Four More Years of Nobama.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Originally Posted by Premmy

I don't think saying Britain's empire was terrible necessarily equates to praise for anybody in particular.

Counterpoint:

Originally Posted by Aerozord

England is such a lovely nation isn't it? So much history

/Break/

Originally Posted by POS Industries

I think the major qualifier here is "single largest," in which case no single act of terrorism (not counting actual full-scale military engagements) by the American revolutionaries comes close to a 3k kill count.

The whole statement was pretty clear and concise, dude.

Originally Posted by Magus

Terrorism is using acts of violence against civilian targets in order to get them to do what you want, though. I'm sure there were terroristic acts on both sides in both the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 but defining the entire rebellion as a terrorist act is bogus unless you have the broadest definition of terrorism as possible. You could argue any act of war is terrorism but that would be an incredibly nebulous definition that reduces the word "terrorism" to pointlessness.

Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, often violent, especially as a means of coercion.
That pretty much defines the revolutionary war. Like sure there is no single acrt which is comparable but I have no real problem with putting the entire war as a single act as it was a coordinated campaign.
If Al-Qaeda wants to blow up some more buildings I can add that to their scorecard as well, I am equal opportunities here.

[Premmy]

Originally Posted by Professor Smarmiarty

Counterpoint:

No it isn't.

As someone who's primary personality trait is disagreeing with everything, you should be able to grasp the idea of disliking two things equally and only mentioning one at a given moment.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Aerozord was countering my placement of the American revolution as a terrorist act with the British colonial record (even though this wasn't my point) despite the fact that the founding fathers were, even by contemporary standards, outrageous bigots, a bunch of opportunistic chancers and far worse than their British counterparts.
So, exactly what I was complaining about then.

[Magus]

"Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, often violent, especially as a means of coercion.
That pretty much defines the revolutionary war." That pretty much defines every war. So you're going to have to be a little more specific.

I mean you basically have the Filipino genocide as an example of an American war full of terroristic acts but you pick on the American Revolution?

[Premmy]

Originally Posted by Professor Smarmiarty

Aerozord was countering my placement of the American revolution as a terrorist act with the British colonial record (even though this wasn't my point) despite the fact that the founding fathers were, even by contemporary standards, outrageous bigots, a bunch of opportunistic chancers and far worse than their British counterparts.
So, exactly what I was complaining about then.

The comment your quip was in response to was about the "single largest act", I'm pretty much okay with framing the revolutionary war as "terrorism" since it passes the duck test re: terrorism, But representing an entire war as a "single act" is just stupid: "multiple acts of terrorism" sure, a " Campaign of Terrorism" sure. A single act? Now that's just more Smarty bullshit in the interest of constantly putting America(or whatever everyone in the room is currently talking about) at the bottom of the "most horrible" list(as if the country doesn't do that all by itself).

Which is what Aero was actually talking about. You don't complain, you bitch and Aero was complaining about your bitching.
edit: and a single line insulting Britain is STILL not a counterpoint to my point

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Originally Posted by Magus

"Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, often violent, especially as a means of coercion.
That pretty much defines the revolutionary war." That pretty much defines every war. So you're going to have to be a little more specific.

I mean you basically have the Filipino genocide as an example of an American war full of terroristic acts but you pick on the American Revolution?

That was in the Phillipines. Thus it didn't count.
And is a bad example of what I was saying because most people will denounce that war nowadays. Same with most of the other examples of American terrorism.
I wanted the example that the most people today would agree with as an act to show that terrorism is not actually a bad thing and so I went straight for the doozy.


[QUOTE=Premmy;1216074]The comment your quip was in response to was about the "single largest act", I'm pretty much okay with framing the revolutionary war as "terrorism" since it passes the duck test re: terrorism, But representing an entire war as a "single act" is just stupid: "multiple acts of terrorism" sure, a " Campaign of Terrorism" sure. A single act?

