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Richard Nixon and the Southern Strategy

   Who are the credible historians that believe vague "economic factors" were a factor in how the Southern Strategy unfolded? The Republican Party, historically, was the liberal, leftist Party. From it sprang the several "Progressive Parties" throughout history. In opposition were the conservative, individualistic, Confederate "Dixiecrats" (Southern Democrats, not the same as today). From the Dixiecrats, sprang several "States' Rights Parties". It was only after the Southern Strategy – the political realignment, where the Republican Party sought after the conservative, Southern voter base – that the Republican Party moved South, and became the "conservative" Party, and the leftists and liberals moved to the Democratic Party. Historically, Socialists and Communists found refuge in the Republican Party, and segregationists and slave-owners found refuge in the Democratic Party. In modern times, as a result of the Southern Strategy, it's the opposite.

   So please, who are the credible historians that would vaguely blame "economic factors" for the intentional Southern Strategy, especially after Ken Mehlman, Republican National Committee chairman, apologized to the NAACP, for precisely that well-known reason?

^Knowledge_Battle | ^Talk_Page | ^Godless_Infidel ┌┬╫┴┼╤╪╬╜ 22:20, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

Really? "Socialists and communists" preferred Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover to Woodrow Wilson and FDR, and Eisenhower/Nixon to JFK and LBJ? The modern GOP of Nixon and Reagan included "segregationists and slave holders"? I had no idea! (Nixon's "race-baiting" must have been quite subtle indeed, for the President that presided over the first large-scale integration of Southern schools and created affirmative action!) On the larger economic trends contributing to the political realignment in the South, see, for example, The New York Times's "The Myth of 'the Southern Strategy'". Please spare us all the grossly simplistic and patronizing history lessons. The burden is on you to justify removing long-standing sourced material from a Featured Article.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 00:55, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

@TheTimesAreAChanging: Well, you started off completely confused. No, they didn't prefer CC and HH to WW and FDR. LBJ was a tipping point for Conservatives, when he signed the Civil Rights Acts and the Voting Rights Act.

Look up the "Progressive Party"(ies), which kept branching off for decades prior to LBJ. Which Party did they come from? (Answer: Republican) Were they liberals or conservatives? (Answer: Liberal) So they were liberal progressive Republicans? (Answer: Yes.) But read for yourself: Progressive Party (United States, 1912) / Progressive Party (United States, 1924–34). It was later, with the Progressive Party (United States, 1948), that they split from the Democrats.

Which party is conservative, nowadays? (Answer: Republican) Which party is liberal, nowadays? (Answer: Democrat) Political realignment between Republicans and Democrats? Duh.

Finally, Clay must have been unaware of a few things when he wrote that – for example:

1) The RNC chair apologized to the NAACP for the Southern Strategy, a year before; and

2) The Southern Strategy has been outed and proven. Dividing the Democrats (1971) (Memo written by Patrick Buchanan, on behalf of Richard Nixon.)

Maybe you just looked at the title of Clay's article, and the article sounded convenient to what you wanted to believe? ^Knowledge_Battle | ^Talk_Page | ^Godless_Infidel ┌┬╫┴┼╤╪╬╜ 20:58, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

History is usually more complex than caricature. Nixon conceded the Deep South to Wallace in 1968, and publicly supported the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. Moreover, Nixon selected a Vice President—Spiro Agnew—who strongly supported civil rights (and, indeed, had become Governor of Maryland by repudiating the racist message of his Democratic opponent, George Mahoney, who famously campaigned against open-housing laws with the slogan "Your house is your castle!"). Finally, the first Republican President to win the South after Reconstruction was Eisenhower (in 1956, in the wake of the Brown v. Board of Education decision, despite the fact that Eisenhower had appointed the chief justice who wrote that decision), long before any so-called "Southern Strategy" can even be alleged, although Congressional realignment was not complete until the 1990s. Even if Nixon did welcome some unpleasant characters into the GOP (something not convincingly proven by your analysis of primary sources such as a retrospective apology), it's hard to say, what, if any, impact this might have had on the long-term trends. See the main Southern strategy article for an account that rings closer to the truth: "The term 'southern strategy' refers primarily to 'top down' narratives of the political realignment of the south, which suggest that Republican leaders consciously appealed to many white southerners' racial resentments in order to gain their support... This view has been questioned by historians such as Matthew Lassiter, Kevin M. Kruse and Joseph Crespino, who have presented an alternative, 'bottom up' narrative, which Lassiter has called the 'suburban strategy.' This narrative recognizes the centrality of racial backlash to the political realignment of the South, but suggests that this backlash took the form of a defense of de facto segregation in the suburbs, rather than overt resistance to racial integration, and that the story of this backlash is a national, rather than a strictly southern one." I think that answers your initial question.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 05:21, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

