Goodbye

I tire of arguing over many things the answers to which should be rather obvious anyway. I'm going away to the other 2+2 forums which require real thought.


Sorry Ray Springfield but you'll be on your own against the likes of Alger, ripdog and brad for a while. You can handle Alger if you stick to short factual points and don't let the sheer volume of his nonsense overwhelm you.


John Cole: I will see you around anyway


It probably isn't healthy for me to spend so much time fixated on world problems and terrorists and in responding to inane arguments. Time to do a little leveling in poker theory and in real poker too. C ya'll 'round it was fun.

You come here, and start telling me you have the authority to vote on what size car I should drive, how much gas I can buy, and so on.


Then a couple people, not even laying their hands on your car mind you, just attack your positions using words, and you turn tail and run.


What a pushover you are. You are the kind of person, M, who would let a sweettalker like Bill Clinton take everything you have, and use it to win interns.


But when they use your vote to start coming after what I have, you're going to hear about it in every venue available to me.


eLROY

The post directly beneath yours provides ample evidence of the sanity of your decision.


Enjoyed the debate. See ya on the other forums.

Do you expect us to be civil - standing idly by and smiling - while you design your brave new world out of our property?


You tax-mad communists will steal, steal, steal, all day, but then, when the victim lets out a whimper, well, what was that all about?


Do you even realize that, at the root of your every political ideal, is theft, and control?


Do you have any semblance of the morals which created This Great Nation?


DO YOU FANCY YOURSELF THAT SUPERIOR?


eLROY

Actually, I find that eLROY's posts do make me think and explore. My tactic now is to ignore his inflammatory rhetoric and concentrate on debunking only one of his assertions per thread. It's all I have time for anyway. It's like arguing with my step-dad lawyer when I was 12. I know his arguments are flawed, but I don't have the knowledge or experience to refute them right off the bat. Yeah, he's an ass, but that's his right. I'll miss having another anti-eLROY comrade. Since I used the term "comrade" it means I'm a godless commie, right Elroy?

anytime you get down to facts, liberals usually end the discussion.


anytime you can get away from opinions and start sourcing facts you can usually win an argument.


brad

Mark,


Unfortunately, we don't get to run into each other often enough. So, if you don't decide to post here, at least peruse every so often. I've enjoyed the debates you've had with Chris Alger because, for the most part, you are both sane, rational people, even if you disagree. And, I enjoy watching you think through stuff in your writing.


When things quiet down at my end--and nothing's been quiet lately--let's try to get together for dinner.


Best,


John

Could you cite some evidence please?

Thx John that sounds good plz email me I lost your email when I changed to a new hard drive

You can worry no longer about responding to me; Mason has apparently kicked me off all these forums because of my politics. In Mason’s words (in ripdog’s “projecting an image” thread below), “I don’t see a difference” between “what you are saying” and “what your critics say you say.”


The critic in question was Ray Springfield in a post entitled “Alger loves Osama.”


The “criticism” to which Mason was referring read as follows:


“Alger loves Carlos. Alger loves Adolf. Alger believes in a Zionisit conspiracy. The Jews of today don't like to be murdered. Not only do they try not to get murdered these days, they will fight back and win in military affairs. The Algerian philosophy is that they are supposed to passively accept extermination and say thank you.”


This followed a my post of mine that concluded that said nothing about zionism or conspiracies or even Israel at all. It’s esstential if banal point was this: “We should only be concerned with the potential for the abuse of power, such as through mass murder and state-supported terrorism. These crimes should not be mitigated or excused if the actor is a ‘democracy.’”


Rather than delete posts accusing me of being a nazi and genocidalist anti-semite, Mason cautioned: “It's time you defended yourself in an appropriate manner. And remember, insults are not tolerated.”


I was surprised as Mason’s comments, given my repeated supposition that accusing someone of “loving” Hitler would be an insult, and my denunciations of all terrorism, my abject hatred of fascism and nazism, the fact that I have never said a kind word about bin Laden, Carlos the Jackal, or Adolf Hitler, and have never mentioned any “zionist conspiracy,” something that I do not believe exists. Nor, it should go without saying, have I ever suggested that any nation, including and probably least of all Jews, should be “exterminat[ed].”


To make sure Mason understood where I was coming from, I sent him an email reiterating my postion “that Jews have the right to a national state where it presently exists, that Israel has the right to exist within secure borders, and that Palestinian terrorism (or any terrorism) against civilians is an abominable crime.” I also told him that


“I recognize that it is respectable in some circles to try to associate critics of Israel and U.S. support for Israel with anti-semitism. I also assume that many people who do this do so with a certain amount of good faith because their political imaginations are hemmed by the persistent pain and ugliness of antisemitism, or because they believe that such critics at least play into the hands of Jew-haters. I would ask only that you reflect on how painful this feels to the critic when it isn't true.”


(For those happily spared my diatribes, my politics re Israel basically dovetail the postions of the Peace Now and Yesh Gvul movements in Israel).


The full text of Mason’s email response to me was the following:


“I think that it's time you quit posting on our forums. It's clear to me that your purpose is to damage them and we would just appreciate if you would appear no more. Remember their main purpose is to discuss poker and other forms of gambling. MM”


So I guess the technical reason that my license to post has been revoked is that I tried to “damage” these forums by raising topics other than poker on the “Other Topics” forum. I suppose everyone can draw their own conclusion, assuming they’re given the chance.


P.S. I enjoyed sparring with you. I'm sorry that you feel my points are all "inane," sorrier still that you feel the rightfulness of anyone's position regarding some of the most intractable problems in the world are "obvious."