Author Topic: I'm going over to the dark side  (Read 10606 times)

Headless Thompson Gunner

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I'm going over to the dark side
« on: December 17, 2007, 04:27:36 PM »
I had an interesting revelation at work today: living denial could be fun.

I was talking with some coworkers at lunch.  We all agreed that the company's research engineer has the best job in the company.  He gets to play with whatever cool technology he wants, without regards to the practicality.  He can spend all day spouting impressive features and test data for his work.  Since he's a researcher, not a developer like the rest of us, he never has to show any real world results.  His projects are never put into practice, so he never has to make any hard decisions that he'll later be called upon to defend.  He never worries about being wrong or seeing his projects fail. 

The rest of us will have to defend our decision later.  We will be called upon to get real-world results.  Some of the things we try to develop will fail, and there could be hell to pay for it.  We're expected to deliver, and for the most part we do.

This sometimes produces friction between the researcher and the developers.  He gets mad at us because our designs are never perfect.  We get mad at him for not understanding that a "good enough" result right now is better than a perfect result that's never going to be realized. 

Well, I want to be that research engineer.  Wouldn't it be cool to live in his fantasy land and never having to worry about real-world consequences?

It struck me how eerily this parallels the politics here on APS. 

The Republicans do the real work of making sure government, which will never be particularly appealing, is at least not as despicable as it otherwise would be without us.  And along come the Libertarians and Paulistas and other similar types, constantly telling us how wrong we are and how much better they are.  Nevermind that they have human flaws and shortcomings just like us.  Nevermind that they won't ever be called upon to defend their real-world results, because they won't ever deliver any real-world results.  Their record is squeaky clean and perfectly defensible, because they have no record to defend.  They get to believe their *expletive deleted*it doesn't smell, and nobody will ever be able to prove them wrong.

I'm going over to the dark side.  I now support Ron Paul. 

My candidate has never instituted a policy that was wrong.  Never.  He never will, either.  Bet me...

If he doesn't get elected, it won't be my fault, it'll be yours for not supporting him enough.  If you don't support him because you think he can't win, well it's your fault he can't win, because you don't support him.

I'll let those dirty Republicans keep Hillary out of the oval office, while criticizing them at every turn.  That should be fun.

No more voting for the lesser of two evils.  I don't vote for any sort of evil (and I'll remind you all at every turn how superior I am for doing this).  And if a greater evil results, I'll wash my hands of any responsibility.  I'll blame it on the system, not on my method of participating in that system.

I don't have to worry about defending the country.  First of all, other people will handle that regardless of how I behave.  Second, I live in Indiana, which most jihadis can't even pronounce, much less find or attack.  And we'll kill 'em all before they get to the beach, which we don't have around here.  Third, a few Letters of Marque will provide all the defense we'll ever need.  Hey, Letters of Marque have never proven inadequate in the past.

Democrats will erode our liberty faster and faster, and it won't be my job any longer to stop them.

Truly, it's the ultimate mental cop-out.  It's self denial, but it'll be fun!  It's sort of like joining the environmental movement on the left.  You get all the benefits of feeling important, of being a good person, of making a difference.  And all you have to do is suspend disbelief.  Easy!

Oh yeah, I'll make fun of the rest of you suckers for not dropping out of the two-party system.  I have seen through all that, because I'm smarter than all of you.

Perd Hapley

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Re: I'm going over to the dark side
« Reply #1 on: December 17, 2007, 04:29:45 PM »
I'm with you.  Let's go skew an on-line poll, dude!   cheesy
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Headless Thompson Gunner

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Re: I'm going over to the dark side
« Reply #2 on: December 17, 2007, 04:42:49 PM »
If you think I'm kidding, that this is some sort of satire or sarcasm, you're mistaken.  I am dead serious.  I now support Ron Paul, and I wash my hands of any consequences that may result.

grampster

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Re: I'm going over to the dark side
« Reply #3 on: December 17, 2007, 04:44:16 PM »
I'm on board, but I'm hoping not many will join us.  Then we'll (gasp) win the then be held to account.
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Paddy

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Re: I'm going over to the dark side
« Reply #4 on: December 17, 2007, 04:51:19 PM »
I guess your point is to ridicule and deride any third parties because none (yet) have been successful at winning a major national election.  So there you sit, pompously smug in your ideological cocoon, confident that your Republican party is beyond reproach, untouchable, unassailable, and indomitable.   

