3 ms·

I think tptacek's point is that he hates Republicans.

sophacles 14y ago
This is silly and disingenuous partisanship. It isn't at all a "anti-republicans" thing in his comment. It is a "hey this guy may be doing this good thing, but don't go about declaring him 'a good guy strictly on our side' (for whatever side that happens to be), he's done these other things that a lot of people are against". Its a sanity check.
- jacoblyles 14y ago
  Let's repost tptacek's comments, to see how partisan they are: >"Expect to see lots of superficial genuflection from Republicans towards the Swartz case; the GOP is in a constant low-grade conflict with the Democratic DoJ." Any show of support of the GOP for Aaron Swartz is "superficial genuflection" driven by partisan conflict. Doubtless, Democratic support would be considered genuine. >"Here, let me put it this way: what do you honestly think Aaron Swartz would think about this clown using his name to score political points?" A Senator with a history of support for Open Access is a "clown" that is so odious that Aaron would be upset to have his support. This is partisanship at its worst. tptacek is dehumanizing Republicans in a way that kills rational thought. A Republican can't even do something tptacek agrees with without receiving his scorn. Is that reasonable to you?
  - TheAmazingIdiot 14y ago
    Tptacek is pretty much a nutjob. He was going on and on against 1st sale doctrine about reimportation, how is it evil and such. He also despises republicans completely, given this thread alone. I'd set equal the anger in Tptacek to the craziness in sparrowos.
    - jhancock 14y ago
      Your post is very rude. I don't always agree with 'tptacek or anyone else, even some of my own past comments. However, I have seen enough of his comments to know I'd be happy to have a beer with the man. If Thomas is a nutjob in your mind and sparrows are crazy, I can't begin to imagine how you might describe some of my perspectives. It would be lovely if HN could be a place where people could express themselves civilly and not be attacked.
      - spinlocked 14y ago
        It would be lovely if HN could be a place where people could rise above their petty self interests and help the community move forward. Thomas is at the wrong end of this spectrum. TheAmazingIdiot is correct BTW. Its hard to imagine Thomas posting his ridiculous views unless he is a paid shill. Probably on your team.
  - sophacles 14y ago
    What's reasonable to me is: not putting any politician on a pedestal. They all suck for a lot of reasons. Unfortunately, you see it on web forums all the time that people have no medium or long term memories: basically they see some politician agreeing with them on some topic and there is much raving about how awesome that person is. Two weeks later, the same politician is against the prevalent view on some other topic, and they are the devil incarnate. Further there is a trend in these discussions to turn everything into "this guy is from this party, so that party is on my side!" craziness, and piles of confirmation bias start happening. So I see comments on how various parties will spin any event and posture themselves towards it, with references to a larger political climate - such as the one you quoted first - not as "anti-$PARTY" or "hate", but as a reminder that the politicians are always playing, a "here is the game now" statement. Similarly, regarding your second quote, calling a politician a clown, is not anti republican anything. The senator has a history of open access, but also has a questionable history in larger civil liberties contexts. The senator posturing himself as a champion of Aaron Swartz because of the open access issue, is just that. We've seen a lot of stuff lately reminding us of Aaron's stance on, e.g. Chomsky and the concept of manufactured consent. This politician is in fact doing what Aaron didn't like in the manufactured consent game. It is a reasonable statement to point it out. Note: when the framing of this as "Obama's DOJ" and other types of strong political gaming that will occur around this, no one will mention Ortiz has been a US Attorney since 1997, and therefore doing this sort of action for many administrations. It will turn into a discussion of which party is responsible, rather than a reasonable discussion about what should be done about an actual problem. In this context, it is reasonable for anyone who wants to address the problem, rather than the politics, to take steps in discussions like this to remind everyone that the person in question may in fact agree with them on this issue, but they, and the party they represent certainly don't agree on every issue. This is a giant problem - the thinking that any party agrees whole-heartedly with your stances, or that any given politician has the right answers to all problems. Finally it should be noted that tptacek gets accused of hating just about every single group that exists at some point. It seems he is in that rare place of "he thinks for himself", and so gets these sorts of "super partisan" accusations about hating the democrats a lot too. Isn't it great when your knee jerk defense of your chosen favorites causes you to attack someone who regularly gets attacked for being too much on your side?

