What you're probably up against now.

[pokeyburro]

"Well, I'm still agnostic about Palin. I like her, and I find most of her policy proposals worth a consideration (and frankly, if you don't know what they are, it's because you haven't looked into them. She's been very upfront about her views). But were the election right this very minute, I don't know that I could vote for her. Teh Fred was my man

Comments

[tompurdue]

> treasonous, lying, biased "media"

I have no response to that. I just kinda wanted to type it into its own box so that I could look at it by itself. (I don't believe its author would think I'd altered it by taking it out of context.)

[pokeyburro]

You're too smart for me to simply take that at face value.

Thoughts like that are what you're probably up against, too. And there's many ways to respond to that, actually. Some easy, some hard. He's not a troll, and he's not an dummy.

[tompurdue]

Face value is precisely how I meant that. It's a deep metaphysical problem. There is no form of dialogue in which he and I can communicate.

If he's not a dummy, then I must be. There is no logical alternative. In fact, I'm more than I dummy: I'm a traitor.

There is no solution here. We're in an epistemological trap, two states that cannot coexist. It will only be solved by somebody dying.

[pokeyburro]

I sympathize. But there's plenty of logical alternatives. One or both of you could be exaggerating, overgeneralizing, and/or working from incomplete data, just for starters.

Cool article -- thanks for sharing

[jcsbimp]

That kind of good feeling, from inhaling such breaths of fresh air, is a dynamic that bolsters my opinion of why a free press is such a good, precious asset for our society to have. Sure it can be abused, just as liberal and conservative politics can be abused, to the detriment of society. But as a thing in itself, it helps keep minds alive, discourse active, and our democratic republic working. Here's hoping her other good qualities make her a good person to govern, because she could be a capable contender and a worthy winner if this is the case.

Re: Cool article -- thanks for sharing

[pokeyburro]

Heh. You sound almost more optimistic about her than I do. I think she's toying with the idea of running even now, rather than declaring, and that'll hurt her some; and she'll have two big fights if she does (primary and general), and it doesn't help that every major media outlet other than Fox hates her guts.

And even if she were to win after all that, there's the question of how well she'd actually do. I think she's smart and people-savvy, but only about Americans (and maybe only about half of them); I have the same reservations about her foreign policy experience that I did about Obama. Even her domestic experience isn't compelling to me. I don't simply hate her the way I see most liberals do. But she strikes me as someone who would administrate several thousand people quite well, but wouldn't be able to apply that experience to several million.