[MD] Imaginings

[Arlo Bensinger]

[John]
That rings about as convincing as your protestation that a politician 
would use distortive and excessive rhetoric.

[Arlo]
Quite the cynic. I hold out that they should do better. You seem to 
accept their pandering as just how it is. Fair enough. Like I said, 
I, too, would almost expect that from Russell. But my point all along 
was "here?!"

Again, as I said, Russell KNEW about Bush's speech. His words 
pandered to fear in the goal of inciting misinformed voters to anger. 
Plain and simple.

And you don't find that morally evil? I mean, it might be "the way it 
is", but does that make it "okay"?

Apparently it does. Okay, so we can't hold people accountable for 
using distortive and inciting rhetoric when they talk politics. We 
can't hold politicians who KNOW that the 2003 Medicare Act provides 
the same end-of-life counseling as Obama's plan, because after all 
they are politicians. When you see angry mobs at  town halls or 
outside the capitol, waiving swastikas because they believe that ONLY 
totalitarian dictators give school addresses, well, that's just fine 
and dandy. Nothing to notice there. Oh well.

Sorry, John, we are gonna have to agree to disagree about this. I 
find such pandering morally revolting. From BOTH sides. And I 
certainly find it revolting to hear it squawked here.

[John]
Ok Arlo, if actual violence occurs I will definitely brand his 
rhetoric "evil".

[Arlo]
Evil only occurs when the incited mob actually does something 
violent, eh? Has nothing to do with the rhetoric that whipped up the 
mob in the first place?

[John]
The way to reason with intellectual subversive rhetoric is using 
intellectually subversive rhetoric.

[Arlo]
You can't reason with it, the only way to deal with it is to call it 
out for what it is. YOU try to reason with it. Knock yourself out. 
See how far that gets you.

[John]
There must be some sort of degenerate glee in doing so.  I know there 
is for me.

[Arlo]
Jeez, maybe if I jumped in every time Platt squawked some talk-radio 
nonsense. Hell, I ignored the first several "death panels", but 
eventually had to call it out. I don't get glee from that, I do get 
some satisfaction in knowing that I am not being intellectually 
dishonest (how I would feel) and just ignoring it all the time.

[John]
I am shocked, SHOCKED I tell you to discover excessive and 
inflammatory rhetoric on this fine forum with all these noble 
onlookers lurking on.

[Arlo]
Yeah, you are quite the cynic. Guess I do have higher expectations. Oh well.

[John]
I was referring back to our first  debate on the love of dog, for the 
love of dog.

[Arlo]
Totally forgot about that. Too busy with my plans to homogenize the 
world, kill everyone who thinks differently than I do, and develop my 
cloning machine. You know how absent minded us anti-freedom 
totalitarian dictators can be, after all.

[John]
Yeah, I thought that was kinda obvious too.  So we must be in agreement.

[Arlo]
I don't think we are in much agreement, but no matter...