I just HAVE to respond to the stuff David Appell wrote in the comment section of one of my posts, because it is just so typical of how the extreme left argues.
I'll do the "my comments in red" thing to his post, below:
David Appell said...
Kremer wrote:
In other words, the problem is, left to pursuing the way we want to live, we don't choose to live the way he envisions. So he wants us to change our culture. A "cultural revolution, you might say.
What an incredibly arrogant statement.
These writers want to change the world no less than you do. And yet you make fun of them and think that your way is the only possible way for humans to live. Straw man argument. I said nothing about "my way being the only possible way for humans to live." In fact, that is what the people I am criticizing are saying!
It is not. Life is very complex and there are many ways of living it. in 500 years our attitudes about many things will look as foolish as do those who lived circa 1500 AD do today, if not more so. This statement is appropos to nothing.
Today's society has good things about it, and things not so good. To boisterously pretend that today's American lifestyle is the only way for people to possibly live is arrogant, ignorant, short-sighted, and lacking in vision. And insecure. Straw man argument again. I never said anything about the American lifestyle being the only way to live.
There are many things good about today's world, to be sure. There are also many things wrong about it, especially in the realm of sustainability and justice.
To pretend otherwise is a form of hubris befitting an ideologue or talk show host, but no one who really things about things in depth. Straw man argument AGAIN! I never "pretended otherwise" about there not being anything wrong about today's world.
There is not nearly sufficient room here to debate this topic, just to criticize the idea that this way is the only way and all other visions are to be denigrated and laughed at. Straw man YET AGAIN!
Which also indicates a very poor understanding of history. And now the phony lecture starts. You see, he is so much better educated than I am, that when I write stuff I reveal my lack of understanding of the world. Of course his education apparently didn't include training in the definition of logical fallacies. Such as non sequitir. Even if I DID claim that the American way of living (whatever that is) is the only way to live, how does that indicate a poor understanding of history? It doesn't follow.
Perhaps Zerzan is not completely right. Perhaps?! This loon actually said that everyone should live in small, agrarian communities, and Appell says maybe he's not "completely right?" Maybe he's only partially right, or just has one or two good ideas. But I also doubt that Kremer is completely right either. Sorry, David, I am completely right that forcing everyone to live the way Zerzan wants is completely wrong.
Kremer's reaction, in fact, seems mostly to be defensive, as if the world could not possibly be any different than it is today. Wow! He managed to actually combine the logical fallacies of straw man and non sequitir in a single sentence! But science clearly shows that we're on a nonsustainable path, and deep down almost every one us knows now that the 21st century will be one of correcting the previous two centuries and putting the world on a green, clean path. Science "clearly shows" no such thing. What exactly is unsustainable? The left loves to talk about sustainability, but it is never defined. Bottom line, it means: live the way we want you to live." David can you enlighten me about exactly what is unsustainable on the path we are on? Please be specific.
Kremer -- as a blogger or as a talk-show host -- has shown little understanding of the complexities of today's life If I were as intellectual as David, maybe I would be able to comprehend complex stuff. But then maybe I too would be unemployed. and seems mostly interested in honing to an extreme path that gets him the most viewers/readers. This is, sadly, a loss for the entire world.
Later, David had to chime in with this little nugget:
David Appell said...
Rob Kremer wrote: Tort law, for one. However, I support government regulations in the case of negative externalities.... This is a far, far cry from "redesigning our social and economic life." That is totalitarian, pure and simple.
Only a very spoiled, well-fed American could equate today's attempts at regulation with "totalitarianism." Here we go again. Straw man. I didn't equate 'today's attempts at regulation with totalitarianism. I said Beebe's notion that we should "redesign our social and economic life" was totalitarian. And it is.
Even trying to do so indicates a very weak understanding of history. OK now for his history lecture. I wonder if he is aware that "redesigning social and economic life" is PRECISELY what Mao did in the cultural revolution, what Lenin/Stalin did in Russia, and what every single socialist/communist regime had to do to impose the system on their people.
