If you feel like I'm getting too personal and mistreating you then I'm sorry. I'll put you back on block and hope no one accidentally direct quotes you again and curiosity gets the better of me. But just because I think you're disgusting doesn't mean you should take it too deeply because I'm rotten enough to my core that I can tell you unabashedly that I find no value in engaging in discourse with you because I do not like how you approach discourse and I don't think that discourse itself has any personal value to you outside of filling in a slot of time for you.
See, it's not that you insulted me that annoyed me, it's that you mischaracterized me and my arguments. You made quite a lot of assumptions about my intentions and my views based on hardly anything I said and what little you did include of what I actually said was only to tone police me. And you still missed what I was
actually saying versus what you
think I said. And not just what you think I said, but who I actually am and what I believe seems to be increasingly detached from who you think I am or what I believe.
An example would be that paragraph about our SC views. Other cases aren't relevant when my initial claim was that this overturning wasn't a deliberate attempt to ban abortion and that they were perfectly in the clear to overturn their own ruling. I laid out very clearly with objective evidence that if that was their intention they wouldn't half-ass it to the point where it is still legal in some states. That's not saying I agree with everything or that I think the SC is free from bias, that's saying that the specific cases I addressed had more mundane reasons behind them than partisan conspiracy theories.
You indirectly attacked me under the guise of talking with another poster while bringing up irrelevant cases that had nothing to do with abortion. There are two things I
really don't like people doing to me: 1. accusing me of saying, doing, or believing things I don't and 2. engaging in cowardly and weaselly behavior to avoid directly confronting me. Particularly when the defense after calling out that weaselly behavior is that I'm too intense or difficult to deal with as if standing up for yourself is a bad thing.
The straw that broke the camel's back and caused me to respond the way I did was when you said "You have all the answers and you're just here to run the tables on us plebs" and denigrated my sincerity. If I just wanted to beat on scrubs I would turn on Smash and play online. It takes far less time and I don't have to deal with it for days on end. I don't like bullying the weak because I'm not insecure.
You aren't the first person to characterize me as arrogant, stubborn, and looking down on others, and you won't be the last. You are in fact, not the first person to publicly accuse me of these things on this website. But there is a fundamental issue that you and others don't understand and that is as follows:
You are not the first person to make your argument. You are not the best person to make your argument. In fact, I have personally seen every argument here many times from people that are both smarter and dumber than any of you here. And I've seen the counterarguments. And counter counterarguments. In fact, I spend lots of time sampling lots of different arguments from all sorts of people, including you guys. And I then mull over what I heard and hold mock debates in my head while doing chores or other daily activities. I then form my own opinion and internalize it.
Because see, contrary to some people's belief, I do spend most of my time as an observer rather than a lecturer. I spend lots of time per day absorbing all sorts of information on a variety of topics and hearing a variety of opinions and debates. Not to win in debates, but simply for the sake of it. It's not a hobby you see, it's a lifestyle. One I've been living for decades.
It's not that I don't consider your argument, it's that I've already heard it many times. It's not that I skim your words to knock them down, I'm merely confirming that I've already heard them before. It's not that I'm too stubborn for your argument to change mine, it's that my argument has already been challenged and scrutinized by someone else. It's not that I look down on you, it's that we are simply not equals in this regard.
The problem with democratizing debate is that not every participant is on equal footing with others. Not to say that everyone involved can't occasionally have a flash of brilliance or a worthwhile contribution, but that it is rare for someone to do so consistently. The law of averages apply even here and there are some that put much more time in than others, but everyone seems to believe their opinion or voice needs to be heard nowadays, whether they spent any serious amount of time forming it or not.
Debates are not necessarily competitions, even if that's what they've devolved into now. Debates are ways to challenge and scrutinize each others arguments to see if they hold up to objectivity and reason or subjectivity when applicable. Not for the purpose of "winning", but to better foster understanding and potentially seeing new sides you haven't before because of your own biases resulting from your experiences not encompassing everything life has to offer.
How many times have you seen someone directly challenge a woman's autonomy? Probably not many, if any. That's something that there would not only be lots of social pressure and repercussions for daring to question it, but many would just plain not even think along those lines in the first place. And I might have changed at least one poster's perception on that.
That's what debate is useful for. It lets you see sides you might not have ever considered before. That doesn't mean you will end up agreeing with that in the end, but your opinion is now stronger and more rounded for it. But that also means you must contribute something new in order to be useful for the overall discourse. If when you look around a bit and you see many others voicing your opinion, that doesn't mean you're right, it means your voice isn't necessary.
