Letters to the Editor
Paul Daniel Ash
Published Letters: 687 Editor's Choice: 2
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@xitijur99
[Read the article: Lessons not learned]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The biggest flaw was actually believing an idiot like George W. Bush would be a competent war president.
I rather think the biggest flaw is thinking the world is America's fucking sandbox and that soldiers, civilians and whole societies are action figures for us to play with in order to assuage our own hurt feelings about 9/11.
But WTF do I know...
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¡El Toro!
[Read the article: Lessons not learned]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]A fifties flashback, sorry.
I was thinking of the Dodgers pitcher from the 80s...
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@omooex in re: trolls
[Read the article: Lessons not learned]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]its used as a way to deligitimize ideas without adressing the points involved.
No, I disagree. "Troll" is a term with meaning. "A person who is deliberately inflammatory on the Internet in order to provoke a vehement response from other users," according to the all-knowing oracle. I and many others have tried to engage some of our resident trolls in dialogue, with zero success... because dialogue is not their aim.
I am not familiar with blank and haven't seen enough of her/his writing in this thread to judge whether she/he is or isn't a troll. But if blank was misdecribed, it doesn't mean that there's no such thing as trolls, any more than that there's no such thing as communists.
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@omooex
[Read the article: Lessons not learned]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Inflammatory can mean all kinds of things--it even sometimes means that you're saying things I don't agree with.
No, it doesn't. Inflammatory means "inflammatory." Troll means "troll." The fact that people sometimes misuse terms doesn't mean terms are devoid of meaning.
You have, by your own admission, been "purposely rude" at times, and you got smacked for it. I think you took more heat than you deserved, though I'm not sure you got more than you asked for.
I personally think there is more of a problem with trollery itself than there is with people being misidentified as trolls just for expressing differences vehemently, even rudely. But - as we said way back in the day - your mileage may vary.
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@omooex
[Read the article: Lessons not learned]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I was only putting the thought out there, I wasn't looking for SALT II.
Here's something I find interesting about you, Jaime: you like to bring up contrary points of view, which is great IMO, as nothing's more boring than a echo chamber. However, you seem to be really uncomfortable being odd man out. It makes you something of a challenging interlocutor.
I didn't even feel like we were arguing in this little sub-discussion as much as just exchanging points of view. If you found it uncomfortable, such certainly wasn't my intent.
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The Dark Side
[Read the article: War advocates like Anne-Marie Slaughter demand that you forget the past]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Sometimes I feel that political discourse in this country is just a big, fat Jedi mind trick, played endlessly.
It's like Ana Marie Cox, on Swampland yesterday, saying "McCain has a serious vision of foreign policy..." but when challenged on it, couldn't say exactly what it was. John McCain can wave his fingers in front of their faces and say, "My friends, these aren't the droids you're looking for," and they all rush to scribble it down.
The whole "reality-based" trope has gotten played to death, but the pervasiveness of the ideological blinkeredness of the power elite - be they Dem or Rep - is truly something to behold.
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@blank
[Read the article: War advocates like Anne-Marie Slaughter demand that you forget the past]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You sound like you've been to Jim Jones Kool Aid Compound.
All those people are dead.
Are you calling Mike Sulzer a dead guy?
I don't understand.