Virtue-Signal To Virtue-Noise Level = 0

Ryan Winkler takes a strong moral stand:

About time Ryan Winkler took a strong, courageous stand against corporate prisons…

…of which there are zero in Minnesota.

Remember when I said DFLers can count on the fact that DFL voters are overwhelmingly badly-informed and lousy at critical thought?

Any questions?

.

90 thoughts on “Virtue-Signal To Virtue-Noise Level = 0

  1. What is it you are confused about Mitch? About what a ‘debate me guy’ is? I think that’s so succinct as to be intuitive.

  2. OT-ish:
    I love Joe’s post about math and showing your work, but I have to disagree (slightly, maybe).

    I have explained to my children multiple times over the years, they are not doing math homework to find the answers to the homework problems. That is just a quick way for teachers to check and correct homework problems. You are displaying expertise, and that is what “showing your work” is all about.

    A good answer will outline how the answer was formed. A great answer will guide you through the steps of solving this particular problem. An excellent answer will guide you through the process of solving similar problems (as well as this one). Rarely do worksheets give you enough space to do so legibly, but working from a book on your own paper will. So, on the test, you show the teacher you are an expert in the processes required to solve this problem.

    And in doing so add this block to your own pyramid of mathematical knowledge. And try not to forget it. At least that’s how I think of it.

  3. What is it you are confused about Mitch? Stand back while I spam your blog with more inchoate, incomprehensible twaddle. I have my random BS generator set to 11, and my friend Emery will show up shortly to back me up. Emery understands 10 dialects of Ebonics with no accent…he’s smart like me.

  4. What is it you are confused about Mitch?

    Not “confused” about anything, Just trying to figure out what your point is.

    About what a ‘debate me guy’ is?

    Nah, that’s just some term you made up, presumably to make some ironic claim about me not “debating”. Getting warm?

    I think that’s so succinct as to be intuitive.

    If that’s the case, then my questions are perfectly clear as well.

    Have at ’em, if you please.

  5. https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/debate-me-dudes-ben-shapiro-ocasio-cortez

    https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/may/03/death-of-debate-jordan-peterson-slavoj-zizek-alexandria-ocasio-cortez

    https://medium.com/breakthrough/the-hollowness-of-right-wing-debate-me-culture-c05c264ca9f7

    You ask Merg, what on earth does that mean?02 year act as a conservative debate me guy in the parts trying to prove conservatives are intellectuals

    So Mitch, it’s as I said.  If you think me being here with a little bit of energy is a guy doing a flex for sake of his own intellectual self regard, you really oughta consider yourself.  Because you’ve been a debate me guy almost full time for 20 years.

    OR…..  you can give us an answer where neither you or I are a debate me guy, and say we’ve both got higher purposes for our interest in rhetoric… IDGAF.

  6. jfc, are you are the insane Prof. Kreapy, Fapliar? It answers a lot of questions, but we all thought you were dead.

    Tell us, are you still the local NAMBLA chapter President, or have you found succor in your imaginary friends?

    tia Fapliar!

  7. John, I’ve been reading your “debate me” posts and I confess, I don’t understand the reasoning behind them. I’ve laid out the steps of your reasoning as I see them:

    Eric Swalwell favors certain types of gun control.
    The National Rifle Association opposes those types of gun control.
    Eric Swalwell wants to debate those types of gun control but only if he gets to choose the National Rifle Association’s representative.
    Mitch Berg is a Second Amendment advocate who also opposes those types of gun control.
    Mitch Berg offers to stand in for the National Rifle Association debating Eric Swalwell on certain types of gun control.
    An offer to debate Eric Swalwell on gun control makes Mitch Berg a “debate me” guy who cannot refuse to debate anybody about anything. [?]
    John Kraphammer can post anything he wants on Mitch Berg’s blog, because Mitch Berg is a “debate me” guy who must take on all comers on all topics. [?]

    I’m having trouble understanding how you reached the conclusions on the last two steps. Could you explain your reasoning for those steps more fully, please?

  8. Wait….how old are your imaginary friends, Fapliar? You got kids in your degenerate fantisies?

    jfc…

  9. Clip here:

    Mitch made a category error in a sloppy, lazy shitpost that he made because he’s a Drew Lee and Rob Doar fan boy.

    Again – what on earth is that supposed to mean?

    end clip.

