderation is currently focused more on whether what a person argues riles other people up, while I think it should be focused on post quality in general.
Also you've kinda made some pretty shitty posts about US pol over the years ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Edit: @Nebuchad
To me it always felt like xDaunt would think way more about the effect of his words and the "line" in US pol than danglars, and would intentionally obfuscate and/or alter his words as to have plausible deniability whenever someone would post an answer to his posts.
But then again, this is definitely not a hard science and it's just what I read into their posts.
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Just do what needs to be done. If the thread dies, it dies. Simple. This is a farce.
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for what it's worth i'm with GH.
for a while, i gave JimmiCs' the benefit of the doubt but come on, this: He has admitted to me before that there were times when he intentionally targeted GH because he couldn't control himself and let his emotions get the better of him. I respect the hell out of people when they have the balls to admit things like that. ad nauseam ... not only makes his later excuses worthless, but also shows he learns nothing from the past, his past.
i see no balls there; just a misbehaved child that following an excuse/admission, wipes his slate clean. over and over and over ...
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You literally just described what gh does every time. The difference is that Jimmic actually admits when hes wrong instead of just finding new mods to get favorable rulings. Acuseing mods of sending racist pms with no evidence, no problem gh you're a dangerous negro we want to keep around. Lacks even the most basic respect for other posters, gee hes a revolutionary and cares about other posters. Clearly advocates constantly for a violent revolution, oh no hes just saying it will become violent beacuse deep state will use violence so violence is now predicted and justified.
He shares more qualities with trump then anyone else in the threads histories.
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How exactly do you show "balls" online? I try to respond to every question of me, I try to admit when I'm a dick. I think I have been fairly honest. I post very nicely to those who are nice to me.
You need to show that you're stronger than your compulsive disorder. Lots of people find GH's ideas absurd, but unlike you, they can stop themselves from responding to GH's posts when it's clear the discussion would be pointless. You're acting like an addicted person, and being nice to you doesn't work because it's like telling an alcoholic that drinking is bad for them. You always respond with the equivalent of "yeah drinking is bad and I should stop doing that" while opening another beer.
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United States44439 Posts
There’s a profound moral sickness in modern capitalist society which we’re really bad at talking about. We drink coffee picked by child slaves and don’t think about it. We eat dollar chickens and don’t question what it takes to make a chicken so cheap. We drive past homeless people in giant trucks. We bomb countries and starve populations whose only sin is being born over resources our economy demands. Our police routinely kill citizens in the service of monied interests.
When GH argues that the status quo isn’t peace and that meeting the intrinsic violence of the status quo with revolutionary violence is fully ethical I can’t help but think he kind of has a point. That any plea for peaceful opposition must explain why only one side is required to be peaceful.
I live a very comfortable life doing nothing but looking at spreadsheets and telling people what numbers mean. If I think about the number of manhours that I consume daily (as in the portion of the hours involved in the creation of the resources I consume that is allocable to me) it surely must be in the hundreds. I live in a system in which their time, and therefore their lives, are valued at a fraction of mine. And most of the time I’m okay with that. I’ve normalized it. People starve so I may overeat and that’s just the way it is. But I quite like that GH hangs around pointing out that this is all morally despicable. That the correct response to not being able to obtain an ethically sourced product is not to give up and pay the slavers, it’s to not consume that product. If Jesus is actually keeping score in accordance with his stated philosophy we’re all fucked.
He’s maladjusted but I don’t know that he’s actually wrong. Like even if all he posted was “YOU ALL DESERVE THE GULAG FOR YOUR PARTICIPATION IN THIS SYSTEM” over and over I’d still not be sure he didn’t have a point. But he posts better than that which, from his political perspective, is probably generous. He treats us with more respect than we’d give Nazis, for example.
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EPT
