quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: Consider it this way. He writes that on a piece of paper and signs his name to it and issues it as an Executive Order. What's it mean now?
um, nothing?
It's a loaded question, because making it an Executive Order already assumes your interpretation, since only your interpretation was proscriptive. Mine was descriptive. You can't legislate that things are stupid or in poor taste, you can only legislate that they are allowed or not. So I don't really think it's a meaningful question you are asking.
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quote:Literally, I can't grasp how someone with an advanced degree can't comprehend other people interpreting that statement as "the idea that our soldiers are comparable to terrorists is absurd."
I can accet, taking the context, that people may assume that this was meant. I don't see that, given those actual words, that this could be the literal meaning of them. They don't mean that in any way I'm familiar with them.
Consider it this way. He writes that on a piece of paper and signs his name to it and issues it as an Executive Order. What's it mean now?
Meaning doesn't work like that. He was talking in a press conference, making unprepared remarks, and that sentence was preceded by two sentences extremely relevant to the
If you want to really push the issue, that sentence is absolutely meaningless in the context of an executive order, or even a law. "It is unacceptable" means nothing in a legislative context, and an executive order is a legislative context.
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Dag, I'm pretty darn sure the President was not blindsided by the question about Colin Powell's (among others') opposition to his plan to get the U.S. into the torture business, nor about the statements Colin Powell made.
I don't think it's probable that he could be said to have been, at that moment, astounded by the concept, especially since that was not at all what Colin Powell said. It wasn't something that he was previously unaware of that had been sprung on him at that moment. His press briefing team had to expect questions concerning it.
As such, I'm pretty sure it was part of a prepared (though likely not strictly scripted) strategy of response.
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I don't think something has to be sprung on you for you to be astounded by it. There are things that I am continually astounded by.
(And I don't think the point is to give the president a pass on poor speaking on account of this being extemporized, but simply to point out that a hyperliteral interpretation may well not be a fair or accurate one. Most people are not that literal.)
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quote:I'm pretty darn sure the President was not blindsided by the question about Colin Powell's (among others') opposition to his plan to get the U.S. into the torture business, nor about the statements Colin Powell made.
Didn't say he was. Your own propagandist streak is showing here, by the way.
quote:I don't think it's probable that he could be said to have been, at that moment, astounded by the concept, especially since that was not at all what Colin Powell said. It wasn't something that he was previously unaware of that had been sprung on him at that moment. His press briefing team had to expect questions concerning it.
He can still be astounded by the concept even if he's expecting the question. It is a rather astounding concept.
quote:As such, I'm pretty sure it was part of a prepared (though likely not strictly scripted) strategy of response.
The idea, yes. The wording, probably not.
Oh, I'm sure they tried to prepare wording for him. He's known to not be good at getting wording correct.
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I use words (or, more accurately, recognize uses of words) in ways that match how words are used by people. If you're trying to parse how someone used a spoken word not read from a script, or written informally and quickly, the dictionary isn't necessarily the best way to go.\
For example, I adopted Icarus's usage of "astound" because I interpreted it as bewildering or confusing.
If you want, I'll go back to my other interpretation, which is very similar but doesn't use the word "astound" in a colloquial mannner with which you are unfamiliar.
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I am bewildered by the attitude my high risk latino students have toward education. The fact that they travel throughout school all day long without a backpack, a pen, a pencil, or books. It's been happening for years, but I am nevertheless bewildered and, yes, astounded by it.
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People don't enter into a prepared response and then go into their bewildered personal thoughts.
You claimed that this a clear picture of him astounded into his personal musings. That doesn't work if he was prepared for the question and had a general response prepared.
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Yes, you say that you are confused. You aren't astounded into your personal musings about it.
edit: You know, I'm out. There's no up side of this and you've already started with the personal attacks. I don't need to argue this with someone who can't stay civil.
I was very upset by this. Other people see it differently. I can accept that, though I'm still upset by it. I'm okay with leaving it there.
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quote:People don't enter into a prepared response and then go into their bewildered personal thoughts.