    Mitch, what I mean is the content of your post is entirely drawn from Drew Lee doing a quote tweet of a Winkler tweet, and Rob Doar doing a reply saying “there’s not even private prisons in Minnesota”

    https://twitter.com/AndrewLeeTCNT/status/1359997244351668228
    https://twitter.com/robdoar/status/1360004251834085379

    AND… Rob Doar says “Another hot-button non-issue for the virtue signal caucus.”

    So first, the whole thing is a reflection of very little labor on your part. Which is to say its “lazy”. Which it is. You thought it was a layup piece of content, took ya 2-3 minutes. And no question, a guy with blog needs that. Fine. But on a scale of the best work you’ve done over 20 years, 1-10, this is a 1.

    Why is this something you package for a blog post because you’re lazy? Affinity. You’re a Drew Lee and Rob Doar fan boy. You trust their world view you react instinctively to their language. So you don’t question it.

    But as I say, it’s not a virtue signal.  It’s no less a hot button issue to progs as castle doctrine is to Rob Doar.  A virtue signal is a different neurological / sociological thing.

    If you want to get in the weeds that I used the idiom ‘shitpost’ incorrectly, I may concede that. But its a ‘shit post’, certainly.

    LMK if you need me to answer anything else Mitch.

  10. I’m not Tom. I was a reader of the blog when that happened, and had sympathetic instincts for you in that deal with him… That was probably misplaced.

  11. I mean the guy is a real eccentric, to be gentle. But I doubt he’s more mentally ill than you.

  12. I’ve always thought of SITD as Mitch’s blog. It is a labor of love, I assume, that Mitch spends hours on each week because he enjoys writing the posts and attracting readers.
    I do not believe that Mitch has any obligation to publish my comments or anyone else’s comments. It is like an editorial page. All you are getting is opinion, and the publisher. MBerg, can publish my comments or remove them.
    I like the anonymity because it allows people to peak their opinions freely, and that is more important than it has ever been in my lifetime.
    I certainly do not agree with everything Herr Doktor Professor Strunk writes, but the idea that I would insist he only be allowed to publish comments I find acceptable is ludicrous.
    So far JK has tried to dox a commenter and has tried to tell Mitch what comments he should and should not allow. Not a good start. It comes off as aggressively intolerant.

  13. I have not tried to dox anyone.  I asked, at a point, that “Joe” demonstrate the claim he is a lawyer is true cuz I didn’t think his analytical skills demonstrated it.  There’s a difference.

    The matter of Tom’s real identity is provable by old comments within the blog.  I have not had to do anything stalky to understand that.  For whatever assurances you dudes need, I’m never going to call you on the phone, drive by your house, all that shit, to the extent I would bother to try and figure it out….

  14. I think you’re lying again, Fapliar. I think you’re Prof. Kreapy sneaking back in here.

    You’ve got the same degenerate sexual appetites, the same delusions of grandeur, same presentation of mental illness.

    If you’re not Prof. Kreapy, no one could tell the difference between you two in a bag of assholes.

  15. , I’m never going to call you on the phone, drive by your house,

    Oh, really? Lmao! That’s rather disappointing.

  16. John, the reason your request that I prove my bona fides was ignored was because it looked like an attempt at doxxing me. Still does.

    Are you working as an attorney?
    Yes
    I don’t believe it. Prove it.
    How?
    Give me . . .

    Give you what, John? Law school name and class rank? Employer? Attorney registration number? Clients’ names (I wouldn’t give you those in any event, they’re privileged). Even if I gave the information to you, how could you trust it without further verification (I could claim my name is Ryan Winkler and I went to Harvard). You’d need verification of the information I gave you, and verification of the verification, and . . . ..

    I can think of no information I could provide which would simultaneously prove (a) I’m working in Minnesota as a licensed attorney and (b) would not doxx me.

    That’s why I declined to respond. Still do.

  17. ^ Yeah, and I accepted that answer. We haven’t talked about it since. I didn’t “try to dox you”.

  18. Lawyer Joe and MO, if it was a claim that you could take to court that I “tried to dox you”, you wouldn’t have a claim cuz I performed no actions in furtherance of “trying to dox you.”

    Which is to say, I didn’t “try to dox you”.

    You get that, right.

  19. OK, we’re getting somewhere.

    “Debate me guy” is, apparently, a term of jargon made by lefty pundits to try to mock and deride people who value discussions based on facts and logic – because if you can’t beat ’em, mock ’em. Right?

    “Debate me” is also a two-word string I’ve written on Twitter a time or two in the past (checks link) nine years.

    Mkay.

    You wanna call me a “debate me guy”, knock yourself out. It’s your (plural) term, not mine.

