Reply #31: Why? It just adds fuel.

[Julien Sorel]

I've gotten into this before with some else on this board: you can't 'refute' an opinion. All you can do is make an argument against it. Even when your argument is better than the other guy's they can still hide in their turtle shell and refuse to accept reality. Arguing against her opinion would just make this abortion of a thread longer, add fuel to the fire, and it would be a waste of my time. The arguments have all been made, anyway.

Just to give you an example of what I mean, the person whose post I responded to made a statement which I refuted. She said 'everything she said was true,' which I have demonstrated is not correct: the statements are, at best, arguable. That's a refutation. I can't 'refute' someone's opinion that 'Clark supporters are scared,' because there's no way to establish, definitively, that it is false. All I can do is argue. I can make a pretty good argument, but in the end, it's just an argument -- not a refutation. Such an argument would almost certainly please the original poster, and while I'll point out what I believe is the real purpose of this thread, I'm not going to waste time arguing against a premise I consider foolish and the product of frustration, bitterness, and wishful thinking.