Split Is Fetterman's aphasia relevant to his being a Senator?

[Patooka]

Back ten thousand posts ago, I challenged a ridiculous assertion from blastula that Fetterman's speech processing disorder was 'irrelevant' to his role in the Senate.

I challenged it because it was ridiculous,

And I pointed out slightly less than ten thousand posts ago (honestly, I'm with you feeling it was that long) that's a very ignorant take. For example, one senator walked in with a snowball proudly proclaiming that as definitive proof global warming doesn't exist. Another thought his time speaking could be best spent reading Green Eggs and Ham. Those two are still senators today. There is a very low bar for idiotic speech in the senate. Fetterman's going to be fine.

And that's not even taking into consideration people who were running for senate this midterm who are less coherent than Fetterman.

 

[Toni]

Fetterman has cleared every hurdle (constitutional and legal) to serve as a Senator (including the most important one of course, being elected). I don't have a 'problem' with duly-elected politicians serving office.

So your problem isn't his aphasia, or his "cognitive deficit" at all.

You're just mad he beat Dr. Oz. Oh, I'm sorry, I should turn that into a question so you won't accuse me of putting words into your mouth and will yet still refuse to provide a simple answer, thus dragging on the thread.

Are you just mad he beat Dr. Oz?

No.

So what is your issue? Why are we even talking about this?

I don't know why you 'jumped in'.

Back ten thousand posts ago, I challenged a ridiculous assertion from blastula that Fetterman's speech processing disorder was 'irrelevant' to his role in the Senate.

I challenged it because it was ridiculous, and my internal mental process was something like "I wonder if anyone will challenge this ridiculous statement, or will they just let it ride because Fetterman is in their ideological camp? I think I'll challenge it. It seems like low hanging fruit and something that nobody could seriously defend".

Evidently, I misjudged what people will defend when partisanship motivates them.

It is indeed amazing.

 

[Metaphor]

If it's just simple partisanship, then that's okay. If it has something to do with his disability, then that's not okay.

If I were eligible to vote in the PA Senate, and, in deciding between Fetterman and Oz, Fetterman's speech processing deficit was one of the things that influenced my calculus, why would that be 'not okay'? What does 'not okay' mean to you? Be specific.

For the same reason that him being in a wheelchair influencing your "calculus" is not okay.

You have not explained what 'not okay' means.

Or someone being hearing impaired. You have a problem with him because he's got an (apparently temporary) disability.

I'm thinking of a couple people I know that you would probably write off. One reminds me very much of Fetterman. A big, intimidating guy with a bald head, a goatee, and tats up and down his arms. My friend has - due to a medial issue - a problem verbally communicating. It ended his career in crisis management, where he spent decades literally talking people off the edge. He is a very intelligent, absurdly caring man who will drop everything to help a stranger. He just has a "speech processing deficit" as the words come out of his mouth.

The other one is a co-worker. James is autistic. He has some physical and social quirks that can be jarring at first, but he's brilliant, and for the job we do his "disability" is actually an advantage. It is very technical work, and James catches things the rest of us would miss.

Specifically, you dismiss Fetterman out of hand because he is recovering from a stroke.

Ford, does it come effortlessly to you to be this dishonest, or did you take lessons?

When did I dismiss Fetterman "out of hand"? Where in my extremely carefully worded "if his speech processing deficit influenced my calculus" do you get "dismissed out of hand"?

Do you have any idea what it is like to be relentlessly accused of things you did not say and do not believe no matter what you say?

The earlier accusation of you being "ableist" is pinpoint accurate. You've written him off because "welp, he's had a stroke, he's brain damaged." You keep saying it doesn't disqualify him, but it is painfully obvious you think it does.

You are bigoted against the disabled. Full stop.

Goodbye Ford. I cannot continue with you today. I don't feel like being permabanned.

 

[Metaphor]

Back ten thousand posts ago, I challenged a ridiculous assertion from blastula that Fetterman's speech processing disorder was 'irrelevant' to his role in the Senate.

I challenged it because it was ridiculous,

And I pointed out slightly less than ten thousand posts ago (honestly, I'm with you feeling it was that long) that's a very ignorant take.

There's nothing ignorant about it.