This is silly and disingenuous partisanship. It isn't at all a "anti-republicans" thing in his comment. It is a "hey this guy may be doing this good thing, but don't go about declaring him 'a good guy strictly on our side' (for whatever side that happens to be), he's done these other things that a lot of people are against". Its a sanity check.

jacoblyles 14y ago
Let's repost tptacek's comments, to see how partisan they are: >"Expect to see lots of superficial genuflection from Republicans towards the Swartz case; the GOP is in a constant low-grade conflict with the Democratic DoJ." Any show of support of the GOP for Aaron Swartz is "superficial genuflection" driven by partisan conflict. Doubtless, Democratic support would be considered genuine. >"Here, let me put it this way: what do you honestly think Aaron Swartz would think about this clown using his name to score political points?" A Senator with a history of support for Open Access is a "clown" that is so odious that Aaron would be upset to have his support. This is partisanship at its worst. tptacek is dehumanizing Republicans in a way that kills rational thought. A Republican can't even do something tptacek agrees with without receiving his scorn. Is that reasonable to you?
- TheAmazingIdiot 14y ago
  Tptacek is pretty much a nutjob. He was going on and on against 1st sale doctrine about reimportation, how is it evil and such. He also despises republicans completely, given this thread alone. I'd set equal the anger in Tptacek to the craziness in sparrowos.
  - jhancock 14y ago
    Your post is very rude. I don't always agree with 'tptacek or anyone else, even some of my own past comments. However, I have seen enough of his comments to know I'd be happy to have a beer with the man. If Thomas is a nutjob in your mind and sparrows are crazy, I can't begin to imagine how you might describe some of my perspectives. It would be lovely if HN could be a place where people could express themselves civilly and not be attacked.
    - spinlocked 14y ago
      It would be lovely if HN could be a place where people could rise above their petty self interests and help the community move forward. Thomas is at the wrong end of this spectrum. TheAmazingIdiot is correct BTW. Its hard to imagine Thomas posting his ridiculous views unless he is a paid shill. Probably on your team.
- sophacles 14y ago
  What's reasonable to me is: not putting any politician on a pedestal. They all suck for a lot of reasons. Unfortunately, you see it on web forums all the time that people have no medium or long term memories: basically they see some politician agreeing with them on some topic and there is much raving about how awesome that person is. Two weeks later, the same politician is against the prevalent view on some other topic, and they are the devil incarnate. Further there is a trend in these discussions to turn everything into "this guy is from this party, so that party is on my side!" craziness, and piles of confirmation bias start happening. So I see comments on how various parties will spin any event and posture themselves towards it, with references to a larger political climate - such as the one you quoted first - not as "anti-$PARTY" or "hate", but as a reminder that the politicians are always playing, a "here is the game now" statement. Similarly, regarding your second quote, calling a politician a clown, is not anti republican anything. The senator has a history of open access, but also has a questionable history in larger civil liberties contexts. The senator posturing himself as a champion of Aaron Swartz because of the open access issue, is just that. We've seen a lot of stuff lately reminding us of Aaron's stance on, e.g. Chomsky and the concept of manufactured consent. This politician is in fact doing what Aaron didn't like in the manufactured consent game. It is a reasonable statement to point it out. Note: when the framing of this as "Obama's DOJ" and other types of strong political gaming that will occur around this, no one will mention Ortiz has been a US Attorney since 1997, and therefore doing this sort of action for many administrations. It will turn into a discussion of which party is responsible, rather than a reasonable discussion about what should be done about an actual problem. In this context, it is reasonable for anyone who wants to address the problem, rather than the politics, to take steps in discussions like this to remind everyone that the person in question may in fact agree with them on this issue, but they, and the party they represent certainly don't agree on every issue. This is a giant problem - the thinking that any party agrees whole-heartedly with your stances, or that any given politician has the right answers to all problems. Finally it should be noted that tptacek gets accused of hating just about every single group that exists at some point. It seems he is in that rare place of "he thinks for himself", and so gets these sorts of "super partisan" accusations about hating the democrats a lot too. Isn't it great when your knee jerk defense of your chosen favorites causes you to attack someone who regularly gets attacked for being too much on your side?