Stop vandalizing the MEK/MKO page please

I don't know what political agenda you have but please stop your repeated vandalization of this page. Me and other users are sick and tired of this. The removed text is not a hoax, please provide your source that it is a hoax. you are damaging the integrity of that article and the community. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.56.21.38 (talk) 17:14, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

There is a consensus on the talk page in favor of removing that section of the article. Please direct further comments there. If you are SupaEditor or another editor not logged in, be advised that sockpuppetry and meatpuppetry are serious offenses that can lead to consequences up to and including a permanent ban from Wikipedia. Regards,TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 23:01, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

A kitten for you!

<3

BowlAndSpoon (talk) 21:35, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

Toasty. With ♥
--BowlAndSpoon (talk) 21:38, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

3RR warning

This is a warning for you to stop edit warring. If you do not stop, you can be banned.

You've claimed that the section in the People's Mujahedin of Iran page about the US-Iran negotiations is a "hoax". The sources you've provided to support that assertion do not support this. Credible sources say that the account provided in the section you have repeatedly deleted occurred.

You've justified reverting one of my contributions for including the term "neocons". My edit did not contain the term "neocons". It contained the term "neoconservative", which is a formal term in political language to describe a member of the neoconservative political movement.

You've claimed there is "consensus" for removing the US-Iran negotiations section. There is clearly no consensus when multiple users have disagreed, and at least one registered user continues to post in the Talk section disagreeing. SupaEdita (talk) 04:59, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

@SupaEdita: Are you the IPs who keep reverting? Are you guilty of IP socking? --BowlAndSpoon (talk) 09:01, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

@BowlAndSpoon: No absolutely not. SupaEdita (talk) 18:01, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

But why focus on whether prominent neoconservatives have questioned the authenticity of the alleged "Grand Bargain," unless you are using the term as a form of innuendo to scare readers away from their arguments? (Is Glenn Kessler a card-carrying member of the neocon cabal, too?) Similarly, by omitting all detail from its description of the proposal (namely, that the "Grand Bargain" was, in fact, an unsigned, one-page memorandum, not on official diplomatic letterhead, delivered in a roundabout way by the activist Swiss ambassador Tim Guldimann, the day after one of its alleged Iranian co-authors participated in senior-level talks with U.S. officials) the first paragraph by default misleads by omission—creating an initial impression on the reader's part that the proposal was real and serious—why else would Wikipedia be covering it?—and only later devoting a smaller amount of space (through your recent addition of a second paragraph) to the caveats of "some former Bush administration officials" and "at least one prominent neoconservative" (note that Rubin is not identified as such in the source, and it would merely be synthesis to add another, unrelated source for that label). "One registered user" does not upend the consensus of three.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 19:07, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

1. Please stop insinuating that I'm trying to "scare readers away from their arguments". I'm stating they're neoconservatives because it's relevant to their credibility on the issue of Iran. Neoconservatives are widely considered biased on the question of Middle East politics, and more generally, US relations with states that have an adversarial relationship with the US. The reader will decide for themselves whether the fact that they're neoconservatives discredits their contribution. You don't get to decide by censoring information from the reader that you worry might make them react in a way you don't like. SupaEdita (talk) 07:13, 21 May 2016 (UTC)

2.

