Okay, this is getting out of hand, and I'm going to have to slam both Ben and Boxley right now.

Near as I can make out, somehow:

[link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=30593|The only time the American military has ever been decisively beaten was by the Vietminh and Vietcong.]

...has become transmogrified into me claiming that the US has won all its wars up to Vietnam. Is it only Ben and Boxley, or is everyone unable to see the differences between these two assertions? Somehow "never been decisively beaten" got garbled into [link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=31140|"saying that the US won every war up to Vietnam."] (I have separately said that we held our own in 1812, and that all things considered, that amounts to a victory of sorts. Which it does, and I've explained [link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=30667|exactly how]. But I never said that we won by Ben Tilly's standard of having won, whatever that may be.)

Starting with failure to parse a perfectly clear English sentence, these two go on to flame me for all sorts of things on a broad array of topics, some of which I said and also supported, but most of which I didn't even say. And then they just got sillier. All the while getting further and further off the original topic, and even jumping fora. Oh, and Screamer jumped in too. But Ben and Box are two chief flamers.

Now I don't mind a good argument, or even a good flame war. But these two just went off the deep end from the beginning. As shown above, their lack of reading comprehension allowed it to happen. But the root cause is another question. To me, the pattern of their retorts suggests they have ideological axes to grind, and that there is a lot of emotion invested in them. Boxley never made a lick of sense. At first I honestly thought he was kidding. Screamer said something too lame to be worth responding too, and then called me a loser for duly ignoring it. Ben made some interesting observations, but never recovered his equilibrium enough to understand just what was actually being said, or what it actually being said about. Their repeated knee-jerk flamages, like Brownian motion, carried us over all sorts of interesting ground. I gave up on Box early, but I gave Ben the benefit of the doubt, until he started playing standards games with what just what qualifies as "savage", or "nasty, brutish and short" as if my precise meaning weren't perfectly obvious from the context. It's the most economical way to construct strawmen, but that's all it has going for it.

But now I know [link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=31140|exactly how Ben got all confused, and how soon.] So there's no point now in proceeding, and nothing to do but point out what happened.

Well, now I've called them on it. This whole blowup was their fault. They misread me from the beginning, and rather than correct their error, just went further and afield into irrationality. For proof of that assertion, see above.

I've pointed out exactly how and where you went off the deep end, and this is your reply?

See, this is why self respecting people reject your burden of proof. We know no amount of evidence will change your mind. You don't want to be convinced. You want to defend your own self righteousness.

You can defend your own self righteousness all you want, but not on my dime. Political correctness doesn't make you superior.

Not just that first assertion. Most of the others, too. It's been demonstrated exactly how you misread the first one. That's the start of this thread, in case you've already lost track. If you won't acknowledge that, after it's been put right in your face, there's no point in going into the others.

You screwed up. We all do. No biggie. But then you went off the deep end. And now you're refusing to face the fact that you've screwed up when it's pointed out to you in precise detail. That's just plain childish.

I'm going to respond to you henceforth in a different manner. From now on I will rarely respond directly. You'll just distort everything and try to drag us both down your rabbit hole again. Instead, I'll respond indirectly, by addressing various root fallacies, including those which you happen to commit. I will address these fallacies either on this site, or else will post here and link to said comments. I will do so not all at once, and at times of my choosing, in formats of my choosing. It will be simply another part of my ongoing campaign to expose the fallacies and falsehoods of both squishy and hard left.

I'm not going to give you the satisfaction of making it purely personal. You're just one of many to me now. I doubt you've had an original thought in years. Maybe never. You're so caught up in racial politics and collective grievance, I wonder if you even understand what it is to think and act as an individual. Individual isn't as individual doesn't. So I'll just deal with what you represent on a wholesale basis. It's more effcient.

you have grossly distorted my attitude in order to attack a straw man, and you really should have known better.

[Ed note: Oops, I confused you with Ben Tilly in the original second paragraph. Sorry about that. An easy mistake to make. The first para applies to both of you, though.]

Let the admin move this thread wherever he sees fit. The whole thing got put in the open Forum by Boxley, and nobody objected at the time that I noticed, so that's where I posted this.