So are freepers really capable of understanding how traitorous they are?

[EstimatedProphet]

I don't think they are. They literally don't understand the difference between loyalty to a country and loyalty to a party, so when their party becomes traitorous like the Republicans have, they don't get why they are no longer patriots. They'll oppose anything that the Republican party tells them to, they'll fight any policy changes not backed by the Republican party - even when it will benefit them directly - and they'll go to their deathbeds claiming that they are the true patriots and not the people that actively worked to make the country better.

[Downtown Hound]

1. No.

[Old and In the Way]

2. The Difference between Freepers and us.

If the Democrats had been doing the same stuff that Republicans are doing....we'd be calling this the Republican Underground. The Freeper exists only in terms of "not us". They've lived their entire lives as being "not us"....they are incapable of breaking this world view mold and understanding that their acceptance of everything that allows them to maintain their "not us" label is precisely what the criminals count on. They are screwing themselves to maintain this delusion. The phrase "cutting off your nose to spite your face" was coined with the Freeper mentality in mind.

[EstimatedProphet]

3. That, and the fact that many of them are bullies

Like someone posted the other day (sorry, I forget who): if liberals get mad, they protest. If conservatives get mad, they make death threats and mail anthrax (paraphrasing, but that was the gist). There is something very fundamental to the freeper mentality about enjoying causing pain and hurting people to get your way. That's one of the reasons it has been easy to win them over to invading countries. They get off on it as it is.

[brazos121200]

4. The Freeper mentality cares only for itself, they have no

real sense of moral responsibility to society. Whether they are an unemployed teenager or the CEO of a giant corporation, they look out only for themselves. What can I get out of this is their motto. They are born con artists, the the truest sense of the word. If they see a minority group being discriminated against or a large number of people unemployed, they care not, its 'not their responsibility'.

They want a society where they have the right to indulge in free enterprise with no restraints and no regulations, and no taxes. Other people are free to fend for themselves, subject to the laws which protect the freeper's interests, of course. Hence Walmart, or any other socially irresponsible corporation you can think of; what's the LEAST we can get away with paying our employees? What's the LEAST amount of health insurance our employees will tolerate? They naturally gravitate to the Repub party, even though they may not consciously know why. Thinking is so 'intellectual' you know.

[C_U_L8R]

5. Freepers cannot question themselves

they are so insecure in their own ideas
that if one of them questions official sanctioned dogma
and agitprop, they are zotted by the goon squad.

Freeper ideology is about as unAmerican as it gets.

[XanaDUer]

8. Have you ever noticed how freeper types go batshit

if they find out you don't agree with them 100000%? There is one guy where I work (male nurse!) who likes to come to work with books written by the likes of Thomas Sowell and rant and rave about why he is correct and why you are wrong.

They are so insecure in their own beliefs, it is amazing!

[cgrindley]

12. Shouldn't you alert readers to Irony?

Freep often calls DU treasonous. To tell you the truth, it is unhelpful both ways. They're political, fiscal and social conservatives, pretty much on the right wing of the Republican party, whereas DU comes across, regardless of what a lot of people claim, as fairly middle of the road group of capital D democrats.

As far as the zotting goes... have you actually looked at a DU forum? See all those "deleted by moderator" messages? They don't happen on their own, you know.

DU is just as closed a shop as Freep and everyone knows it. Posters who dissent from a very narrow line or have the audacity to contradict other posters are frequently called "trolls" or worse, accused of being Republicans or, god help us all, Freepers. It's a constant battle to remain civil at times, and people's arguments are often utterly irrational--appealing more than likely to some personal tale of woe or relying entirely on some one issue philosophy. There's a huge culture of entitlement.

At times, it's just as nuts around here as it seems to be on Freep.