" Similarly, by omitting all detail from its description of the proposal ... the first paragraph by default misleads by omission—creating an initial impression on the reader's part that the proposal was real and serious"

If there are details you think should be inserted in the first paragraph, then add them. Deleting the entire section, with a totally unsubstantiated (in the world of objective evidence, not your own mind) claim that it's a "hoax" is faith editing. Please stop abusing the fragile editing process that is Wikipedia. Improve the section. Don't remove it. Prove your arguments, and wait for consensus. Don't try to ram your arguments though with insinuations of me trying to scare readers, claims that the word "neocon" (or even 'neoconservative') should be censored from the article, or misconstruing the consensus driven ethos of Wikipedia to mean the consensus among the majority who agree overriding the disagreement of the minority who disagree.

3.

""One registered user" does not upend the consensus of three."

Please stop with this nonsense. You are free to enter into consensus with two other people. But consensus in the context of what Wikipedia tries to achieve means consensus among ALL participants. 3 vs 1 is not a discussion wide consensus. I'm not trying to 'upend' anything. Again again with the intellectually dishonest charge. Just like your innuendo about me alleging a 'neocon cabal', to slyly defame me. SupaEdita (talk) 07:21, 21 May 2016 (UTC)

@SupaEdita. You edit war against consensus on a single page, and this is the only thing you do in the project. Even if you were right on the content (I do not think so), your edits are going to be reverted and you are going to be blocked if you continue doing the same. My very best wishes (talk) 00:50, 22 May 2016 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
	Keep up the good work. BowlAndSpoon (talk) 08:14, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

Back up your "greatest hits" with an RS

• NB: The following conversation reflects an earlier version of my user page, and—more broadly—the fact that I originally joined Wikipedia in 2010 for the very deliberate purpose of fighting what I considered Leftist propaganda with Rightist propaganda. There is much to dislike in my past record, but I've since become a softer, milder TTAAC. In any case, even if I still believed all of my old arguments regarding executions during the North Vietnamese land reform, they were so heavily indebted to Paul Bogdanor that it would be a bit self-aggrandizing for me to claim them as one of my "Greatest Hits."TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 18:59, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Seeing your list of "greatest hits" brought this to mind. Download the full text and search for "TTAAC". While I don't find your hits to be uniformly great (or even good), I gotta to concede that they are notable. And admittedly, a few are pretty great. I trust you won't get dizzy with all that success.Guccisamsclub (talk) 21:43, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

Gucci, I very much regret the way that entire exchange from January 2013 went. (I was, to some degree, embarrassed by my conduct even at the time. In my defense, I was technically still a teenager.) As I also note on my talk page, "Please ignore anything I did prior to the fall of 2013." It should probably say at least the fall of 2013, as my transition from flame-warrior and counter-propagandist to productive editor took time: At first, it was only on the Sega video game articles that I actually took responsibility for trying to create encyclopedic content of interest to the general public, rather than causing enough disruption to shift the Overton Window ever so slightly to the Right of where it was when I joined Wikipedia in 2010. (Back then, Wikipedia was much more insanely far to the Left than it is today—if you can take my word for it.) I've only skimmed Luyt's article for now, but I feel I should respond to at least one of his criticisms; namely, the allegation that either I must be able to read Vietnamese, or was citing The History of the Vietnamese Economy without having read the relevant excerpt. In this particular case, there is actually a third possibility: Namely, that I was reading from an English translation on Thongluan.co (the link to which no longer works), which is at least arguably less ethically questionable. (That is not to say I am innocent of having ever cited sources without reading them; my productivity during 2012 was too great for that to possibly be true.) Say what you want about my methods, but I know with a fair degree of certainty that few of my opponents were any more scrupulous than I. To give just one example: When I joined, Wikipedia claimed that "Operation Menu was the codename of a covert United States Strategic Air Command (SAC) bombing campaign conducted in eastern Cambodia from 18 March 1969 until 26 May 1970, during the Vietnam War leading to the destruction of over 1,000 towns and villages, the displacement of 2,000,000, and the deaths of over 700,000 to 1,000,000 Cambodians." Confronted with that kind of propaganda on dozens of pages, I lashed out with the fury you might expect of an adolescent. I am not proud of it—although, to the extent I was successful, I cannot say I entirely regret the result. I am, however, proud of my work on Dreamcast, which includes fond memories of my room being filled with piles of old gaming magazines as I carefully researched every detail.

