Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Comey firing - Have you considered..

Okie,

To your first proposal, to illuminate my reason for not jumping on it, I think that should it come to that, Trump would resign before formal impeachment proceedings were concluded. Since that would have me technically losing the bet while winning the overall argument, that doesn't work for me. So here's my counter:

A box of bullets says Trump won't finish his first term.

As to your second proposal, first, I would never require you to put the bullets in escrow. I'm operating in good faith here and my presumption is that you are as well or we wouldn't be talking. This is why, for instance, I won't bet bigfish: he's willing to flat out lie to defame me, then continue the lie even when it's shown he's lying! And mark my words, he'll keep doing it. But for those of you who aren't lying scum, which is most of you, my presumption is good faith on your part and that's my posture as well.

As to the meat of your second offer, you're going to have to bear with me a second here.

Think about the points I've been trying to make here- about the breakdown of civil discourse between partisans, primarily. Look at my .sig; look at the other thread I started about motivated ignorance... Okie, this isn't me trying to be annoying; this is an issue I care DEEPLY about. Our society is in a pickle, MULTIPLE pickles, and we will not find productive and palatable ways forward by sticking our fingers in our ears. The 30% of rabid partisans on either end of the spectrum, who are basically unwilling to engage ideas outside their comfort zone and will turn red and stomp their feet if presented with such, ARE THE PROBLEM. Or at a minimum are a huge barrier to any solutions.

If I took my conservative views on guns, race, free speech, etc to a hardcore liberal forum, guess what would happen. They'd call me all manner of names. They'd gang up. They'd form a circle-jerk and agree with each other about how awful I was. Sound familiar?

But people like me, IE folks with a foot in both camps, who are willing to engage with and absorb the heat from the rabid partisans, are absolutely critical for the very survival of productive discourse in our society! And we are rare. There are a bunch of people here who more or less agree with the things I've been saying- again, more or less- and have expressed that to me in PM's. But they want nothing to do with trying to talk to what several have independently described as "the crazy people" on the Campfire forum. Because of my personality, the path I took to get here on this forum, and ironically my head injury, which greatly increased my "IDGAF" capacity and ability to let stuff roll off... I AM willing to talk to the crazy people!

So my question to YOU is.... you're a reasonable-seeming person; why would you even want to win that bet? Why is it SO IMPORTANT to so many of you that I shut up, or go away forever? Why is it so crucial that you not hear opposing points of view? Have you always been so iconoclastic? I submit that collectively, you have not. Over the past 15-20 years, I've helplessly watched about 1/3 of society, a 1/3 I think is really crucial, and who I at least somewhat identify with in terms of many shared values and ideals, obviously not ALL, but many... I've watched them slowly get indoctrinated into a belief system, a paradigm as it were, that AS LONG AS THEY STAY INSIDE IT, they can (apparently) sleep at night. This started with talk radio (dittos!) in the early 90's and has progressed since then, and has accelerated greatly in the last few years.

That mentality, I'm saying to you, is just as pure a poison on the Right as it is on the Left.

So you are asking me put up, on my side, a deeply-held core value of mine: the belief that smart people can figure [bleep] out if they communicate, and that it is absolutely critical to keep those lines of communication open. Against that you bet 10 boxes of bullets.

I'll pass on that one, but I wanted to give you the respect of a proper answer.