Been a few days, I’ve been busy with life. Regardless, here’s a list of things I’ve had thrown at me as genuine rebuttals to what I say by republicans.
Well maybe, but [liberal] did it!
This one really drives me nuts. It puts the world in the perspective of My Team vs Their Team and we’re all going on a point system. If one guy with a blue hat does something illegal, if someone with a red hat did the same thing then the score is 1-1 and now no one can complain. First off, that assumes that if I call myself a “liberal” (which I really don’t, I’m mostly just anti-conservative so I land as “liberal” by default to most), then I therefore must support everyone who calls themselves liberal.
To be honest, I believe Clinton lied, I believe he did some stupid shit, I believe Kerry’s campaign was a failure because of his lack of firm stances on issues. I believe Dean needed to calm down during his campaign, I think Hillary needs to shut her mouth. Harry Belefonte isn’t doing anyone any favors by sounding like a lunatic and Michael Moore is very effective at forcing a fresh viewpoint to others but he can be Ann Coulter-like in that it’s more about browbeating than debating.
Look, I don’t care if a liberal fucked up. No party is perfect, I don’t think Democrats have their hands clean of dirty money (for example). The point is that THIS is the issue, and if you think someone can’t be held accountable because other guilty people exist, then no one will be held accountable and everyone will become a guilty person at some point. I don’t have any stock in democrat politicians, and if it turns out they’re guilty, then fry ‘em as well. My problem with republicans trying to drag dems down with them and Abramoff isn’t my resistance to the idea that they may be guilty of something, but that it’s a dirty tactic to pull people down with you simply in order to change public opinion. It’s like a murderer complaining that someone in the jury got in a fight so they have no right to convict him.
Well of course [whoever] would say that!
This one crops up whenever anyone but Faux News or a White House mouthpiece says something. I agree that there are people who will take an anti-republican stance no matter what, but not everyone who comes to an anti-republican conclusion starts off there. People seem to think that the only people who believe that Bush has incriminating evidence with Abramoff or the NSA is illegal is a bunch of Bush-hating liberals (or “lie-brals” because they’re so clever). And any proof offered from a source without a White House stamp on it is thus worthless.
It doesn’t matter if it’s right, it just matters where it came from, apparently.
There’s also an interesting side-spin on this in the form of “that’s just spinning the numbers!” It happens when clearly irrefutable numbers are cropped up from unbiased sources and given out by the “liberal media”. In this case, it’s not that the facts are wrong, it’s that the evil liberals are making the numbers look a lot worse than they are. This is a dead-end with arguments, it’s best to walk away.
If it was illegal, why isn’t it all over the news?
This is one of those statements so patently stupid it’s hard to properly assess and work with. Generally it comes from someone who sticks to one news source that they watch now and again when there’s nothing interesting on SpikeTV and ESPN2. The kind of people who change the channel if their favorite show is interrupted by a presidential news conference. Somehow they expect every major issue to leap out of their televisions and radios whenever they happen and infiltrate their brains while they still get to enjoy MXC.
The alternate version is when this comes from a hardcore righty who avoids any news that isn’t coming out of Bill O’Reilly or Rush Limbaugh’s mouth. It also usually comes accompanied with chatter of the “liberal media” and a claim that this phenomenon would leap all over Bush and the republicans “if it were true”. Keep in mind this is bizarre logic. They claim that it’s not out there because the liberal media would have covered it, and the proof of the media being liberal is usually something asinine such as using an entirely pointless story that Fox News jumped on (case in point: O’Reilly’s “War on Christmas”). The fact that democratic speeches denouncing the president are swept under the rug while Bush’s “strong statements” are paraded on all stations is entirely lost.
If it was illegal, they’d have been arrested by now!
See above. When confronted with this, I was actually dumbstruck for a few moments. Somehow people think that Bush is powerless to stonewall information and has no sway over the people in power to do the investigating. As though he were some observer during the whole thing who can’t stave off anyone who wants evidence. Also amusing because it also assumes that every illegal thing that any official has ever done is immediately uncovered. The person in question who threw this at me later commented about Clinton having people killed. I wonder, if it was really illegal, why didn’t he ever get in trouble with it?
Bush said it’s legal what he did, so I believe him!
Scott Peterson said the same thing, as have nearly every convicted felon. Moving along.
You want Bush to release that information because you WANT to find some dirt on him!
This is another case of “change the direction of the debate so I can sound like I’m winning”. It also assumes that I, like the person I’m talking to, starts off with an opinion and only accepts finding out that I was right. I dislike Bush, I dislike him a lot, however I’m not too big on crucifying him for something he’s not guilty for. Aside from sending the wrong message (“you can get away with crimes, but watch out for something you didn’t do”), it also sets a piss-poor precedent of someone who someone simply dislikes being found guilty and punished without any evidence confirmed of a crime.
The simplest refutation is that if he’s truly innocent, why wouldn’t he release the information? That brings me to my next argument.
It’ll just be used to make him look bad!
Not if it ain’t true. And even that’s a moot point because it assumes that Bush is the only one holding said information. Whether or not he wants it to, those pictures will emerge and Abramoff will spill the beans on every contact he had with the president. It’s like when Clinton was confronted with the dress. The proof exists, and he’s not in control of it. The question now turns into why he would hold out on information he can’t stop from emerging in the future? When Abramoff himself finally throws everything out there he’s going to have to deal with people swamping him with “why didn’t you release these before?” Refusing to prove your innocence is often a sideways way of admitting guilt.
There’s just a few pictures! or That’s only two republicans!
The former argument is Abramoff, the latter is in response to a few republicans publically denouncing Bush’s spying. It follows along with the “they’d have been arrested by now” argument in that the person for some reason things all information and all people out there right now are all that there will ever be. A big offender here is Scott McClellan and Bush himself. First Bush has never met Abramoff. Then there’s some pictures, so what? He meets a lot of people. Then it turns out there are pictures from a meeting, not just a meet-and-greet. So what? He meets with a lot of lobbyists. It’s constantly passing the buck along, rationalizing the current information by saying there isn’t very much of it so there isn’t any guilt. Then as more emerges, simply applying the same to that.
The problem is, it won’t work in the end, particularly when the supplier of said information is out of your grasp. That goes back to the prior piece.
That’s just a sampling of arguments I’ve gotten, some of my thoughts on them that fell on deaf ears. Oh there’s a bunch more, and I plan on putting up a piece like this when new issues show up and I get more incredibly stupid arguments. I’m holding out on the religious variety for obvious reasons.