    I’m not, of course. Just a guy who enjoys this tiny little megaphone.

    Everything beyond that is…something else. Projection? Gaslighting?

    No idea.

  20. if it was a claim that you could take to court that I “tried to dox you”, you wouldn’t have a claim cuz I… I didn’t “try to dox you”.

    Right – you “can’t prove it in court“.

    True.

    But you were asking questions that were, to say the least, deeply misplaced in the comment section of a forum you don’t own.

    Legally “doxing?” Nah. As out of place as a pyramid of skulls at an Amy Grant concert? Absolutely.

  21. You left out a response to the observation it was a lazy, crap post.  I’ll take it that I’m right about that.

    Oh, your vibe is thoroughly “debate me” even if the amount of times you’ve explicitly reply guy’d “debate me” can only be counted on two hands over ten years.

    I think you’re using ‘gaslight’ wrong as well, but I don’t blame you there such that women have trafficked in this term a lot the last ten years and degraded it.

  22. Again Mitch, if you are terribly concerned about ‘deeply misplaced’ behavior within your comment threads, you might take a look at your buddy Tom insisting he’s a different man than he is so that he can do white supremacist commentary on news of the day with pseudo-anonymity.

    Gimme a fucking break man.

  23. You left out a response to the observation it was a lazy, crap post. I’ll take it that I’m right about that.

    It observed a certain economy of effort during a busy week.

    It was, however, correct in every particular that mattered. You’ve not come close to showing otherwise.

    Oh, your vibe is thoroughly “debate me” .

    Aaaah. My “Vibe.

    OK. So? I enjoy a good discussion.

    Care to provide one?

    i>I think you’re using ‘gaslight’ wrong as well

    Strawman? Projection? Logrolling?

    Again Mitch, if you are terribly concerned

    Yeah, I knew I’d regret using that term.

    You’ve wasted a lot of time. How’s that?

    Gimme a fucking break man.

    So let me try again.

    What IS it you’re looking for? Riff on Strunk? Call me a “debate me guy?” What is it you’re eating up all this bandwidth over?

    Try, try try try, to actually convey the thought, the whole thought and nothing but the thought.

  24. Actually, let me save you some time, JK, since God only knows you’ll never get to the point.

    I enjoy communicating ideas. Sometimes, that takes the form of a debate. I enjoy flexing the ol’ intellectual muscles. I can unfortunately count on one hand the number of MInnesota progressives / “liberals” / leftists who can go more than one round of factoids without slipping into strawmen, ad hominem, appeal to ridicule, bluster, threats, stalking and such – including the laughable deflection of pathologizing “the debate me guy”.

    Will you break that pattern? Well, you don’t appear to be quite as depraved as some who’ve preceded you, but you’re not exactly a workout, either.

    By the way – I get the impression you’ve been here before under another name. Go ahead, spill it.

  25. Oh, yeah – and back on topic:

    Winkler’s playing to the ignorant crowd – which is pretty much all he’s equipped to do, being pretty ignorant himself.

    With all your thrashing about, you’ve never addressed that, the actual point of this thread, other than flailing away at ancient history.

  26. A: The Earth is Flat and therefore we must raise taxes.
    B: No, it isn’t. The Earth isn’t flat.
    A: Yes, it is.
    B: No, it isn’t, and I can prove it. Debate me.
    A: You’re oppressing me. Hater. I’m blocking you.

    Seems to me the linked articles are all Flat Earthers trying to explain why they shouldn’t be asked to explain why they think the Earth is Flat and why that justifies raising taxes: because anybody who wants an explanation is a hater.

    That’s just deplatforming under a different name. It doesn’t seem like a good way to discover the truth of whether the Earth is actually Flat and whether taxes should be raised on account of it.

  27. Mitch, any man is mockable, for good reasons. I don’t exempt myself. You’re mockable, trust me. You as “debate me guy” isn’t terribly insulting. And its true. Take whatever you might get out of that, constructively.

    I haven’t posted here under another name.

    I think Winkler’s objection to private prisons is as solid a position as a person like him might have. The argument one would make to keep that function within the realm of the government is perfectly good, and even ‘conservative’ re its preference for public institutional control, maintenance, execution of that function. Its a neo-market fundamentalism that is radical and dystopic that seeks to move that into the realm of commerce. You should have the brainpower to understand that, because its a superior observation to “Winkler likes unions”, but you don’t as a matter of bias and affinity. And you never make a concession to the other side’s sincerely held logic as “debate me guy” in so much certitude of his wisdoms, so that’s that.

