Blatham
OK, I can see the risk of another looming meta-discussion about A2K, but I'll take the risk and answer your post.
blatham wrote:You wouldn't? How does a mind like this happen? How do so many minds like this happen? They appear here as if we are at the end of some assembly line. The content of their posts is almost entirely predictable in its cliches and phrasings.
I would say that noone here is like Swolf, just like noone here was like, whatsisname - the Posner guy. You tend to throw everyone from Sofia to Scrat and Fox to the likes of Swolf in the same category. Thats like throwing Soz and me in together with Tartarin up to Pistoff and frolic.
blatham wrote:So, nimh, how do you propose we engage them? That's not a glib or rhetorical question, it's absolutely serious.
Collect facts. Rapid response: defuse any infactual assertion that can reasonably be checked.
You can compare general perspectives and abstract points of view on Bush, the neo-conservatives and America in this day and age until the end of days - and if you happen to be talking with georgeob1 or Finn it can actually be an enjoyable exercise, but ... thats all it'll be, a freewheeling exchange of views. Which, of course, is part of what A2K is about.
Meanwhile, this board, like many others, occasionally is swamped by outright lies, fallacies and mere factual mistakes when a 'hot' issue comes up. Those you can counter (especially the latter). You still probably wont convince the person expressing them, but at least you'll block one more tribuary of the flow of further dissemination.
Plus, its practical. Do some documentational work. You bring the facts together once, you'll be able to use them ad infinitum in the future to counter the same assertions when they come up again and again.
Finally, Soz's b) category
does exist. I am guilty a little bit of the same you do in extremis - a priori assume anyone of a certain political bend and posting style to be a hopeless case and enter conversation with him in equivalent style (answer in mere satire, coming into a discussion boots first, whatever). But posters like Brand X and even Fox, too, have occasionally been moved to stop putting forward a certain assertion when its shown to lack basis or be factually incorrect (until they find some new source they think backs it up again). No, they wont explicitly admit you're right (I always marvel at how terribly difficult people find it to say, "oh yeah, OK, I was wrong" - I do it all the time myself). But they'll silently make amends, go for another example or argument next time, et cetera. And they're a
lot more likely to do so, imho, if you come up with straightforward facts, qoutes or sources on the asserted fact at hand than if you counter with a long, eloquent but glib and put-down-riddled political-philosophical panorama on the State of American Politics Today.
Plus (more relevantly perhaps), there's always the new people coming in (even just to read the thread), and its useful if when they then see a neat overview of SVFT assertions, they'll see a neat overview of the records and testimonies that prove them wrong as well. Those, too, are I guess more likely to take that into account than some abstract treatise about the evil of neo-conservatism. Its all just marginal of course, but every little bit helps.
Meanwhile, if you
can distinguish between, say, Foxfyre and Swolf, you'll be able to keep threads at least within the realm of the sane. Argue with Fox and she'll put up a post for every of yours, with her own fallacies but also her own facts and sources -
on the topic at hand. Throw Swolf an answer - any kind of answer - and you
know that you're going to get not one, but five responses, consisting of a Dadaist collection of cartoons, communist newspaper frontpages, Serbofascist ramblings and diatribes about anything except the topic at hand - well, about the Yugoslav war, anthrax and Clinton's deadly sins, specifically, anyway.
