Most Republicans believe in demonic possession; Meanwhile, less than half think humans are responsib
50 replies, posted
[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;38309202]Well, duh! What are you, new to this show? Democracy has [I]always[/I] been a competetive sport. I mean, Christ, we've got rosters and drafts and bitter fan rivalries and everything. It's not just America--this is politics in general. Hell, it's [I]life,[/I]
man. No matter where you go or what you do, you're gonna have cheerleaders waving team colors and people chanting. Might as well get used to the idea now.
See above.[/QUOTE]
But politics [I]shouldn't[/I] be like competitive sport. It's people trying to persuade there people that they're the ones who some make the decisions that affect their lives and the lives of billions of others.
It isn't a trivial thing, and shouldn't be treated as such.
[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;38309202]Well, duh! What are you, new to this show? Democracy has [I]always[/I] been a competetive sport. I mean, Christ, we've got rosters and drafts and bitter fan rivalries and everything. It's not just America--this is politics in general. Hell, it's [I]life,[/I]
man. No matter where you go or what you do, you're gonna have cheerleaders waving team colors and people chanting. Might as well get used to the idea now.
See above.[/QUOTE]
'that's life!' is a pretty silly way of looking at it
how could you ever hope to progress if everyone was told to 'get used to it'?
[QUOTE=Awesomecaek;38305913]My computer is possessed by daemons [img]http://sae.tweek.us/static/images/emoticons/emot-tinfoil.gif[/img][/QUOTE]
and they're all mounting linux distros
[QUOTE=Sgt-NiallR;38309240]But politics [I]shouldn't[/I] be like competitive sport. It's people trying to persuade there people that they're the ones who some make the decisions that affect their lives and the lives of billions of others.
It isn't a trivial thing, and shouldn't be treated as such.[/QUOTE]
It's a pretty thought, but it's completely dismissing the fact that we're all normally functioning human beings who have opinions on things. In order to eliminate "sports rivalry" mindsets, you'd have to lobotomize the entire human race. But why would you even want to? You act like competition is a bad thing. Sure, you get ignorant goons who just arbitrarily pick sides, but competition and rivalry is the driving force of achievement and advancement, and without it we'd all just sit back and say, "eh, I could go either way."
I mean, where the hell would civil rights be if we'd never picked up big foam fingers and beer caps and started marching for equality?
Dude, face it, it's impossible to avoid fandom. It's imbedded into almost every single aspect of our lives, from the ways we prefer cleaning our asses after a rough squat (bidet vs. toilet paper) all the way up to who we feel better about running our country, and other decisions that will affect us for the rest of our lives. And it's actually a pretty cool thing, because without it we'd never really care to make any changes, would we?
I mean, at the end of the day, rivalry and fandom [I]is[/I] democracy. The side with the most fans and biggest show of support is the one that endures. So to say it shouldn't exist in politics is just [I]ludicrous.[/I]
So, yeah. "Get used to it."
sad
[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;38309451]It's a pretty thought, but it's completely dismissing the fact that we're all normally functioning human beings who have opinions on things. In order to eliminate "sports rivalry" mindsets, you'd have to lobotomize the entire human race. But why would you even want to? You act like competition is a bad thing. Sure, you get ignorant goons who just arbitrarily pick sides, but competition and rivalry is the driving force of achievement and advancement, and without it we'd all just sit back and say, "eh, I could go either way."
I mean, where the hell would civil rights be if we'd never picked up big foam fingers and beer caps and started marching for equality?
Dude, face it, it's impossible to avoid fandom. It's imbedded into almost every single aspect of our lives, from the ways we prefer cleaning our asses after a rough squat (bidet vs. toilet paper) all the way up to who we feel better about running our country, and other decisions that will affect us for the rest of our lives. And it's actually a pretty cool thing, because without it we'd never really care to make any changes, would we?
I mean, at the end of the day, rivalry and fandom [I]is[/I] democracy. The side with the most fans and biggest show of support is the one that endures. So to say it shouldn't exist in politics is just [I]ludicrous.[/I]
So, yeah. "Get used to it."[/QUOTE]
i don't know about you but id prefer the most important position on earth to be decided by logic and reason, rather than "hurr durr i was born republican therefore i will vote as such!" or "go obama 4 more years 4 more years!"
