[smc]

As exasperating as arguing with you is, Tracy, the one thing that makes it easy is that you are so consistent.

Originally Posted by TracyCoxx

Actually what it means is:
In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.

My posting about ows being gangs was neither extraneous or off-topic. This thread is called Today's Political Landscape. Do you deny that OWS is part of today's political landscape? It is on topic. Does it provoke readers into an emotional response? You assume what I said was to provoke. Let's be honest. Anything I post which you do not agree with will elicit an emotional response by you. Care must then be taken with that definition because it assumes that discussion can be had without an emotional response. As long as any and all opinions of mine that you don't agree with elicits an emotional response from you, your accusations of being a troll are obligatory responses that should be ignored. Unfortunately you take advantage of the fact that the more you say something, true or not, the more people believe it.

Putting aside that this same thing could be said of you -- "you take advantage of the fact that the more you say something, true or not, the more people believe it" -- what is most notable in your response is that you provide a definition that includes three elements: "inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages". You then go on to defend your post because it is neither "extraneous" nor "off-topic." Of course, what I have said consistently is that your troll-like behavior is of the deliberately INFLAMMATORY variety. I leave the fact that you dealt with the other two, but not that one, for others to interpret (and we have a lot of really smart people reading these posts ).

Originally Posted by TracyCoxx

And you're intelligent enough to know that I never said or implied that I was called a troll for my defense of the Constitution.

Nor did I ever suggest that you had done so. But by writing what I quote above, you trick the less-careful reader, or the reader who hasn't followed every bit of the exchange, into thinking that I did. We study that kind of thing in my rhetoric classes. It derives from the Greek Sophists, who were masters of what most accurately should be called rhetorical bullshit.

Originally Posted by TracyCoxx

Wrong. I honestly believe that some people within the occupy protests behave as gangs.

As is typical, once you are called out for your troll-like inflammatory language, you begin to retreat. In Post 114, you wrote: "Many people on this thread are of the Bush's Fault camp or of the Occupy gangs."

No one reading that can fail to notice that now you say "some people ... behave as gangs," whereas I responded (quite specifically) to your generalization when using the term. So, shall we take this to be your way of admitting that the generalization was wrong?

Originally Posted by TracyCoxx

Knowing how you mischaracterize sometimes, I would like to see video of that since I have no knowledge of that.

I will look for video. Meanwhile, you can search news archives from the time, and add Miami-Dade to the mix. You will find newspaper reports of the Bush campaign hiring a "mob" and of the Justice Department launching an investigation. Of course, once Bush became president, the investigation was quietly dropped. Lest you claim that I am mischaracterizing that last point, historians from all across the political spectrum agree that the Bush Justice Department -- independent of the content of the politics -- was the most politicized Justice Department of the modern era.

By the way, I find it hard to believe you "have no knowledge" of these events. You registered on this site with a birthday that makes you old enough to have been cognizant of what was holding the United States at the edge of its collective seat during that period, and unless your interest in politics is a recent phenomenon, you would have had to shut your eyes and ears to miss the reporting.

Originally Posted by TracyCoxx

Accidentally giving the wrong address aside, if what you say had happened, then obviously it is gang behavior.

Nice of you to say so. Meanwhile, as for the method of discourse, I refer readers to my response above regarding the clever implication that I may have made up what was widely reported in the media, that was addressed by the Virgina Tea Party leaders, and what became the subject of investigation by law enforcement agencies.

Originally Posted by TracyCoxx

Yes, and it's well known that my personal perspective offends you. Everything that proceeds from that fact becomes quite predictable and monotonous. So with that, I'll get back to the topic as people can read for themselves how these "You're a troll" "Am not" "Are too" conversations go as they are all over the political threads.

And yes, I did notice that you moved to your default position of attacking the poster (not the topic of the thread btw) rather than the well said anti-occupy video I posted.

Your double standard is quite appalling. I hadn't gotten a chance to watch the video (which is nearly 10 minutes long) but have every intention of responding. You disappear for days at a time after posting things and getting responses.

But, by writing what I quote just above, you get to create the illusion that I am either afraid to respond to a post, or that I can't because I don't know what to say, or that I deliberately ignore something, or whatever. It's all of a type, and it's why you get called out on your method time and again.