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Never! It lets you refine your position, take into account factors that you may never have considered, and might change the position entirely based off facts you never would have known.
Divisive debates are an addiction for some people. The energy and repressed violence of some supporters may eventually surpass even the excesses of European soccer fans. Being able to put forth a view and sometimes successfully defend it becomes a reward in itself. Eventually, after a number of encounters, the testosterone runs down, sanity begins to prevail, and most people take stock and realize that they haven't changed anyone's views. It is no accident that most of the extremists are male.
Good debate is lively and sometimes heated, but real winning is based on superior logic and resources. What can be disturbing is the number of clueless people who will enter into an online debate armed only with preconceptions that are regurgitations of talking points from the media and favored candidates, coupled with idiomatic phrasing or cursing. Little or no original thought or research goes into the vitriol being written, and they become the adult version of kids with mallets rushing the field and driving croquet balls into the ground during a friendly afternoon social event.
I tend to avoid most of the political arguments, in part because I became adept at the form and format early on in arguments with my father, in part because I rarely learn anything of importance, in part because it is a time waster, and in part because they are usually simply boring and juvenile and based on totally false assumptions.
What I noticed this last election cycle is that the attack dog mentality of some people is beginning to be recognized by the candidates as a real danger to them and their opponents, and even the system itself. I'm not sure where it is all leading, but it doesn't look pretty.
No, the forums simply reflect our diverse opinions. It does allow us to communicate with people we otherwise would never come in contact with. It gives us access to others ideas. It is always a good thing if people can consider new ideas even if they do not agree with them.
The online forum format and phenom may well provide the one trueprotection from governmental mindset manipulation, though we've got to understand that they can also censor it, change it or have the likes of me banned or worse ("Come along, Mr. Rifleman. we've been reading your recent anti-government posts! Your new limo awaits".)
I hope, as with the info-hungry Chinese, it offers the option for intelligent, informed multiple opinions, coupled with open debate, however rancorous. Attack dogs can still be useful and can show the ever-watchful government doggies (hello there, guys...) that we just might not be so easily manipulated. And through forums, we might just all come to a majority opinion that bypasses the hubris* effect in government! Look how the 'net helped Mr. Barama overcome Mr. McCain's ancienticity!
(*As in Ta Ta, Schummer. (sorry; couldn't help myself, again...))
Some people don't post because their opinion is unpopular. Some forums are devisivve by nature. as are some cable shows, some radio shows and some newspapers. The Great Debate Forum is aby and far the most civil of all most of the time.
I lay the blame of the current level of hatred and devisive-ness on paid performers. These pretty faces that don't know the difference between tour and tore are paid to read devisive questions or comments from a teleprompter, or from a script, and then over-shout anyone who disagrees with snippy, snarky comments. One could call the loud voices a heated debate, except it is not a debate when unfair and biased labels and ugly names are painted across a person who is not present to defend him or herself. I've oft thought a lot of the comments bordered on slander. I still do which is why I limit my watching cable news to CNN's Larry King and Brena Buttner's "Bulls & Bears" on Fox Saturaday 9am CST and C-Span Book-TV.
WE are American. We are red, brown, yellow, black, whilte and bi-racial. We are Catholic, Juew, Muslim, Chrisitian, Agnostic, Wiccan and non-practicing. We are Democrat, Republican, Indy and non-voters, We are Old, young, male, female, educated and not, poor, wealthy, and in-between. We are not statistics. We are Americans and we LOVE our debates because we live in the land of the free abd we can.
We DO NOT need to use labels and devisive phrases to debate. All we mrrf to do is present a position and sit back and wait for the debate to begin. Like it or not, everyone has an opinion onn something that is near and dear to their heart.
Let me add one other thing. People can legitimately see something from differing sides and have honest opinions about their view. I have no real problem with that. But to think that everything must be an “I win, you lose” scenario is just plain stupid.
I have been on the "internet" since before it was the internet, and the tone of the discourses really plunged badly in the 90s and hasn't stopped. Perhaps the widespread availability of the present internet from that time on just allowed us to see what a huge number of vicious a-holes there are in the general population when they can hide in a faceless crowd....or perhaps the temper of the times just happened to begin to plunge downward from the late 80s onward. But for whatever reason, the change has been close to 100% and it is overwhelmingly for the worse.
On the internet there are only two letters in the alphabet, A and Z; and whichever one you pick proves you are the scum of the earth. Use another ID and pick the other letter, and you will still be the scum of the earth.
If I could imagine four-year-olds in the terminal throes of syphilitic insanity they would probably be indistinguishable from the majority of the participants on internet forums.
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