Favorite Poster: Best of the Best

[Antonio the Sixth]

Crabcake, Al and Nathan. But there are so many good choices...

[Antonio the Sixth]

I still think Mikado is an underappreciated Atlas gem.

Really? I think he's overrated. He was one of those awful semi-ironic left-wing T***p supporters back in the day, which to me is the strongest indicator of intellectual shallowness.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I still think Mikado is an underappreciated Atlas gem.

Really? I think he's overrated. He was one of those awful semi-ironic left-wing T***p supporters back in the day, which to me is the strongest indicator of intellectual shallowness.

I'm not sure I'd agree with the description of me as "left-wing."

You're right. It would be a contradiction in terms anyway, since a genuine leftist would never support T***p.

Doesn't change my point.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I still think Mikado is an underappreciated Atlas gem.

Really? I think he's overrated. He was one of those awful semi-ironic left-wing T***p supporters back in the day, which to me is the strongest indicator of intellectual shallowness.

I'm not sure I'd agree with the description of me as "left-wing."

You're right. It would be a contradiction in terms anyway, since a genuine leftist would never support T***p.

Doesn't change my point.

I do.

Ha. Ha. Ha.

[Antonio the Sixth]

He was one of those awful semi-ironic left-wing T***p supporters back in the day.

Really?  I actually don't remember that at all.  IIRC, he was posting very little during primary season, and I don't remember him commenting on Trump.

I remember an IRC chat in which he said that very explicitly (along with, sadly, Gully, whom undoubtedly should have known better). I also note he hasn't denied it.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Your talking about "is". I'm talking about "ought". You still haven't answered.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Antonio, as someone who professionally studies political science, should rejoice that he does at a time when drastic changes to the way we understand politics are occurring all over the world. There's many a dissertation in 2016.

As a matter of fact, yeah, T***p's rise is a boon for me as a scholar, as it brings attention and interest to topics I was already planning to study. However, I don't "rejoice" - I'm horrified because, guess what, I happen to have a f**king conscience.

@Bacon King: Duh. I too had long realized that T***p could win. That's precisely why I was sounding the alarm and calling out the edgy liberals who thought supporting him was all fun and games.

[Antonio the Sixth]

In 2015 I jokingly made a few hyperbolic/"ironic" pro-Trump remarks because I thought he was a harmless buffoon who had no chance of winning - and at the time I quite liked the the symbolism of how he appeared to be tearing the Republican Party apart from the inside even he simultaneously represented everything wrong with the modern GOP. In hindsight I'm ashamed that I lacked the judgement to take Trump seriously. I completely fail to understand, however, how you could possibly feel justified in calling me "intellectually shallow" for treating Trump like a joke (which he is) before I recognized him as a threat. It's blatant arrogance for you to so smugly insist on your intellectual superiority - and to disregard all input and commentary I've offered ever since - just because you noticed a growing problem a little sooner than I did.

Why do you assume that my criticism, harsh as it is, comes from a place of smugness and superiority? If you've paid seen some of my recent posts, you might have noticed that I've also been intensely self-critical about my attitude leading up to the election. If you think I'm applying a double standard, by all means let me know why. I never intended to be harsher on others than I am on myself.

Anyway, I don't think I ever singled you out as a liberal ironic T***p supporter, so I don't know why you take things so personally. I don't know when exactly you realized the errors of your ways, but if it's before January 2016 then you're not nearly as bad as, say, Lief and Oakvale, who stuck to this routine until the Spring or so.

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I couldn't disagree more. "Setting aside our emotions" when thinking about the bleak future that awaits a 300-million-people country (and possibly the world) is the exact opposite of what we should do. Emotions are what makes us moral beings, what allows us (however crudely and imperfectly) to tell right from wrong. Staying all detached and value-neutral in the face of the prospect of mass poverty, death and destruction is not rationality - it's sociopathy. (And besides, this idea that emotion and reason are antithetical is one of the silliest mistakes in the history of philosophy, but I digress.)

I stand corrected about what Mikado was going for. It might not be intellectually shallow, then, but it's still incredibly off-putting.

