Quote :

"and my anecdotal experience is that violent "revolution" against godless liberals is a sympathetic idea and often found in certain biblical interpretations to be acceptable, and these sympathies exist in varying degrees across a large section of the more provincial and conservative elements of our society. "

Oh goodie, proof by anecdote!

1/10/2011 2:09:07 PM

Quote :

"Topeka church to protest 9-year-old's funeral Members of a church in Topeka will protest the funeral of 9-year old Christina Taylor Green, killed in the Tucson shootings Saturday, according to a release. The Westboro Baptist Church, led by Fred Phelps, posted a statement on the church's website, under the domain godhatesfags.com, shortly after the shootings: THANK GOD FOR THE SHOOTER-6 DEAD! WBC WILL PICKET THEIR FUNERALS.” Phelps posted a video to YouTube, in which he said,"Thank God for the violent shooter, one of your soldier heroes in Tucson." The video can be seen here."

Of course they will

http://www.politico.com/blogs/glennthrush/0111/Topeka_church_to_protest_nineyearolds_funeral.html?showall#

1/10/2011 2:39:47 PM

Quote :

"Except it is an actual definition of cause"

Only, it's not. Something can increase the likelihood of something happening, yet not be a cause. I can give you several examples off the top of my head. So please, stop redefining words to suit your argument

Quote :

"Also gotta love how the right is suddenly believing in mental illness again when one of their own goes on a rampage."

I was not aware that people who love communism were "one of the right's own." Wow.

Quote :

"I bet he would have agreed with the "second amendment solution", and you can be guaranteed he took some level of inspiration from the other man in arizona who brought a gun to a political rally but failed to shoot anyone."

So, now, to you, simply carrying a weapon with no intent to shoot it is "failing to shoot anyone." Really?

[Edited on January 10, 2011 at 3:13 PM. Reason : ]

1/10/2011 2:58:05 PM

^^What. The. Fuck.

1/10/2011 3:02:41 PM

part of me thinks these Westboro people, like that Gary chap that preached in the brickyard, are sociologists conducting some kind of mean experiment on all of us..

1/10/2011 3:05:17 PM

Gary is hardly analogous to these people come on now

the only people conducting this experiment would be the government as they continue to permit this crap

im all for free speech but there comes a point where enough is enough for everyone

my tolerance point is doing this shit at a child's funeral.

I think most others will see the need for change when they do this shit next to Obama's casket if someone were to assasinate him. Because you know they will (protest)



[Edited on January 10, 2011 at 3:10 PM. Reason : k]

1/10/2011 3:07:10 PM

^^^^^ This might be the one that finally gets these people taken out for good.

1/10/2011 3:10:12 PM

^, ^^ Careful now, you never know what unhinged lunatic might be reading this stuff. Your violent rhetoric could be the cause of someone's death.

1/10/2011 3:21:30 PM

Yeah but you know BigHitSunday is not a Tea Party member, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh so he isn't inciting violent political rhetoric that obviously led Jared Loughner to attempt an assassination.

1/10/2011 3:33:33 PM

[Edited on January 10, 2011 at 3:37 PM. Reason : .]

1/10/2011 3:36:03 PM

Quote :

"The politicising of this event sickens me. I cant believe the stuff I hear and sometimes you just gotta shake your head at mcDanger, good for a laugh tho."

It's not politicization of the issue, it's a legitimate question about our political process and our culture. If you can't see that then it makes perfect sense why you're wrong about practically everything else; you don't read and can't reason. But you can pound a guy's skull in!!! whoopee!!

Quote :

" News like when Obama tells him to bring a gun to a knife fight? Or again, is it only a culture of violence when it comes from one side of the political spectrum? Or are we now assuming that our crazy person was Glen Beck NUMBA ONE FAN!"

Of course not. That being said do you understand what "covariance" means? People are starting to notice the coordination in the narrative and in the rhetorical techniques being used. You want to cast any suspicion and question about this as partisan paranoia, as if I'm a fucking Democrat and harbor anything other than disdain and disgust for them.