Rob, you might try reading anything Solzhenitsyn, victim of Stalin redesign efforts especially "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" or even "Cancer Ward," or some of Wiesel's victim of Hitler's redesign most famous works. Or simply rent "The Killing Fields" victims of Pol Pot's redesign efforts if reading is too much effort for you. Love the condescension, David. Odd that he is making my argument, isn't it? Then you might see what real totalitarianism is like.
You hideously insult such true survivors by comparing your situation to theirs. Comparing my situation to theirs? What is he talking about? I said nothing about "my situation." I am making the argument that when people want to use government to "redesign society" as Beebe and Zerzan want to do, it is inherently totalitarian. And each of those people he lists were victims of exactly what I am referring to. Can he possibly actually miss that point, and think that I was saying that I am a victim right now of totalitarianism? Does he have a reading comprehension problem?
You should, frankly, be ashamed. Actually I am a bit ashamed.
The funny thing about David is he continues to make stuff up that in his mind he somehow thinks I wrote, and then proceeds to debate it. It's not like it's just one time - he does it again and again. Over and over he argues straw men.
It's like he has these demons he debates in his mind, and he comes on the blog and imagines that I wrote all those things his demons said to him, and he argues it out on the blog!
It is really quite funny.
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34 comments:
David "One Bad" Appell and others on the Angry Left have what psychologists term "displacement of rage". There's an article about it at americanthinker.com: here.
Gee, Rob,
Will you call Alexander Graham Bell and Henry Ford "totalitarian" for totally redesigning our way of life?
Rob, your original post was full of straw man arguments, so you might want to put that particular stone away.
One example is suggesting that small agrarian communities means a 12th century way of life.
Actually, isn't that how most of this country was at the beginning of the last century?
Actually, isn't that how most of this country was at the beginning of the last century? ... Yes, and we were saved from oblivion by the Progressive Era. Didn't you know that? I bet you Conserv-a-nutz can't even cite three scientific studies that were conducted during the Progressive Era.
Roadrunner:
Really? That is your argument? Really? That technological advancements have "redesigned our social and economic life?"
No, they didn't. Some have had profound effects on our lives, but they did not "redesign" anything.
What affects they had were not by design. The effects were a by-product of an innovation or product that became very useful.
is David Appell really better educated than you, Rob? Don't you have two degrees from the University of Chicago?
If I am remembering correctly, didn't you graduate with honors, Phi Beta Kappa?
Rob, you might want to spend a little time making your communications clear.
I wrote part of the conversation you noted, and it's confusing even to me.
I can barely tell what you originally wrote, what I then wrote in return, and how you then responded after that.
Clarity is the first requirement of good writing. All your mish-mash above is such a jumble that it's just not worth trying to parse through all it and attempt any kind of response.
What do you expect from a guy who idolizes Che Guevera?
Rob, you might want to stop hating the Middle Class long enough to actually read my blog and learn something for a change. Then I want you to answer this. I'm much more important than you but I can't get anyone to read my blog. Frankly, I can't figure it out because according to my scientific training, 2 + 2 = 4. Can anyone here even remember three things they read on Quark Soup? Jeez.
P.S. My photo is: here.P.P.S. That stands for Portland Public Schools.
David Appell writes:
I can barely tell what you originally wrote, what I then wrote in return, and how you then responded after that.
David: Are you color blind?
anon 4:39 - I'm sure you meant to write 'color deficient'. It affects 12% of U.S. males. It is quite possible, scientifically speaking, that David Appell is genetically incapable of seeing red where it is obvious to everyone else. But please don't slander the sight-challenged by lumping reflexive socialists in with them.
David, would you consider running for office as a Democrat? We have many opportunities for folks like you who can't tell sh;t from shinola.
David,
Rob will never listen to us, because we're "occupiers". Even though I was born here. Although I'm sure that Rob would have found my Republican parents, who did "invade" from "back east", quite acceptable.
Don't you Middle Class-despising Conserv-a-Nutz hate it when I have a conversation with my secret alter-ego in this blog's comments section and pretend that I'm not? I know you do ... no matter how obvious I am. For one, Republicans are hateful by nature. Everybody knows that. So that's one of the reasons I do it. The other is that nobody else will talk to me. I own this blog now. Bwahahahahaha.
Respectfully,
DAc a.k.a. Roadrunner - thanks to that Middle Class hater Coyote. Meep meep. (Quark Soup.)