This is where I come in. I usually don't pop in unless I see a flaw that isn't being addressed, a "correct" minority opinion needs reinforcing, or the discussion has devolved into an echo chamber of the same voices "liking" each other. If someone is already adequately handling those things, I don't see a need for my voice.
That might make me seem like I'm levitating above everyone or running the tables as you put it, but it actually is just a genuine desire to educate or provide a different perspective. It is rare to see a critique from the left largely because the left is effectively dead. It is frustrating to watch conservatives and liberals run the same tired scripted debates in circles all the time. I find that they are both surprised and ill-prepared to handle a genuine leftist perspective. That's why I debate with those groups, even if I find them aggravating, and not because I'm masochistic lol.
So the fundamental issue, and I'm addressing everyone who has ever called me arrogant or stubborn because they lost a debate, comes down to the fact that we are not equals. Not because I'm inherently superior, but because you didn't make the effort. I didn't learn from you because you didn't have anything new to offer. I didn't admit I was wrong because you didn't prove it. I didn't concede because your skills weren't adequate enough to make me. And ultimately, I'm not required to acknowledge an inferior argument or the defeat of a strawman.
The unfortunate thing about debate is that it isn't as clear-cut as a Smash battle. Even if the loser considers the winner's strategy to be unfair or dishonorable, the results screen doesn't lie. Debate however, requires a bare minimum for one to even understand that they've been beaten. By beaten, I mean they are unable to provide a robust counter to their opponent's argument. That doesn't mean that your opponent is correct, but that does mean you aren't good enough to prove it. If you find yourself unable to directly confront your opponent's argument, you've lost. No amount of mischaracterization, defeating strawmen, personal attacks, circlejerking, appealing to emotion, or demanding acknowledgement is going to change that.
If you think that makes me sound arrogant, your entitlement is showing. If you think I'm looking down on you, that's you projecting your insecurities on me. The people who educate me are well out of your league and above mine. Trust me when I say I know my place. You just need to learn yours. I'm not trying to be harsh, that's just objective reality.
If that bothers you, it really isn't my problem. I can't change your inadequacies, only you can. It's not my duty to coddle egos or paint an unrealistic view of reality. Debate, like any skill, is not egalitarian. If you want to be skilled, you must do the work and have the discipline to tame your ego. I'm not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but I put in my time. And you need to do at least as much as I said I've done in order to make me learn from you.
And if you don't want to do that, you must understand that is why we are not equals.
Roe was all we had, but now it's gone. And given the situation, what good could possibly come of the decision?
I think there's still a pathway to getting abortion legalized federally, provided that liberals make some compromises. Most of the country might not be open to unrestricted abortion, but they are when it comes to things like medical emergencies and the like. The problem being that as per usual liberals take the most extreme position on their pet issues and refuse to compromise. If they'd drop their all or nothing approach, I think there is a good shot to getting abortion legalized at a federal level, restricted though it may be.
The only other roadblock will of course be the GOP themselves. But lets not forget that the Trump administration had a supermajority at the beginning and still couldn't get the Affordable Care Act repealed because their own constituents flooded town halls demanding they back off. That scared just enough Republicans for the GOP to fail on getting enough votes for the repeal. Proving that enough upward pressure can make even the GOP think twice about ignoring the will of the people.
Though yeah, you are pretty much correct in everything else you said and that's why it'll be a long shot to say the least. But there is a path as long as people are willing to follow it. The reason why I entered this topic is to get liberals to understand other viewpoints and hopefully get them to realize they are on a self-destructive path. Unfortunately it looks like history is going to repeat itself and liberalism is going to get crushed both politically and culturally, but at least I can say I tried my very small part.
At the end of the day, we can't expect people to have unfettered access to this many pleasures and not be responsible to moderate them. Our brains are resilient to pain, but weak to pleasure. If people remain naive to the consequences of their actions, they will inevitably destroy themselves as we are seeing all across the Western world with obesity and the like. And others as we've seen with all the warring in pursuit of self-righteous idealism.
If liberalism can't get all this under control that leaves the door open for conservatism to swoop back in and remind us at how good they are at regulating us. And liberals are already making their argument for them by focusing too much on systemic ills while basically saying people can't or shouldn't be trusted to make their own decisions and be held responsible for the consequences. If they say that a populace can't be trusted to regulate themselves then they are saying that we need authoritarian systems to regulate us in our place. And conservatism does that much better.