Oh, also: while I wasn't "freaking out" per se, if you go back and look at my posts in the final weeks of the campaign you'll notice I wasn't nearly as confident as most other Democrats. One of the points I kept hammering in was the collapse of AA turnout in early voting. It brings me no joy to have been right about that, but since you're implying that I was part of the crowd that was "arguing whether Hillary would have a bigger landslide in the electoral college or the popular vote", I feel the need to point it out.

[Antonio the Sixth]

The conclusion of primary season really forced a lot of people (indluding myself) to luck deeply at ourselves and how we had degraded politics to an amusing sport separate from our comfortable realities. Really, it didn't strike me the extent to how awful the whole affair was until the RNC when the GOP dragged out the clearly suffering Benghazi familes on stage. Most people on Atlas, when it was announced that the Republicans were going to dedicate a night for a half-baked conspiracy theory were amused. so was I. But when we got down to it, there was nothing remotely amusing about the spectacle that unfollowed, just a really sad indictment of not only Trump and the people who had allowed him to become nominee (and ultimately president) but of myself. I, like so many others, was guilty of thinking this was all a game, when it so clearly isn't. It's a feeling I've felt before. When I was in my teens, a Call of Duty game attracted some controversy because the first scene involved the protagonist (you) shooting innocent civilians in an airport as part of a false flag operation. Because of all the controversy I was actually genuinely excited to play it (and I don't play those sort of games normally). But when I got to actually play the game, it actually made me feel really horrible. There was no glee, just a really awful sinking in my stomach. It made me feel generally disgusted at myself for not being able to look past the 'controversy' (obviously drummed up for sales) and believing this would be in anyway amusing because of its controversial nature.

The RNC gave me a similar feeling of self-disgust at my inability to look critically at this awful juncture at American politics with a sober eye from my smug perch in a different country.

Although I didn't go full hog with "ironic trumpism" I was certainly no saint and for that I apologise. to myself, mainly, because I let myself down.

Thank you so much for sharing. This is exactly why the "ironic T***pism" shtick made me (and still makes me) so angry. It's a really good post. If I was a mod I think I'd turn it into a thread and sticky it at the top of the 2020 board.

I'll also note that Oakvale has expressed a similar regret, and I give him credit for that. Those who are still unrepentant can go f**k themselves as far as I'm concerned.

Emotions can and often do make people stupid. It is a dominant system in our brains. You're right, emotions also make us human and gives us character, but one should be able (and know when) to set them aside so they don't cloud our judgement. I'd argue that peoples runaway emotions greatly hurts one's ability to rationally think about important issues and politicians. The 2016 campaign seemed to be excellent example of this. I'd say the way the average person makes political choices seems overly devoid of logic and reason and over-packed with emotion and blind faith.

Emotion without reason leads to ineffectiveness, but reason without emotion leads to nothing at all. So, if I really have to chose between one or the other, give me emotion any day. Thankfully, not only can you have both, but you can have both in whatever quantity you want. There are plenty of people who are very rational and very emotional, as well as people who are neither. This is a completely false dichotomy.

[Antonio the Sixth]

but reason without emotion leads to nothing at all.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'nothing at all.' Emotion isn't needed for an intelligent being to be productive or successful. As a human I'd of course want my emotions, though.

Productive of what? Successful under what metric? Unless such a being had its purpose laid out for them by another being (in which case it's "intelligent" only in the way my computer is "intelligent"), it won't be doing anything anything at all. In order to truly do something of your own volition, you need to have a goal in doing it. And that goal can only be emotional in some way.

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I honestly can't conceive of the idea of thinking without my emotions. Even if I'm not emotionally attached to my outcome when thinking about something, I might at least be having fun thinking about it (or, if I'm forced to think about it and would rather think about something else, I'm annoyed I have to do that).

I understand that emotions can sometimes sabotage rational inquiry (eg confirmation bias, etc.), but to me that's more a matter of knowing how to articulate reason and emotion, rather than privileging one or the other.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Fair enough. I still think that finding T***p "hilarious" constitutes a lapse in moral judgment, but I won't pretend it's the sort of lapse I'm never guilty of.