The Man Who Should Have Been President
Al Gore wins Nobel Peace Prize.
Thank God we got the lying incompetent rich frat boy draft-dodging good-for-nothing moron instead of the guy capable of winning the Nobel Peace Prize.
Whew! That was a close one!
Al Gore wins Nobel Peace Prize.
Thank God we got the lying incompetent rich frat boy draft-dodging good-for-nothing moron instead of the guy capable of winning the Nobel Peace Prize.
Whew! That was a close one!
posted by Winston Smith at
6:03 AM
29 Comments:
Although I'm pretty pleased about this, just to play devil's advocate for a moment, you can definitely recognize there are arguments to be made against Gore getting the prize. You can think that global warming is a real and very serious problem and recognize the role Al Gore's had in raising awareness about it and still think that an award of the Nobel's magnitude would be more deserved by a guy who solved the problem, perhaps by getting a worldwide treaty passed, or by coming up with a cheap, low-emission energy source, than the guy who merely made people aware of the problem.
Still, no doubt in my mind we'd all be better off if this guy was President.
Well, I was wondering about this, but then thought that, as for actual inventions, perhaps that's more on the side of a Nobel in the relevant science. The peace prize is for the guy who made the difference in a more social way.
I'm not wedded to that conclusion, and I actually think these things are pretty political. But the mere fact that Gore was anywhere near in the running says something important. Contrast this with, say, what Bush '41--the NOT-good-for-nothing one--did after HE left office. Mostly lobbied and spoke for money. One of his causes: getting (I think) Sierra Leone to open up a region with a rare type of lion to rich big-game hunters.
Just imagine what '43 will spend HIS time doing after he is (finally, finally FINALLY) done ding his damage to the country.
There is the question of whether the Peace Prize should be used simply to recognize achievement, or to recognize achievement and further advance the cause of peace.
Awarding the prize to Gore makes perfect sense in the latter context.
Gore lost an unloseable peace-and-prosperity election through his own mookiness. He should have won by 20 points. [Bush41 beat Dukakis by 8, and Dukakis, for whom I voted, was much better opposition than Dubya.]
Oh look, in Salon today---
As a former president, Clinton has also padded his personal bank account with more than $41 million in speaking fees from appearances for major corporations and other organizations.
And let's not forget him advising Dubai in the ports deal. But at least he doesn't go around hugging murderers and dictators in the name of "peace."
Well, it isn't clear that Gore lost, actually...but to the extent that he did, he lost largely because the GOP lied about him. (My favorite: the James Lee Witt affair.)
Though it does seem to be true that Americans are more willing to tolerate idiots than geeks... And look where THAT got us...
Didn't say there was anything wrong with making money after leaving office. Said that's not all you should do.
Oh, and that you shouldn't side with rich, fat-ass "hunters" as against endangered lions. Call me crazy.
All the *tu quoques* in the world can't make Bush a good president, Tom. Ya might as well give it up. It's not getting any less silly.
Give it up? Kid gloves, amigo. We're all fellow Americans here. We set the example for the nation and the entire civilized world.
Just taking them as they come, in an environment with not a great sense of history. (See Harry Truman, the Korean War, FDR's righteous squirrelings against both American legislation and the Nazis, and a dozen other arguments that have been left unrefuted.)
If the central thesis is that those on your side of the aisle are somehow better human beings than those on mine, you might be right---altho the facts are not yet in evidence. What I do know is that if one's information supply is nearly exclusively left-wing blogs and "news" correspondents like Karen Tumulty, no reasonable person could conclude other than that America's right is toejam and its left is composed mostly of far more reasonable and decent people.
I don't blame you atall atall for having that impression, WS. I would, too.
When I google the myriad of Democrat scandals, all I get are right-wing blogs, which I can scarcely prop up as evidence hereabouts. When it's right-wing wrongdoing, the "approved" sources like the New York Times, WaPo and CNN pour out like Fountains of Truth. Oh yeah, and Karen Tumulty and her ilk.
But no, I think people don't pay attention to details like James Lee Witt when they pull the big lever. In fact, the last-minute disclosure of Dubya's decades-ago DUI affected the vote count more than the sum total of any clever GOP rhetorical "lies."
Geez, Clinton won twice with twice more baggage. Gore lost because he's a mook, stalking Dubya across the stage during the debates and acting weird. He should have beat Dubya like a drum. All he had to do was act normal.
