You know, if you'd started your exchange with me in a civil tone, and had you attempted to communicate a reasoned viewpoint (such as you're doing now), instead of hurling a load of unwarranted vitriol at me, maybe I'd have half a mind to listen to you now.
Even now, you're expecting to win me over with reason, but you apparently don't have the basic social skills to observe or understand that you insulted me and every other decent person who's chosen to relocate out of California.
Little tip: unless you couldn't care less about convincing me of your argument, or if you're simply trying to assert your rightness, then backing up and offering a simple apology is the way to resume the conversation.
You started this by laying into me with outrageous ad hominems, when I hadn't directed a single word your way. Let's see if you're big enough admit that was over the line.
I won’t inject myself into this, but I do see in threads like this a common theme that denigrates people who don’t flee a state (too lazy, stupid, liberal to leave) coupled with a “last over the bridge” approach in the target state, basically saying “...don’t even think of coming to my state, because regardless of your political views, if you are from State A then you are damaged goods and you are going to ruin everything when you arrive...”
I live in the People’s Republic of Massachusetts, and apart from California which many people profess to want to see slide into the ocean, the state I live in is equally reviled by many, and for some good reasons.
I have often said, that if it weren’t for my wife (who won’t leave this state) that I would be long gone, but that is perhaps just a convenient excuse...the pain level is not so high that I would rationally do it.
Point is, there are a good number of conservatives up here. Heck, I probably know all of them...:) We all know a secret handshake and such. We get painted along with a lot of bad folks, and often unfairly. I used to do the same thing about California.
Talk about wearing my own faults on my back...:(
Liberals have destroyed the strength of the Constitution via unimpeded use of federal highway funds and other such goodies...the strength of allowing each state to govern as it sees fit, and provide alternatives for people. If you didn’t like a law in State A, you could migrate to State B because it had different approaches to a given law. That is far less common now, with the Federal government using those fund distributions to hammer down nails that are sticking up.
If (when) things go south, it is unlikely to be contained within state lines.
Your tone was not civil. It was condescending, arrogant, inconsiderate, and self-adsorbed. Nor is this some isolated incident with you. From what I can tell having searched your posting history, you've made over 1,000 posts touting how much California sucks, how smart you were to move to Texas, and how everybody else should too. In a great many of those cases, you are among the first to leap onto the subject. It's akin to leaving a losing football team on the field and to switch jerseys with minutes left in the game because "it's game over" and then, as the clock ticks down, running around through the stands shaking hands and telling the fans what a loser team you left. Over and over.
Yet before searching that posting history, I checked on something else, and what do you know but I found exactly what I had expected exactly where I suspected. You see, you had already admitted that my planned accusation of cowardice was true:
13 posted on Saturday, September 27, 2008 1:05:48 AM by Windflier (To anger a conservative, tell him a lie. To anger a liberal, tell him the truth.)
FReepers were warned that Arnold was a liberal. There were hundreds of posts to the thread and MANY references to it, and not just by me. NormsRevenge, countercounterculture, and especially calcowgirl all carried a fight to inform against implacable and probably paid professional disinformation artists. But you, like so many FReepers now banned, were so afraid, so blinded by fear of a Marxist Ls Raza activist, that in your panic you ignored readily available facts about the stealth socialist "alternative." You voted for a "safer" liberal out of fear, despite the fact that the specter of Bustamante was deliberately overblown by your own GOP.
Here are the facts:
"6. If the choice were between Cruz Bustamante, the Democrat and Tom McClintock, the Republican, who would you be more likely to vote for: Cruz Bustamante or Tom McClintock?"
September 25-27
Registered Voters
McClintock 49%
Bustamante 42%
Probable Voters
McClintock 56%
Bustamante 37%
19 posted on Sunday, November 14, 2004 11:44:04 AM by Carry_Okie (The environment is too complex and too important to be managed by central planning.)
That nearly twenty point margin was widely circulated before the recall, information that refuted your baseless fears were you not so blinded by them as to be incapable of seeing the opportunity. Gallup may often be wrong, but not THAT wrong. Those numbers showed that Arnold would take as many voters from Democrats as he did Republicans. Had conservatives voted their heads or hearts instead of their fears, as you did, McClintock would have won a three way race against a racist Marxist and an effectively liberal democrat. Tom McClintock has the kind of will and character that might have saved this State from itself. You didn't have the guts to back him and I'll bet you didn't send him any money either.