You claimed that this a clear picture of him astounded into his personal musings. That doesn't work if he was prepared for the question and had a general response prepared.
Yes, they do and yes it does. Lawyers count on it, and it happens even with the best prepared witnesses, witnesses far more articulate than Bush seems to be on television.
By the way, see my post above about how we can drop "astound" if you want. I was using it colloquially.
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quote:Yes, you say that you are confused. You aren't astounded into your personal musings about it.
And one way of expressing that confusion is to say I can't accept that.
You keep saying "people don't..." Almost inevitably, it's something I've seen people do, and usually something I've seen quite often.
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quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: People don't enter into a prepared response and then go into their bewildered personal thoughts.
Well, I'm not a politician, but I do in a sense have "prepared responses," in the sense of conversational ground I find myself covering on multiple occasion, with different people. And I have expressed bewilderment, such as in my above post, in those "prepared responses," if my bewilderment was relevant to the conversation. In this case, the question, expected or not, was about a concept Bush finds bewildering. It seems only natural then for him to express bewilderment, whether the bewildering question is expected or not.
Also, keep in mind that expressing bewilderment is part of Bush's "charm." It's that "simple guy" thing that the people who elected him, to a large degree, eat up. So that's even more incentive for him to express bewilderment; he does it exceedingly well.
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Icky, That's not the way I meant it. I wasn't saying he wasn't bewildered by it. I was saying that he was astounded into going off into his own personal musings, in such a way that him saying flatly "It's not acceptable" was really sort of a externalized internal monologue doesn't work in the circumstances.
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When you change my words and then attempt to refute the changed words, the description seems to fit. Not to mention your characterization of the detainee bill.
It's not just a sometimes thing. And it's particularly annoying when it's transparently clear your point wouldn't work with the word I actually used.
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Where did I change your words? I'm not conscious of doing so.
Also, if you're going to talk about transparent, going from "Where did I make a personal attack?" to "Yeah, I made a personal attack, but you deserved it."
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quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: Also, if you're going to talk about transparent, going from "Where did I make a personal attack?" to "Yeah, I made a personal attack, but you deserved it."
That's not a personal attack. It's a statement about what you've done.
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You didn't say blindsided. You said astounded, which, as I showed, is synanamous with suprised, which itself is synanamous with blind-sided.
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Again with the redefinitions. Saying someone has a propogandist streak is a personal attack. Man up already.
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quote:You didn't say blindsided. You said astounded, which, as I showed, is synanamous with suprised, which itself is synanamous with blind-sided.
I simply don't believe that your that obtuse about language usage.
If the words were really the same, you could have easily used "astounded." But it doesn't carry the same connotation as blindsided, a connotation that was necessary to the point you were trying to make.
I didn't contend that he had no idea the topic would come up, which is what "blindsided" suggested.
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FWIW, I think there are different nuances to "surprised," and as I attempted to point out in my example, it is not necessarily synonymous with blind-sided. Maybe what we have here is just a miscommunication?
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No, you said astounded, which again, is synamous with suprised. Saying he was suprised by it does in fact mean that he did not know it would come up.
edit: You know, I have no idea how to spell "synonymous". Kindly assume that I meant to use that spelling in all the instances above.
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quote:No, you said astounded, which again, is synamous with suprised. Saying he was suprised by it does in fact mean that he did not know it would come up.
No, it doesn't. Icarus has already explained why this isn't necessarily so.
And I didn't say he was astounded by the question, but by the concept.
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I never said they weren't personal attacks. When you say, for example, that you doubt someone's intellectual integrity, that's a personal attack.
Also, you're sort of arguing against yourself here. You think I made personal attacks on OSC, but, because you claim that I said they weren't personal attacks, then you making similar on me aren't personal attacks? Even if I did argue as you say I did, that doesn't change the fact that you considered what I said to be personal attacks and therefore, logically...you weigh the same as a duck.
edit: Because I wanted to put in the logically and then the Monty Python's just came out.
quote:No, it doesn't. Icarus has already explained why this isn't necessarily so.