If there was a huge crowd of Democrats acting this way I'd be alarmed too. Any crowd of Americans regardless of their political affiliation or otherwise; any arbitrary mass acting this way you have to wonder about. That is, unless you're a right-wing fanatic like yourself and could give a fuck less so long as people agree with you, ultimately. That's the only explanation I can give for you plugging your ears and humming about this issue

Quote :

" Only, it's not. Something can increase the likelihood of something happening, yet not be a cause. I can give you several examples off the top of my head. So please, stop redefining words to suit your argument"

I gave you links to an entire branch of computer science that disagrees with you. What definition of cause are you working under? You realize that just because it has an intuitive semantic field in English doesn't mean it has a rigorous enough definition suitable for scientific work, right? (Of course you don't.)

[Edited on January 10, 2011 at 3:50 PM. Reason : .]

1/10/2011 3:42:30 PM

1/10/2011 3:49:43 PM

Like imagine if BigHitSunday read one book for each time somebody has savagely slammed his skull against a hard surface

1/10/2011 3:52:34 PM

Quote :

"What definition of cause are you working under?"

Ummm, the DICTIONARY definition. it's funny how in order to support your claims, you have to veer away from accepted definitions so often and into specialty definitions.

[Edited on January 10, 2011 at 3:54 PM. Reason : ]

1/10/2011 3:53:56 PM

Quote :

"It's not politicization of the issue, it's a legitimate question about our political process and our culture. If you can't see that then it makes perfect sense why you're wrong about practically everything else; you don't read and can't reason. But you can pound a guy's skull in!!! whoopee!! "

dont toot your own horn, the two statements really werent related as I was talking about what I hear on the news, and your ass is far from the news believe me.

your comments being laughable was more of an aside mentioned after i started reading through your posts.

Quote :

"Like imagine if BigHitSunday read one book for each time somebody has savagely slammed his skull against a hard surface "

aww, you mad? this is the reason I laugh at you, i can see you getting mad and just itching to launch personal attacks when someone disagrees with your stance.
Like fuckin Sid from toy story or somethin in a room full of broken toys and stagnant fart


[Edited on January 10, 2011 at 3:56 PM. Reason : d]

1/10/2011 3:54:11 PM

Goddamn McDanger is an asshole.

1/10/2011 3:55:40 PM

Quote :

"Ummm, the DICTIONARY definition. it's funny how in order to support your claims, you have to veer away from accepted definitions so often and into specialty definitions."

Ahahahaha let's apply the dictionary definition of causation to social settings, guys. Aaronburro, resident genius, says it's okay. Don't worry that he is unaware of a nearly 2000 year study of the topic which has finally, in the last century, culminated in a mathematical rigorous and quantitative field. This is an example of where philosophy goes right and terminates in mathematics useful for science. You should check it out assuming you give a fuck about things.

Quote :

"aww, you mad? this is the reason I laugh at you, i can see you getting mad and just itching to launch personal attacks when someone disagrees with your stance. Like fuckin Sid from toy story or somethin in a room full of broken toys and stagnant fart "

I don't care if you laugh at me because you have the mental capacity of a child (getting worse each time you get slapped in that thick head).

Quote :

"Goddamn McDanger is an asshole."

I lose my patience sometimes with people who have literally no clue what they're talking about. It gets frustrating trying to interface with people who refuse to read or think.

[Edited on January 10, 2011 at 4:00 PM. Reason : .]

1/10/2011 3:58:00 PM

Well then go away

1/10/2011 4:01:10 PM

Quote :

"People are starting to notice the coordination in the narrative and in the rhetorical techniques being used."

Where by starting to notice you mean leaped to conclusions about the motivations of a crazy person and then ran with the conclusions rather than looking at the actual facts?

Quote :

"Any crowd of Americans regardless of their political affiliation or otherwise; any arbitrary mass acting this way you have to wonder about. That is, unless you're a right-wing fanatic like yourself and could give a fuck less so long as people agree with you, ultimately. That's the only explanation I can give for you plugging your ears and humming about this issue"

Or it could simply be I don't see any mass or large crowd of people calling for violent political action. There are a handful of people who are inappropriate, everyone else is just angry, and rightfully so.

Quote :

"aww, you mad? this is the reason I laugh at you, i can see you getting mad and just itching to launch personal attacks when someone disagrees with your stance."

