Tag Archives: Argument

For a Certain Value of ‘Win’

25 Wednesday Dec 2019

Posted by in Politics

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y0aRjr1DSo, the Trump campaign has launched a brand new website intended to help their supporters ‘win’ arguments over the Holiday dinner tables. (No, I’m not linking to the damned thing; you can find it yourself if you like.) I seem to recall the deplorable pundits encouraging their faithful to harass us at the Thanksgiving dinner table. Now they’ve decided to press the fight on into Christmas as well.

…and supposedly, it’s liberal secularists that are trying to ruin Christmas, but whatever!

How are they pitching this little bundle of disinformation? According to CBS News:

“We’ve all seen the news articles about liberal snowflakes being afraid to see their MAGA relatives at Christmas or holiday gatherings, so the Trump campaign wants people to be ready,” Kayleigh McEnany, Trump campaign national press secretary, said in a statement. “We’re not helping snowflakes avoid arguments – we’re helping Trump supporters win them! As 2019 draws to a close and 2020 approaches, President Trump and Americans are going to be winning, winning, and winning, and then winning some more!”

Which brings to mind a certain question. Why is it that we liberals are the ones ducking these Holiday discussions? Why is it that we are the ones consciously trying to avoid politics with friends and family over the Holiday season. I suppose there may be some counter-examples, obviously there are, but I do think the general pattern is those pushing this sight see it; liberals are the ones who would rather not engage even as deplorables are only too happy to spill their love of the Manchurian Cheeto all over the room, regardless of the season.

its-hard-to-win-an-argument-with-a-smart-person-44291783Frankly, I think this quote, commonly attributed to Bill Murray sums it up rather nicely. (Speaking of which, does anybody out there know when Murray said that? Or if it really was him?) It isn’t a fear of losing the argument so much as the knowledge that any argument worth making will be wasted on some folks. We’ve all been there, and the headache just isn’t worth it. Also, quite frankly, the fear of seeing the darker truths about people we know and love. It sucks when you realize that someone you really care about shows you that that they are only of egg-nogs away from telling a bunch of really racist jokes. It’s unpleasant to realize that a close friend or relative doesn’t check his facts before opening his mouth and can’t be corrected when called out on it. It’s genuinely horrifying to realize that someone you love is just fine with seeing certain people suffer needlessly (ahem! Children in cages on our borders or living under the bombs in any number of places around the world). It isn’t just the unpleasantness of disagreement that makes some of us wary of Holiday discussions, it’s those moments when you can’t help seeing a trace of cruelty or willful deceit underlies the politics of some people you’d like to love. Sure, sometimes people make a reasonable argument from the other side. Even a right wing clock is right twice a day, so to speak, but sometimes, all-too-often really, it isn’t the challenging case that makes us uncomfortable, much less the cold hard-to-explain fact, it’s the moment you see the genuine cruelty in a friend or family member. Politics brings that out in people, some people at any rate.

With Trump in the White House, politics is bringing it out of them a lot more often.

If Hell is the impossibility of reason, then Holiday Hell is the impossibility of reasoning with a half-drunk uncle. The White House wants to see more of that happening today and tomorrow. Apparently, this year it isn’t enough to fight an imaginary war on Christmas or to do as Trump has done in the past, which is to take credit for the fact that people are wishing each other Merry Christmas again, and hope that people won’t notice that most never stopped in the first place. Now they want us to argue more over Christmas.

This is just one more example of trump’s old promise that he will deliver countless wins to his followers. Like so many other ‘winning’ moments, this one is a manufactured moment of one-up-manship, a pointless battle designed to give someone lacking any semblance of character a chance to feel he got the better of someone else. It is neither patriotism nor conservatism. It certainly isn’t Christianity.

And it really isn’t much of a win when you think about it.

Which is to say that it is just like everything else Trump has brought to us over the last 3 years.

 

A Damnable Dilemma!