If it seems odd that I put more care and effort into articles about videogames than articles about important historical events, consider the fact that Paul Siebert (a well-chosen foil for the purposes of Luyt's paper) eventually gave up when it became clear that his approach was not successful at winning "consensus" on Wikipedia: It's hard to feel a sense of responsibility for an article when a massive edit war might result in all of your additions being purged overnight. (Thankfully, I have little fear of that happening on Iraq–United States relations, as the underlying issues are not subject to the same level of heated debate as the Vietnam war, or, say, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which I swore off after 2014.)TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 00:07, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

Not to beat a dead horse, but what you read was certainly not The History of the Vietnamese Economy. This is.Guccisamsclub (talk) 12:35, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

You've got me there.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 16:39, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

Not a good idea to use edit summaries to suggest other editors are Nazis.

You've been warned before about personal attacks. You should know better and I'm sure you know the possible consequences. Doug Weller talk 18:02, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

The editor in question does not hide his Nazi sympathies, but proudly devotes a whole section of his user page to Holocaust denial.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 18:12, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

I am following up with the user regarding that userpage. Newyorkbrad (talk) 18:30, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

Good idea. TheTimeAreAChanging, reporting the page would have been a good idea, don't you think? Or even, although not the best idea, mentioning that in your edit summary. Doug Weller talk 18:42, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

Just to follow up, a polite request to remove some copyvio links from his userpage was complied with but with an edit summary stating it had been requested by fags. Nice chap. Doug Weller talk 14:55, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

continued from Talk:2016_Nice_attack

Well I've let the issue drop, a little later than a few other editors who took a similar view. The current text is just fine, but not for the reasons you mentioned IMO. Its merit is that it is more exact (specifies the BBC's evidence, rather than its general conclusion—I'm all for readers being as clear as possible about the underlying evidence), not that it follows policy more closely. The latter might also be true, but it's not necessarily obvious. You know much better than I that "policy" on wikipedia can be as contentious as "truth" in the real world, even if there is agreement on the general criteria. And you know far better than I do, in your heart of hearts, that OR is alive and well on wikipedia. It's just that this OR is explicitly conducted only on talk pages where editors discuss, contest and select source material. And whenever "truth" is contested, OR is usually implicit in actual article edits. This is not to say that the policy is wrong or useless or even incomplete. As anywhere else, the problem is the human element.

But to get a little more concrete, I don't recognize my argument in your retelling of it. So the point about Pepe and Louise was not that refutations of Pepe necessarily cast doubt on Louise. In actuality, there were two points: 1) If Pepe and Louise claim the same thing, a source claiming that thing to be a "fake" via refutation of Pepe should not be assumed to be nothing more than a refutation of Pepe, since its intended target is not just Pepe but also the actual thing. Such an assumption could in fact be considered OR, if an editor were to uncover evidence that Louise's testimony is basically independent of Pepe's. You'll note that no such evidence was offered (only my evidence to the contrary), so it cannot even be called research. I know you think the target in our hypothetical example is actually Pepe, not the thing—we'll just have to let that philosophical debate rest. 2) Pepe and the source that debunks his allegation do not become irrelevant the minute Louise makes the same allegation in a different form. That's simply moving the goal posts so that the allegation always comes out unscathed. This part of the argument was aimed at those who wanted to simply erase the BBC and the source it debunked. This was a key point and I'm glad the sources were kept.