Is Bush a bad president? I don't know what a good one is anymore. If Bush pulls out Iraq in extra innings, history will be kind. Already, bin Laden's 9-11 clarion call for the commencement of the Muslim apocalyse has stalled and has probably been beaten back for another century or two, with Ahmadinejad's Shi'ite advent of the 12th Imam probably not far behind.
We may have dodged this latest eschatological eruption from the Middle East for the next lifetime or two, inshallah, thanks to some extremely clumsy but timely action.
As for Clinton42, I'm on record as being OK with him (and I hope Clinton44 is equally as judicious), but I'd really like to know what was in the documents Sandy Berger snuck out of the National Archives in his pants and then hid at a construction site.
Clinton got many little things right, but he may have missed the biggest one, and that's how presidencies are judged. In the meantime, both Carter and Clinton's post-postgraduate work betrays a certain feeling of unfinishedness about their presidencies. It was Carter who facilitated the Islamic Republic of Iran, and Clinton was savaged by gay activists for doing little-to-nothing about AIDS, altho now it's on his to-do list next to making money. Did 40 or 41 pursue the bucks with the dedication that 42 has? I don't think so.
Perspective is impossible without tu quoques, and Carter and Clinton are not only rich veins, they're the only ones we have in a generation where history starts anew with every dawn. Dubya is absolutely the worst president of this century, on this we agree.
Silly? I've heard worse. Thank you for your forbearance. It ain't easy being a stranger in a strange land.
Jesus, Tom. You can't be serious, man. I've marched down innumerable posts like this refuting you in detail, being as civil as I know how...but I've got a life, and I can't do it over and over.
This is just a parade of transparent rhetorical tricks. Vague gestures about "approved sources," weird suggested theories about Gore losing because he stood wrong in the debates, the outright crazy overall suggestion that Bush might not be a terrible president, all aimed at the hilarious conclusion that we we wouldn't likely be better off with Gore.
It's just silly, man. Seriously. This kind of crap is why I can't take your side seriously. If that end of the spectrum is going to become sane again, it's got to eschew this kind of silliness.
This stuff is important. It deserves to be treated as such.
Hmmm. I missed the refutation parts. The usual MO is, wow, you're so wrong I can't even address your points, so I'll just dash this off to tell you how wrong you are and your arguments are risible, with words like silly, crazy and hilarious. I suppose I could do the same.
I don't think Gore lost an unloseable election because of James Lee Witt. That's silly.
No, not because of James Lee Witt. At least not that alone. More like because of this:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Daily+Howler+Al+Gore+Election+2000&btnG=Google+Search
TVD, people don't refute you because exercises in futility get tiring after awhile. I've read this blog for a fair amount of time, and it seems like the same things get said over and over again to you to either no effect or complete avoidance of the points made. It's frustrating to read and I'm sure it's even more frustrating as a participant.
Someone could copy and paste "straw man" and "red herring" refutations from previous discussions with you, but what's the point?
I think it's pertinent that a previous thread in which the posters disagreed (about the girl who walked into an airport with a "bomb") was intelligible and ended in mutual understanding, in 31 posts, with WS calling the posters "a reasonable bunch," and I found myself wondering where exactly you'd wandered off.
When your arguments are pretty consistently "silly, crazy, and hilarious," and efforts to discuss said arguments have little to no effect, I don't see a problem in ceasing to refute those arguments and simply label them as such.
Why take the time to write 4 paragraphs to put me down without making a single specific point?
I don't get it. If what you say is true, just ignore me. You have no trouble with somebody wackily predicting political violence in America on the part of the right wing. I'm detecting a certain animus here for my political leanings.
I don't expect to change anyone's mind about anything here; I'm testing ideas to see if anybody has a decent counterargument. When they resort to insults and "straw men" and "red herrings," I know they don't have any.
Cheers.
Oh my god, the real problem comes to surface:
"When they resort to insults and "straw men" and "red herrings," I know they don't have any."
Tom has no idea what a straw man or red herring is, it seems. THAT'S what the problem is! He has NO idea that he's consistently making fallacious arguments because he doesn't know what these fallacies are!
