Why have you promised not to use it?

(06-18-2025, 04:11 AM)TokenLiberal Wrote: Why have you promised not to use it?

The R-word tends to trigger people.

Maybe it does when you use it because you're one of those Putin fanboys and it's mostly that fact that triggers people (understandably so since Putin is, as they say, the bad guy).

(06-18-2025, 04:37 AM)TokenLiberal Wrote: Maybe it does when you use it because you're one of those Putin fanboys and it's mostly that fact that triggers people (understandably so since Putin is, as they say, the bad guy).

Actually, my original position was that the western politicians have dug themselves a moral hole in which they sit. The deeper one digs, the higher, relatively speaking, every one else becomes.

The napkin incident on the train from Kiev for example.

(06-17-2025, 11:22 AM)TokenLiberal Wrote: When you brand your forum "mud pit politics" and there is a clear focus on politics in your forum structure, new users will expect to find political discourse and expect to find other users who don't shy away from debate. You seem to have realized the branding mistake and have since rebranded, which I wholeheartedly agree with. Had this been the brand from the beginning, I probably wouldn't have wasted my time.

If you're visiting tinder.com for months before you realize it isn't a site for firewood then it's not a problem with the site, it's a problem with you failing to observe your surroundings and not reading the actual description of the site - which was there when you got here. Not surprising since you made it clear many times over that you have no intention of assimilating to the forum culture, so why bother to read the admin's logs and site descriptions.

You enjoy having the last word and I've given it to you in every single one of our exchanges, but you having the last word and me reading it are not synonymous. Every time I held a mirror up to you, you felt disrespected by the naked contempt you've shown others and yet you refuse to modify your behavior. You posted some long survey with ignorant assumptions loaded into the questions and what amounted to a book review on liberal mythology that nobody really cared to engage with. Sometimes when they did, you bitched out it. You're obsessed with respect, give none, and apparently when reading the website address -that you are now complaining about being a misrepresentation- you selectively ignored the "mudpit" portion of it.

You'd have been kicked from most sites five times over by now for just being a tiresome troll, which is probably why in spite of the constant sniveling you've done you just keep coming back. You've been kicked form everywhere else you've gone I'd guess, or nobody else wanted to play these games and ignored you. You're on the ignore list of some members and others have considered your rhetoric to be trolling. Maybe you're just a little different, but your willful refusal to even try to assimilate to the culture that you invaded isn't on anyone except you. This ignoring of the mudpit part and bitching about not being satisfied with the politics part is entirely typical of your bullshit rhetorical tactics, which I am no longer going to bother pointing out to help you improve your chances of meaningful engagement. You don't want to have a discussion. You want to argue and you want to be immune from having the same shade thrown on you that you throw on others.

As I said in the last long post I made to you, you can either get over it or you can't. Clearly at this point, you can't. You keep coming back, angrier than when you left, more recalcitrant, more eager to engage in circular arguments, and forever unwilling to accept that your opinions and beliefs are not facts and are not axioms that the rest of us must accept as true. By all means, feel free to call me all the names you'd like and make all the insinuations you'd like. You're erasing years off your life with your addiction to drama and conflict, but I'm just going about my day. We're a lightly moderated and censorship resistant forum, which you knew... but if you want to make an ass of yourself that's entirely acceptable here.

Other people have the right to post here without you dragging them into your crap and they certainly have a right to not reply to you. I have exercised that right often and have never regretted the decision when I finally got around to seeing your replies. I'm a member of this site like everyone else, with the exception being that I remove spam... and I'm willing to handle people that engage in trollish or toxic behavior more than anyone else cares to.

I very much doubt I'll read your reply, but the dopamine rush you get from writing it will feed that little monster inside you for a little bit. Enjoy the high, it's on the house.

(06-18-2025, 05:04 AM)NobodySpecial268 Wrote: Actually, my original position was that the western politicians have dug themselves a moral hole in which they sit. The deeper one digs, the higher, relatively speaking, every one else becomes. 