Izzat yer point?

I think you're in for one helluva shock when the Republicans get their asses handed to them next year.  2006 was only a warning, and the GOP didn't get the message.   They seem to think they can foist off some sleazy ahole like Giuliani on us and we'll still vote Republican.  Not likely.  Too many of us old timer Republicans pissed off beyond all recall.  GWB and his cabal of neocons have screwed the pooch.  The Republican party will be lucky if it wins another national election in the next 30 years.

Headless Thompson Gunner

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Re: I'm going over to the dark side
« Reply #5 on: December 17, 2007, 05:23:42 PM »
I'll say it again.  That wasn't meant as satire or sarcasm.  I mean what I said. 

It's darned appealing to consider only the immediate self-satisfaction of your position, not the consequences.  And in terms of self-satisfaction, supporting the Libertarians is tough to beat.  Consequences had always dissuaded me from that, but no longer.

I'm going the way of Ayn Rand's Leo Kovalensky (politically speaking), and I'm doing it deliberately.

Len Budney

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Re: I'm going over to the dark side
« Reply #6 on: December 17, 2007, 05:28:24 PM »
It's darned appealing to consider only the immediate self-satisfaction of your position, not the consequences.

Comments like this tend to amaze me. They make supporting the wholesale slaughter of innocent Iraqis, for example, sound like mature taking of responsibility, while making the refusal to do so sound like irresponsible selfishness. Slavery is freedom. Ignorance is strength.

--Len.
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GigaBuist

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Re: I'm going over to the dark side
« Reply #7 on: December 17, 2007, 05:29:06 PM »
Quote
I guess your point is to ridicule and deride any third parties because none (yet) have been successful at winning a major national election.
Well, not lately.  You don't hear much from the Whig party these days.

The Rabbi

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Re: I'm going over to the dark side
« Reply #8 on: December 17, 2007, 05:29:48 PM »
"The only thing necessary for bad men to conquer is for good men to support Libertarianism." Sir Winston Churchill*






*O.K.  Maybe it wasn't Churchill.  Maybe it was Edmund Burke.  I dunno.
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The Rabbi

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Re: I'm going over to the dark side
« Reply #9 on: December 17, 2007, 05:34:33 PM »
It's darned appealing to consider only the immediate self-satisfaction of your position, not the consequences.

Comments like this tend to amaze me. They make supporting the wholesale slaughter of innocent Iraqis, for example, sound like mature taking of responsibility, while making the refusal to do so sound like irresponsible selfishness. Slavery is freedom. Ignorance is strength.

--Len.
Not surprisingly, this is incomprehensible to me.
We (meaning those who support the war in Iraq) did not support the wholesale slaughter of innocent Iraqis.  That's one reason we deposed Saddam Hussein.
But how that is relevant to this discussion is beyond me.
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Headless Thompson Gunner

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Re: I'm going over to the dark side
« Reply #10 on: December 17, 2007, 05:38:03 PM »
It's darned appealing to consider only the immediate self-satisfaction of your position, not the consequences.

Comments like this tend to amaze me. They make supporting the wholesale slaughter of innocent Iraqis, for example, sound like mature taking of responsibility, while making the refusal to do so sound like irresponsible selfishness. Slavery is freedom. Ignorance is strength.

--Len.
Not surprisingly, this is incomprehensible to me.
We (meaning those who support the war in Iraq) did not support the wholesale slaughter of innocent Iraqis.  That's one reason we deposed Saddam Hussein.
But how that is relevant to this discussion is beyond me.
Killing innocent Iraqis wholesale is bad.  It's downright mean.  And I'm opposed to it!

