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Absurd Alhazred posted:Be respectful. It is now known as the Duane Tolbert Gish Memorial Gallop. I had no idea that clown had died, but it makes me smile slightly to learn it.
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# ? Feb 19, 2016 19:18 |
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# ? May 8, 2024 07:31 |
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Tesseraction posted:jrode's argument style, wherein he responds to specific criticisms of his words with often unrelated screeds, reminds me of the simulations of Chinese from the thought experiment. Simulated logic, no understanding of what he's talking about. Like a libertarianism AI construct programmed to respond to our input with the best look-up methods it can manage. I guess this explains why the most common response wealth inequality I see is "Well, wealth isn't finite. " or some other variation of a zero sum game argument. It's a loving non sequitur. It doesn't even address high economic inequality exists at all.
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# ? Feb 19, 2016 19:32 |
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Halloween Jack posted:I think that libertarianism is the symptom and not the cause, here. The cause is that they're immature, and possibly alienated and poorly adjusted to adulthood to boot. Yeah this is definitely one of the largest causes. It seems like most libertarians are teenagers that eventually grow out of it but the ones that are unwilling to change become people like jrod. They try to dress up their incredibly simplistic arguments with giant essays that ultimately don't say very much. Jrod's inability to understand that market elasticity is significantly more complex than basic supply and demand is obvious evidence of this insanely simplistic worldview. In fact you can look at basically every one of his arguments and see that he doesn't have anything past a high school understanding of what he's talking about. In many cases he probably doesn't even know what he is talking about and is just taking someone's arguments for granted because they are a libertarian and therefore must be correct. Ultimately the hyper-individualism of libertarianism probably reinforces this immature behavior as they desperately cling to the their rigid, unchanging, and very simplistic worldview. Well adjusted people realize that a nuanced and adaptable worldview is significantly better since the world is complex and constantly changing. As a side note I'm so happy that Jrod's probation reason is calling out his obvious racism. That was one of the only topics that showed cracks in his facade of impersonal copy and pasted arguments.
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# ? Feb 19, 2016 19:55 |
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I was a kinda-sorta libertarian when I was 19 years old (without having ever read any Rand) but I dropped it when I realized that the intellectually lazy South Park Republican viewpoints I bought into were racist and sexist in practice, if not in theory. JRod is constantly getting caught saying "I admire racists, agree with them on all the important issues, and want to see their ideas put into practice, but I'm not racist! Because it's theoretically impossible for a libertarian to be racist." That, and I realized the data I'd been using to back up my beliefs was bullshit. (I read Rush Limbaugh's See, I Told You So when I was in high school. He has a whole chapter devoted to how Reagan improved the lot of the middle and working classes, which completely ignores the impact of the payroll tax. poo poo like that.) Sometimes data actually convinces people. Cnidaria posted:Yeah this is definitely one of the largest causes. It seems like most libertarians are teenagers that eventually grow out of it but the ones that are unwilling to change become people like jrod. They try to dress up their incredibly simplistic arguments with giant essays that ultimately don't say very much. Caros posted:I just have to ask, am I the only one who thinks libertarians doth protest too much? One study that goes against this grain, which was discussed in so many conservative blogs that I had trouble finding the original source, concerned people who were asked their opinion on the Israel/Palestine conflict before and after being shown graphic images of Palestinian suffering, if I understand the methodology. Liberals softened their judgments, conservatives didn't. Which does not, in my estimation, establish that conservatives are more reasonable, but that they lack empathy. Believing that empathy is the enemy of reason certainly sounds Randian to me... Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 20:23 on Feb 19, 2016 |
# ? Feb 19, 2016 20:10 |
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Semi related to the gamer stuff from earlier, but John Stossel hosting the Libertarian Party primary debate reminded me of my favorite Libertarian line: "I'm not racist. I'd boycott a racist company. I'd call people bad for not boycotting racist companies... But companies should have the right to discriminate. You know... Just cause." No, there's no reason for this. They never have anything they want to do with this new right to discriminate. Nothing would change, we'd all still eat with black folks... But there's this unspoken reason that we really really need to have the right to discriminate just in case we want to. Its a right we never want to use and will apply social aggression to anyone who tries to use that right, but it has to exist on paper. I'm just saying, for a right that nobody seems to want to use, there's a lot of Libertarian tears from Stossel and Jrod over it.