My problem is not with the syntax, just how it's being used...it's exactly the same as "policy", but much more serious. While on any given topic the applicable policies may be hotly contested, crappy markup that looks like a frat house after a drug-fueled orgy is OVERWHELMINGLY SUPPORTED BY CONSENSUS. It's fucking insane.Guccisamsclub (talk) 02:22, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

Yes, you're right: Without some degree of OR on talk pages (what I euphemistically call "editorial discretion"), many pages would devolve into a mess of claims and counter-claims, perhaps even giving undue weight to demonstrably false claims in nominally reliable sources. Hence why WP:OR explicitly states: "This policy of no original research does not apply to talk pages." In this case, I still think the burden would be on you to prove that Louise's testimony is based on the exact same evidence or is simply a regurgitation via citogenesis of Pepe's, rather than the reverse. But, as always, we may just have to agree to disagree. TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 03:58, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

On reflection, I also feel your stance here is a bit hypocritical given that, in one of our earliest debates, you argued that a letter to the editor in which Zbigniew Brzezinski categorically stated that Chinese support for the Khmer Rouge was done "without any help or encouragement from the United States" did not refute Brzezinski's alleged "admission" to far-left author Elizabeth Becker that "we encouraged the Chinese to help Pol Pot"—even though Brzezinski was writing in response to a New York Times article written by Becker! As I recall, your argument was that any inaccuracies in the article based on Becker's book in no way called that specific quote from the book into question. But perhaps you remember that exchange a bit differently than I do?TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 04:35, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

Well, these two examples are not really the same: on the one hand we have the BBC saying the event did not take place (arguably) and explicitly refuting a stupid tweet saying that it did, but NOT refuting the eyewitness, explicitly or otherwise; on the other we have a politician issuing a denial of a description of policy by a reliable specialist source. Those were my arguments, respectively. So it's a false equivalence.

You stress the part where he denies encouraging China, but [you're wrong—he said arrangement, NOT encouragement] I stress the very first sentence as being his key point: An April 17 article asserts flatly -- as if it was a fact -- that the Carter Administration helped arrange continued Chinese aid to Pol Pot.

In her article, Becker wrote that Zbig facilitated Chinese and Thai aid to the Khmer Rouge, but Zbig's full quote was a little different. He said he encouraged others to support Pol Pot, because obviously the US government could be not seen as getting its hands dirty with such an "abomination", something he reiterated in his letter. But nonetheless it had to be done, because it was a question of "helping the Cambodian people", which is standard code for furthering US government interests. So Zbig did challenge Becker's description of the policy and her use of his quote in her article. Therefore, if someone were to quote Becker's NYT piece, it would be fine to also quote Zbig's denial. But in relation to the veracity of the full quote from Becker's book, Zbig's letter is simply a politician's non-denial denial. I actually asked Becker a couple months ago whether Zbig or his lawyers ever demanded a correction from her or her publisher, despite the fact that the book went through several editions and received much publicity. She said "no". Clearly if someone invents an inflammatory quote, the correct response is along the lines of:"I never said that—you're a liar and you'll hear from my lawyers". No such response was forthcoming. For example, Zbig did explicitly deny another quote in relation to Afghanistan, causing Real News to issue a correction.

And you might want to stop throwing around terms like "far-left", "activist" and "communist", unless you are know something about an individual's political views and activities. That's what got Joe McCarthy into trouble, though to be fair—he at least tried to collect the "evidence". And it's just poor form, 'cause it makes you sound like a shrill regular from Free Republic, Little Green Footballs or worse. Now I've had enough contact with you to know that's not true, but you could easily give the wrong impression to someone else and thus derail the conversation. You had me fooled for some time.Guccisamsclub (talk) 15:52, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

Here's the exact quote, once again for the record: "An April 17 article asserts flatly—as if it was a fact—that the Carter Administration 'helped arrange continued Chinese aid' to Pol Pot. The Chinese were aiding Pol Pot, but without any help or arrangement from the United States. Moreover, we told the Chinese explicitly that in our view Pol Pot was an abomination and that the United States would have nothing to do with him—directly or indirectly." To me, that sounds like Brzezinski is denying the thing itself, rather than disputing "Becker's description of the policy and her use of his quote" via a "politician's non-denial denial." (If Brzezinski didn't respond to the book, I'm guessing he didn't bother to read it. It was probably harder for him to ignore being libeled while reading The New York Times with his morning coffee.) Demanding the initiation of libel litigation to prove a quote invalid is obviously an impossibly high standard. I return to Occam's Razor and ask: If Brzezinski was just going to deny it later, why did he make the "admission" to Becker in the first place?TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 17:10, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

