Discussion is good. Isn't it?

[learnedhand_dj]

I consider myself to be a moderate, politically. True-believers on both the left and the right tend to annoy me, mostly because of their tendency to dismiss contrary opinions rather than defend their own. The reason for my annoyance today is the unwillingness of someone on my FL to discuss a position he's taken on his blog. Rather than respond, he'

Comments

[learnedhand_dj]

Thanks for your answer.

I think I was being relatively polite in my first response. It was just two sentences, and the second one was one word: "Nonsense." I admit that calling someone's opinion nonsense is not exactly polite, but considering how out-there his post was, I thought I needed a strongly worded comment in response.

Really, I just wanted to get a sense of how he arrived at his opinion. He obviously has had vastly different experiences than I have had over the past several years, and I was curious as to how those experiences influenced his opinion. I was also curious as to how he would explain away the many studies that show how our foreign policy has made the situation worse and not better.

So, my second comment asked why he bothered posting at all if he didn't want to talk about it. That comment got deleted as well. So, not only did he not want to explain his position, he didn't want to explain why he didn't want to explain his position. That's when I got thinking that maybe his view of what a blog is for was different from mine.

[bastardsnow]

I definitely agree. I think that for the most part his posts do tend to be more like speeches than press conferences. I do know of at least one person who has defriended him over his treatment of people in that post.

I think he definitely comes from the Conservative Christian side of the spectrum, which is so amazingly far from my experience that I often can't even comprehend the mindset necessary for the arguments, to be honest.

In any event, most of the time when I do engage with him, he's at the least polite. I'm guessing he's just so upset over the result (because I believe he honestly does want what's best for the country, just has a completely different view of what 'best' is) that he probably felt he couldn't respond civilly.

[learnedhand_dj]

I think you're probably right. Being a moderate, it's easy for me to forget how the folks out on the wings react when things don't go their way. Because their view of the world depends so much on the belief their opinions are correct, when a majority of the country tells them they are wrong, it has to hurt. A lot.

I think its understandable that I wouldn't think of the right-wings hurt feelings. The elections were so close and fraught with irregularities in 2000 and 2004, I think that the left-wing didn't really feel rejection, but instead cried fraud. In 1992 and 1996, the right-wing could comfort themselves with the fact that Clinton didn't get a majority. So, really, we haven't had an election where one of the wings would have a reason to feel significant rejection since 1988. I guess I've just gotten used to the losing side seeking comfort in the knowledge the other side didn't really represent the majority of the country, rather than having reason to feel hurt by the country's rejection.