Here you go, Tom:
A Red Herring is a metaphor for a diversion or distraction from an original objective. That is, if you say something irrelevant to the current point being made in order to take attention away from it. See, that's bad because you are saying something that doesn't matter in order to make people think that you're right when you're clearly wrong. You do that a lot, and if someone tells you that's what you're doing, and they're right, then that IS a decent counter-argument to your "argument".
http://logicalfallacies.info/redherring.html
Now, if someone accuses you of making straw men, they mean that you are misrepresenting the position that opposes yours in order to create a really easy target to destroy in a rhetorical attempt to demonstrate that you are right. That's clearly bad because you aren't really showing that the opposing position is bad, but that a similar-looking but much weaker position is bad.
http://logicalfallacies.info/strawmanarguments.html
There! Now you can go back and read allll those posts of yours where people informed you that you were guilty of perpetrating one of these and realize what happened! So, from now on, you'll be educated and you'll understand what's being criticized when you do these things! Right!? RIGHT!?
YAAAAAAAAY!
...
Please be specific. This is another generic "you always" post that is more suited for marital squabbling.
And keep in mind that I often have the same objection to what my correspondents write in "reply" to me, but wingeing about it is uncivil and unbecoming.
Holy shit. Dude. Seriously. You have to be trying a sociological experiment or something to see how much bullshit people will put up with before they snap and go insane.
EVEN though this is TOTALLY worthless, I'm going to cite 10 times (a mere fraction) people have told you you were throwing a red herring and you ignored it.
1) http://philosoraptor.blogspot.com/2007/07/though-experiment-for-liberals-and.html
Half-way down, I inform you of your red-herring usage, you declare what I say a rant and "accept my surrender".
2) http://philosoraptor.blogspot.com/2007/07/john-yoo-partison-scumbag-at-greenwalds.html
"your claim was that Winston says John Yoo is a partisan bastard, and that a proposition inferred immediately from that proposition is that only certain views of issues are permitted, and then, as proof, cited an article that proposed a view about a completely separate issue."
3) http://philosoraptor.blogspot.com/2007/08/what-conditions-must-surge-meet-in.html
"Well, this definitely isn't a good reason. I didn't say anything about your link being "epistemologically acceptable". This whole little aspect of your posts lately has really gotten on my nerves. You keep saying that like we just randomly say "I don't trust this source" and "I trust this source" for no good reason - as though we've created arbitrary lists of good and bad sources. That is clearly not the case, so stop pretending it is. Furthermore, I never questioned the credibility of your source. I pointed out that it just flat-out didn't say what you seemed to be indicating that it said. So, not only is this part of your post resting on the incorrect presumption that we arbitrarily deny credibility to certain sources, but it's also a red herring."
4, 5, 6)
http://philosoraptor.blogspot.com/2007/04/price-of-disloyalty-over-at-slate.html
"Jesus...Pelosi again, Rwanda...anything but Iraq." -WS
"Your attempt to use second-rate rhetoric and your inability to address WS's posts in this area without yelling "CLINTON DID THIS AWFUL THING TOO!" as substitutes for facts and reasoning for your position is a tactic you might reconsider not using in the future." -Dark Avenger
"It's gotta be Kosovo, or Kant, or anything but Bush. Just anything but Bush" - Me
7)
http://philosoraptor.blogspot.com/2007/03/incompetence-dishonesty-and-contempt.html
"Joe Wilson, Nancy Pelosi, Sandy Berger, Scooter Libby...
Red herrings on parade...
Every irrelevant thing here but the kitchen sink." -WS
8)
http://philosoraptor.blogspot.com/2007/08/groupthink-and-other-thing-groupthink.html
"Option C- Point to some totally irrelevant topic and build a huge argument about how we are wrong and then claim that you have won. When it is pointed out that you have done this you say that we are making personal attacks against you." -t3hr0x0r
9)
http://philosoraptor.blogspot.com/2007/08/occasional-peirce-quote.html
"And, furthermore, THIS POST DOESN'T EVEN HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH NLT..." - WS
10)
http://philosoraptor.blogspot.com/2006/07/and-you-thought-in-god-we-trust-was.html
"You've got a real mish-mash of irrelevant points here, Tom." -WS
THERE. Now then, I think that proves that it's suitable to say YOU ALWAYS DO THIS SHIT.
Now either fix it or STFU.
"When they resort to insults and "straw men" and "red herrings," I know they don't have any."
What The Mystic says lays it out better than I could. I also think it's worth pointing out, though, that personal insults are not the same as accusations of "straw men" and "red herrings."