But he did not need to buy Becker's book to know that she attributed the quote to him! Becker quotes him right in her article. Doesn't it surprise you that Zbig studiously avoids mentioning the supposedly libellous quote, going so far as to avoid the word "encouraged"? What could possibly explain his behaviour? Spilling his morning coffee on the paper in a fit of rage before seeing the quote? Senility? (This is before even considering the fact that most politicians do not follow the George Washington's example, who confessed to chopping down the cherry tree (but that's a myth anyway), and their ass-covering must always be taken with a huge grain of salt. As I've said before, that's even true of a saintly figure like Zbig—perhaps especially true, because their image means a lot to them) Leaving aside the issue of his credibility, Zbig might be "denying the thing itself" BUT there is some debate about what that "thing" is. Guccisamsclub (talk) 17:49, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

Executions in post-war Vietnam

Since the source on the Vietnam War page debunking claims made by Jackson and Desbarets does not suggest that few executions took place, are there are any reliable sources that do make an attempt to estimate the total death toll from executions? Stumink (talk) 22:40, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

There were countless Western reporters in Vietnam when Saigon fell, and many were expecting a massacre. However, what those journalists witnessed—and reported back home—was nothing of the sort. Far from settling scores in a fit of vengeful rage, the North Vietnamese troops were extremely well-disciplined and on their absolute best behavior: There was nothing even remotely comparable to the Viet Cong's conduct at Hue. Rightly or wrongly, those initial media reports have heavily influenced all subsequent discussion regarding the question of post-war reprisals in Vietnam.

In reality, it is perhaps unsurprising that Hanoi did not consider the prospect of a spectacular bloodletting in full view of the international media to be advantageous at that time. (In addition, the mechanisms that might lead a Marxist-Leninist regime to pursue a program of political purge hardly require hate-crazed, undisciplined soldiers.) Nevertheless, it is a fact that allegations of a post-war "bloodbath" in Vietnam are almost impossible to find in the scholarly literature, with the exception of fringe sources like Rummel. That there was no "bloodbath"—although many Vietnamese were detained in reeducation camps or died trying to flee the country—is simply the standard account. Even The Black Book of Communism makes this point (before briefly questioning whether things might have been different if the Tet Offensive had brought about the collapse of South Vietnam in 1968).

The Desbarats-Jackson study was consciously intended to rebut this standard narrative; unfortunately, the authors botched the job. Desbarats and Jackson seem to be under the impression that their method of extrapolation is "extremely conservative," not least of all because their study excluded all cases of execution except those that the interviewees personally witnessed. However, there is no way to escape the limitations of the underlying data: Seriously, just ask any statistician about a duplication rate of 34%! Even more dubious is Desbarats's near-doubling of this estimate to 100,000 in The Vietnam Debate—based solely on an alleged admission by a top Vietnamese official that "two and a half million, rather than one million, people went through reeducation." (Here Desbarats simply conflates the concentration camps with other, far milder forms of "reeducation.") While both Desbarats and Jackson have done serious work elsewhere, their contributions to this topic are more of a cautionary tale.

In sum, there is precious little evidence to support claims of a post-war "bloodbath" in Vietnam, those claims that have been made are not widely accepted, and it would violate WP:DUE to suggest otherwise. There is some corroborating evidence of a post-war purge—for example, Le Thi Anh's April 1977 National Review article "The New Vietnam," which says that "30,000 South Vietnamese had been systematically killed using a list of CIA informants left behind by the US embassy"—but a definitive answer might well require the opening of the Vietnamese archives.