25 Wednesday Mar 2015

Posted by in atheism, Religion, Write Drunk, Edit Stoned

≈ 12 Comments

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Ah to be just as cool as this! (pun intended)

Ah to be just as cool as this! (pun intended)

Seems like I’m always reading (or hearing) that atheists are just as bad as religious folks. This theme has a few funny variants! Pushy atheists are just as bad as pushy  believers, or maybe they are just as closed minded as fundamentalists. Atheists who force their views on others are just as obnoxious as Christians who do the same. You can add all manner of pejorative adjectives and get the same formula. We non-believers always seem to be just as annoying, just as rude, and get on people’s nerves just as bad as those we criticize.

I guess atheists are justazzy people.

…which I suppose is fair enough, but is being ‘just as’ really just as bad as being what others just are when someone accuses them of being justazzy?

It’s a bit of a dark night where all cows are grey, this world of justazzyness. I guess it’s a question of priorities, and some folks’ priorities don’t leave much place for the the particulars. Those without a damn to give will hear only that others talk too much about a thing and not much about what each has to say about it.

…which makes for a whole lot of justazzyness.

It’s easy enough to imagine the possibilities. We’ve all met the assholes who could easily square this equation off quite nicely. But of course, folks complaining about the justazzyness of non-believers are rarely clear about just what it takes to cross the line into justazzyness. It could as easily be a thoughtful question as a bit of snark; just likely to be respectful disagreement as a bitter bit of insult. I can’t help thinking in most cases one enters the land of justazzyness simply by stating a point of view in the first place.

My old high school used to suspend both parties in a fight, even if one clearly attacked the other. To them defending yourself was just as much a ticket to the principal’s office as picking a fight to begin with. This would seem to have been just as much a case of justazzism as the one that has me up at this fricking hour. It’s 3:30am fer fuck’s sake! And my dreams no doubt find this topic just as poor an excuse for keeping them waiting as any other.

Soon, dammit!

Oddly enough I can’t help thinking this justazzitude is just as unfair to the justazzinination as it is for the justazzinandum. It can be no better to be a measure of damnation than it is to be damned for opposing the damnable. But of course that’s just as one would expect it to be. But is it really a forgone conclusion that faith imparts an evil to anything that shares a measure of whatever it may be? Is belief really such a settled villain that the only question left is will it take its foes down with into a Hell of great peevishness? I’m no friend of Jesus, and even I wouldn’t say it’s such a settled matter as that. But who could fault a fellow for saying ‘no’ to anything so easily dismissed as that? Who but someone who really just wants the issue off the table whatever the costs and whatever the merits of the parties involved?

What a damnable state it must be to live in a world where one can neither affirm nor deny with anything more than a shrug and a meh!

It’s a tragic narrative I suppose. An unbeliever confronts the monsters of superstition and gullibility only to find himself becoming a monster in the eyes of a third party. Try as he might, our soldier of reason can only see in those eyes staring back at him  the very darkness he seeks to combat. The vision is painted in broad strokes to be sure, but some eyes don’t see care for detail. There is no argument against apathy. But is faith not the original sin for this tragedy, a seed which bears fruit in the form of a rotten dilemma? One may accept faith, or one may just as well accept it in the very act of denial. Damned if you do and damned if you might as well have anyway.

You have to wonder! Will those impatient souls who make no distinction keep to that mood Saturday and Monday as well as Tuesday and Friday? Or will they take a side some day, perhaps one which is just as present today in their thoughts as it will be when they at least choose to voice it? Not that they will wish to discuss the matter then, now, or ever.

…which is just as frustrating to some of us anyway.

I expect this rant makes just about as much sense as a kite in a bowl of soup, but then again, I’m feeling kinda justazzy tonight.

Anyway, I guess we’ll have cause for concern when folks start talking more about how religious folks are just as bad as unbelievers. When people of great faith are just as bad as us already justazzy folk, then me must have taken a wrong turn after all.

Till then…