Pointing out people who you consider to be worse at X who are already in the Senate does not make having a deficit in X 'irrelevant'. It means you don't always hire the best people, no matter what recruitment method you use.

 

[Ford]

If it's just simple partisanship, then that's okay. If it has something to do with his disability, then that's not okay.

If I were eligible to vote in the PA Senate, and, in deciding between Fetterman and Oz, Fetterman's speech processing deficit was one of the things that influenced my calculus, why would that be 'not okay'? What does 'not okay' mean to you? Be specific.

For the same reason that him being in a wheelchair influencing your "calculus" is not okay.

You have not explained what 'not okay' means.

Or someone being hearing impaired. You have a problem with him because he's got an (apparently temporary) disability.

I'm thinking of a couple people I know that you would probably write off. One reminds me very much of Fetterman. A big, intimidating guy with a bald head, a goatee, and tats up and down his arms. My friend has - due to a medial issue - a problem verbally communicating. It ended his career in crisis management, where he spent decades literally talking people off the edge. He is a very intelligent, absurdly caring man who will drop everything to help a stranger. He just has a "speech processing deficit" as the words come out of his mouth.

The other one is a co-worker. James is autistic. He has some physical and social quirks that can be jarring at first, but he's brilliant, and for the job we do his "disability" is actually an advantage. It is very technical work, and James catches things the rest of us would miss.

Specifically, you dismiss Fetterman out of hand because he is recovering from a stroke.

Ford, does it come effortlessly to you to be this dishonest, or did you take lessons?

When did I dismiss Fetterman "out of hand"? Where in my extremely carefully worded "if his speech processing deficit influenced my calculus" do you get "dismissed out of hand"?

Do you have any idea what it is like to be relentlessly accused of things you did not say and do not believe no matter what you say?

The earlier accusation of you being "ableist" is pinpoint accurate. You've written him off because "welp, he's had a stroke, he's brain damaged." You keep saying it doesn't disqualify him, but it is painfully obvious you think it does.

You are bigoted against the disabled. Full stop.

Goodbye Ford. I cannot continue with you today. I don't feel like being permabanned.

This video is what I feel like I've been dealing with in this thread:

 

[Swammerdami]

I apologize to one and all for the "Should disqualify" in thread title. Ambiguous, and not, apparently, the claim under review. I gave little thought to thread title, partly because my initial idea was to move this split to Elsewhere and/or Lock it.

I kept the thread in part as a paragon or exemplar of what some of these "debates" devolve into. This one began with Metaphor objecting to

Would have been too dispiriting if he lost over a disability irrelevant to the job.

Is the disability COMPLETELY irrelevant to the job? No, of course not. Lots of things aren't COMPLETELY irrelevant to a legislator's job — , being rich, being poor, biting fingernails, not to mention dating 17-year old girls, thinking a snowball refutes global warming, inciting sedition, or swallowing "Jewish space laser" crackpottery.

Almost every single post on this Board contains a sentence which is not 100% COMPLETELY correct. Jokes and obvious hyperbole should be ignored of course, but I'm not alone in ignoring about 99% of the false statements I read here or anywhere. Life is short.

Metaphor felt that the word "irrelevant" was wrong and pointed that out. Fine. I don't blame him.

And then it went on and on and on. And On and On and On. There were 135 posts in the Fetterman derail when I did the Split. The nesting was horrifically deep.

Do you have any idea what it is like to be relentlessly accused of things you did not say and do not believe no matter what you say?

Fine. Evidently you think Fetterman's condition will soon abate and that anyway it will have no effect on his performance. Your initial intervention was ONLY to help educate a fellow Infidel on the fine-grained nuances of the word "irrelevant."

You have no opinion on Dr. Oz's qualifications, or Herschel Walker's, or any of the other UNqualified candidates, but needed to expound on the word "irrelevant."

Can you imagine how this seems to people who are using the thread to discuss the elections? One post wasn't enough for you. You devoted hours to defend some picayune glott and now tell us that "you did not say and do not believe" anything about Fetterman's qualifications.

You ask "Do you have any idea what it is like ...?" Do YOU have any idea what it is like to engage in "discussion" with YOU?

 

[Metaphor]

Do you have any idea what it is like to be relentlessly accused of things you did not say and do not believe no matter what you say?