Hey, David: We are still waiting for you to show your previous statements to be true. Your claim that you have answered them is simply false:
1. “the science is that the world is warming and man is responsible for much of it. This is well-established in the scientific literature.”
2. CO2 can cause “far more than 0.5 C warming”
3. “if you're going to damage the climate by burning carbon "
4. “today's CO2 is different – manmade (there's irrefutable proof of this).”
5. “Global warming is, simply, the most serious and most difficult problem ever faced by mankind. . .This is a sound, definite scientific conclusion, no longer in any real doubt”
Where is the evidence? Your silence is ample evidence that you have none Thanks
JK
David and road ought to hook up.
They can exchange and combine the imaginary conversations in their heads and impress themselves by advising each other.
Really Roady, your interpretations of what people say or mean is ludicrous. Same goes for David.
So while you're babbling out your subsequent misrepresentations you're telling lies and being really dumb.
In David's case he'a a fabricator living entirely in his own little world.
Rob,
You are in violation of Blogger Terms of Service by allowing impersonators:
IMPERSONATION: We do not allow impersonation of others through our services in a manner that is intended to or does mislead or confuse others.
Roadrunner,
You are in violation of Blogger Terms of Sanity.
IMPERSONATION: We do not allow impersonation of sane people, by the insane, in a manner that is intended to or does confuse themselves.
David-Roadrunner, you are in violation of Blogger Terms of Service. Stop impersonating me.
Rob,
LOL! Thanks so much for bringing a smile to my morning! David Afpel is a delightfully loony little troll who frequents other blogs because nobody reads his stuff. As you note, he does love to lecture, or as I've long viewed it, to pontificate.
If only others were as brilliant as he...or, barring that, if only others would recognize his brilliance, then the world would be so much better.
What is the name of the loon in Eugene who got into trouble for threatening the children of a blogger?
Wasn't she some kinda psychologist or something?
Man, her name escapes me, but as I recall she had a goverment job somewhere and lost it because she went nutz on the 'net?
I'm afraid we may have to set up a watch on Dear Friend Afpel. Did the Unibomber blog before he went nutz?
.
Rob would accuse the captain of a sinking ship of totalitarianism for ordering people into life rafts.
R Kremer wrote:
> I am making the argument that
> when people want to use government
> to "redesign society" as Beebe
> and Zerzan want to do, it is
> inherently totalitarian.
Nearly everyone tries to use government to "redesign society." This has been done since time began, and continues with laws about tax deductions for home mortgages, or laws about who can and can't marry whom, or which couples can and can't adopt, or who can and can't be fired for certain behaviors, or who gets to deduct their health insurance costs and who doesn't, laws about the tax deductability of children, or second homes, of huge SUVs, of tax subsidies given to any number of industries and businesses, of whether we collectively carry guilt for the torture done in the name of our country, and on and on and on.
All parties, R, D, L, and all others, are responsible for pushing and enacting such laws, and for trying to shape society. All of us try to do the same by whom we vote for -- Kremer, Zerzan, Obama, Bush, me, or anyone.
I still can't figure out why nobody will read my blog. Maybe it's because I can only turn out the same old cr@p that everyone on my side does ... egoic, socialistic power-tripping -- within the scientific journalism idiom, of course. Alas, with no readers, I get no comments. So instead of figuring out how to be interesting, I am compelled to comment on Conserv-a-Nutz blogs like this one. Since they have readers, I can use their own blogs to disrupt them from monkey-wrenching what we are trying to accomplish on this planet. And so it goes. Quark Soup!
David,
Don't you have some peer reviewing you shoyuld be working on?
You know, like for that study by climatologists proving Katrina was caused by AGW?
David Appell writes:
Nearly everyone tries to use government to "redesign society." This has been done since time began, and continues with laws about tax deductions for home mortgages, or laws about who can and can't marry whom, or which couples can and can't adopt, or who can and can't be fired for certain behaviors, or who gets to deduct their health insurance costs and who doesn't, laws about the tax deductability of children, or second homes, of huge SUVs, of tax subsidies given to any number of industries and businesses, of whether we collectively carry guilt for the torture done in the name of our country, and on and on and on.