Nah, he's just propagating that culture of violence. He's a big fan of Sarah Palin don't you know.

1/10/2011 4:03:26 PM

Quote :

"http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=41087 Glad some people are picking up on the Krugman joke."

This column is absurd.

Did you even read it before posting it?

Quote :

"'Something about the current state of America has been causing far more disturbed people than before to act out their illness by threatening, or actually engaging in, political violence,' pontificates Krugman. Oh, and the Left bears no responsibility for that? They’re the ones who drop titanic mandates and mountains of regulation on American citizens. Their President has given us 20 months of crushing unemployment. They stole over $800 billion from us for 'stimulus' pork and slush funds, and Krugman has gone on record saying he thinks they need two or three trillion dollars more. The Democrats cranked up class-warfare rhetoric to a fever pitch during the lame-duck session of Congress, denouncing anyone who resists higher tax rates as greedy and unpatriotic. They bent over backwards to get miserable crooks like Charlie Rangel out of trouble with the lightest slap upon the wrist, flaunting their corruption in the face of a population boiling with impotent rage. When the president of Mexico denounced America on the floor of Congress last year, the Democrats rose to give him a thunderous standing ovation. But all this 'climate of hatred' is coming from the guys on conservative talk radio?"

I think this guy missed the point completely.

1/10/2011 4:06:17 PM

^thats the kinda shit that disgusts me and im a righty for sure.

People got murdered and people use it as a stump to gain votes/take votes from the other party

i was hoping for once politicians would take the high road. LOL

[Edited on January 10, 2011 at 4:09 PM. Reason : f]

1/10/2011 4:08:34 PM

Quote :

"People got murdered and people use it as a stump to gain votes/take votes from the other party"

I mean that's inevitable, really. When there's as much money and power up for grabs as there is in national politics you're going to get the worst out of people who are already more cutthroat than the average person. Which is probably a big part of the problem.

1/10/2011 4:10:40 PM

Yea but the bullets hadnt even cooled off yet

1/10/2011 4:12:25 PM

Early bird catches the worm

1/10/2011 4:13:16 PM

You know, when the facts come to light, we will likely realize that this guy is completely mental.

But, his mental instability aside, the vitriolic heat of the current political climate is still worthy of discussion. It shouldn't be asking much that we ask our political leaders to tone down the rhetoric and conduct themselves with at least an ounce of professionalism instead of acting like angsty teens. Currently, some of our political leaders have been irresponsible with their rhetoric, and the narrative has been consistent for a while. Now, an elected official was the target in an assassination attempt. So it's perfectly reasonable to ask if the two are related. Perhaps they are not, but the topic is very much worthy of discussion, and it is not fair for people to hide behind the cloak of "personal responsibility" when we know that there are people out there who can interpret messages the wrong way.

It's the same line of thinking that bullying should be stopped in schools to prevent students from going on rampages, or that abusive parents are likely to raise children who become prone to violence themselves. So it is worth discussing whether or not we should expect our elected leaders to, at the very least, be a little bit more precise with their words.

1/10/2011 4:20:55 PM

Quote :

"I haven't caricatured the Tea Party, they did it to themselves. Whose fault this is in their mix (whether the Koch bros. or the rubes they Lord over) is really irrelevant here. The image I have of them is not "media manufactured" it's proudly accepted by many of them. The thing you can't seem to understand is that the face they present to the country through the more authoritative members of the group is not the movement itself. You have to look at the swarms of xenophobic, racist, uninformed bigots out there, many of whom (while not violent) sympathize with violence. "

Really? Your perception for the Tea Party is not media manufactured, huh. So you're going around the country and interviewing people that identify as "Tea Party"? What a joke. You have no basis for what you're saying. You saw a few images on the internet of racist, bigoted signs that popped up at Tea Party rallies, and you're basing your entire argument on that. You fancy yourself as the rational, enlightened scientist, yet you've proven that you're incapable of viewing this topic objectively.

It doesn't matter that there are violent individuals within the amorphous "Tea Party." All that matters is that you're willing to paint the entire movement with a broad brush.

