Whether Gumbercules is what some people think he is or not (I don't know yet, maybe he is), just by reacting to him the way they did and more or less ordering me to ban him (I might in the future, who knows), they lost. This really is not a smart way to handle a troll, whether he is one or not.
Why not engage with him first, instead of projecting all kinds of stuff onto him and go berserk right away? You can always go berserk at some later point. Now it's all about how people have reacted to Gumbercules, instead of his opinions on Trump. He can just ignore everything now and continue to whine about how people treat him here.
But I'd like to know whether he truly believes that Trump will make things better for the majority of the American people? Is Trump really fighting the establishment, or is he part of it? Has he drained the swamp, or extended it? And in light of all of this, is he the right president to deal with the risks of AGW, which are very serious?
I am probably a troll to some extent. I mean, I do seek out debate. But that's not necessarily trolling. I think it's because even when I see someone who holds a view I do, I may still see their justification for doing so isn't logical and feel the need to point that out. Or there may be some reason their view could be valid while one of the arguments they dismiss on the other side is valid, even though I may still feel it insufficient to justify a change of view. So I'm as concerned about good and bad arguments as I am about true and false views. Obviously I want to have true views, but they aren't any good the justification for all of them is irrational.
Maybe more to the point, a quote from my favorite intellectual:
"It’s always worth establishing first principles. It’s always worth saying, what would you do if you met a Flat Earth Society member? Come to think of it, how can I prove the earth is round? Am I sure about the theory of evolution? I know it’s supposed to be true. Here’s someone who says there’s no such thing, it’s all intelligent design. How sure am I of my own views? Don’t take refuge in the false security of consensus, and the feeling that whatever you think you’re bound to be okay, because you’re in the safely moral majority."
I see a lot of forums, like reddit, and in many of these places like the politics sub on reddit, everyone just agrees with each other. So when they talk about Trump, it's all about how he's horrible, literally in every way, and if someone dares speak up and say, you know, I don't like him, but about this one tiny thing, he's not wrong, people just go nuts and pile on. Anyone that dares to question the local dogma gets shredded, and no one deals with their arguments, regardless of how civilly they are presented. It's like people WANT to exist in a laboratory quality echo chamber. I truly do not understand that inclination. I mean, I used to argue with creationists because I was an evangelical Christian, and about the time I left that religion for no religion I had LONG arguments with the Christians that I knew in real life (through our yahoo group) and I actually ENJOYED explaining all the interesting details within biology that make it nearly certain that humans and other animals share a common ancestor. And I enjoy astronomy, so I also enjoyed talking about all the reasons the universe HAS to be old. I didn't just call them stupid and say everyone knows the universe is 13.7 billion years old and you'd have to be an idiot to think otherwise. The result is that they actually had some good questions (and some kind of dumb ones), and I think a lot of them actually saw that there was very good reason for me to think what I thought and as a result they are more comfortable themselves with accepting these ideas than they otherwise would be.
More about trolling. I came to this forum because Guy McPhereson got me interested in the subject. I saw something about near term human extinction on youtube, and it was interesting. I can't evaluate his claims quantitatively, but qualitatively they made sense. I am interested in a BOE, even if it's as bad as Guy says, it's interesting. Just like nukes are interesting. Devastating, but still, if a nuke goes off, or a tornado hits, it's still fascinating to watch. So mostly I monitor two threads, the current melt season thread, and the other similar one with all the data and graphs.
I don't want to give advice to people who will vote for people who go heavy on identity politics, anti-capitalism, free everything for everyone. Those things and immigration is why I voted for Trump. I don't like the turn towards totalitarianism on the left, and that is what it is. It's all about identity politics. Suppressing speech in real life and on the internet, calling everything racist, sexist, lying about police killings, lying about the wage gap, and all around attempting to destabilize and overturn civil society and create a socialist utopia. Why this concerns me is best summed up in this video:
There are lots of people who voted for him for those exact reasons, and don't like being called racist, deplorable, irredeemable (without justification by the way) by people who continually bash the very country they both call home, and half the people who live there. Most of them aren't dumb enough to think Trump is going to make their lives great or greater (that's our own responsibility). Again, I don't want to give advice, but the behavior of people here only breeds more Trump supporters, because those people will still dislike Trump, but they see the danger of what the left is becoming as talked about in that video. Anyone on the fence, if they read the last few pages of this thread will likely see those who condemned most aggressively and find them to be irrational and hysterical and unwilling to even talk to people with whom they disagree. Most people are civil and reject such behavior and recognize the evil that can so easily come about if those who think dissidents shouldn't be allowed to speak get real power.