So, once Arnold started to show his true colors (as predicted here by said numerous reliable posters you ignored), instead of owning your mistake and accepting responsibility for redress, as soon as things started to look sure to turn for the worse, you split for greener pastures.
All I had to do was Google: "Windflier, Arnold, Bustamante," and it popped right up. It was the first search string I used. I suggest you muse upon what was so obvious to me about your posting that I would go there.
Republicans do this to and for themselves routinely. The political class is counting on it. You fell for a campaign of fear by your own party and ran to a new State. Yet that same Party is pulling the rug out from under you in your new State as we speak. Once the demographics turn sour in Texas, as they surely will, you'll blame somebody else just as you did California, and run... where?
This is a global battle against communo-fascism; there is no place to run, blind and witless, simply delaying the real fight instead of preparing to win. You were touting your wisdom and strength of will, but covering for your still-active fears, deeming anyone who chose to stay and fight in California as somehow lacking in resolve. You were hoping for ego reinforcement for your "wise decision" (and I have seen you revel in it). You know it. That's why you keep doing it.
You had already shown no concern whatever for the circumstance of others of which you then accused me. That's why my simple edits on your own words fit so perfectly. It was pure projection on your part.
No, your posts looked like a guilt trip to me. You confirmed it just as soon as I prodded. I told you the truth, and you went ballistic, apparently without even reading the link effectively quoting you as fair warning. Now, read your own tag line above. It fits like a glove: You voted for a liberal, one who got away with implementing socialist policies that even Gray Davis never attempted because he would have faced unified Republican opposition Arnold had no reason to fear (you were warned about that too). You were told the truth and you squealed.
You didn't know squat about me, that I'd given up $1.5 MILLION to join that fight against fascism. You didn't know that I did it to develop means to cut the legal and technical legs out from under the beast. Nor did you care to learn that in that fight, I do work so degrading, so physically arduous, that it would be illegal for an illegal alien to do it commercially. That's publicly available information too. I do it gratis, just to do what I could to save free enterprise in this country from environmental racketeering. You didn't know that no university or government project has ever come close to having achieved our results, much less that they are now admitting it. You didn't know that my patent predates and possibly invalidates carbon trading. All were developed over a period of FIFTEEN YEARS for use in California. You say that if I had strength like you, I could just leave.
You didn't even care to look at my FR page before posting, showing not as much care as I had already done before posting to you. Yet your need to justify your actions was so great, that doing it for the thousand and first time was simply automatic.
That is why you went off the deep end when I called you on it: In reality, you don't give a crap about Texas; you like what Texas does for you, for now. What you really care about is saving your own skin. It is an obsession that will get you killed if you don't pay attention. It is a consequence of an atomized society, one where extended families with the kind of deep roots that make them immovable now have virtually no political meaning (now go read the second half of the Fifth Commandment; that's what it means). It is that very lack of "no place to run" out of a deep commitment to family instead of our individual "needs" which should have motivated you to dig deeper and fight, really fight, every polite debate with every leftist you meet. That is a conservative value. Its lack is but one reason why the collectivists are beating us.
FR was founded and still operates from California. Last I checked, California FReepers were still the largest contingent on this site and routinely among the biggest contributors to its funding. No, I'm not going to move. Neither to my knowledge is Jim. So you deem us fools for staying and then tell me I should have been nice when I proved that...
You helped drive the stake in the heart of this State when you fell for your fears, violated your principles, betrayed your fellow conservatives, and voted for Arnold. You were warned and heeded your fears to save your skin. When you figured out that it was a mistake, you ran.
Had you checked the link in my first post to you here, you would have seen the quote above and (if you had kept your wits) realized what I meant and shut your ample yap. Every time I see a FReeper spitting on those left behind in California, I check to see if they voted for Arnold. You see, the correlation is excellent. You squishy conservatives are just like the liberals who flee for Colorado in that regard.
I don't care what you think of me; I want you to repent of your behavior, if only to save Texas. So if rubbing your nose in it is what it takes...
So be it. Expect more in the future with references to this post quoting you so plainly that no one will miss it.