The napkin incident on the train from Kiev for example.

If you take Russian propaganda for truth, that's a sensible position. I don't, and I think Putin, as far as the depth of moral holes goes, has Western politicians beat by quite a few miles, his being deeper.

(06-18-2025, 06:52 AM)TokenLiberal Wrote: If you take Russian propaganda for truth, that's a sensible position. I don't, and I think Putin, as far as the depth of moral holes goes, has Western politicians beat by quite a few miles, his being deeper.

How so?

ETA: care to explain this?



As a parent, I can tell something really fishy is going on there. If they were my kids and they behaved like that, I would say; "Right, hand it over."

Do you think they are fit to lead Europe into a war with a certain post soviet country?

(06-18-2025, 06:30 AM)Ksihkehe Wrote: If you're visiting tinder.com for months before you realize it isn't a site for firewood then it's not a problem with the site, it's a problem with you failing to observe your surroundings and not reading the actual description of the site - which was there when you got here. Not surprising since you made it clear many times over that you have no intention of assimilating to the forum culture, so why bother to read the admin's logs and site descriptions.

There was a clear focus on politics when I got here. From the start (this thread), I was clear about what I'm here for and your (among others') initial response to this thread signaled to me that I was in the right place. Most users, yourself among them, initially showed a willingness to hear me out and discuss politics, but then through their actions showed me, over time, that they're actually not willing. I think this thread is itself a great example. We get into a discussion, but then you suddenly stop responding. Okay, I thought, maybe others are more receptive. So I made a few threads, trying to gauge what people are interested in. Most ultimately showed the same unwillingness to talk about politics. And that's okay, you're tired of the subject and you've probably written me off as delusional, I get that. It's a risk I took joining the site and it didn't pan out this time. I'm not losing sleep over it, I've wasted my time in plenty of worse ways in the past.

Quote:You enjoy having the last word and I've given it to you in every single one of our exchanges, but you having the last word and me reading it are not synonymous. Every time I held a mirror up to you, you felt disrespected by the naked contempt you've shown others and yet you refuse to modify your behavior. You posted some long survey with ignorant assumptions loaded into the questions and what amounted to a book review on liberal mythology that nobody really cared to engage with. Sometimes when they did, you bitched out it. You're obsessed with respect, give none, and apparently when reading the website address -that you are now complaining about being a misrepresentation- you selectively ignored the "mudpit" portion of it.

I don't enjoy having the last word at all. I want an ongoing discussion, and obviously the key to having an ongoing discussion is responding to each other and answering each other's questions. When I ask you to specify which parts of my post are factually wrong, I'm not trying to "have the last word", I'm trying to have a discussion. When I ask you questions, you're not doing me a favor by not answering them. You're actually being rude.

You'll find that in many of my responses to other people, I'm asking a lot of questions. That's because I want to learn about their perspective. The difference between you and I there is quite striking. In this thread, you haven't asked me a single question (other than "Did you know that ...?" which is just another statement). It's clear you don't care about my perspective. You're here to preach. 

Quote:You'd have been kicked from most sites five times over by now for just being a tiresome troll, which is probably why in spite of the constant sniveling you've done you just keep coming back. You've been kicked form everywhere else you've gone I'd guess, or nobody else wanted to play these games and ignored you. You're on the ignore list of some members and others have considered your rhetoric to be trolling. Maybe you're just a little different, but your willful refusal to even try to assimilate to the culture that you invaded isn't on anyone except you. This ignoring of the mudpit part and bitching about not being satisfied with the politics part is entirely typical of your bullshit rhetorical tactics, which I am no longer going to bother pointing out to help you improve your chances of meaningful engagement. You don't want to have a discussion. You want to argue and you want to be immune from having the same shade thrown on you that you throw on others.