Fine. Evidently you think Fetterman's condition will soon abate and that anyway it will have no effect on his performance.

No. I did not say that and have no beliefs either way about how long it will take to abate.

Your initial intervention was ONLY to help educate a fellow Infidel on the fine-grained nuances of the word "irrelevant."

No, it was to call out what I thought was an obvious falsehood that nobody else called out because the board is an echo chamber.

You have no opinion on Dr. Oz's qualifications, or Herschel Walker's, or any of the other UNqualified candidates, but needed to expound on the word "irrelevant."

I don't even know the fuck what a Herschel Walker is, and I barely know about Dr Oz as somebody who got his start with Oprah.

Can you imagine how this seems to people who are using the thread to discuss the elections?

I imagine the people who attacked me and continually refused to get the point thought that every time I defended myself from falsehoods was more evidence they were right.

One post wasn't enough for you.

It would have been enough if the people who attacked me for correcting a blatantly obvious falsehood took the loss.

You devoted hours to defend some picayune glott and now tell us that "you did not say and do not believe" anything about Fetterman's qualifications.

"Anything" about them? When did I say I didn't believe "anything" about Fetterman's "qualifications"?

You ask "Do you have any idea what it is like ...?" Do YOU have any idea what it is like to engage in "discussion" with YOU?

So, are you going to answer my question, or is it simply enough for you to make a post attacking me, and directing further falsehoods against me?

 

[ZiprHead]

You ask "Do you have any idea what it is like ...?" Do YOU have any idea what it is like to engage in "discussion" with YOU?

Can you imagine if Metaphor engaged in duscussion IRL like this?

 

[Metaphor]

You ask "Do you have any idea what it is like ...?" Do YOU have any idea what it is like to engage in "discussion" with YOU?

Can you imagine if Metaphor engaged in duscussion IRL like this?

Oddly, I never seem to be dogpiled for pointing out obvious falsehoods in real life.

 

[steve_bank]

Sounds like a derail to Up In Flames.

 

[ZiprHead]

You ask "Do you have any idea what it is like ...?" Do YOU have any idea what it is like to engage in "discussion" with YOU?

Can you imagine if Metaphor engaged in duscussion IRL like this?

Oddly, I never seem to be dogpiled for pointing out obvious falsehoods in real life.

You probably don't do it like you do it here. You'd probably get beaten up quite regularly if you did so.

 

[Metaphor]

You ask "Do you have any idea what it is like ...?" Do YOU have any idea what it is like to engage in "discussion" with YOU?

Can you imagine if Metaphor engaged in duscussion IRL like this?

Oddly, I never seem to be dogpiled for pointing out obvious falsehoods in real life.

You probably don't do it like you do it here. You'd probably get beaten up quite regularly if you did so.

That you think people would resort to physical violence when talking to me tells me much about you.

The last time I was assaulted it was by a meth addict on the bus who thought I was looking at him the wrong way. And I hadn't even said a word!

 

[ZiprHead]

You ask "Do you have any idea what it is like ...?" Do YOU have any idea what it is like to engage in "discussion" with YOU?

Can you imagine if Metaphor engaged in duscussion IRL like this?

Oddly, I never seem to be dogpiled for pointing out obvious falsehoods in real life.

You probably don't do it like you do it here. You'd probably get beaten up quite regularly if you did so.

That you think people would resort to physical violence when talking to me tells me much about you.

The last time I was assaulted it was by a meth addict on the bus who thought I was looking at him the wrong way. And I hadn't even said a word!

I imagine how your argument style would go down in a bar. I would think by the third "Sure, Jan." the fisticuffs would start flying.

 

[Metaphor]

You ask "Do you have any idea what it is like ...?" Do YOU have any idea what it is like to engage in "discussion" with YOU?

Can you imagine if Metaphor engaged in duscussion IRL like this?

Oddly, I never seem to be dogpiled for pointing out obvious falsehoods in real life.

You probably don't do it like you do it here. You'd probably get beaten up quite regularly if you did so.

That you think people would resort to physical violence when talking to me tells me much about you.

The last time I was assaulted it was by a meth addict on the bus who thought I was looking at him the wrong way. And I hadn't even said a word!