[quote]In order to eliminate "sports rivalry" mindsets, you'd have to lobotomize the entire human race. But why would you even want to? You act like competition is a bad thing.[/quote]
oh
[QUOTE=Bobie;38309660]i don't know about you but id prefer the most important position on earth to be decided by logic and reason, rather than "hurr durr i was born republican therefore i will vote as such!" or "go obama 4 more years 4 more years!"
oh[/QUOTE]
Who the hell ever said that fandom was driven by ignorance and stupidity? Not to burst your little bubble of intellectual superiority, but isn't the entire reason you came into this thread to pat yourself on the back for not believing in demonic possession and/or being Republican, or perhaps to argue the opposite and support your beliefs? I mean aren't you doing exactly what I've been talking about [I]right now[/I], but sitting in your wheely chair at home and arguing that people who cheer at rallies are intellectually inferior to you (sit there with a straight face and tell me [I]that's[/I] not the epitome of a sports fan).
My point is, you're here to argue all these points, and, despite your silly and unwarranted sense of superiority (right at home in any sports bar across the world), you feel like you've got a pretty good basis for your positions. You're an informed fan, right? Well why the hell can't everybody else be, too?
To be honest, looking at the historical evidence, I always thought the planet was warming up naturally. I just think that we're to blame for it happening too quickly, therefore creating erratic weather patterns etc.
[QUOTE=Memobot;38310006]To be honest, looking at the historical evidence, I always thought the planet was warming up naturally. I just think that we're to blame for it happening too quickly, therefore creating erratic weather patterns etc.[/QUOTE]
Yeah we're coming out of an ice age but the problem is that we're not causing a mild increase, it's been spiking dramatically since the industrial revolution and since we started mass burning coal and oil.
[QUOTE=Memobot;38310006]To be honest, looking at the historical evidence, I always thought the planet was warming up naturally. I just think that we're to blame for it happening too quickly, therefore creating erratic weather patterns etc.[/QUOTE]
historically, the planet has had periods of rising temperatures and periods of falling temperatures. We're barely putting a dent in the climate with factories and cars and such. Evidence shows that over the past 100 years the temperature has actually dropped by a few degrees.
There's a reason you don't see people bitching about global warming once winter hits. During the summer it's just an easy way to rack up votes or donations from the environmentally conscious.
[QUOTE=ButtsexV3;38310050]historically, the planet has had periods of rising temperatures and periods of falling temperatures. We're barely putting a dent in the climate with factories and cars and such. Evidence shows that over the past 100 years the temperature has actually dropped by a few degrees.
There's a reason you don't see people bitching about global warming once winter hits. During the summer it's just an easy way to rack up votes or donations from the environmentally conscious.[/QUOTE]
In the past hundred years the temperature has been rising, and more importantly than that standard rise is that the oceans are warming up within a kilometre of the surface. The best part is you can't even say it's cause the suns been more active or anything like that because in the past few years the Suns been at a low point in its cycle of activity.
The planet is warming, we're losing ice from ice sheets and shit will snowball very rapidly when we hit the tipping point. The only question that's left now is whether or now we can slow it down or whether we just need to get ready for the worst and hope for the best.
[QUOTE=ButtsexV3;38310050]We're barely putting a dent in the climate with factories and cars and such.[/QUOTE]
[IMG]http://climate.nasa.gov/images/evidence_CO2.jpg[/IMG]
[QUOTE=ButtsexV3;38310050]Evidence shows that over the past 100 years the temperature has actually dropped by a few degrees.[/QUOTE]
[IMG]http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/service/global/global-land-ocean-mntp-anom/201101-201112.png[/IMG]
Read a book sometime, scooter.
[QUOTE=ButtsexV3;38310050]historically, the planet has had periods of rising temperatures and periods of falling temperatures. We're barely putting a dent in the climate with factories and cars and such. Evidence shows that over the past 100 years the temperature has actually dropped by a few degrees.
