Whats with the Increase Threads Made Mostly By New Members To Push For Obama's Healthcare Reform?, page 3

reply to post by ElectricUniverse

Here's an idea: Why don't you try not characterizing your political opponents as brainwashed? You people spend half the time complaining that no one gives you an honest debate and the now you spend the other half of the time complaining that too many people wish to challenge your misconceptions. This latter claim seeks to classify them as paid disinformation agents so that you don't actually need to argue with them - you merely attack the credibility of the speaker without actually addressing what they are saying.

Your thread title makes a solid implication that someone who starts a thread that is in favor of health care reform must be both a new member and a member that is somehow connected to directly to Obama - a shill. First, you're operating off several assumptions: 1. that this website receives enough traffic to justify FAKE debaters; 2. The readers of ATS are too incompetent to distinguish between fact-based arguments and shill propaganda; 3. Convincing the few dozen people who read any particular thread would somehow have a broader effect on their community, justifying some complex conspiracy to deceive them.

A better question is how this site has somehow become a right-wing paradise? How many threads asserting that Obama is an illegal immigrant because he was not born in the US and underwent no naturalization process? How many race-based Obama threads that were deleted by admins? How many Death Panel threads that have no basis in reality while simultaneously ignoring the fact that insurance companies do in fact have death panels responsible for rejecting claims for necessary treatment due to cost?

I think a better question to ask is why so many threads are so consistently identical to Fox News talking points? Am I asserting a conspiracy involving the Fox News channel? No. I am asserting a particularly low level of critical thinking skills on the part of Fox News viewers who are so easily convinced to be terrified. No one questions the fact that 100% of the news coming from that channel is negative toward democrats and every written article of a political nature is written like an editorial rather than a mere reporting of the facts of an issue, with a title containing a rhetorical question or asking a controversial question that the article subtlely admits is completely false.

Open a history book and go towards the section on Joseph McCarthy. He got his kicks accusing everyone of being a communist - he had the whole country reporting on their neighbors. People were fired from their jobs for refusing out of principle to sign loyalty oaths or because they were friends with someone who attended a communist club meeting in college. It was a disgusting chapter in our history and you fools have permitted yourselves to do the SAME THING all over again because you're angry that you lost an election.

When you vote in fair election and your candidate loses to another candidate, this does NOT mean you are unrepresented in Congress. Stating otherwise, challenging the integrity of the whole election process, simply because you lost the election is reckless. You people so casually throw around the word fascism and yet now you advocate overthrowing the government because your candidate didn't win, because someone who is not more similar to yourself is in power. How could overthrowing a government under these circumstances be called anything except fascism?

So, I reiterate: if you don't like the subject of a thread, don't read it or respond intelligently to the points you disagree with. Avoid simply attacking the speaker as a shill or government agent. Why? Because challenging the integrity of the system or the person is much easier than winning fairly within the confines of that system. Personal attacks are easy but they accomplish nothing. All you've done is show how weak your argument must be because you cannot argue the facts.

[edit on 8-9-2009 by andrewh7]