(03-27-2025, 12:52 PM)FCD Wrote: It might surprise you to learn I had actually kind of looked forward to this discussion.  I have since you joined, and I thought this thread might be a good entry point to do just that.  That is, provided we could establish a level playing field before starting, a baseline.  And, we needed to be able to do this without wasting a bunch of time.  I can see that will not be possible without wading through a bunch of bullshit at every evolution, and I'm not willing to do that.  It is abundantly clear you are trying to establish a bias advantage before even allowing the discussion to begin.

Huh? Almost all of my questions are just asking you to expound upon points that you've made. It can be entirely on your terms if you're willing.

Quote:What you are continually trying to do is establish an advantage that you know something which I don't (i.e. that you have some inside track which you can use as a shield).  It doesn't matter.  It really doesn't matter.  All of that would come out in further conversation which we can't even seem to get started.

Seems to me it did start. You have the pick of the litter of subjects. Here's a list of subjects you made points about, after which I asked follow up questions:

- State level public education
- A public health insurance option necessitating socialism
- Waste, fraud, abuse in the federal government
- The dysfunction of the federal government
- Triage of spending taxpayer money
- Acting now and acting decisively to solve something (it's unclear what)
- The impossibility to have interventionist policy in an otherwise capitalist system
- Left-wing positions requiring a rewrite or dissolution of the constitution

These are points you made. I am asking follow up questions and clarifying my own position so we can get an actual discussion going, instead of talking past each other. This is how discussions are supposed to work. We reach mutual clarity about our positions, and then we debate their merits.

Quote:I am a cut to the chase kind of guy, and I don't really give a shit about all the other "noise".

Cut to what chase? What chase are you trying to get to? We have many subjects we can continue discussing, but you're just retreating for no reason.

Quote:I'm confident others will be along shortly to participate in my absence.

I'm not confident at all, unfortunately.

Frankly, it comes across like you have no interest in talking to me. As soon as I start asking hard questions, you run away. And if you really made an effort to understand where I'm coming from, you wouldn't continue to insist you know me better than I know myself. You've projected your preconceptions about liberals onto me and gave me no chance at all to prove them wrong. You say I keep telling you you don't understand, but it was you who first told me I don't understand myself. All I'm doing is countering that point, by saying it might be you who's missing something. And there you go, throwing a tantrum. I suppose the only way I can get you to talk to me is to just sit here and take it, but I'm not that docile. Without mutual respect, there can be no mutual understanding.

I hope you'll reconsider.