There's a reason you don't see people bitching about global warming once winter hits. During the summer it's just an easy way to rack up votes or donations from the environmentally conscious.[/QUOTE]
While politicians can dispute and disagree on whether or not climate change is created by humans, and scientists can dispute and disagree on what the consequences can be I think we can all agree that you are quite wrong in everything you've just said.
[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;38309757]Who the hell ever said that fandom was driven by ignorance and stupidity? Not to burst your little bubble of intellectual superiority, but isn't the entire reason you came into this thread to pat yourself on the back for not believing in demonic possession and/or being Republican, or perhaps to argue the opposite and support your beliefs? I mean aren't you doing exactly what I've been talking about [I]right now[/I], but sitting in your wheely chair at home and arguing that people who cheer at rallies are intellectually inferior to you (sit there with a straight face and tell me [I]that's[/I] not the epitome of a sports fan).
My point is, you're here to argue all these points, and, despite your silly and unwarranted sense of superiority (right at home in any sports bar across the world), you feel like you've got a pretty good basis for your positions. You're an informed fan, right? Well why the hell can't everybody else be, too?[/QUOTE]
you're very eloquent when it comes to creating a huge straw-man argument
I believe that the problem is that you have batshit hardcore social conservatives and free-market libertarian neo-cons within the same political party, in the same way that you have social moderates, fiscal conservatives and slightly fiscally left-leaning people within the Democratic party.
If we did away with our current voting system, then the retards would all congeal into smaller parties which would, overall, get less representation in the system.
If 100% of Republican candidates have to vie for the 50% of those which believe in demons, that means that the candidates have to represent them, too, along with their own more fiscally conservative ideals.
So even though they're theoretically 25% of the voting population (assuming that the R/D line is about 50/50, for hypothetical's sake), all of the Republican candidates have to represent them some way to get elected.
However, if you had a Social Conservative Party and a Libertarian Free-Market Party within the same (proportional) legislature, their opinions would count less, relative to how many seats they [I]actually[/I] have.
In the same way, members of the Democratic party could then move off into different, newer parties that are more supportive of their specific ideals. I.e. a libertarian fiscal conservative wouldn't have to put up with social retardation and focus their goals on economics.
[QUOTE=Sgt-NiallR;38309240]But politics [I]shouldn't[/I] be like competitive sport. It's people trying to persuade there people that they're the ones who some make the decisions that affect their lives and the lives of billions of others.
It isn't a trivial thing, and shouldn't be treated as such.[/QUOTE]
politics without competition is not democracy, it falls into autocracy
competition is imperative for good governance and accountability - aka, building blocks of democracy
[QUOTE=BrickInHead;38313426]politics without competition is not democracy, it falls into autocracy
competition is imperative for good governance and accountability - aka, building blocks of democracy[/QUOTE]
I believe that there's too much competition and not enough discourse.
A government functions best when it's elected officials are there to work for the wants, needs, and best interests of it's constituency - instead, we have a giant circus of candidates shouting "CANDIDATE A WILL SET THE WORLD ON FIRE" and "CANDIDATE B WILL TURN AMERICA INTO A DICTATORSHIP".
It's [I]too[/I] focused on elections and [I]not at all[/I] focused on working together (with agreements and disagreements on the way, naturally) to bring the nation into recovery.
In other words, candidates would rather fear monger and scream that their party would fix everything if only the other guy's party would just fuck off, and that's just not true.
Republicans are a disease, and Democrats are the doctors that won't give any medicine to treat it.
It's like I'm trapped in a real life South Park Episode.
[QUOTE=valkery;38305977]I would say that while humans aren't entirely to blame for climate change, we are certainly have expedited the overall process.[/QUOTE]
Pretty sure its almost entirely due to human activity. Though natural process produce greenhouse gases, it has almost always been in equilibrium with the amount that the earth can absorb back. We've pushed those numbers over the limit.
Republicans make me believe in demonic possession too
[QUOTE=Jodern;38315206]Republicans make me believe in demonic possession too[/QUOTE]
Indeed i often get the feeling that republicans are possessed by demons of stupidity and ignorance.
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.