Quote :

"You want to know "what can be done" when "rogue elements" in a movement end up hijacking it. Why not follow what every conservative expects of Muslims worldwide, and expect the tea party to, as a whole, kick these people out and denounce what they're up to? "

The Tea Party does not have a traditional power structure where members can be kicked out or silenced. Anyone can identify as "tea party," no matter what their beliefs are. Leaders of the movement, often self-appointed, have, on many occasions, denounced any and all violent behavior. Self-identified tea party members have denounced violence. Have all of them? No.

Indeed, the same could be said about Muslims. Many Muslims have denounced all violence that is perpetrated in the name of their religion. American conservatives, of course, are never satisfied with that, insisting that more come out and denounce it. You're establishing the same expectation here, and it's every bit as ridiculous now.

Quote :

"Sarah Palin tells people not to "retreat", but to "reload" and puts a bunch of congresspeople in obvious sniper scopes. You've TP candidates in places like Texas calling for violent overthrow as an "option on the table", and a bunch of peckerwoods like the minutemen running around playing rambo. Yet NOTHING CAN BE DONE here, we must throw our hands in the air and shrug, because apparently the vast sea of "normal" Tea Party members can't be bothered to criticize their comrades in arms. You start your post changing the topic from violent, divisive rhetoric to simply "divisive rhetoric", claim it has nothing to do with anything, and then spend the rest of your post arguing that its effects can't be stopped or even mitigated. How am I supposed to react to you?"

I haven't said that there's nothing that can be done. What you're asking here, which is how do we tone down the violent rhetoric and change people's underlying beliefs, can easily be asked when discussing many topics. How do we educate the masses so they have more respect for human life and basic decency? No one here is prepared to answer that question in full. The only way I know to do is to educate, through public discussion, until we change minds, one at a time. There's no silver bullet; this is the human condition. There are ignorant people out there, but many can be converted to believe in liberty and equality.

There's some validity to the phrase that you'll catch more flies with honey than vinegar. One day, you'll learn that, and instead of shouting down anyone that disagrees and refusing to engage in rational debate, all under the guise of being more rational than everyone else, you might be able to change some minds in areas where you know what you're talking about.

1/10/2011 4:22:30 PM

1 Like^

1/10/2011 4:26:44 PM

2 Likes

1/10/2011 4:26:58 PM

awe - I miss you guys.

1/10/2011 4:35:31 PM

Quote :

"Ahahahaha let's apply the dictionary definition of causation to social settings, guys. Aaronburro, resident genius, says it's okay. Don't worry that he is unaware of a nearly 2000 year study of the topic which has finally, in the last century, culminated in a mathematical rigorous and quantitative field. This is an example of where philosophy goes right and terminates in mathematics useful for science. You should check it out assuming you give a fuck about things."

Come on Mike, stop messing with these guys. I have read and love Pearl's Causality text and this is not at all what it is says. There have been massive strides towards a formal causality calculus (I use it all the time), but for such an inference one needs a formalized model involving latent variables, endogenous variables, and functions representing the causal structure between all these variables, not to mention probability distributions. You also cannot infer causality (or anything for that matter) off of a sample size of n=1.

To say that "A increases the probability for B, therefore A causes B" is still the same post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy that has been around forever. I suspect you know this.

[Edited on January 10, 2011 at 4:46 PM. Reason : ]

1/10/2011 4:39:38 PM

Quote :

"Where by starting to notice you mean leaped to conclusions about the motivations of a crazy person and then ran with the conclusions rather than looking at the actual facts?"

No that's not what I mean.

Quote :

"Or it could simply be I don't see any mass or large crowd of people calling for violent political action. There are a handful of people who are inappropriate, everyone else is just angry, and rightfully so."

I didn't claim a mass of people were calling for violent political action. Boy isn't this fun, where I spend time going through your posts which you carelessly threw together.

Quote :

"People got murdered and people use it as a stump to gain votes/take votes from the other party"

Nobody in this thread is doing this.

Quote :

"Really? Your perception for the Tea Party is not media manufactured, huh. So you're going around the country and interviewing people that identify as "Tea Party"? What a joke. You have no basis for what you're saying. You saw a few images on the internet of racist, bigoted signs that popped up at Tea Party rallies, and you're basing your entire argument on that."

