If you post on a forum you are a politician and thus your views can be disagreed with.

[MelissaWV]

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Besides, his allegedly conservative, allegedly populist political so-called philosophy is funny enough. Who could possibly have to resort to his waistband to get a laugh going at his expense?

The only reason his waistband comes into it for me is because of the lap band surgery. I don't care about how he looks (this would rank up there with the "Rand needs to change his hair to reach women" threads), but that surgery means a couple of things to me. First, he and his political advisors may have decided his weight might make him look bad compared to other candidates in a debate, which hints at his ramping up for higher office (president? VP?). Second, it is a legitimate health concern. This is akin to Cheney's pacemaker and the fact that it provides another risk to someone in higher office.

The latter really isn't a big deal yet, but I guess I see it because of how many people we take care of at work with complications from lap band surgery down the line.

Considering the forums mission statement is to "facilitate the grassroots initiatives.." I do not see how klamath is off the mark with the "politician" reference.

Words still have meanings. Not everyone who's ever had a political discussion is a politician. Not everyone who posts here follows the Mission Statement (some are purely Off Topic posters). Prior to and during facilitation, there is also a vetting process that can get a bit ugly and that sometimes outright REQUIRES some personal "insults" of the sort UWD is talking about, which are veiled but not outright statements of assholeness.

If Dr. Steve Parent showed up here tomorrow saying he had secret insider information about who was going to win in 2016, and how we could combat it, how would that thread go? I wonder if people even remember him to any great extent. I do think that personal information would be part of that thread, because the guy's got a very long history of scams. There's no argument to refute in that scenario (other than the fact that in 2007 his sources told him it was going to be Hillary for sure, not this Obama guy; he's just a distraction). There's only such a fundamentally bad series of prior events and personality traits that they do reflect on his efforts and his inevitable requests for funding.

I am pro-personal attacks.

Too many people post all sorts of bullshit hypocritical opinions, and should be called out for their hypocrisy.

Oh, and nobody that has a life outside of politics reads these boards anymore. Only political junkies do, and their minds are already made up. All the arguments about what outsiders will think are baseless attempts to shut an opponent up in some kind of group-think policing.

Moderated forums are an example of libertarian philosophy failing in real life, because the blind spot in all utopian philosophies is people are people, and nasty little animals; the nastiest, most deceptive, most murderous on the planet. Millions of people have been killed trying to settle the arguments presented here. There is every level of attempts to inflict pain when it comes to politics, from an underhanded insinuation of feeble mindedness to napalm.

Also, expert trolls can levy personal attacks all day, and get away with it because they know just how far they can push the envelope and get away with it. When I see that bullshit, I just prefer to bluntly punch them in their smarmy face and call them an asshole, then try to make fifty sly insinuations they are an asshole.

And don't forget, forums are for people who love anger. They come here to either get mad or vent.

So fuck all you self-righteous pharisees that think your insults are slightly less severe than your opponents'. An insult is an insult, no matter how prettily you wrapped it up.

Most of your assertions are off the mark, particularly the characterization of all forum members as angry hypocritical assholes with no lives off of the forums. I come here to chat with friends once I'm done with my other responsibilities, and while I am working on projects; it is pleasant background noise and it's the only place I can learn about efforts I'd like to donate time and money to with any degree of accuracy. I do occasionally see threads that annoy or exasperate me, but I don't come here specifically to get angry and vent.

Whether you realize it or not, people do browse these forums as visitors. They do so out of curiosity, but many times they do so to gather information. There are elected officials that post here, and there IS an effort to affiliate them with the angry basement-dwelling creature you characterize in your post. It's not a particularly concerted effort at the moment, but there have been a few articles featuring this site. How many were positive?

As for just calling someone an asshole instead of insinuating it, I guess I could have (in your opinion) responded to your post with "you're an asshole" but that wouldn't have been accurate, and it wouldn't have addressed the parts of your post I found to be incorrect.