And I didn't say he was astounded by the question, but by the concept.
I've never seen astounded used that way. The dictionary also supports my usage. and, as I said, I don't see how someone could be bewildered into going into his sort of internal monologue by something he was prepared for. If you didn't mean it that way, that's fine. But I don't see any reason why me applying the dictionary definition to a word must necessarily be a malicious attempt to distort what you said.
As to the second part, if he was prepared for the question, he would necessarily be in a state where he'd not be suprised by the concept, yes?
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Right, he was astounded by the concept. I get that. However, as, if we're talking about astounded in the sense of "suprised into bewilderment", which is the only sense I've ever seen it, then being prepared for the question, which relies on encountering the concept, would preclude being astounded by the concept.
Look, if people have a different perception of things or even a less specific definition of certain words than I do, I can get that. And, as I said before, while I don't necessarily agree that you may be using the words in what I would consider the "correct way", I don't see arguing over stuff like that as leading to anything other than "Is Too"/"Is Not" stuff.
This was very upsetting to me. If other people interpreted it the same way as I did but did not find it upsetting, there might be grounds for an argument. As it was, I tried to explain how I saw it, and why I really thought this was the only way, coming from where I'm coming from, that I could see it. If people have a different perspective and are not inclined to adopt mine, there's little I can do about that. We might be able to discuss it, but Dag is clearly not willing to do that with me. So what's the point?
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Icky, Technically, dropping the wtcayta on someone is supposed to mean that there person has so little integrity and is just talking crap and engaging them will only lead to nastiness. So, putting it in is a recognition of this as a sort of "You're wrong, but there's no point in getting into a thing with you about it, so this is it." If you continue to address the person afterwards, you're kind of going against the whole spirit of the thing.
Of course, as you dropped on a statement of mine that was (arguably) accurate and as I'm not terribly lacking in integrity nor really interested in kicking up the nastiness, or at least I like to think so, I didn't deserve the initial application anyway. But, hey, Dag's in your clique and I'm not.
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MrSquicky, you'll note that I deleted that post as soon as you clarified what you were talking about.
In any case, though you came up with the idea, I was not aware of the interpretation that it means a person lacks integrity, and I do not use in that way. I use it to mean pretty literally that I don't know what someone is talking about, in a situation when someone apparently decides to get hostile.
I frankly didn't know what attack you were referring to, and it kind of seemed like you could be referring to me, since there was nothing in your post to distinguish whether you were referring to me or to Dag.
As far as the clique accusation--and boy am I tempted to "drop it" on you again--is it your contention that Dag and I are never on opposite sides of any debates?
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No, you're part of a social clique. I'm not. For some people this means you don't have to treat people with the same consideration, like, for example, looking for what they were talking about before saying they were spouting BS or feeling like you need to apologize when you falsely accuse them of something. It's got nothing to do with being on the same sides in an argument though.
I'm used to the ill-effects of not being popular on Hatrack.
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edit: You know, if you really use what the crapping the way you say - well, first, could I respectfully ask you to choose a different phrase, because that's extremely different from the (I think) useful purpose I tried to establish it for? - what I said above really isn't fair. I'll leave it because it helps explain my earlier reaction though, as well as my aversion to deleting things.
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quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: You know, if you really use what the crapping the way you say - well, first, could I respectfully ask you to choose a different phrase, because that's extremely different from the (I think) useful purpose I tried to establish it for?
quote:"Unacceptable" is often use specifically to express "disfavored in society" not rising to the level of forbidding, and "think" is often used to mean "hold the opinion that."
Yes. Yes.
quote:"That is unacceptable behavior," for example, is often used to condemn acts that are not against the rules but are rude or otherwise have a negative effect on those who witness them.
Yes.
quote:"I think that you are an idiot" is more often used to mean "I hold the opinion that you are an idiot" than "a thought is present in my mind that you are an idiot."