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# ? Feb 19, 2016 21:27 |
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DrProsek posted:John Stossel Obligatory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrX9Ca7LSyQ
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# ? Feb 19, 2016 21:29 |
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Halloween Jack posted:Their male, straight, white fans. Heh, next time I hear something like that I'll just say "hand me a book report on Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States or you concede the debate"
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# ? Feb 19, 2016 21:48 |
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Halloween Jack posted:I was a kinda-sorta libertarian when I was 19 years old (without having ever read any Rand) but I dropped it when I realized that the intellectually lazy South Park Republican viewpoints I bought into were racist and sexist in practice, if not in theory. If you were able to adjust your beliefs based on the available evidence, I don't think you meet the technical diagnosis for libertarianism.
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# ? Feb 19, 2016 21:56 |
DrProsek posted:Semi related to the gamer stuff from earlier, but John Stossel hosting the Libertarian Party primary debate reminded me of my favorite Libertarian line: "I'm not racist. I'd boycott a racist company. I'd call people bad for not boycotting racist companies... But companies should have the right to discriminate. You know... Just cause." No, there's no reason for this. They never have anything they want to do with this new right to discriminate. Nothing would change, we'd all still eat with black folks... But there's this unspoken reason that we really really need to have the right to discriminate just in case we want to. Its a right we never want to use and will apply social aggression to anyone who tries to use that right, but it has to exist on paper. In practice of course a lot of them would like the color line to get reinstated, if perhaps not in a conscious way.
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# ? Feb 19, 2016 21:58 |
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Nessus posted:Well the charitable version is that they're being like Rorschach from Watchmen (who of course they often adore - not for being a complex and interesting character, but for his firm refusal to "compromise") and arguing that no good end justifies breaking your inner rules. By this standard, of course, the local liberal is your enemy, while the foreign Bolshevik is merely a foreigner; if the Bolshevik tends his own fields, you have no complaint with him. Indeed, you have a common enemy. Your local liberal. I'm sure their superhuman reasoning faculties will determine that "easy to tell apart" directly translates to "belong to vastly different categories," so of course it would be most Praxworthy to keep the Races (which are True in Nature) separate because "similar kinds work better with one another"
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# ? Feb 19, 2016 22:08 |
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Halloween Jack posted:By the by, is there a formal name for the tactic where you drop a link to an essay or an entire book and say "read this and then get back to me or else you concede the debate?" He used to love that one. I don't feel obliged to read the entirety of mises.org since he obviously doesn't read much of what he posts. Halloween Jack posted:Well the Gish Gallop was exactly what I had previously mentioned, from when I got into it with an idiot truther--I tried to focus on a particular source, but this guy ended up insisting that the alleged hijackers didn't do 9/11 because he read a story about suicide bombers shaving their body hair, which means all terrorists do it, and body hair obviously means all hair, so 9/11 was an inside job because the hijackers weren't bald from head to toe. It was amazing. There actually is a term! It's technically an 'argument from authority' but PZ Meyers came up with a specific term called the Courtier's Reply. It is inherently fallacious since it eschews proof in favour of "heh read up fuckr " - it's considered what they otherwise call an argument escape hatch.
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# ? Feb 19, 2016 23:39 |
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Cnidaria posted:In fact you can look at basically every one of his arguments and see that he doesn't have anything past a high school understanding of what he's talking about. In many cases he probably doesn't even know what he is talking about and is just taking someone's arguments for granted because they are a libertarian and therefore must be correct. One of the big appeals of libertarianism is how simple it is. After all, when you can have a consistent answer to any problem that comes along, it's appealing. It makes it seem more complete. The problem, of course, is that life is complex and very quickly, the simple answers aren't so simple anymore. Take the idea that we should only intervene when someone is doing harm to another person. How do you describe harm? How do you determine who is harming whom? What about a situation where one person is harming a lot of people, but not directly, and could possibly not be aware of the harm they're committing. A perfect example would be pollution. What's frustrating about JRod is that he doesn't ever seek to understand why the world is organized the way we've organized it. Why did states rise up instead of libertarian communes? After all, the ideas that drive libertarianism are not new. And one just has to go back into history and see what happens when society is left to figure it out for themselves. Gangs of New York as not total fiction. I would argue that JRod really doesn't know what he's talking about, beyond maybe having some experience with it. Like, he's gone to the doctor and he's worked minimum wage jobs, so he thinks he really has some understanding of how the system actually works. What's frustrating is that he doesn't know when he doesn't know something. For example, I tend not to talk about economics in this thread. Why? Because my understanding of economics is very basic. I couldn't have an intelligent conversation on how it works. But he'll just talk about everything like he's an expert, and it really hurts the debate. How are you supposed to talk about healthcare with someone who doesn't understand why having licensed doctors is a good thing?
