Big Sky Cairn

Someone should do some scientific studies on exactly what it is in the liberal brain that so effectively avoids cognitive dissonance in their beliefs. Whatever allows them to live solely in a world of lofty ideals, far removed from the real-world also seems to compartmentalize inherent contradictions in their popular partisan attack-memes.

For example:

George W. Bush is a complete idiot.
George W. Bush has perpetuated massively complex conspiracies and duped the whole world.

Government should help the poor.
Government should raise taxes on the things that poor people do (smoke, drink, buy gas).

Denny Rehberg is an uber-wealthy elitist who has gone Washington
Denny Rehberg is a white-trash hillbilly that sleeps on his couch and drinks at dive bars.

Update (thanks to Wulfgar for embodying this one in comments below and on his site):
People should practice tolerance toward each other.
People should be intolerant of people who are intolerant.

Edit: Yeah, I spelled a word in the title wrong. Sue me.

“Blinded by the ideology!” Liberals like to proclaim themselves rational thinkers, who use logic and facts. By proclaiming this so, that is often as close as they can get to logic, thinking or facts.
It is their irrational emotions that hold sway. The world is a Manichean exercise where those who are on the Left are good, and all others bad.
You have had several examples in your comments. “All racists are Republican” quickly comes to mind. In fact, if you could do a search in your comments for the word “all” I think that you will find a higher incidence of usage by the left than the right, in spite of higher populations of people on the right who read you.

You know, Wiley, I think you’ve been chided before about putting up strawmen arguments. When doing this, it’s good to link to actual liberals saying the actual things you’re saying they say. Good luck with that.

I’d say that these memes are well documented enough to be considered self-evident at this point. Not worth my time to go and track down examples.

Silly Wiley. You are not aware of all Internet traditions. A “meme” is an internet story, joke or theme told over and over, with no relation to the truth. It’s kinda like the Loch Ness Monster or clairvoyance. We all know you “want to believe”, and that’s why you repeat the BS every chance you get. But repetition doesn’t make it true, little camper, just like the hook-hand escaped psycho story.

If you want anything resembling credibility, you better make it worth your time to present facts instead of campfire tales.

George W. Bush is a complete idiot.

via Wulfgar:

like this.

George W. Bush has perpetuated massively complex conspiracies and duped the whole world.

and this.

Government should help the poor.

(Come on, do you really need a cite for that?)

Government should raise taxes on the things that poor people do (smoke, drink, buy gas).

or this.

Okay, that took me about a minute of searching, and about 10 for finding html tags.

Sorry, Wulfgar. A “meme” is a cultural building block - it is to culture what a word is to language. Internet stories, jokes etc. that are online are memes of the online community, but memes exist well beyond the wonderful world of web. Every culture has memes - including the ones I listed. So don’t presume to lecture me about “Internet traditions” and consider taking Mark T’s advice to me: Get out more.

Is it your claim, then, that none (or, hell any) of the contradicting positions in this post are a fair representation of the left-wing partisan attack machine?

Tell you what. Pick your favorite “lie” - the one you are most convinced isn’t true. I’ll take the time to find an example for you.

It’s guaranteed you can find anecdotal evidence of anything. What does it prove? What we are looking for is the mainstream current. Since I am outside the mainstream, I can’t help you, but discussions like this are pointless. I don’t know what you think you are proving - that liberals are contradictory and stupid? Not hardly.

I did a piece on minimum wage and offered up the two primary defenses conservatives have against enforcing one - 1) increasing MW costs jobs, and 2) increasing MW creates inflation which hurts those who receive the increase, negating any benefit. I was worried that I was doing a strawman, so I Googled, and those defenses were everywhere I look. Then I came here, and you put defense #2, almost verbatim. It was eerie. The point is that I had hit on mainstream thought on your side, so I was engaging you where you lived.

If you are going to attack liberals and progressives, get to know us better. Don’t do the Dave Rye thing of putting your words in our mouths - take our actual words, and debate them. We’re a verbose lot - you don’t have to look far. This is why I constantly urge that you get out and over to our sites and take us on. What you’re doing here is not useful.

Since Mark already responded vastly better than I could yo your false generalizations, I just want to point out to you, Captain Clueless, that the phrase “aware of all Internet traditions” *IS* an Internet meme. I’m not presuming anything. I am lecturing you because you’re desperately in need of it. Mark is absolutely correct; you do need to get out more.

When you do, you will notice that memes (even in as broad a use as you put the word to) do not inform culture of the truth. If they are the building blocks of anything, they build collective humor (often at the expense of individuals such as yourself), collective distraction or often collective wonder (think Hollywood, little camper). But truth? Hardly.

See, memes needn’t have an absolute truth value. Hell, sometimes they don’t need a truth value at all (Obama is a MOOOOSSSLIM!) They just need to be fascinating. You weren’t promoting or engaging a meme. You made general claims you can’t back up. And when called on it, you fall back on tired arguments you can’t support.

1) Your view is a meme so it must be well documented somewhere … Right, just like Bigfoot. Throwing out buzzwords is hardly helpful if the word doesn’t mean what you think it does.

2) You equivocate: “Liberals’” (all inclusive) suddenly becomes the “left-wing partisan attack machine”.

3) You challenge the instance as if it proves the rule. By that logic, recent events in Tennessee prove to us that all right-wing liberal haters are homicidal maniacs. Doesn’t quite work, does it?