[C_U_L8R]

17. To a certain extent you're right

and it's a shame when things get closed-minded around here.
That said.. it happens far less here than there and I believe it's
rooted in the essential principles and differences between
"conservative" and "liberal" thinking. Those two little words pretty
well sum up the situation. And being liberal doesn't always mean
we have to entertain freeper crap. There are not two sides to the truth
as Faux News would have everyone believe.

[cgrindley]

18. Well, that dichotomy itself is a problem

There isn't really a thing called "the truth" and even if there was, it certainly wouldn't only have two sides.

[EstimatedProphet]

27. Be that as it may, there are things that are true

Truth: Hundreds of thousands have been killed in Iraq, the vast majority of which would still be alive had we not invaded.

Truth: There were NO WMD's that were any kind of a threat to the US or its interests

Truth: War profiteering has drained a budget surplus into the biggest deficit ever generated in this country.

Truth: The Bush administration led us into war based on the idea that Iraq was a clear and present threat to the US, and that 9/11 was their doing - we know that the opposite is true.

Say that to a freeper, and see what happens.

They can believe what they want all damn day. They don't get to have their own facts.

[cgrindley]

30. All true

Those really weren't the sort of issues I had in mind. I was more thinking of social issues and their possible solutions. EG I'm pretty much in favor of a cap on personal injury cases and I'm in favor of nationalizing the HMOs and hospitals, but there are opposing views and who's to say who's right on those issues?

[EstimatedProphet]

34. OK, merits of those things can be discussed

IMO the difference is, here we'll allow the discussion.

[EstimatedProphet]

26. No, I don't buy that

I know from experience how often people do stay here with dissenting voices. You really can't say that just because we both get rid of disruptors we're both intolerant. Often people stay on DU, sometimes even for months, with what we would call non-progressive viewpoints. On FucktardRepublic anyone with an even slightly different view is banned within minutes.

And frankly, I get the feeling that you think we should be reaching out to them, and I have to disagree. We reach out, and they use it as a club to beat us up. It's like reaching out to a rabid dog. Besides, we have demonstrably not only the worst president we have ever had, he is the worst president we could ever possibly have, and the only way they don't back him on AssholeRepublic is that they think he doesn't kill and torture enough foreigners. Friends like that, I don't need.

[cgrindley]

29. We should not reach out to them at all

Freepers will never see reason. That's part of what Freepers are all about. We should certainly kick them off as soon as they arrive. I'm merely trying to say that it's exactly the same reaction that they have to us.

[EstimatedProphet]

33. Ah. I see.

I misunderstood you at first.

I would still say though that we have more welcome of diverse opinion here that they ever dream of.

[Faux pas]

6. Nope, 'morans' aren't capable of self analysis. n/t

[XanaDUer]

7. No.

...

[Name removed]

9. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Richard Steele]

10. Thank you for proving that Estimated Prophet's assessment was entirely correct.

[EstimatedProphet]

20. Oh, did I miss a freeptard while I was gone?

Darn. I always miss retarded jerks fall down the stairs.

[Richard Steele]

28. A real LIVE one, too!

[WernhamHogg]

11. Why are you even here?

Don't you have some anthrax to mail?

Enjoy your stay! :hi:

[cgrindley]

13. but don't you see

your message is exactly the message you'd get over there if you identified yourself as one of us... it's not helpful in either direction, and in a minute or two, that dude's message will have been erased and his account zotted...

[EstimatedProphet]

22. Why the fuck do they come here anyway?

It's not like I went to Shitheel Republic to start shit. This is a perfect example of the difference between conservativs and liberals, which came out in another thread. Liberals get mad and protest. Conservatives get mad and try to keep liberals from being able to speak. they're dimestore novel villans at best. They would really be a threat if they weren't so laughable. It's like someone wrote them as characters instead of them being actual people, and the writer was really bad.