If all you want is a nominally respectable source to justify the inclusion of contentious material, then The Next Frontier: National Development, Political Change, and the Death Penalty in Asia fits the bill precisely—recent, top-quality publisher, not tainted by association with Desbarats and Jackson. Yet its estimates still seem exceptionally high, and it is not clear what they are based on; we should be wary of perpetuating citogenesis.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 02:46, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

Well I would definitely support some mention of allegations of excecutions from respectable sources mentioned above even if reports of excecutions are hardly confirmed. I hardly think it would a problem to mention the high estimates as long as the sources are not described as a confirmed fact. Stumink (talk) 14:45, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

I am watching this page due to a previous exchange. I am categorically against putting The next frontier—with its off-the-cuff hysteria about 2 million jailed dissidents and 100-250K killed in 18(!) months—in the article. This a clear violation of WP:DUE and WP:FRINGE: by flashing these ridiculous numbers we are handing the microphone to a view that is beyond fringe, beyond even Desbarats and far beyond the Black Book of Communism. And fringe claims do not become OK simply because they are prefaced with "according to", because serious claims are often prefaced in exactly the same way and the reader won't know the difference. Nor do fringe sources become notable and valuable because they are the only ones that give "the number": that's actually precisely why they are fringe. Furthermore, and even more importantly, this is a case of WP:EXCEPTIONAL: exceptional claims require exceptional sources. One does not simply declare that some government has slaughtered 100-250K in one year. This would put post-war Vietnam in league with Joseph Stalin (1937-38) and Suharto (1965-66), two colossal purges that have been covered in literally thousands of excellent sources. This is a level of scholarship that allows—in fact requires—us to discuss numbers. For Vietnam we have one source that's been debunked and a non-Vietnam-specialist source which contains an essentially baseless bloodbath allegation. That's two worthless sources plus some minor echoes in Rummel and Vietnamese exile literature. You'd think a purge of this magnitude would be mentioned in virtually every serious book, but it's not—although its absence often is. Are all Vietnam specialists idiots? At least Desbarats did a whole research project on the topic; Frontiers just throws the allegation out there without even a smattering of research. So unlike Desbarats, Frontiers is not even wrong.

When we look for numerical estimates about some event or phenomenon, we want numbers that have been properly researched and vetted. At the very least, we want an honest educated guess. We don't need stuff along the lines of: "did you know that crocodiles have killed 2 million people in the 20th century"? "Estimates" like that are worse, much worse than no numbers at all, and can completely destroy an article. I've seen it happen.Guccisamsclub (talk) 21:45, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

I agree completely with Gucci's comment above, and could not have put it better.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 23:26, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

@Stumink:, @Guccisamsclubs:, @Smallchief:: In the interest of considering all of the evidence against my position, the recent dispute at Fall of Saigon has caused me to reexamine communist defector Nguyen Cong Hoan's 1977 Congressional testimony. Hoan says: "Although no bloodbath has taken place in Saigon or the major cities of the South [emphasis added] as it had been widely feared, based on the Tet 1968 experience in Hue, in the provinces where there are no observers eliminations and killings have occurred on a widespread scale and under many forms, some so subtle that no outside observer can possibly detect. For instance, in a typical province which I know well since it is my own, Phu Yen, directly after the communist takeover around 500 people were killed en masse in a forested area of Hoa Quang village, Tuy Hoa district, Phu Yen province, around 15 kilometers west of Tuy Hoa town. The victims of this mass execution were Dai Viet party members, police, intelligence, and Phoenix officers, people with an anti-communist record, and hoi chanhs. Some 200 other people have been eliminated in the days that followed and in the last two years. ... Now my province has a population of 300,000 and over 6,000 people are in jail. Therefore it is easy to project and see that the total numbers of political prisoners in South Vietnam must come to no less than 200,000 at the minimum." Consider the implications: If 700 individuals were executed in Hoan's province of 300,000—and this can be projected for the entire South Vietnamese population of roughly 30 million—then it begins to seem possible that the communists could have executed as many as 70,000 opponents from 1975-1977. However, this claim should be taken with caution, because there is simply no way to know whether or not what Tuy Hoa experienced was normal or exceptional, and Hoan's account is not given much credence in the secondary literature. In addition, there are other factors to consider. For example, over 10 million South Vietnamese fled to the major cities during the war (making South Vietnam among the most urbanized nations in the region): Where those city-dwellers all immune from retribution? Even so, Hoan is a far better source than Desbarats, suggesting that this debate cannot be definitively resolved—although we do have an obligation to report the consensus view, which is that no major bloodbath is known to have occurred.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 01:00, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