All in all, you rely on the same thinking that has led the right-wing to the disaster they will face in the upcoming elections. You believe yourself smarter than those you think are your opponents. You’re really not; and your expose here simply proves that you’re willing to insult our intelligence. Sadly, you do so by exposing your own weaknesses in the ’smarts’ department.

But you keep on telling yourself just how smart you are, covered in Cheeto dust while sitting in your underwear hoping your mom doesn’t come into the basement. (Oh look, another meme. It’s so prevalent that it must be well-documented … somewhere.) Now aren’t you glad that those are the building blocks of our culture?

~What a yutz~

Wulgar caught me. As a small part of my master plan to make Wulfgar look silly, I actually went in and changed another users’ comment time-stamp. I’m slippery that way.

In truth, our comment system here automatically puts any comment with more than one link into a moderation queue. On any given day, I get 10-30 spam posts in that queue and I don’t look at it every day since it’s so long and I prefer to handle them in bulk. So I didn’t see Steve’s comment until long after he posted it (sorry Steve).

Either way, I’m flattered that this earned me an entire post over at Wulfgar!’s place.

I’d post this at Wulfgar’s site, but he has a habit of editing my posts….

http://i35.tinypic.com/2w737lt.jpg

He seems to have a real problem with people who disagree with him. Like an 8 year-old child, if they’re told they’re wrong or hear the word “NO” they throw a tantrum.

On any given day, I get 10-30 spam posts in that queue and I don’t look at it every day since it’s so long and I prefer to handle them in bulk. So I didn’t see Steve’s comment until long after he posted it (sorry Steve).

Oh. So you’re incompetent. I can live with that.

He seems to have a real problem with people who disagree with him.

Not at all. I have a problem with little 8 year olds who insult with no basis. If I posted a picture of you screwing sheep, (as I’m certain you do, Rusty) would you consider that ‘disagreement’?

Wiley hasn’t supported anything he claimed in his post. Wiley can’t support anything he claimed in his post. Wiley was just wrong. He could admit it … but he won’t. Now who looks silly, Wiley?

I’ll take a stab at it.

And allow me to answer your question with a question: What is the moral and/or logical foundation for being intolerant of the opinions of others?

Oh, and the beauty of your question is so deliciously ironic considering the subject of this post… it even warranted an update to the main text above.

Oh, and by the way Wulfgar. Clarify for me exactly what your problem with this post was.

Is it that you (mistakenly) believe that a “meme” refers exclusively to an online activity?

Or

Is it that I didn’t provide links to the thousands of liberals making any of the contradicting arguments I address above?

If the first - I recommend you read one of those books you sell. If the latter, these positions are so darn prevalent that I hereby declare them to officially be truisms. So say we all.

Going on four comments in a row here. Sweet. So, Wulfgar, I’ll save you the time of actually reading one of those books. I used the Google (search word “Meme”)

Result 1 was “Meme“:

“A meme (pronounced /mi?m/)[1] is any learned feeling, thought or behavior. Examples include thoughts, ideas, theories, practices, habits, songs, dances and (controversially) moods. Memes propagate themselves and can move through the cultural sociosphere in a manner similar to the contagious behavior of a virus.”

Result 2 was “Internet Meme“:

“The term Internet meme is a neologism used to describe a catchphrase or concept that spreads quickly from person to person via the Internet.[1] The term is a reference to the concept of memes, although this concept refers to a much broader category of cultural information.” (emphasis added)

So, given you are wrong, are you going to admit it like you suggest I do above? Huh?

Sad little Wiley.

What is the moral and/or logical foundation for being intolerant of the opinions of others?

What is wrong is wrong. Why do you have an issue with that? If one held the opinion (as Rusty appears to) that eating paint is good for toughening up our children, would you think it “intolerant” for a person to respond that that’s a dumb idea?

And you’re just being a git. My query wasn’t of the form: People should practice tolerance toward each other.
People should be intolerant of people who are intolerant.

My query was of the form: People should practice tolerance toward each other.
Why should People be tolerant of people who are just damagingly stupid?. What is it about “opinion” that carries with it the demand for tolerance? Simple answer … nothing.

For instance, some idiots may think that “memes” are “cultural building blocks”. The more rational will see that not all “cultural information” is of equal truth value. I’m not wrong, kitten, and you can’t prove I am. But you obviously are.

Clarify for me exactly what your problem with this post was.

You built a Straw man on false generalizations. Don’t you understand English?

Is it that I didn’t provide links to the thousands of liberals making any of the contradicting arguments I address above?

Nope, you haven’t. And you haven’t named one book that proves your point … coward. You haven’t read one single book that ‘I sell’, have you? (I don’t sell books, dickhead. I sell computers, and our market share has grown beyond your wildest fantasies of sales excellence.)

these positions are so darn prevalent that I hereby declare them to officially be truisms. So say we all.

I actually looked online for a picture of a woman in wedding garb standing next to a donkey in your honor to celebrate your wedded bliss. You declare what you want, jackass. You still won’t be right.

And I do notice that you are still too farucking chckenshiat to leave your own website. Mark pointed that out, and you blew him off in fear. You claim to respond to me. You haven’t. coward. You stay right here in our comfort zone. I pity your bride, and I hope that she finds a real man, someday.

Wulfie, I just love pushing your buttons :).

I have a word I coined that desribes the quality of the content of your responses in this debate, Wiley: “Coobsian”.

Good word, eh? Feel free to use it freely.