yawn...

 

I thought this thread was about the election and the expressions of your views of it. Why has it now degraded into mud slinging?

Does your civil war still simmer?

PEACE, and fuck off to anyone who now makes canadian jokes.

 

Hey Wylie, how have you been??


The end of the civil war that you speak of can be summed up like this....

The old boys at the courthouse, whittlin' and chewin' say, "Lee surrendered, ah didn't"

However, since I am a Yankee who emmigrated to the south, I have observed far more racism above the Mason-Dixon line, than below it. For some reason the folks up north won't let it die, they keep dredging it up over and over again.

 

This guy is SMART!:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndx3ifpIn7o

 

I ran on to this article in Slate Magazine today that I thought speaks directly to the theme of this thread. The article is about why Barack Obama should appoint geniuses to his cabinet and other positons. I thought it might be interesting to look at the names mentioned. See if anyone agrees. And then see who Obama actually appoints.

And as to the actual OP of this thread I thought this quote was pertenent.

http://www.slate.com/id/2204597/?from=rss

 

First off, while I certainly agree that some intellectual "snobs" can be that way, what I don't understand is why stating facts and using stronger logic and reasoning skills to explain why another idea is indeed inferior or whatever needs to automatically be labelled "snobby." If I were to try and talk plumbing to someone who has spent decades being a plumber and he quite rightly corrected my ideas and procedures and whatever else, would I need to consider him a plumbing intellectual snob? Does being correct automatically make you a snob? There are certainly many things that are open to opinion in this world where there is no wrong or right or better and worse, but there are many things that are quite quantifiable and it is quite easy to examine data and determine what is better and what is worse. So why is it bad when someone is smart enough to examine said data and attempt to inform the populace that a certain thing is better than other certain things? Why are they labeled elite snobs? Just because of the way they inform? Or is it just the mere fact that they are correct that makes them snobs. But when a conservative is correct and explains it, suddenly it's not snobbery. I'm sorry but I highly doubt that any significant portion of the voters that voted for McCain, especially the ones who had the luck of appearing at his rallies and showing the world their true colors, have any kind of real knowledge or understanding of economics or foreign relations beyond the horrible sound bites put out by Fox news. Which again explains why all the various intelligent conservatives such as George Will and Christopher Buckley and the Economist, et al. all decided to vote for Obama and not McCain. They ARE smart enough to understand economics and foreign relations and many of the other things that will be in store for the next President and they knew that the best chance of succeeding against those problems was with Obama. I daresay you would find it hard to explain why so many of these conservatives suddenly voted against "their beliefs" in voting for Obama. And I daresay you would find it even harder to explain why anyone with a modicum of intelligence and education and understanding of economics or foreign relations or whatever would vote for McCain other than through the blind adherence to dogmatic ideology or an extremely racist belief system.

I didn't ignore anything. By merely stating that I could understand why some might have voted for Bush on the first go around, I completely understood that fundamental difference. But the problem in your argument lies with the stone cold irrefutable fact the Republicans and especially Bush and McCain are absolutely the opposite of the fundamental "conservatives". The Republicans haven't been conservative (other than socially) since Reagan. So if you are accurate in your statement that people vote their beliefs, then not a single conservative anywhere (except a strictly social conservative) should have voted for McCain because he is not even conservative. The Republicans have done more to waste money and grow our government than any Democrat. So again it appears that either A) the people who voted for McCain are conservatives, but too stupid to realize that McCain wasn't one, B) lockstep political party robots, or C) racist assholes.

I don't need to assume anything. Again, I can easily see people being fooled in 2000, but by 2004 you would have to be a friggin' moron to vote for Bush again. It was plainly obvious and all it took was even the smallest bit of critical thinking to understand that voting Bush again would be bad. I'm not saying that voting Kerry would have necessarily been the alternate choice, we would have probably been better off with many of the 3rd party candidates, but Bush was definitely near the bottom of the list as far as good choices go. So you had a bunch of morons manipulated by Karl Rove and his tactics, along with strategically stolen elections, and voila, Bush returned.

What boggles the mind to no end is that your brain can fire up enough to understand turning on a computer and typing, much less keeping your autonomic functions running in your body.

 

Give it up Deidre. You're not her and you're not dealing with people who will sacrifice thinking and reason for big tits and a phony smile. Pretty face don't make a pretty heart and ugly on the inside is as ugly as ugly gets.

 

This is the point that tenguy doesn't seem to grasp. I have no problem with conservatism from an intellectual standpoint. One can make a case for it, although I tend not to agree. What I have a problem with is the out-and-out HOSTILITY toward the intellect, and the celebration of ignorance, represented by the past eight years. It's evident in this hostility of the Bush administration toward science, it's attacks on it's opponents as being "elitist"....and in so many other manifestations. One saw it in the McCain/Palin campaign with the constant references to "real Americans" (i.e. Joe the Plumber).

 

This entire post reinforces my original statement regarding intellectual elite or snobism. Read your comments one more time and tell me that you haven't resorted to exactly that.

You repeatedly say that you can not understand how anyone could vote for Bush, then turn around and try to compare the Obama vote against McCain. It is so simple that you of the "intellectual superiority group" cannot see it. They voted for whom they thought was the better choice. Personally I did the same, Obama was the better choice this time. Some folks, actually a hell of a lot of them did the same when voting for McCain.

The only way most liberals can explain it is to claim racism, there most likely was some, just as there was in the African American community, but it wasn't the underlying reason. The reason again is simple, some folks vote the party, some vote their religious beliefs, some vote the military strength line, there are millions of reasons, perhaps as many as there are votes.

Give it a rest.

 

I voted for a President Bush 4 times in my life. I voted for Obama this time. Out of all the presidents. I though I agreed with Obama on most issues. I also like Obama's professional attitude. I lost faith in the republican party with Bush and I don't like Mccain.

 

You really nailed a point I have been scratching at but failed to verbalize when you make the point about the Bush administration's hostility towards intellectualism being evidenced in their constant approach of; " Just listen to me because after all what do scientists know?"

Actually I think the crux of pffawg9999's entire post can be summed up quite simply. An intellectual elitist is anyone who presents a credible argument that disagrees with tenguy.

 

Not at all true, Stumbler. My only complaint is that to use "intellectual superiority" as a reason to vote one way OR the other is flawed.

The reasons that people view things differently have far more components than ones intellect. For you or anyone else to state that it is only a matter of intellect, is arrogant.

Intellegence is ones capacity to learn and comprehend, it is not a measure of how much or what was learned.

 

Thank God, somebody said it.

Mind if I put that in my sig?

 

If deidre79 is a man he has access to photos that he sent me of a really beautiful. :rose:

 

Geez Stumbler, you think that is me? Thank You Give what up?

 

A+ Tenguy

 

A really beautiful what?

 

:excited:

 

Why is it that you constantly contradict yourself but can never see it even when its in the same post.

Let me point out the contradiction to you and then you might have the intelligence to learn and stop doing it.

If intelligence is the capacity to learn and comprehend then who we vote for should be based on our intelligence. As pffawg9999 pointed out in his post there might have been some excuse for voting for George Bush in his first term but by the election of his second term people should have learned he was a bad leader and comprehend that voting him would result in more bad leadership. In other words the majority of voters did not use their intelligence and were actually stupid for not using it.

No of course not I didn't think that was you. I just thought it was a stupid response. And give up on trying to post on these kinds of threads because you don't have the mental capacity necessary to make sense.