Politics Discussion Thread January 2013

OrphanWilde

Top-level comments should introduce arguments; responses should be responses to those arguments.
Upvote and downvote based on whether or not you find an argument convincing in the context in which it was raised. This means if it's a good argument against the argument it is responding to, not whether or not there's a good/obvious counterargument to it; if you have a good counterargument, raise it. If it's a convincing argument, and the counterargument is also convincing, upvote both. If both arguments are unconvincing, downvote both.
A single argument per comment would be ideal; as MixedNuts points out here, it's otherwise hard to distinguish between one good and one bad argument, which makes the upvoting/downvoting difficult to evaluate.
In general try to avoid color politics; try to discuss political issues, rather than political parties, wherever possible.

As Multiheaded added, "Personal is Political" stuff like gender relations, etc also may belong here.

Top-level comments should introduce arguments; responses should be responses to those arguments.
Upvote and downvote based on whether or not you find an argument convincing in the context in which it was raised. This means if it's a good argument against the argument it is responding to, not whether or not there's a good/obvious counterargument to it; if you have a good counterargument, raise it. If it's a convincing argument, and the counterargument is also convincing, upvote both. If both arguments are unconvincing, downvote both.
A single argument per comment would be ideal; as MixedNuts points out here, it's otherwise hard to distinguish between one good and one bad argument, which makes the upvoting/downvoting difficult to evaluate.
In general try to avoid color politics; try to discuss political issues, rather than political parties, wherever possible.

As Multiheaded added, "Personal is Political" stuff like gender relations, etc also may belong here.

I don't think the majority of the people who do this are male. I can think of half a dozen occasions just over the holidays where this was done by a woman (and I can recall only one male counterexample). She probably sees it otherwise given her politics, but I'd say it's equally split at best.

I do not expect her to make an equal opportunity blog post. However, you wanted to know why it's met with hostility by some people. The post sends out hostility towards men in an unspoken way, so it is responded to in kind.

One reason gender politics is especially "mind-killing" is that the two least interesting/statistically significant/improbable positions (males are more THIS than females, females more THAT than males) also happen to be the two positions seen as the "strongest".

4TimS13y

You have high standards. (shrug). It looks to me like Not-Your-True-Rejection, but it would look that way to Mindkilled-Me whether it were true or not. (shrug). Thanks for articulating your reasoning.

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Politics Discussion Thread January 2013

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Politics Discussion Thread January 2013

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