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# ? Feb 20, 2016 17:04 |
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Nessus posted:Well the charitable version is that they're being like Rorschach from Watchmen (who of course they often adore - not for being a complex and interesting character, but for his firm refusal to "compromise") and arguing that no good end justifies breaking your inner rules. By this standard, of course, the local liberal is your enemy, while the foreign Bolshevik is merely a foreigner; if the Bolshevik tends his own fields, you have no complaint with him. Indeed, you have a common enemy. Your local liberal.
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# ? Feb 20, 2016 17:32 |
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Cemetry Gator posted:What's frustrating is that he doesn't know when he doesn't know something. For example, I tend not to talk about economics in this thread. Why? Because my understanding of economics is very basic. I couldn't have an intelligent conversation on how it works. But he'll just talk about everything like he's an expert, and it really hurts the debate. How are you supposed to talk about healthcare with someone who doesn't understand why having licensed doctors is a good thing? I'd take it a step further and say (one of) the really frustrating things is not just how Jrod doesn't know what he doesn't know, he actively refuses to learn anything contrary to his religion. Tons of posters have actively demonstrated things he's gotten objectively, no-questions wrong and linked or mentioned primary source material by which he could get measurably less-ignorant on a ton of subjects. Hell, I was one of them back before I decided it was a waste of time and just went scorched earth on him. He doesn't just not know things, he's aggressively resistant to learning any better- Hey, that's a violation of NAP and means we can peacefully and non-aggressively shoot him, right?
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# ? Feb 20, 2016 18:55 |
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Captain_Maclaine posted:I'd take it a step further and say (one of) the really frustrating things is not just how Jrod doesn't know what he doesn't know, he actively refuses to learn anything contrary to his religion. Tons of posters have actively demonstrated things he's gotten objectively, no-questions wrong and linked or mentioned primary source material by which he could get measurably less-ignorant on a ton of subjects. Hell, I was one of them back before I decided it was a waste of time and just went scorched earth on him. He doesn't just not know things, he's aggressively resistant to learning any better- Actually you're breaking the NAP by assaulting his perfect libertarian principles with your statist propaganda.
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# ? Feb 20, 2016 18:59 |
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Zanzibar Ham posted:Actually you're breaking the NAP by assaulting his perfect libertarian principles with your statist propaganda. Joke's on him, I never consented to joinder.
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# ? Feb 20, 2016 19:01 |
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Halloween Jack posted:In an interview, Alan Moore said (paraphrased) "I never expected that people would see a smelly, outcast paranoiac who's terrified of women as the hero of the story. But I forgot about, y'know, average comic book nerd." rorschach is also a longform burn on Steve Ditko being a fuckin nutjob objectivist i don't like watchmen much, but i appreciate that
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# ? Feb 20, 2016 19:13 |
I can see admiring some aspects of the character of Rorschach, even Portly Liberal Owl Man does so. But there's a difference between "I admire his nerve and dedication to his shtick" and "yes, he is a role model."
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# ? Feb 21, 2016 00:28 |
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anyone who identifies with rorshach should probably be locked up for the the good of the public to be honest. i predict lots and lots of prisons full of autistic white reddit posting comp sci majors
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# ? Feb 21, 2016 00:42 |
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Cemetry Gator posted:One of the big appeals of libertarianism is how simple it is. After all, when you can have a consistent answer to any problem that comes along, it's appealing. It makes it seem more complete. The problem, of course, is that life is complex and very quickly, the simple answers aren't so simple anymore. it also helps if you're a sociopathic white MRA for whom the idea of Property Rights (tm) always and forever as the be-all end-all solution to everything is a pretty sweet deal
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# ? Feb 21, 2016 00:44 |
Yeah the question is: How do you persuade those who do not have property of consequence, and have little reasonable prospect of obtaining property, that property rights are the most important thing in the world? You might be able to make some headway but that seems to be a fundamental disconnect, and doubtless all the bitching about Democracy being Wicked boils down to perceiving this flaw. Now you could give the general masses a small amount of property, directly or indirectly. However, and here's where America may be running into issues, you can't just produce property out of nowhere after a certain point. America's been completely claimed, and most of the federally held lands are marginal and being kept up for the sake of wildlife and/or bombing ranges, or for the sake of having some timber indefinitely instead of having lots of timber now and a howling wasteland in ten years.