My candidate voted against this war.  It's an illegal war anyway, because there was never a vote to declare war on those innocent Iraqis, which my candidate voted against.

The Rabbi

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Re: I'm going over to the dark side
« Reply #11 on: December 17, 2007, 05:40:29 PM »
So he voted against the war in the non-vote that was taken?

Hmm, channeling Kerry I think.
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Headless Thompson Gunner

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Re: I'm going over to the dark side
« Reply #12 on: December 17, 2007, 05:43:19 PM »
No no no.  There was a vote about whether or not to have the war, but there was never a vote to declare war.  If you can't see the difference, you've been listening to too much Shean Hanity.

Besides, what has this war done for us except kill off innocent Iraqis and use up our national gold.  Which isn't really gold any more.  Which is bad.  My candidate supports the gold standard, which we never should have given up 70 yeas ago.


Hey folks, I made an obscure reference to Ayn Rand in an earlier post.  Doesn't that get me bonus points?  Hows come nobody noticed?

The Rabbi

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Re: I'm going over to the dark side
« Reply #13 on: December 17, 2007, 05:46:37 PM »
You'll need to sniff knowingly and dismiss Alan Greenspan as having gone over to the dark side before we can take you seriously.
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Len Budney

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Re: I'm going over to the dark side
« Reply #14 on: December 17, 2007, 05:49:01 PM »
It's darned appealing to consider only the immediate self-satisfaction of your position, not the consequences.

Comments like this tend to amaze me. They make supporting the wholesale slaughter of innocent Iraqis, for example, sound like mature taking of responsibility, while making the refusal to do so sound like irresponsible selfishness. Slavery is freedom. Ignorance is strength.

Not surprisingly, this is incomprehensible to me. We (meaning those who support the war in Iraq) did not support the wholesale slaughter of innocent Iraqis.  That's one reason we deposed Saddam Hussein. But how that is relevant to this discussion is beyond me.

RP's most notable stance is his opposition to the invasion of Iraq, and his intention to withdraw from Iraq (and Germany, and Korea...) promptly. This provides the context of HTG's comments, and therefore it is reasonable for me to focus on that issue in particular. Thus its relevance. HTG since stated his opposition to the invasion, and I'm too tired to tell whether he's being serious or satirical. So I'll confine myself to addressing your remarks here.

What's taken place in Iraq has been the wholesale slaughter of innocent Iraqis. It's possible in theory to support Saddam's overthrow while opposing everything else about the war, such as the accompanying slaughter, the use of torture, etc. If that's your position, I'd expect that you'd find my remarks comprehensible, and express some sort of lament that GWB handled Hussein's overthrow so incompetently that mass slaughter resulted.

As I said, it's possible in theory. It's pretty hard in practice, because the sectarian violence in Iraq, etc., were a foregone conclusion before the invasion. It's easy to find all sorts of references on the Internet, written before the invasion started, that predicted precisely the outcome we got. That being the case, supporting the invasion while condemning the consequences is like supporting the fire while condemning the smoke.

--Len.
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griz

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Re: I'm going over to the dark side
« Reply #15 on: December 17, 2007, 06:11:46 PM »
Quote
I'll say it again.  That wasn't meant as satire or sarcasm.  I mean what I said

Then welcome to the right side.  Ironically, there has been a third party canidate win the presidency.  It was soon after the republican party was created.
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Headless Thompson Gunner

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Re: I'm going over to the dark side
« Reply #16 on: December 17, 2007, 06:24:48 PM »
Right!  It's been 150 years since then, and we're due for another third party win!

Now, if we can only get Ron Paul to run on a third party ticket...

GigaBuist

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Re: I'm going over to the dark side
« Reply #17 on: December 17, 2007, 06:26:58 PM »
Quote
This sometimes produces friction between the researcher and the developers.  He gets mad at us because our designs are never perfect.  We get mad at him for not understanding that a "good enough" result right now is better than a perfect result that's never going to be realized.  
Can you come up with a metric for picking presidential candidates that have a shot at becoming the pary's nominee?

