Reply #112: Tending a Garden

[mrbluto]

Perhaps your reasons for supporting Obama are sound.

But from my experience I've encounter many Obama supporters who simply won't entertain a reasoned discussion regarding their candidate, nor credit a discussion of the advantages of other contenders.

When that happens I'm sorely tested, but have restrained myself for the most part out of courtesy and the hope that my supported candidate would get a fair hearing.

Well, the bloom has been off that rose for quite some time.

Yet still I sought a reasoned discussion.

Then it became clear that anything not laudatory said about Obama prompted at least one, if not several, Obama supporters to charge those who said such things with racism really kicked the stuffing out of my motivation to be civil.

But I persisted.

Upon reading your post it became clear to me that, while you have a right, NanceGreggs, to express your opinion, you have no right to do so without insult or belittlement.

Nope - no right at all.

That happy situation is the result of contentious people tending the shared garden that a reasoned debate is - including policing their own partisans.

Suffice to say Obama supporters are at least as culpable for the current lack of civility as any other group.

So excuse me if I'm not shedding a tear for your chances of expressing yourself without insult or belittlement.

p.s.: It's a rare cultist that believes they arrived at their devotion via anything other than justifiable means, so if you want to close the book on any argument about that it's time to provide a logic case for why you're not a cultist if it matters to you, rather than simply declare you are not. Same for the other things you mention. I have yet to hear a convincing case made for why either Obama or Clinton are better than the other, or even some people not even some people not actively campaigning.