However, I have a question. Recently, I've been coming across more and more people who do not argue positions that can be easily controverted: that is, they take a position that I find so outlandish and reprehensible that I find myself without a counter-argument: which, in turn, gives the callow youth the impression that he (it's always a he) has won the "argument." I submit this example:
oh, JOURNALISM, how cute. I'm sure your even-handed worldview will help you tell us about how "others think" and "some feel"... "journalism" is nothing more than a 12-year-old girl's diary. funny how those who aspire to indocrinate others are the first to cry fascism. are you actually good at anything?--"Captain Napalm" on the career choices of othersI'm sorry, but when I meet people like this I tend to stare like I'm in the chimpanzee section of the zoo. Despite working in a criminal justice related clinic, I remain confounded that people can be either this willfully stupid or heedlessly puerile. And this was an adult with a job! I mean, look at the ridiculous nature of that statement. Even responding to it with a "no, well some journalists are quite responsible really and have done a lot of good" post makes me feel like the terrorists have won.
Am I getting old? Because reading this post made me feel like the fogey with the shotgun that has no more refined pleasure in life than filling some young sprout's hide full of rock salt. But isn't that just an Ann Coulter argument?
As a final, related aside: it frustrates me to no end (and, to be fair, I've seen this done on both sides of the aisle and have been guilty of it myself) where in discussions of terrorism, one side or the other resorts to wishing that the opposing side would die. In that case, should you not be pro-terrorism, the problem being that maybe the wrong persons are dying? "Oh, we hate Osama bin Laden, and we'd do much better at it if 49 (or 51)% of you would just die."
Idiots!
1 comment:
Yeah, internet message boards (blogs, for that matter)--not usually bastions of informed or intelligent debate or content. I take a few positives away, nevertheless.
First, most of the posters were suitably outraged over the NSA's domestic spying. The pernicious "don't worry if you have nothing to hide" argument seldom cropped up and was usually well countered.
Second, chatter about politics, no matter how stupid, is better than silence.
Three, if you put these people together in a room (as a major public participation project I worked for did) and let them talk together, they'd probably come up with something they could agree on. The internet's a wonderful thing. (Same argument holds for talk radio, I suppose.) It makes communication so much easier. But you might as well be typing to a machine, not another person. It's a lot harder to say nasty, over-the-top things, in defense of ideologically rigid positions, when you have to say it to someone else's face.
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