Debate: You're Doing it Wrong

I should probably be in bed by now, but a couple of things have cropped up in my news feed tonight that will inevitably lead to arguments with imagined opposition in my own head while I'm trying to get to sleep, so I feel I must vent.

My political leanings are mostly liberal: I'm an atheist who believes in a person's right to do whatever they like, as long as it doesn't adversely impact the lives of others.

You want to get smacked off your arse on crack (for example)?  I believe in your right to do it.  You steal from someone to fund your habit?  I believe in your victim's right to break your fingers.

Yes, buying drugs funds criminal activity, which in turn adversely affects lives, but

that could be offset by legalisation, leading to safer drugs, better control, more taxes

to go into health and recovery services, and the removal of a significant revenue 

stream for said criminal activity.  (a deeper conversation for another time)

Similarly, if you're the type of ignorant half-wit who assumes superiority over someone else because of the amount a melanin in your skin, you be happy in your delusion.  The second you use it as an excuse to attack someone (physically or otherwise) is the second before you should be strung up to the nearest lamppost by your pubic hair.

I bring this up because Katy Perry was recently attacked for a racist jibe against Barack Obama.


In the video, she equates people lamenting her new hair style to those lamenting the loss of Obama as president, in an obvious use of exaggeration for comic affect.

Kind of like, "Look, I realise global warming is a ticking time bomb, but if we don't act soon, Bay might agree to another Transformers movie. Priorities, people!"

Of course, this being the age of the internet, rather than this being a borderline smirk-worthy thing said by a person, it's instead blown up into, "Rich bitch hates black people!"

The US has a serious problem with racism right now, but while it has remained prevalent for so long - in the main due to dense-skulled neanderthals denying its existence (generally because their heads are rammed too far up their own arses to notice it happening) - the issue isn't helped by reactionary half-wits on the opposite side of the aisle crying 'Racism!' whenever someone dares utter the word 'black'.

Not 30 minutes after seeing this story did I happen across another that, on closer inspection, highlighted the deep-seeded issue with social and political debate these days.

"A Republican congressman has suggested that poorer Americans do not deserve affordable healthcare because they have not led “good lives” and so bring it on themselves when they get sick."

No, he hasn't.

What he actually said was people with pre-existing conditions are a greater burden on health care, and should contribute more to offset the cost to those who "lead good lives".

Of course, that doesn't really sound much better: "If you're sick, it's your own fault.  Why should the rest of us have to pay for it?"

But he did immediately clarify: "Now, in fairness, a lot of people with pre-existing conditions...have those conditions through no fault of their own, and I think our society under those circumstances needs to help."


Don't get me wrong, I understand that there's nothing altruistic about his arguments.  He's simply trying to make sound fair a policy that allows insurance companies to discriminate against sick people, which makes him a scumbag.

But the thing those on the left need to learn is, you can't win the argument by misrepresenting what these scumbags say.  It makes it look like you're not really listening.  It makes it look like you're jumping on any soundbite you can find to support your argument, regardless of context.

You're like an anti-vaxxer or climate-change denier, who finds that one argument among a thousand that backs their view, and holds it up as 'proof' that they're right, and everyone else is wrong.

In other words, you look like an idiot.