I imagine how your argument style would go down in a bar. I would think by the third "Sure, Jan." the fisticuffs would start flying.

ZiprHead, your daydream/fantasy about me getting physically assaulted has been noted. I get it.

 

[ZiprHead]

You ask "Do you have any idea what it is like ...?" Do YOU have any idea what it is like to engage in "discussion" with YOU?

Can you imagine if Metaphor engaged in duscussion IRL like this?

Oddly, I never seem to be dogpiled for pointing out obvious falsehoods in real life.

You probably don't do it like you do it here. You'd probably get beaten up quite regularly if you did so.

That you think people would resort to physical violence when talking to me tells me much about you.

The last time I was assaulted it was by a meth addict on the bus who thought I was looking at him the wrong way. And I hadn't even said a word!

I imagine how your argument style would go down in a bar. I would think by the third "Sure, Jan." the fisticuffs would start flying.

ZiprHead, your daydream/fantasy about me getting physically assaulted has been noted. I get it.

I highly doubt it.

 

[Swammerdami]

Some general remarks. I am not talking about any particular poster except myself.

People who post on message boards, especially a board where much of the discussion is argument, are different, on average, from the general population. For starters, most score as INTJ on an MBTI questionaire, a type which is rarish in the general population.

Written communication has a different character, both for writer and for reader, than spoken language. Added to this is the policy of leaving long strings of nested quotes. What might seem to be a witty single-sentence riposte to someone else's sentence gets a somberer, more tedious look when presented after the long quote nesting. This is true even when the reader skips over the quote stream.

Speaking only for myself, I have had trouble in my life with social interactions. I'm much better now than when young, but I'm still too thin-skinned. I had to leave the interesting "Christ Myth Theory" thread because I felt like I was being insulted, despite that fellow Infidels had no intention to insult me.

I am one of the worst offenders here. I often repeatedly tease or insult Infidels who disagree with me. Consider this a confession, and a hope that I will improve a little.

Let's all try to get along better. It is not necessary that every rejoinder be surrejoindered.

 

[Ford]

Let's all try to get along better. It is not necessary that every rejoinder be surrejoindered.

To quote Samuel L. Jackson's character at the end of Pulp Fiction:

"I'm tryin'. I'm tryin' real hard, Ringo."

As I said way up the thread, this whole split could have been shut down by Metaphor saying something akin to "whoa...no. I'm not at all saying Fetterman is disqualified or unable or impaired or anything. Jeez...that would be terrible of me to say, and I didn't. Nothing to see here. Move along."

That's not what happened.

Instead it was an endless stream of "he's got a cognitive defect! His brain is dysfunctional! Doesn't that bother you? I'm not saying he's not qualified! I'm just saying he's got serious brain damage! Can he speak? Can he even think? Why are you attacking me? I'm just saying he's not able to understand speech! Can he do his job? Of course he can! Except he can't! He needs to make speeches on the floor or what is he there for? Of course he's not disqualified! He's just brain damaged and we should all think about that! Why are you all piling up on me?!"

 

[Patooka]

Metaphor, this is someone who apparently has not had a stroke who is still running for senate. This is the fucking standard:



If anything, Fetterman is overqualified for senator. He'll do just fine,

 

[Metaphor]

Metaphor, this is someone who apparently has not had a stroke who is still running for senate. This is the fucking standard:



If anything, Fetterman is overqualified for senator. He'll do just fine,

I did not choose this thread title. I did not say Fetterman was 'not qualified' to be a Senator. The only thing Fetterman or any Senator has to do to be 'qualified' is be eligible to serve, and then get elected.

I've been on this board for years and still I did not predict the cacophony of hysterical, obstreperous belligerency that would arise from suggesting that understanding the speech of others is not an irrelevant skill for a Senator, culminating in Ford's work of fiction in post #177.

 

[Jarhyn]

I did not choose this thread title

Then request it be changed. It's your post at the root of it, it's in your power to demand proper characterization of your views.

Quit pretending that it's hopeless despite the fact that you've tried nothing to actually solve what seems a problem.

The fact is, you have spent the whole thread trying to cast doubt and muddy waters and weave public opinion against someone for whom there is no real barrier to them understanding things sharply, on the basis that the path that is required to reach that understanding is not the same path that avails most.