Coming from Bellmore, that’s the kind of thing that has me reaching for the gun cabinet. But I’m sure that Brett is talking about the nice non-Nazi-flag-waving Minutemen.

Help you’ve mindshared me into submission. I’m so on your side! If people would only pay more attention to the facts on time use, that show that people spend more time watching TV than reading, exercising, educating children put together then this world would be a better place.

I’ve got to pay more attention to the meta-narrative of invective.

Since my side:= people who are continually perplexed

their side:= people who think they know the answer

Then, mindshare invective would say “Those stinkin’ know-it-alls that think they know everything are sure irritating to those of us that do.”

Your Side = people who pay attention to facts
Other Side = people who want fact-free polite discussion

then… :)

Which leads me to my slightly better crackpot theory on How To Gain Mindshare™, which is this: The way to win more people to Your Side is to use more invective, not less. Perhaps, just perhaps, if you hurl lots of insults at people you disagree with, then some weird mechanism will kick in and bring more supporters to Your Side. (They’ll probably not include the people you insulted, but that doesn’t matter.)

Here are some facts.

From 1956 to 1980, a Democrat, Frank Church, was a senator from Idaho. He sponsored wilderness legislation, voted against the war in Viet Nam and played a leading role in legislation restricting the power of the CIA.

Fourteen years later, in 1994, and again in 1996 and 1998, many of these same Idahoans voted for Helen Chenowith for US Representative.

Those are the facts. And honestly, after having lived through it, it blows my mind. I can’t explain it with facts.

Another Democrat from Idaho, Cecil Andrus, wrote in his book, Politics Western Style, that seeing Bill Clinton deal with the media made him realize that the Democrats were screwed in Idaho. In his opinion he wasn’t a regular guy, he was a star, and Idahoans wouldn’t put up with it.

I recognize that its not a fact, and that I may be projecting, but its as good of a theory as any that people in Idaho vote for the Helen Chenowith’s of the world because she irritated the Bi’s of the world.

And of course, apparently it’s not a waste of time for Karole to be repeatedly harping for like 4 posts on how Invective Is Bad For Discourse™ without even stating where she stands regarding Chenoweth’s beliefs.

That is the danger of using lazy descriptions; it lumps all a person (or party)’s views together.

My only point was that it’s a bit of a waste of time to put people in little boxes. Sometimes these descriptions are just lazy generalisations. Such terms can be overly inclusive. You could say I’m wary of meta-narratives.

Let’s say three people are discussing whether waterboarding is “in fact” torture.

Person 1 says that it is a fact that there is waterboarding and that it is in fact torture.

Person 2 says that it is a fact that there is waterboarding and that it is not in fact torture.

Person 3 says that there is no such thing as a waterboard so it can’t be torture.

The promoters of “factual” and “reasonable” discourse oftern seem to me to think that excluding 3 from the discourse helps us in some way with the disagreement between 1 and 2.

I am saying that disrespecting person 3 helps us nothing towards the dispute between 1 and 2.

Almost nothing we care about is primarily a matter of “fact”.

Hey, what a radical, relativistic position!

Anyway, when it comes to the promotion of polite fact-free just-so discourse, Slocum, Nat Whilk, and Brett Bellmore are clearly at the forefront. (Wait, make that “Anyway, I believe that it seems to a statement of fact that when…”…)

My fellow Europeans: we can no longer in honesty say that Americans have no such thing as irony. This isn’t just irony, it’s high-tensile maraging carbon-steely.

For instance, anyone who has a first-hand aquaintance with the militia movement, rather than getting all their “knowlege” about it from the likes of Morris Dees, will know that it was a lot more complex than the left likes to admit, and had some genuinely admirable aspects. You can see that at work with the Minutemen today, who are a LOT nicer bunch in reality than their press would suggest.