My unpopular opinion

[hyphenate]

right now.

I don't get it. We're supposed to be intelligent adults, we're supposed to be better than "them" and yet we go on and on about how "stupid" they are, and then post from freeperland.

Now, I DO call them stupid, and really rip into their overall stances on issues and *gag* how could anyone support this illegal regime. And yes, it's always a generalization, and never an attack on an individual, unless I go to another website where both freeps and dems might interact, where I will challenge their position with my own.

But this utter obsession with going over to FR and pulling posts, bringing them here and breaking them down is something else again. It's not right. It's simply not right. It's like attacking someone who's already down. It's fighting someone without them being able to respond at all. It's a bully tactic.

So what if they do that at their site with our posts? I mean, aren't we supposed to be that much "better" than they are? Aren't we supposed to be beyond such bully tactics?

Everyone has their opinion, and whether their opinion is right or wrong is not the issue. The issue is the right to defend your opinion and to have others respect your right to defend it. If THEY take that away from you, why should we take that right away from them? We KNOW they're assholes. We KNOW they have no respect for free speech and the ability to defend ourselves, but why must we also sink to such devastating lows?

Sometimes I feel as though we're as bad as them. It's not the big issues that makes us that way, but the small, petty crap like this that brings us down to their level. If we can't be above such immature tactics, then how can we proclaim ourselves at a higher moral level?

I know some freepers who DO sink to such levels as this, and it makes me dislike them even more for how less than adult they are, even if they're not children physically. And when I see it at DU, I lose some respect for those who are doing it. Attacking someone who is unable to defend themselves, for whatever reason, is just such a nasty thing that there is no way to describe how angry it makes me.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion. We're supposed to respect that as we hope others will respect our right to our opinion. But when we seek out others' opinions simply to tear them apart without their presence and knowledge is completely an UNworthy trait and one I would like to see eliminated, at least here. If we're supposed to be more magnanimous than they are, we'd better attempt to grow up and stop acting like them.

[babylonsister]

1. Thanks. And,

care for some popcorn? :popcorn: :yourock:

[zanne]

2. You are absolutely right.

Your point is very logical and reasoned. And mature. Unfortunately, I'm not, so the next time I hear a right-winger criticizing us, he'll get it right back.

[stevedeshazer]

3. Ever gossip?

That's all it is.

[Syncronaut Seven]

4. Human nature, ain't it a biatch?

Desperately wish we could get past it as well.

I'm not a human, I just play one on TV.

[Lena inRI]

5. Your sense of fairness doesn't register with freepers. . .

because they blindly "stand by their leader."

"Everyone is entitled to their opinion" . . .not if they're ERRONEOUS OPINIONS. . .then that's mob rule by a minority.

I'm with Plato on this issue. . .rule is best by a republic led by citizen philosophers who arrive at best logical opinions. . .I do not trust democracy by easily "terrorized masses."

These freepers deserve nothing short of constant ridicule and contempt for their false bravado and self-righteousness. They and the idiot Bush administration are destroying our national integrity.

Peace. :smoke:

[Tony_Illinois]

6. This is stupid

:scared:

[shenmue]

7. I think it is just satire

Freeper posts are often so garbled and wacked out that they make fun of themselves. If a conservative posted a coherent, well-written argument, although I might disagree with their sentiments, I'd try to stay respectful of their willingness to keep the dialogue straightforward. However, when somebody gets up there and just hammers on the keys until what appears in the post is not only untrue but plain babble, not to mention when they are overtly insulting toward liberals, I think the line in the sand disappears. If they want to drag it down to a low level, they're going to get what they ask for. They shouldn't dish it out if they can't take it.

[Joe Chi Minh]

8. Do you think making nice with the Nazis during the Third Reich

would have influenced them?

I have to ask why any Democrat would want to visit Freeper sites, because, given their basic assumptions, their views are going to be predictable, or predictably completely "off the wall" because, much of the time, not even logical on the basis of those assumptions.

But if Democrats choose to do so, it seems elementary good sense that they should frame their responses, in the knowledge that their opponents will either be at their feet or at their throat, depending on their stance. To my mind, you are advising the mischievous Democratic "grunts" who visit their sites, to offer their throat. It's never going to be a civilised debating society, because that would mean unilaterally Democratic and, in time, the Freepers would be the only ones left standing. That would be the effect not of magnanimity, but of tremendous naivety.

[itzamirakul]

9. I had quite a disagreement with one DUer who insisted upon posting

Freeper posts here at DU and requesting comments.

When I inquired "Why?" the OP said he/she was doing it to show how "vile" these people really are. After several posts back and forth between us and while watching to see that many, many other DUers were responding to his original posts, it seemed as though I was fighting a losing battle. There seems to be a place for that kind of post at DU and people who enjoy tearing those posts apart in a safe environment where the Freepers cannot respond to them.

In some cases, I have to remember that I suspect there are many Freepers registered here at DU with over 1000 posts to their names.
Sometimes it is fairly easy to tell. I have learned to just ignore those Freeper re-posts because I am truly not interested in them.

[CTyankee]

10. Ridiculing your political enemy goes back to the ancient

Greeks. Look at the plays of Aristophanes and Euripides. Political leaders in Athens were held up to shame and ridicule (sometimes extremely rudely in the comedies)because they got Athens into a long and disastrous war with Sparta (called the Peloponnesian War), coupled with Athenian Empire overreaching in Sicily to establish a power and trade base in the Mediterranean (sound familiar with our Iraq War and the Middle East?). This happened in the world's first democracy, Athens (flawed tho it certainly was: they held slaves and women had no public role).

These works exist and are performed today. They remind us that political narrative has always been a volatile, sometimes rude and mean, discourse in the body politic.

Just a perspective here.

[Odin2005]

11. And Athens shows what you get with pure, direct democracy...

Socrates was condemned to death on ground of impiety and "corruptiong the young" because the majority disliked his views. Sound familliar?

Repugs using populism for thier advantage: :thumbsdown:

[CTyankee]

12. I am reading Hanson's "A War Like No Other"

a recent look at the Peloponnesian War and our own "imperialist democracy" and what we are doing in Iraq. It is a fascinating book, if you love history, and I highly recommend it. He draws comparison after comparison with many of our wars (and those of WEstern Europe) and the Peloponnesian War. It really hits home. History DOES repeat itself. Read this book!

[NinetySix]

13. For heaven's sake, stay away from the Hate Mailbag!

It'll REALLY cheese you off....

[ruggerson]

14. This is why we lose elections n/t

[incapsulated]

15. Um. Well.

I don't give a shit what those idiots say, I don't read those threads, generally. They just annoy me.

But, if you are asking for sympathy for those devils, you are barking up the wrong tree.

They are a bunch of mentally challenged neo-nazis on a message forum. Unfair? "Moral level"? You have got to be kidding me. If they could respond, I doubt they would have anything worthwhile to say to defend themselves that wouldn't add to the unintended comedy. They are shit-for-brains who would be the first to pull on brown shirts if you sent them back in time.

Fuck them. Who cares if mocking them is a fun diversion for some people. I sure don't.