First, David, very nice sentence! Especially coming from someone who recently lectured on this blog about good writing.
Second, your point is an excellent example of left wing moral equivalence. Why is it so many on the left are incapable of making moral distinctions between things that have a surface similarity, but that any thinking person can easily see are worlds apart?
For instance, how many times have we heard "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter?" That is an example.
But you give a great one. Ronald Reagan lowered tax rates. He is guilty of "redesigning society" just the same as Stalin and Mao, who murdered, oh, 100 million souls between them pursuing their redesign efforts.
Very nice!
Rob,
You're also guilty of ridiculous moral equivalence--you equate working to shape society to be sustainable with mass murderers.
You equate preventing people from using the world as their garbage bin with mass murder.
You equate preventing a small group of people using up the world's resources with mass murder.
Shame on you.
As for the saying "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter", that phrase came into use in the 1980s, when the Reagan administration was funding actual terrorists who the Reagan administration was calling "freedom fighters."
They even killed a Portlander, who was doing the awful thing of bringing sustainable electricity to a small village.
Hey, Rob,
What do you have to say about this, from a Global Climate Coalition (oil, coal, and auto industry group) report in 1999:
"The scientific basis for the Greenhouse Effect and the potential impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2 on climate is well established and cannot be denied."It looks like the polluters have known for at least the last 10 years that things need to change, yet they've been lying to us.
And conservatives have played right along.
The question is, were you duped, too, or were you in on the scam?
Roadrunner,
There's all sorts of contect that would make that irrelevent.
But if that's the kind of thing that impresses you and overrides the abundant contradictions to AGW it demonstrates how you bias leave you suseptable to influence, impressionable and lackng sound judgement.
Then you cross into ludicrous with your last question.
"... because it is just so typical of how the extreme left argues."So, would this be how the extreme right argues: "Ronald Reagan lowered tax rates. He is guilty of "redesigning society" just the same as Stalin and Mao, who murdered, oh, 100 million souls between them pursuing their redesign efforts."?
Because the only way to redesign society is by using the Communist model? Conservatives who want to return the country to "traditional values" are really just Mao and Josef in disguise? Thanks for the warning.
Perhaps those in the Civil Rights movement who were asking for Federal assistance in helping to combat racism (such as the Voting Rights Act), and redesign America into less of a racist society, were just a heartbeat away from relocating racists to re-education camps?
Hmmm,
Rob is silent on the Global Climate Coalition's internal report from ten years ago acknowledging that global warming is caused by human activity.
I suppose it's uncomfortable for the world to see that you've either been a dupe or a stooge.
And that's the open question, isn't it: which of the Global Warming deniers were just gullible dupes, and which were stooges who have known all along that they were perpetrating a lie?
Rob Kremer said...
> Ronald Reagan lowered tax rates. He is > guilty of "redesigning society" just
> the same as Stalin and Mao, who
> murdered, oh, 100 million souls
> between them pursuing their redesign
> efforts.
Of course Reagan was not trying to redesign society on the level of Mao.
But neither is Zerzan. He is suggesting that we might be better off in a small-community, more self-agrarian society. What is so sinful about that? He might be right. There's no doubt that, as Republicans have complained about for 40 or 50 years now, that American's have lost a sense of community they once had in the years prior to 1950, when almost everyone lived in small, agrarian communities. Weaved with today's technology, there's no reason that need mean we all die from strokes and tuberculosis like they did back then. There's absolutely no doubt that we do not have the same sense of community we did back then, or even when I grew up as a kid in rural PA. I thought conservatives valued those times? Corporations weren't supreme then (though they were after the policies Reagan advanced -- why did he do this if he/you were so enamored with local community values?). There wasn't the violence inspired by corporate television, and young girls did not go off and get 1.5M abortions a year -- or, at least, you didn't have to hear about it, did you?
Roadrunner said...
> Rob is silent on the Global Climate > Coalition's internal report from ten
> years ago acknowledging that global
> warming is caused by human activity.
>
> I suppose it's uncomfortable for
> the world to see that you've either > been a dupe or a stooge.
I too would like to see Rob's comments about the GCC's internal reports. His silence has so far been deefening....
last word!
you wish
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