[Cabcere]

14. How are we traitors?

I'm not being sarcastic here, I honestly want to know why you feel that way. :shrug: Care to explain? :)

[cgrindley]

19. But the chances are, you *are* being sarcastic to the Freeper

You know perfectly well why the typical Freep thinks a DU'er is a fount of treason. They identify the head of state with the country itself, therefore, if you are opposed to the head of state, you are being treasonous. It's basically that simple. They also feel that if you do not support the war itself, then you are also being treasonous as Congress and the President both authorized it. The most of them are strict constructionalists and/or originalists, both of whom see any challenge to their way of thinking as being a challenge to the constitution itself and therefore treason. Finally, I suppose that most of them are idiot Young Earth Creationist literalists, and see any other point of view as actually (and here I mean actually actually as in really) inspired by Satan (who they think really does exist).

The question I have for you is why? Why pretend you don't know where they're coming from? Of course you do. Everyone does. It beggars imagination to attempt to think otherwise.

[WernhamHogg]

23. That's not true...

"They identify the head of state with the country itself, therefore, if you are opposed to the head of state, you are being treasonous."

They had NO problem opposing the head of state when he was a Democrat named Bill Clinton. You just proved the point of the OP: they are loyal to their party, they are NOT loyal to our country.

[cgrindley]

31. True

They are loyal to their party but perhaps more so when it's in power. They seem to be pretty quick to yank out the long knives when their party needs a good purge.

[Cabcere]

24. I know what I *think* most of them think

But I wanted to hear it from him. Just because a certain group of people share a basic political philosophy doesn't mean all of them agree with every aspect of that philosophy. We have our theories (most of which are reasonable, and likely accurate) on why FReepers think we're traitors, but not being "on the other side," we don't know for sure exactly why they feel the way they feel, or how exactly they think we are being traitorous. At least, *I* don't. So yes, I suppose I do know the basics of why FReepers in general think we're traitors...but I don't know this guy's reasons. :shrug: Does that make sense? I'm not very good at expressing myself sometimes, sorry. :blush:

[cgrindley]

35. The point has been made regarding the Freep hive mind

they tend to be a lot more in lockstep with one another than we are over here.

[Cabcere]

36. Fair enough.

I guess I made some assumptions about the similarities between the two groups when I made my initial post, and, well, you know what they say about assumptions... ;) I'll try not to jump so hastily into generalizations next time. :hi:

[Clark2008]

16. It's juvenile to dislike someone who lied to you?

I dislike the pResident because he was never elected (the Supreme Court stopped the vote-counting), he's habitually incurious (he didn't know that there were Shi'ite and Sunni Muslims and that they were different) and he lied us into an unnecessary war that isn't solving any terrorism problems, but, is in fact, creating more.

I'm sorry, but I do find your sticking your head in the sand and ignoring all these facts - and they've come from several sources not the alleged "liberal" media (of which there is none. 90 percent of the media is owned by conservative-leaning corporations - you can research that yourself, too) - and continuing to support this idiot-in-chief as juvenile. Why can't you SEE how bad he is for this country? What is in your brain that refuses to allow you to look at all the facts?

Honestly?

[Clark2008]

15. Some people HERE don't get that.

They whine and tell us we're all Republicans if we absolutely don't vote for the Democratic nominee because we, personally, happen to believe that person is bad for the country.

(Note: I'm not talking about Kerry. I'm just supposing that a Dem nominee could be horrid and there is one running now I think is).

[BlooInBloo]

21. Of course. They never believed in American ideals in the first place.

[demrabble]

25. They Are Clueless Wonders

Freepers are truly one of the wonders of the modern world.

They are so fucking clueless about the world and about themselves, it makes reasonable people wonder.

Freepers support the Patriot Act -- but call themselves patriots.

Freepers support torture of innocent people -- but call themselves compassionate.

Freepers support illegal wars of invasion and occupation, but say they are peace-loving.

Freepers say they are Christian, but love only money.

Clueless. Fucking. Bastards.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

32. Freepers = Lemmings falling off cliff

can't think of any other explanation