Wouldn't the thought that the other guy is an idiot HAVE to be present in his mind in order for him to hold the opinion that the other guy is an idiot? Where is the distinction? What is the difference?
quote:So "It is unacceptable to think that the Nazis were a force for good on the planet" can be rewritten "It is disfavored society to hold the opinion that the Nazis were a force for good on the planet."
Yes. Wait.
What was I going to argue with again? I'd better go re-read the thread.
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I'm not getting involved in this. I don't need to read two pages of stuff just for the small joy of arguing about the changing nature of words and the slightly greater (but still small) joy of arguing in favor of the validity of new cultural interpretations of certain phrases.
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quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: QUESTION: Mr. President, former Secretary of State Colin Powell says, "The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism." If a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and former secretary of state feels this way, don't you think that Americans and the rest of the world are beginning to wonder whether you're following a flawed strategy?
BUSH: If there's any comparison between the compassion and decency of the American people and the terrorist tactics of extremists, it's flawed logic.
It's just -- I simply can't accept that.
It's unacceptable to think that there's any kind of comparison between the behavior of the United States of America and the action of Islamic extremists who kill innocent women and children to achieve an objective.
I don't think he really answered the question. Putting that aside...
When the President of the United States says, from the podium, that something is unacceptable, I would argue that a common understanding suggests he presumes to speak for more than himself. For the American people, or a majority of them, if not for some abstract notion of western democratic nations or civilization as a whole.
There's also a certain tilt of language that's used to imply more than "it is reasonable to believe that" or "it is commonly believed that", but rather "it is immoral that you would consider this" or "it is foolish to consider this"... To head off reason with appeals to the herd mentality that fears ostracization more than irrationality.
It's a lousy trick, but it happens a lot.
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quote:but Dag is clearly not willing to do that with me.
You are the one who refused to discuss it. You accused me of engaging in "is too/is not" when I had posted lengthy explanations, and you had simply said, "That's not how it's used."
Please don't try to pretend that you were interested in discussing the issue you actually posted about, nor that you treated me with anything approaching respect with "is too/is not."
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quote:I never said they weren't personal attacks. When you say, for example, that you doubt someone's intellectual integrity, that's a personal attack.
My clear impression, from numerous discussions, is that you consider statements fair game in a debate about ideas. You certainly make statements such as that time and time again.
quote:You think I made personal attacks on OSC, but, because you claim that I said they weren't personal attacks, then you making similar on me aren't personal attacks? Even if I did argue as you say I did, that doesn't change the fact that you considered what I said to be personal attacks and therefore, logically...you weigh the same as a duck.
No. When someone has made it clear that they consider statements acceptable that I would otherwise consider to be discourteous, and that they are not shy about making them, I will use statements of that kind when engaged in debate with that person. When that person insists that the statements are about the ideas and not the targeted individual, I will use that definition in debate with that person, because that person will not consider such things discourteous.
You are, of course, also being wildly inconsistent here. You now claim that those were personal attacks you made on OSC. This seems to suggest that you think such things are acceptable in discussions on the board. So now why do you use that as an excuse to end the conversation?
After unsuccessfully "ending" the conversation on the previous page with a mischaracterization of the prior conversation?
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quote:"I think that you are an idiot" is more often used to mean "I hold the opinion that you are an idiot" than "a thought is present in my mind that you are an idiot."
Wouldn't the thought that the other guy is an idiot HAVE to be present in his mind in order for him to hold the opinion that the other guy is an idiot? Where is the distinction? What is the difference?
Having that thought in your head is necessary for holding that belief, but not sufficient.
For example, I just thought/imagined the idea that Mother Teresa was really Hitler with sex change. While I did think of if, I never really thought that.
"Thought that", of course, being synonymous with "believed that" in that sentence. Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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*pats seat next to her* You can be in my clique, Squicky. Matt likes you.
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Well, that didn't get a response. I was wondering about the clique comment, though. It can't be because of identical views - I think Dag and Icky are on opposite sides all the time. I wonder if it's because of the sake forum? Maybe I've missed the secret Hatrack thread. I don't know - I was just wondering where that came from.
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