As a counterpoint to your point go read like every history of colonialism wreitten between say 1940 and 1970. Or any comment section on something vaguely about colonialism about the internet. If you haven't seen people use british colonial history as a stick to surpress arguments you simply haven't read anything on colonialism. Or like racism, sexism, any of these things- this is like internet arguing 101. Aero did it in this very thread and how is that not a counterpoint? His entire post was "britain are bad thus your point is invalid". And its annoying because it shuts down debate and argument and hurts knowledge. It was like the other day when we were talking about Kant and everybody is like "Kant was a fuck" over and over- which yes he was but where does that get us, how does that help us? You're just blindly repeating what everybody knows over and over again which prevents more clinical, reasoned arguments and evaluations. Or the popular trend of attacking say christianity using the most extreme representations of it in say intelligent design. And I agree that christianity is history's greatest monster by doing that you prevent yourself from harnessing the radical potential at its core, from the extremely powerful arguments of say Bloch and Milibank because you are just using your correct but limited view of "Fuck everything christainity".

The whole act/multiple acts is semantics, you could go either way and who really gives a shit (and you accuse me of bitching). But to me the revolutionary war was a campaign of coordinated terror- how is that not a single act? Is there usch a thing as a "war" or should we just consider them a series of battles which happen to involve the same side.

Now that's just more Smarty bullshit in the interest of constantly putting America(or whatever everyone in the room is currently talking about) at the bottom of the "most horrible" list(as if the country doesn't do that all by itself).

Which is what Aero was actually talking about. You don't complain, you bitch and Aero was complaining about your bitching.
edit: and a single line insulting Britain is STILL not a counterpoint to my point

Maybe if you guys didn't throw around so much reactionary bullshit I wouldn't have to bitch you out on it so much. This is classic "Why don't you stop complaining about my bigotry".
Also 99% of my posts are jokes- I'm not really sure how that is bitching or a concerted campaign to attack what ever everyone is talking about. I only bitch in the 1% where you guys bitch about my jokes because they remind you of how much you desperately hate the poor/minorities/women/yourself (delete as appropriate)



TLDR VERSION: Man dudes, I was just making a comment on the use of words and how their meanings are being subverted by the media/culture that we live in and we should reclaim them. I wrote it in like 10 seconds and I don't see the point of a massive exegesis of it.
My entire point was "terrorism can be bad/sweet, it is entirely neutral depending on what side of the cause you are on and we should not fall into the trap of putting bad dudes as "terrorists" and good dudes as "not terrorists"". And like if anyone wants to have issue with that they should, having an argument about where the line should be drawn between an act or multiple acts or a campaign is just ridiculoussssss.

[Magus]

Well I was just arguing with your definition of terrorism, if you want to take it down to the war's individual elements then that is fine. I'm just saying there's a difference between a battle maneuver and an act of terrorism. Attacking a group of enemy soldiers is a battle maneuver, tarring and feathering one or two captured ones in the public square is an act of terrorism.

Like let's look at an entirely separate era and geographical location--Vlad the Impaler killing 20,000 Turkish soldiers is a battle maneuver. Vlad the Impaler impaling 20,000 Turkish soldiers on pikes and leaving them for the reinforcement army to see is an act of terrorism (especially since it's rumored he couldn't actually find 20,000 Turkish soldiers and so went ahead and impaled quite a few villagers as well).

[POS Industries]

My favorite part is where Smarty keeps ignoring what I actually said to continue derailing the topic in the way he wants.

The point wasn't about the definition of terrorism as positive or negative, the point was that 9/11 was the single largest instance of whatever you want to call it on American soil. You can infer this from the fact that it was what I said in no uncertain terms, except that I guess Smarty really wants to have an argument about the relative morality of revolutionary tactics and how they're defined in the public, which is nice and all but doesn't have a thing to do with the actual topic of this thread.

And since the thread's intended topic has been so successfully derailed by Smarty's efforts to do so, I will be closing it and we will be putting it under further disciplinary review.