What I'm looking for, and you certainly don't have to provide it, is a list of conditions that every single nominee of a party that gathered more than 20% of the popular vote meet.  That could very well just be the Republican and Democratic parties -- I'm honestly not sure how far back the primary system goes.

Maybe as a group we can come up with one?  Personally, I'd wager that the best indicator would be the the first 5 or 6 primaries.  However, maybe it's possible to do it with polling data before the primaries even started.  I'm certain we can toss fundraising ability right out the window -- Dean proved that in 2004 IIRC.

Paddy

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Re: I'm going over to the dark side
« Reply #18 on: December 17, 2007, 06:29:42 PM »
Quote
Now, if we can only get Ron Paul to run on a third party ticket...

Horrors, no!  That would split the Republican vote and we could get President Hillary.  laugh

Headless Thompson Gunner

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Re: I'm going over to the dark side
« Reply #19 on: December 17, 2007, 06:31:04 PM »
Political ability is a big factor. "Politics" is the art of working together with other people to achieve a result that you couldn't have achieved on your own (or at least, couldn't have achieved on your own as easily). 

So popularity and leadership are prime qualifiers for being able to win a primary (or any election).  The ability to not offend people ranks pretty high too.  Making smart deals and doing favors with/for influential people is another hot ability.

Len Budney

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Re: I'm going over to the dark side
« Reply #20 on: December 17, 2007, 06:31:31 PM »
Horrors, no!  That would split the Republican vote and we could get President Hillary.  laugh

Hillary's presidency is practically guaranteed. I'm hoping against hope for Ron Paul, but it's almost certainly gonna be "Heil, Hillary!" I'm already practicing my goose step.

--Len.
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Headless Thompson Gunner

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Re: I'm going over to the dark side
« Reply #21 on: December 17, 2007, 06:32:27 PM »
Quote
Now, if we can only get Ron Paul to run on a third party ticket...

Horrors, no!  That would split the Republican vote and we could get President Hillary.  laugh
Not my problem.  I wash my hands of results, and I only concern myself with my own good intentions.

The system is broken, man.  Can't work within it, can't work outside it.  But I have the utmost faith in Ron Paul's ability to save us.

Headless Thompson Gunner

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Re: I'm going over to the dark side
« Reply #22 on: December 17, 2007, 06:34:32 PM »
Horrors, no!  That would split the Republican vote and we could get President Hillary.  laugh

Hillary's presidency is practically guaranteed. I'm hoping against hope for Ron Paul, but it's almost certainly gonna be "Heil, Hillary!" I'm already practicing my goose step.

--Len.

Have you seen the polling that shows any Republican would beat Hillary?  Well, not any Republican, they only polled on the top 4 or 5 Rep candidates, and thus didn't bother to ask how Dr. Paul would do.

But I'm done with the Republican Party.  All they ever give us is more government and more gun control.  Even when they don't give us more government and more gun control.  Which is never.

Maybe they'll finally take notice of us if we throw enough votes to a third party candidate and split the ticket and give the win to Hillary.  If we get Hillary elected they'll have to take us seriously.

Len Budney

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Re: I'm going over to the dark side
« Reply #23 on: December 17, 2007, 06:41:27 PM »
Have you seen the polling that shows any Republican would beat Hillary?  Well, not any Republican, they only polled on the top 4 or 5 Rep candidates, and thus didn't bother to ask how Dr. Paul would do.

I'm no prophet, but I think such polls are premature. Unless Chicago is nuked between now and the election, I think almost any Democrat can beat any of the leading republican candidates. Huckabee's skeletons are just starting to come out of the closet. Giuliani's corruption runs so deep my mother could beat him. McCain stands no chance of being nominated. And Romney is simply pathetic, not to mention Mormon.

--Len.
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Headless Thompson Gunner

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Re: I'm going over to the dark side
« Reply #24 on: December 17, 2007, 06:42:51 PM »
And Romney is simply pathetic, not to mention Mormon.

--Len.
I thought we didn't generalize about such things?  It's not the religion, it's the man...?

Obviously I have a lot to learn about being a Paulista.   undecided