Making a personal insult is (or can be) a logical fallacy, an Ad Hominem attack in specific, and does not, therefore, constitute a valid attack on your positions.
Pointing out your use of logical fallacies, though, is perfectly reasonable.
If you think of one as equivalent to the others, you are mistaken. If you treat one as equivalent to the others, you are either mistaken or acting disingenuously.
---Myca
Look, I don't want to seem like I'm piling on, and I appreciate having a conservative around more than you probably realize, Tom, and I'm fully aware that accusations of red-herring-ness aren't equivalent to red-herring-ness...
You DO sometimes--in my humble opinion--offer up red herrings and tu quoques.
Perhaps you're driven to that because you think we're subject to groupthink around these parts...something I myself worry about...but still...
I'm sure I do, sometimes. It's just when anyone else does it (and we all do---ooops that a tu quoque again)---people let it slide. Me, I get the Special Treatment.
However, I think it's insulting to accuse the other fellow of arguing dishonestly. I may have fallen from grace on that myself, but if Mr. Mystic wants to troll through the files as dedicatedly in my defense as he does in my indictment, I think he'll find that I seldom cross that line, regardless of provocation.
Ok, you're right, I apologize for being rude in the third paragraph. My only excuse is that it is frustrating to see what great discussions could be had between people of different viewpoints on this blog, and then see the type of discussions that are the status quo (i.e. pointing out logical fallacies over and over again).
I have nothing against you personally. However, I do think we might be more likely to point out when you do make fallacies because either 1) you do so more often than other posters or 2) when other posters are told they are making a logical fallacy, they directly address the concern and in some cases revise their opinions/concurrent posts so the fallacy goes away. That was my point in bringing up that particular thread. It's maddening to see these attempts to encourage a better style of argumentation consistantly either completely ignored or high-handedly dismissed.
That frustration encouraged the rudeness that should not have been in that post and I was wrong to voice it. And as far as Mystic trolling, he did something I was not even going to bother doing and didn't think anyone would have. I think his effort was to show you that indeed it happens often and just as often he personally is the person trying to point out those fallacies. He's either tenacious or a slow learner. Either way, I didn't think it would make a difference because these examples would be ignored or defended against and nothing would be gained from the effort.
But the main point is that I think people on this blog are ok with conservative positions (it's WS's blog, after all). It's just not ok to continue making the same mistakes over and over again and ignore or refuse help arrogantly (it is not endearing to call other posters "whining", "uncivil", and "unbecoming", for example).
And that's my final two cents. (Likely.)
What can I say, Tracie? I've invited some friends from the right to comment here on what I thought were promising discussions, and all have demurred. How can you stand it, more than one has written me. I don't have that much patience.
I poked through Mr. Mystic's Bill of Indictment, and I'm pretty OK with my performance. Some apparent "red herrings" were continuations of previous discussions, and so the casual reader of this blog would lack context. Neither did I press what I believed to be conclusory points that were ignored. And if I seem to go from A to C or A to Z, perhaps it's the reader who lacks the knowledge of the letters that might stand in between. After all, this is a comments section, and a certain shorthand is de rigeur, eh?
There's a noticable lack of whingeing on my part about dishonest arguments or being accused of them---after all, the "straw man" fallacy also includes attacking the weakest facet of the other fellow's argument, and it's often a minor point of mine that becomes the bone of contention.
So, too, out of respect for my host, although I've certainly run afoul of his greater expertise in some areas, he's run afoul of mine. However, as I'm the guest and he's the host, civility demands that likewise dressing him down on those occasions is inappropriate. Perhaps the lack of crossfire leads people like Mr. Mystic to feature accusations sent my way over the validity of the actual arguments offered.
I mean, I could make a lot of noise. But any worthwhile discussion would end, and I have found much of my participation here worthwhile.
Except this, frankly. As previously noted, after 10 posts, the subject becomes me instead of the issue at hand, and I find it untoward to defend myself. In future, I'll attempt to bail before that point.
If I ignore the scurrilous ad homs that inevitably arise after the 10-post point, you'll know why. I often keep writing past the productive point, as I'm no coward, and I seem to have an archaic sense of courtesy toward my correspondents.
Well, Tom, I do like having you around, and I like having conservatives to talk to, and I don't think you're always wrong, and I don't think I'm always right.