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# ? Feb 21, 2016 00:58 |
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The basic problem is that modern progressive liberalism sees social and economic justice as key components of individual liberty, whereas libertarians don't. That's pretty much an unbridgeable gap
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# ? Feb 21, 2016 01:08 |
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icantfindaname posted:The basic problem is that modern progressive liberalism sees social and economic justice as key components of individual liberty, whereas libertarians don't. That's pretty much an unbridgeable gap Liberalism is all about inalienable rights, while libertarianism only cares about the most alienable right of all, the right to property.
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# ? Feb 21, 2016 01:24 |
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I just want to thank everyone in this thread before it closes tomorrow. I have been infinitely fascinated with the way JRod thinks everything he believes in is objectively unquestionable. If we criticize him it must be because he didn't sell it correctly, not because we object to the ideas he's proposing. This thread has also made me realize how much racism, suffering, and callousness are features, not bugs of libertarian thought.
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# ? Feb 21, 2016 01:35 |
I wonder if that's ever been made explicit. Like you could work with an argument or perspective that says "For my luxury to have true savor, others must be miserable." You could work with that guy, figure out a baseline which while "despicable" and low-brow is nonetheless minimally comfortable and adequate. You could even encourage his sense of sport.
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# ? Feb 21, 2016 01:41 |
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Billy Gnosis posted:I just want to thank everyone in this thread before it closes tomorrow. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praxeology Be fascinated
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# ? Feb 21, 2016 01:55 |
Yeah and we're not putting that on him, he openly said in a post (I still can't find it because I am bad at computer) that you can't actually disprove his economic theories with mere evidence, merely support them or - perhaps, generously - slightly refine their execution. We ought to dig that line up so we can all copy-paste it at him when he comes back.
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# ? Feb 21, 2016 02:13 |
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Nessus posted:Yeah the question is: How do you persuade those who do not have property of consequence, and have little reasonable prospect of obtaining property, that property rights are the most important thing in the world? You might be able to make some headway but that seems to be a fundamental disconnect, and doubtless all the bitching about Democracy being Wicked boils down to perceiving this flaw. You appeal to the common American ethos of achieving success through hard work (and rugged individualism). Also, you make an appeal to morality rather than liberty. You tell the poor person that they wouldn't be so poor if it wasn't for the government taking away all their hard earned money in taxes. Everyone believes that one day they'll make it, and people who work hard day in and day out to make ends meat want to see that light at the end of the tunnel. So you give them an argument of hope, that their goal is being held captive from them and they must fight for it. You create resentment for the "welfare class" by telling people who work hard and people who have worked hard for their successes that the government wants to take away their hard earned, hard fought successes to "award" people who are lazy and do not wish to work. You reinforce this by idiot hunting and cherry picking and maybe even fabricating out of whole cloth examples of people "living it up" on government welfare. Most Americans (even non-religious) hold hard work as an important virtue and laziness as a sin. If the counter argument is that only the rich will be taxed, the argument becomes increased taxes cost jobs, raise prices, further destroying the middle class (the middle class is always being destroyed) You begin a campaign of mocking "participation awards" and then turn that into an argument of the government wanting to "give awards to losers." Every generation's counter-culture always attempts to break down the previous generations' culture, which by itself is often off-putting to older generations and more traditionally minded youth. So you drive the wedge deeper by claiming it's a conspiracy by The Others (liberals, immigrants, gays, foreign religions) to destroy that which is holy and pure (that being your own personally held culture which was created when you tore down the previous generation's culture). Even I was born in time to know what the end of the Cold War was like. So you hang the Stalin shaped albatross of Soviet Stalinism on the necks of your opponents. You decry labels (like racism) and argue that your opponents are projecting (after all, takes one to know one, right?). In America, it cannot be stated enough that the fear of Communism and anti-Communism/anti-Soviet propaganda played a large role in the forming years of many of today's older generations, and beliefs get passed on to the younger crowd. So you appeal to that fear, hanging the albatross of Stalinism on the necks of your enemies. Last, and very important, nobody likes to lose. Being poor is losing. If you are poor, you are not successful. And if you aren't successful, you're a loser. There is nothing more heart shattering and demoralizing than being unable to achieve your dreams and realizing that you're a "loser". So, often, many people delude themselves into believing they're not poor, after all, they've got a roof over their heads, clothes on their backs, food on the table, and by golly they're working hard. Pride prevents them from seeking government assistance (and being associated with the loser "welfare class"). There's a pride in doing everything yourself, with no help. So, as a Conservative or Libertarian, you appeal to that. The people in your base all believe they are middle class - whether they're actually poor or wealthy - they all believe themselves to be "middle class". So you pull out all the stops, redefine the middle class into not just a financial label, but a cultural one (basically WASPs); then hit them with everything I've already mentioned, throw in moral and religious appeals (abortion, gay rights, gun rights, drugs, illegals) and hammer away about how your political opponents are DESTROYING the middle class. Throw in the authoritarian arguments of fighting a battle that needs to be won or else the apocalypse will occur. The big key is, you describe welfare not as a safety net to help you when times are tough, but as government giving money to parasites, fraudsters, the lazy, and the losers. And that's enough to piss people off enough to vote for you. They won't do the research because they don't have the time to. And if they do have the time to, they're either listening to the AM talkers, or reading the books written by the AM talkers or other conservative thinkers.