    I got to hit it.

  28. “Mitch made a category error in a sloppy, lazy shitpost that he made because he’s a Drew Lee and Rob Doar fan boy.”

    “But as I say, it’s not a virtue signal. It’s no less a hot button issue to progs as castle doctrine is to Rob Doar. A virtue signal is a different neurological / sociological thing.”

    I think I figured it out. John, when you said Mitch made a ‘category error,’ you meant Mitch assigned Ryan Winkler’s tweet to the wrong category: he assigned it to the category of ‘virtue signal’ when it should have been ‘sincerely held belief.’

    Am I right? Is that what you meant?

  29. And the reason you believe Ryan Winkler’s tweet belongs in the “sincerely held belief” category is because lots of Liberals believe private prisons are bad public policy since public safety is a state government responsibility. Got that, too.

    But Ryan Winkler made a point of including a shout-out to public employee unions in his tweet. His new legislation which will ban private employers from competing with those unions. And public employee unions have historically donated overwhelmingly to Democrats. So my question is: why did you conclude the legislation is a sincere concern for public safety and not a payoff to the unions covered with the fig leaf of concern for public safety?

  30. Now that’s an interesting question, Joe Doakes, because to know the answer for certain we would have to be mind readers.
    But since we can’t mind read, we can look at other data.
    The absence of any real world effect of his proposed legislation would indicate that it is moral posturing. OTOH, if he intended his support for HF 1074 is to cement a lucrative arrangement with public employee unions, that is something more than moral posturing, something more like typical politicking.
    People who are really concerned about the lives led by the incarcerated have a number of options. They can support prison ministries, prison reform, etc.
    Does Winkler have a history of being interested in the lives prisoners lead and the conditions of their imprisonment? If not it is reasonable to put his support for HF 1074 in the “moral posturing” column.

  31. Winkler and his fetid ilk have no more regard for prisoner lives than black lives, MO.

    Once a guy finally commits enough crimes not even a reprobate judge can cut him a deal…say, be within 10′ of a black counterfeiter as he dies of a drug overdose, well that guy can’t vote; so fuck em.

    =======

    Mitch, cool your jets. When Kreapy Fapliar wants you to be insulted, he’ll let you know. Right now, he’s just impressing us with his mad word salad skillz…so let him toss us a nice salad.

  32. Mitch, any man is mockable,

    Er, sure. Seems like a low bar to which to hold oneself, but let a thousand lights shine.

    its a superior observation to “Winkler likes unions”, but you don’t as a matter of bias and affinity.

    Or – you should “have the brainpower to understand” – the point of the post wasn’t to go through a detailed analysis of private prisons, with all the arguments on all sides, but to point out that Rep. WInkler is posturing about what is and will (because of executive branch politics fo the foreseeable future) be and remain a non-issue.

    He’s acting like a politician? Yep. Yay. We agree. I get to make of that what I will.

    And you never make a concession to the other side’s sincerely held logic as “debate me guy” in so much certitude of his wisdoms, so that’s that.

    I’ll meet you halfway. I do it, and not infrequently. I rarely get the occasion in this space, but it’s happened.

    It happens more frequently with people who don’t lead, or resort to, insults after one round of factoids gets flensed.

  33. You as “debate me guy” isn’t terribly insulting.

    I don’t care one way or the other.

    But I’d never heard the term as a “term”, and I and switched to ignoring it until you posted that link indicating that the phrase seems to be part of a move to mock and marginalize people who respond to emotion-based, manipulative arguments with fact, so as to devalue their approach.

    Given that, I’m thinking “insulting Mitch” is the least of the problems.

  34. When Kreapy Fapliar

    If this is Gleason ,he’s doing a great job of disguising his usual writing “Tells”.

    Not saying it can’t be done – but most of the habitual stalker types – Gleason, Weiner, a few of the others – have tics in their writing that gives ’em away.

    JK says he’s new-ish here. Maybe. He shares a few of Paddyboy’s tics, and a few from the long-banned “Doug”, but not enough where I think it’s the same people.

    Enh. Let a thousand flowers bloom.

  35. Feel free to correct me — but isn’t the cardinal rule of “shitposting” to commit to your bit. And not to lose your nerve. The world will catch up eventually. And if they don’t, well, it was fun while it lasted.

  36. Sure.

    This isn’t a shitpost.

    This is a Winklerpost.

    And I can’t think of more than 1-2 posts of the 17,000 I’ve written since 2006 that I am not committed to, fwiw.

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