Actually that's not right but thanks for playing!!

Quote :

"You fancy yourself as the rational, enlightened scientist, yet you've proven that you're incapable of viewing this topic objectively."

Except I'm one of the only people interested in having a real discussion about social causation and violent rhetoric. We haven't even started that discussion; Republicans have been too busy trying to convince us that social causation only exists for minorities when they do a bad thing.

Quote :

"It doesn't matter that there are violent individuals within the amorphous "Tea Party." All that matters is that you're willing to paint the entire movement with a broad brush."

I'm willing to ask if the rhetorical techniques that help unify them as a group at all are good or damaging for our country as a whole. The only people really casting judgment here are the people desperately trying to pin conclusions on me. That I think the causal influence is greater than zero is the weakest claim possible and true, mostly by virtue of how weak it is.

Quote :

"The Tea Party does not have a traditional power structure where members can be kicked out or silenced. Anyone can identify as "tea party," no matter what their beliefs are."

Neither does Islam, which lacks central authority.

Quote :

"Leaders of the movement, often self-appointed, have, on many occasions, denounced any and all violent behavior. Self-identified tea party members have denounced violence. Have all of them? No."

Sounds a lot like Islam!!

Quote :

" Indeed, the same could be said about Muslims. Many Muslims have denounced all violence that is perpetrated in the name of their religion. American conservatives, of course, are never satisfied with that, insisting that more come out and denounce it. You're establishing the same expectation here, and it's every bit as ridiculous now."

That's not what I'm doing at all. Keep arguing at McStrawman though, you might be able to blow him down.

Quote :

" I haven't said that there's nothing that can be done. What you're asking here, which is how do we tone down the violent rhetoric and change people's underlying beliefs, can easily be asked when discussing many topics. How do we educate the masses so they have more respect for human life and basic decency? No one here is prepared to answer that question in full. The only way I know to do is to educate, through public discussion, until we change minds, one at a time. There's no silver bullet; this is the human condition. There are ignorant people out there, but many can be converted to believe in liberty and equality. "

The problem with the "education" response is it's too vague to say anything. Keep in mind that educating people about basic, sensible human values will step on some religious fanatic's toes. This is one inroad through which the right eviscerates public education.

Quote :

"There's some validity to the phrase that you'll catch more flies with honey than vinegar. One day, you'll learn that, and instead of shouting down anyone that disagrees and refusing to engage in rational debate, all under the guise of being more rational than everyone else, you might be able to change some minds in areas where you know what you're talking about."

It's hard to continually produce honey for people who intentionally waste my time. Internet right-wingers have this brilliant tactic of throwing down low-effort ignorant posts that are so rife with error someone has to write a book to properly respond. In many cases, books HAVE been written, but they go ignored and so people like me are left to summarize entire fields (the summary of which will not be read, comprehended, or used for revision whatsoever).

People get angry at me on these boards because I get indignant when people talk out of their asses. Funny enough, the conservatives who get blue in the face at me not respecting their shoddily put-together, empirically bankrupt, conceptually contradictory theories are the same people who criticize our pussified PC "everybody's right, everybody's opinion matters" culture which they use as a crutch in every single debate.

Quote :

"Come on Mike, stop messing with these guys. I have read and love Pearl's Causality text and this is not at all what it is says. There have been massive strides towards a formal causality calculus (I use it all the time), but for such an inference one needs a formalized model involving latent variables, endogenous variables, and functions representing the causal structure between all these variables, not to mention probability distributions. You also cannot infer causality (or anything for that matter) off of a sample size of n=1."

I didn't claim to be able to infer causality off of a sample size of one, and in fact, an interventional interpretation of causality is what's currently used. I'm giving a causal hypothesis about this particular situation (that there's a nonzero influence contributed from repeated use of violent rhetoric) that's not offered as a conclusion, but rather as a speculation for further discussion. As you well know, research of any sort starts with a conjecture that's based off of some dude eyeballing what's happening. Causal analysis and statistical analysis more broadly is presented as a way to settle the matter with quantitative tools.

Quote :

"To say that "A increases the probability for B, therefore A causes B" is still the same post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy that has been around forever. I suspect you know this."