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# ? Feb 21, 2016 02:45 |
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Literally The Worst posted:rorschach is also a longform burn on Steve Ditko being a fuckin nutjob objectivist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hD7EKZ32ODQ
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# ? Feb 21, 2016 03:36 |
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I was incredibly happy when the full audio of this made its way to YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tdaw1GFdIU See you in some other thread.
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# ? Feb 21, 2016 09:08 |
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Goodbye Jrodefeld, although you never listen at all, you had the grace to stick to your guns, as your arguments would stall. You crawled out of the old thread, and you started your own under the pretense that you were focusing on only property rights. And it seems to me, you posted like a candle in the wind. Insisting that you were safe and fine when the rain set in. And I tried to convince you, but you were just an idiot. Your candle burned out long before your legend ever did. Dentistry was tough, those fillings had mercury, even though there were trace amounts, you removed them anyway. Although you would deny, we still would pounce on you, claiming that you were a racist, and you loved watermelons too. And it seems to me you posted like a candle in the wind. Only ever using Mises for evidence. And we tried to give you proof but you were just an idiot, your candle burned out long before your legend ever did. Goodbye JRodefeld, although you never listened at all, you would always repeat yourself, as your respect would start to fall. Goodbye Jrodefeld, from a Statist who relies on coercion, who demanded you lived like him, like a Leftist Progressive. And it seems to me you posted like a candle in the win. Claiming that all of this rain was just aggression. And we would have liked you more, but you were just an idiot. Your candle burned out long before your legend ever did.
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# ? Feb 21, 2016 15:34 |
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I think it's really telling that whenever other libertarian posters showed up (either here or in the other thread) they rolled in with basically the same points as jrod but gave up after a page or two. Maybe they were arguing in good faith and then reached the limits of their ability to defend their ideas? If so, jrod gets no points for endurance since he literally just posted the same poo poo in variations over and over. Anyways, bye thread, it's been real.
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# ? Feb 21, 2016 15:42 |
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steve ditko famously had a meltdown over a letter stan lee wrote, trying to patch up the bad blood between them over creatorship of spider-man, saying "i consider steve ditko to be the creator of spider-man", because consider means it's an opinion and not a fact that was the point where, by all accounts including his own, stan just went "yeah i'm uh, i'm done here"
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# ? Feb 21, 2016 15:43 |
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i never got my fight, and that's a shame
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# ? Feb 21, 2016 15:44 |
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Literally The Worst posted:i never got my fight, and that's a shame All those training montages, wasted.
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# ? Feb 21, 2016 18:08 |
Halloween Jack posted:In an interview, Alan Moore said (paraphrased) "I never expected that people would see a smelly, outcast paranoiac who's terrified of women as the hero of the story. But I forgot about, y'know, average comic book nerd." Doesn't "smelly, outcast paranoiac" pretty much describe Alan Moore? Didn't he go live in the middle of no where and grow a crazy man beard or am I thinking of the guy who originally made Wonder Woman?
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# ? Feb 21, 2016 18:22 |
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As my final post I just want to say that Jrod is an ugly idiot child that was too scared to meet anyone's challenges to face off mano y mano in either the realms martial or intellectual. Also he probably still wets the bed.
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# ? Feb 21, 2016 18:39 |
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Goodbye thread, you were too beautiful for this world. May all your NAPs remain unviolated. RIP
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# ? Feb 21, 2016 18:52 |
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I hope JRod or the other libs come back and make a new thread so we can watch the meltdown all over again. It was a run ride.
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# ? Feb 21, 2016 19:00 |
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# ? May 8, 2024 07:31 |
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Hbomberguy posted:I hope JRod or the other libs come back and make a new thread so we can watch the meltdown all over again. It was a run ride. Its probably a guarantee until JRod gets perma'd, and even then for a while. We just got to keep talking about how much of a racist all of his idols are.
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# ? Feb 21, 2016 19:06 |