I'm sure this will sound ridiculous to you, but the fact that I am considered a troll by some users here is more a reflection of them than of me. It shows that people here are not used to discussions between people who disagree with each other. And I know that's a hard thing. As a civilization we have lost the muscle memory of how to talk to people we disagree with ideologically. This is reflected in the response I got here from you. When our first difference of perspective became clear, you immediately stated "you're heavily biased by what the press tells you". Instead of trying to understand my perspective, you write it off and retreat back into your comfortable bubble of emotional validation. It's obvious that, when you do this, no discussion can be had. And this has unfortunately become people's default response when they run into others that they disagree with. Social media have taught us that we no longer need to do the uncomfortable thing of engaging with perspectives that differ from our own. We can just ignore them, and they will stop turning up in our feeds. Since this is an old-style forum, and I keep coming back into your feed like some annoying, dissenting fly, it makes sense that you start to think I'm a troll. What I really am is someone who disagrees with you and wants to talk about it.

Quote:As I said in the last long post I made to you, you can either get over it or you can't. Clearly at this point, you can't. You keep coming back, angrier than when you left, more recalcitrant, more eager to engage in circular arguments, and forever unwilling to accept that your opinions and beliefs are not facts and are not axioms that the rest of us must accept as true. By all means, feel free to call me all the names you'd like and make all the insinuations you'd like. You're erasing years off your life with your addiction to drama and conflict, but I'm just going about my day. We're a lightly moderated and censorship resistant forum, which you knew... but if you want to make an ass of yourself that's entirely acceptable here.

Do you realize how incredibly self-important it is to assign to me an emotional state where I am addicted to and angry about the one part of my life you are involved in? You won't believe me but this (and ATS) was, to me, simply a way to expose myself to perspectives that I don't usually see. It's so easy to stay in our little echo chambers and become closed-minded ideologues, I see it in other people and I don't want it for myself. It's not any more or less than that.

It doesn't have to be a dramatic conflict. Discussions between people who disagree with each other can be respectful, believe it or not. I have met and had discussions with conservatives who were perfectly able to stay respectful and join me in getting to the bottom of a disagreement. A requirement is that both parties actually want to get to the bottom of it, and care to learn about the other's perspective. I didn't find that here which, again, is okay and I don't blame you for. It's obviously not your responsibility to be the person I'm looking for.

Quote:I very much doubt I'll read your reply, but the dopamine rush you get from writing it will feed that little monster inside you for a little bit. Enjoy the high, it's on the house.

It's an interesting thing to me to make a post addressing someone and then to express that you probably won't care to read their reply. Why make the post, then? What are you getting out of it? A dopamine rush, perhaps? This seems a lot like projection.

(06-18-2025, 07:01 AM)NobodySpecial268 Wrote: How so?

The moral failings of Putin are many. The most egregious in my mind is the oppression of his own people.

Quote:ETA: care to explain this?



As a parent, I can tell something really fishy is going on there. If they were my kids and they behaved like that, I would say; "Right, hand it over."

Do you think they are fit to lead Europe into a war with a certain post soviet country?

They are hiding things that they would rather not have in the picture because it makes the table look messy. One is obviously a used napkin and the other is a kind of plastic stirrer. Both are things you would expect to be there.

You really think that if these people were using drugs they would be so stupid as to have them just laying on the table at a press event?

Apply occam's razor.

(06-18-2025, 08:42 AM)TokenLiberal Wrote: The moral failings of Putin are many. The most egregious in my mind is the oppression of his own people.


They are hiding things that they would rather not have in the picture because it makes the table look messy. One is obviously a used napkin and the other is a kind of plastic stirrer. Both are things you would expect to be there.

You really think that if these people were using drugs they would be so stupid as to have them just laying on the table at a press event?

Apply occam's razor.

Are you asking me to deny the evidence of my own eyes and ears? And I don't mean the commentary . . .

Let's not forget my finely tuned parential instincts of bringing up two kids (and their friends).

After a night on the Kiev express, it wouldn't surprise me what they left behind from the night before. Do remember they were ambushed by the reporters who more than likely knew exactly what was waiting on that tabletop.

Quote:The moral failings of Putin are many. The most egregious in my mind is the oppression of his own people.

Oppressions? Please continue . . .