i am here because i enjoy debate and reading views that differ from mine. i also want to persuade. i try to do that with a superior argument, backed up with reliable sources when possible. how about you?
Ditto. I also like to learn what the liberal media is trying to sell it's target audience, and what is helping it do that.
Posting is for intelligent exchange, edification, illucidation, clarification, definition and re-definition (and more).
Just out of curiosity - since you bring up reading views different from yours - how many people do you have on ignore here? My guess is that you've created an echo chamber here (& elsewhere) which protects you from ACTUALLY being challenged in your views, and that you've put up firewalls against anyone or anything that might do this. But don't feel badly if this is true - most people do this. Oh - and I'm here to find out when Mueller will nab Trump. Any. Day. Now.
My wife hates talking about politics. I'd rather not talk politics with friends, to prevent damaging relationships. Thus, this is the only outlet.
you raise an interesting point. what is it about politics that creates such enmity? is it no longer possible to just disagree with somebody and that be that?
normally i do not bother to respond to forum members who deploy the ad hominem fallacy, but i am making an exception in your case to remind you that i am not the topic of this thread.
The first part of your post makes a good point. However, there are good reasons to have some people on ignore, not necessarily to block viewpoints. I hope this makes sense: When I started posting here, I wanted to get to as many points of view on certain subjects as possible. At that time, there were too many people saying exactly the same things and they could do this for 10s of pages. Putting people that tend to agree with each other on ignore, except for the obvious ring-leader, allowed me to see all the view points without the redundant povs and so saving me a considerable amount of read/scan time. That said, I haven't had anyone on my ignore list for a pretty long time. Apparently, the povs seem more individualistic even if some are in agreement with one another.
The reason is that people get too emotionally attached to the person they vote for. For example, if you criticize Trump's behavior, it is like directly criticizing the Trump voter him(her)self, which they take personally. As a non-citizen, I can't vote. I would have voted for Obama. However, I had many disagreements with his policies, resulting in me throwing Obama's book into the trash that my wife had given to me. I try to not get emotionally attached to people, rather ideas. I find it rather silly to emotionally attach to someone like a president, who I have never met and probably never will meet, and who probably wouldn't give me the light of the day even if we met and the cameras were not rolling. People will never solve the issues the country is having. It is the ideas that will bring solutions.
I wandered onto a discussion board in 2008. Uninterested in politics, I was shocked that the faction posting blamed Bush for the meltdown, top to bottom, front to back. I don't even remember whether I voted for him, but I couldn't believe one man single handedly sunk the economy. Being a Nuclear Engineer and working in and managing R&D for many years, I had to research. Found my way to the Capital Markets Subcommittee 1997 - 2000 and beyond. Baker(R-LA) and GOP were fighting for an independent regulator for the GSEs. None other than Maxine Waters was fighting for Fannie and Freddie to lower credit standards on the House side. None other than Chuck Schumer on the Senate side was busy laying guilt trips on the GOP for daring to want responsibility in lending. Of course, I found my way to HUD Director Andrew Cuomo demanding that Fannie and Freddie buy mortgages in the subprime market dominated by minimum wage workers. Then, the Pelosi - Reid minimum wage increase that threw millions of minimum wage workers out of their jobs and homes. I'm here because not many fight back against the lies that Bush 43 was responsible for the Clinton deregulation to this day. When asked by friends what I do during the day, I tell them I banter with idiots. I started with Cleveland.com, then went to the ABC Politics Board, neither hosting the wars today. I'm here and a board on Google Groups.
I arrive at conclusions and want to see how everyone else arrived at their conclusion on the same topic.