There are other possibilities, but if intervening on the value of A produces a systemic and predictable change in B, then it's either an indirect or a direct cause. Trust me, I know how constraint-based searches go. Needless to say if I intervene on a variable and it manipulates the value of another variable predictably, then there are various algorithms for integrating this information back into the causal theory itself. Causally interpreted Bayes' nets practically depend on the notion of intervention; these interventions set the value of a particular variable, but produce noisy effects elsewhere as we're dealing with a system of regression equations.

[Edited on January 10, 2011 at 5:22 PM. Reason : .]

1/10/2011 5:13:25 PM

This is crazy.

http://www.youtube.com/user/Livefreerevolution#p/a/f/0/e5oJBpZYmdc

Skip to about 3:00 for the really weird part. I honestly don't know what to make of it.

1/10/2011 5:19:27 PM

^^For the record, all of that is correct, it just wasn't clear that is what you were arguing.

1/10/2011 5:26:51 PM

1/10/2011 5:35:21 PM

Quote :

"Skip to about 3:00 for the really weird part. I honestly don't know what to make of it."

A staffer signed on and subscribed after the shooting.

1/10/2011 5:48:45 PM

What about the part that he worked on her campaign?

1/10/2011 5:51:41 PM

^ Unfounded rumor. I've only seen that he showed up to one of her events in 2007.

1/10/2011 6:00:23 PM

Quote :

"Except I'm one of the only people interested in having a real discussion about social causation and violent rhetoric."

Except you aren't. You're instead spending your time claiming that examples shown that indicate that violent rhetoric is nothing new in the political discourse (for at least the last 10 years) are not examples of violent rhetoric because they don't meet some arbitrary criteria you just made up.

Quote :

" Republicans have been too busy trying to convince us that social causation only exists for minorities when they do a bad thing."

Or perhaps that social causation requires more than a few isolated people who speak without thinking.

Quote :

"I'm willing to ask if the rhetorical techniques that help unify them as a group at all are good or damaging for our country as a whole. "

Begging the question. You've presented no evidence that violent rhetoric unifies "them" as a group.

You've also not presented any evidence that the given shooter in question was in any way aligned or unified with "them" or that he was influenced by the rhetoric "they" use.

Quote :

"m giving a causal hypothesis about this particular situation (that there's a nonzero influence contributed from repeated use of violent rhetoric) that's not offered as a conclusion, but rather as a speculation for further discussion."

Alternative hypothesis:

The conditions which give rise to an increase in violent rhetoric in the political discourse also give rise to an increase in actual violence.

1/10/2011 6:28:06 PM

Quote :

"The conditions which give rise to an increase in violent rhetoric in the political discourse also give rise to an increase in actual violence."

then it would seem to me natural to try to break part of that feedback loop. not by laws. but by the people with a voice choosing to use it in a measured way.

1/10/2011 6:31:39 PM

fwiw I just heard he was a registered Independent and did NOT vote in 2010. They didnt say anything about 2008. It was during a news update on XM while I drove home.

1/10/2011 6:34:40 PM

Quote :

"Nobody in this thread is doing this. "

dude how dense can you be. I explicitly made it clear that not only did i make the original statement in reference to media coverage, but thepost you quoted was in reference to an article poste by a user that illustrated my original point

so congratu-fuckin-lations

Quote :

"Republicans have been too busy trying to convince us that social causation only exists for minorities when they do a bad thing. "

ALL republicans? Im a republican and I dont believe that shit. So the ONLY social causation that can be an accepted theory is the political climate of our society?

it cant be, for example, that nobody this kid encountered has ever taken him seriously for any reason and this congresswoman not answering his question was a final straw?



[Edited on January 10, 2011 at 6:41 PM. Reason : c]

1/10/2011 6:36:23 PM

^^ goddamned independents.

1/10/2011 6:40:46 PM

Quote :

"But we know that it has been a time of extreme, implicitly violent political rhetoric and imagery, including SarahPac's famous bulls-eye map"

Yup, an unprecedented era of violent rhetoric:

1/10/2011 6:41:11 PM

Quote :

"then it would seem to me natural to try to break part of that feedback loop. not by laws. but by the people with a voice choosing to use it in a measured way."

