POTUS State of the Union

Okay, I'm going to strip away the fancy phrasing and describe some of your recent behaviour. Let me know whether you think I've misrepresented you anywhere.

  • You were hanging around a gay forum, and some quite conventional political ideas ("Obama has done some decent stuff") came up.

  • You immediately responded with some extreme political ideas ("Obama is contemptible scum who ought to be thrown in jail"), phrased in a brief way that begged for clarification.

  • Somebody asked the question that you were begging for ("What's Obama done to deserve that kind of contempt?")

  • Based on their eleven-word post, you immediately jumped to the conclusion that they were trapped in a powerful media bubble, creating a huge, irreconcilable gulf of opinion between you. You further decided that they must be "closed-minded", and "more interested in their political loyalties than the truth", making them contemptible.

  • You then decided that linking a single source, without clarification, explanation or summarization, would be such a huge gift of knowledge to this person that absolutely no more conversation would be desirable or necessary.

  • Rather than just posting this source, you decided to insult your conversation partner for being less knowledgeable than you, insult them again by comparing them to their political opponents, and baldly state "don't try to continue this conversation; I'm never going to speak to you again".

Do you think this kind of thing is okay? I don't even care about the politics here (I'm British) - but I do have a strong hunch that you're more of a dick than you seem to think. People aren't usually so eager to decide that it's okay to treat other people in such a shitty way, even if they strongly disagree with them.

Since you've described my statement as grandiose, and since my statement mirrors Amnesty International's investigation, would you be willing to describe Amnesty International's assertion as grandiose?

I was talking about tone, not content. The whole "I have nothing but contempt for this man" thing?

/r/gaybros Thread