But you ARE extremely partisan--far more pro-GOP than I am pro-Dem, very pro-Bush despite your protestations, and many of your attempts to defend the administration are...well, strained to say the least. I'd never, for example, twist so far to defend Clinton, despite having a medium amount of respect for the guy, and a soft spot for him to boot. And, when that kind of straining and twisting is so obvious and relatively frequent...well, it gives you a bad rep in that regard.
Though, to be fair: I, too, get more of an inclination to cheat when I'm outnumbered and besieged.
I also have so say, you have something of a tendency to write the following kinds of comments:
[Here, say, insert post by me about the war going badly]
Your response:
"Well, the war may be going badly, but Clinton once sold part of our strategic ice cream reserves to Yemen, and also here are some other bad things about Democrats that have no place here whatsoever:..."
We all have our foibles, and it must be tough to be the only guy on your side of the fence in a discussion like this. Unfortunately, I think your comments are mix of (a) perfectly reasonable, often insightful points and (b) intensely partisan, purely rhetorical game-playing. Now, some liberals are going to get mad at even (a)--so much the worse for them. Me, it's (b) that pisses me off, and makes it harder for me to take your (a)-game as seriously as I should.
The problem:
Tom doesn't understand what a red herring is.
The solution:
Tell Tom what a red herring is.
The problem:
Tom doesn't understand what a red herring is.
The solution:
Tell Tom what a red herring is.
The problem:
.....
WS, I'm also pretty easy on Democrats, particularly Clinton42. I'm an apologist by disposition, not a polemicist.
Your central thesis seems to be that Democrats are bad, but Republicans are always worse, politically and as human beings. I disagree with that. Hence, the "red herrings."
And Mystic, I'm flattered by all the attention, but you've had your say and you can stop now.
No, that's a distortion of my position, which I've made pretty clear: Dems aren't always or inherently better people. In fact, some of my favorite folk are Republicans.
But there's a very, very nasty batch of Republicans in charge of your party right now. They were far more vicious in the House for the last ten years that Dems have ever been, and this administration has been the most despicable anyone can remember. As I've said many times, I'm not much of a fan of the Dems, and I think the left is largely wacky.
But Cheney, Bush, DeLay and company are radical outliers on the nastiness scale, even by Washington standards.
And the fact that you and so many others like you are either blind to that, or *pretend* to be blind to it, just makes me think that the Dems really are the party for me after all. The Dems--God love 'em--fell out of love with Clinton over his silly little indiscretion. You all still have little hearts floating around your heads when you talk about Bush, even after eight loathsome, disgusting, destructive years.
And what that makes the Dems, for all their faults, is less crazy--and consequently less dangerous--than you all.
lol
That's what you get. You get an ell oh ell.
l
o
l.
I dunno if Republicans are head-over-heels about Bush, or if Dems fell out of love with Clinton, who's still more popular than his wife, and she's the party's next nominee.
Good to hear you think Democrats aren't necessarily better people. I obviously got the wrong impression from you posting things like the Oral Roberts matter. As for "loathsome, disgusting, destructive," there's really no intelligent rejoinder to that. You win.
"As for "loathsome, disgusting, destructive," there's really no intelligent rejoinder to that. You win."
Translation: "I have no reasonable response to what you said. Therefore, I shall say that you expressed an opinion based accurately on the facts of the world. Since you took all the facts when you made your opinion, I am unfairly left with none to support an opinion of my own, making this unfair, and thus, I really win."
Did that capture it all, Tom?
Um, first, pointing out that Smith is loathsome doesn't mean that you think that the Joneses are always superior to the Smiths.
And, second, here's a way to tell that I don't think Dems are all superior to Republicans: I've said it about a hundred times.
Really, Tom, this is fairly frustrating I have to admit.
Uh-huh. 90% of your posts excoriate the right, and to point out the times that the left has done similar things is a "red herring."
Got it. It's only Bush and Cheney who are off the charts. And DeLay. And Reagan. And the wife of the guy at Oral Roberts. And Michelle Malkin. And Krauthammer and Will and Jonah Goldberg. And the writers at National Review. And me.
It's like...you list all the lying scumbags and think that a list will help prove that they're somehow not lying scumbags...
It's like that epistemological theory "coherentism" - as long as there's ENOUGH craziness, it won't really be crazy!
As long as there are lots of names, it can't be true!
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