Only if those who would do violence also listen to those with a voice. So far we have no evidence of that here.

1/10/2011 6:41:11 PM

im watching this story on a kid who was allowed to handle and fire an uzi at a gun show while his father recorded...as his kid shot himself in the head by mistake

so because I am a right leaning republican that is very pro gun rights, I would assume mikedanger would think that I am ok with this and that nothing should change

1/10/2011 6:44:14 PM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_zTN4BXvYI

1/10/2011 6:54:44 PM

and I'm a left leaning democrat who is also pro gun rights.

that doesnt mean i cant recognize what the fuck is going on with the violent political rhetoric and the overall effect it has.

as for the kid you describe, i feel sorry for the dad, even though he's a dumbfuck. what a tragedy. kids probably shouldn't handle weapons until at least their teens. and only then if they are mature and have good judgment and go through a responsible training course. there's no law, no one-size-fits all that will solve this. but a big problem is there are fully-adult gun owners lacking some basic common sense.




[Edited on January 10, 2011 at 7:00 PM. Reason : ]

[Edited on January 10, 2011 at 7:01 PM. Reason : ]

1/10/2011 7:00:24 PM

Quote :

"ALL republicans? Im a republican and I dont believe that shit. So the ONLY social causation that can be an accepted theory is the political climate of our society?"

I would answer your question but I can't even make sense of it.

Quote :

"it cant be, for example, that nobody this kid encountered has ever taken him seriously for any reason and this congresswoman not answering his question was a final straw?"

It could be as simple as him having a severe brain defect which would have resulted in this no matter what.

Quote :

"Except you aren't. You're instead spending your time claiming that examples shown that indicate that violent rhetoric is nothing new in the political discourse (for at least the last 10 years) are not examples of violent rhetoric because they don't meet some arbitrary criteria you just made up."

You're being dense and I'm not going to waste my time trying to correct you. I'm going to assume you're smart enough to sort this out yourself (because you are).

Quote :

"Or perhaps that social causation requires more than a few isolated people who speak without thinking."

Even a single person can act as a social cause, unilaterally. You'll want to gerrymander this definition up until your "side" is in the clear, so what's the point?

Quote :

"Begging the question. You've presented no evidence that violent rhetoric unifies "them" as a group."

The public figures who serve as a public face for the movement use the rhetoric, and people in the movement listen to it. You can continue to be dense and play this conceptual powderpuff bullshit that Republicans like to do but I'm giving you no credit for it.

Quote :

"You've also not presented any evidence that the given shooter in question was in any way aligned or unified with "them" or that he was influenced by the rhetoric "they" use."

That's certainly right, and there might be no connection whatsoever. The question about whether or not the rhetoric is appropriate and has negative consequences is independent of whether or not a potential example is legitimate or not.

Quote :

"The conditions which give rise to an increase in violent rhetoric in the political discourse also give rise to an increase in actual violence."

Also possible, but to suppose zero connection between violent rhetoric and violence denies that rhetoric serves any purpose whatsoever. Are these people just making noise? What screens out the imagery and fantasy from the "real message"?

Quote :

"Yup, an unprecedented era of violent rhetoric:"

Lol you even italicized the word that you used to depart from what the other person said. Hahahahaha. Nobody's saying it's unprecedented, but keep beating that straw man because god knows it's the one whose ass you can kick.

Quote :

"Only if those who would do violence also listen to those with a voice. So far we have no evidence of that here."

And what about everybody else? Do you really suppose this has no effect whatsoever? That's a remarkable claim.

Quote :

"im watching this story on a kid who was allowed to handle and fire an uzi at a gun show while his father recorded...as his kid shot himself in the head by mistake so because I am a right leaning republican that is very pro gun rights, I would assume mikedanger would think that I am ok with this and that nothing should change"

I don't oppose the right to own a gun so I have no fucking clue what you think you're accomplishing with this

1/10/2011 7:03:58 PM

Quote :

"Yup, an unprecedented era of violent rhetoric:"

you added unprecedented, not him. so what was the point of your pictures, a sarcastic call-out of yourself?

1/10/2011 7:06:19 PM

1/10/2011 8:24:57 PM