I should also add that Hoan himself does not give any figure for the total number of executions (as that would be silly; he wouldn't know). Gucci's earlier objection, that Human Events may have misattributed its estimate of 50,000-100,000 to Hoan, appears vindicated. Finally, Hoan is obviously working off the assumption of a lower South Vietnamese population than I am.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 01:08, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

I see no problem in mentioning this in the form of "mass executions have been reported {footnote with source and numbers}". As Times has pointed out any linear extrapolation from this is extremely problematic, even if we accept Hoan's testimony as 100% true (and it's not clear that we should). While I personally have absolutely no problem with mentioning this, WP:PRIMARY is something to consider. Guccisamsclubs (talk) 01:28, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

He might also be working with an entirely different ratio. I find it hard to believe that Hoan has no idea about the population of South Vietnam—and if he does not, so much worse for his credibility. If we apply the ration suggested by his prison estimate (bear in mind that prison =/= labor camp), the total number of executions will be around 23,000. Guccisamsclubs (talk) 01:42, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

Actually, Hoan is using "prison" to refer to the re-education camps; his remarks on the "prison" population are in a section titled "the Reeducation and Labor Reform Program of the Vietnamese Communists," and in preceding paragraphs he details the seven camps in his province, containing approximately 6,000 "prisoners." That said, you make a good point about the ratio, further underscoring the questionable nature of the figures for executions and camp inmates attributed to Hoan by Human Events and Stephen J. Morris. Therefore, if Hoan is to be cited at all, his own testimony should be used rather than the wildly inaccurate paraphrases by fringe Right-wingers with an ax with grind. (In light of this sort of sloppiness, one is tempted to wonder if the Orange County Register derived its estimate of 165,000 camp deaths by combining the 65,000 executions alleged by the discredited Desbarats-Jackson study with Desbarats's revised estimate of 100,000 executions. While it's hard to believe the Orange County Register could be that careless, more reputable scholars commit errors like that all the time—see, for example, Elizabeth Becker's double-counting of already inaccurate statistics in After the War was Over: "Officially half a million Cambodians died on the Lon Nol side of the war; another 600,000 were said to have died in Khmer Rouge zones.")TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 03:17, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

re becker: that's pretty horrible—I can sort of see now why you dislike her work so much Guccisamsclubs (talk) 12:38, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

The plot thickens. The Northwest Asian Weekly claimed on July 5, 1996 that "150,000-175,000 camp prisoners (are) unaccounted for." Maybe the Orange County Register chose 165,000 because it lies somewhere within that range. Of course, it would be rather surprising if only half of the prisoners survived.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 13:40, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

This goes against my better judgement (wasting time of uncitable sources 99% certain to be utter crap), but curiosity dictates we submit this to the ref desk. Many libraries carry back issues of this obscure paper. This might out be on a limb, but to me it kinda looks like Desbarat's 100K + Encarta's 50-75K (dead at sea). But, it may be citogenesis going from Asia Weekly to Encarta. Indeed none of these alleged deaths have ever "been accounted" for. But more worthwhile, imo, would be tracking down Chanda's 1976 column in FEER, where he claims an allegedly official 200,000 figure, contradicting the sources cited in Ginetta.Guccisamsclubs (talk) 14:30, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

Re: Richard Nixon

The ridiculous editorializing that Richard Nixon resigned to "almost certain impeachment and removal from office" is kept in? This is pure speculation, since he resigned and impeachment proceedings weren't commence or a trial. This is not encyclopediic language. You say there is a consensus, so it stays. I am well aware of the "consensus" among liberals who hate Richard Nixon and make him out to be the Anti-Christ, and the personfication and use every opportunity to belittle and denigrate him inluding this scurrilous speculation about his "almost certain impeachment and removal from office", which is just their venting their spleen. I thought Wikipedia was an encyclopedia, not a political soapbox, apparently I was wrong, this is a quasi-encylcopedia. The standards are maintained for the Leftist heroes such as Fidel Castro a Communist dictator referred to as a "leader" while dictators of the Right are honestly described as dictators. I am not suggesting that the Rightist dictators not be described as such, only that there not be double standards. RN's WP page is only one example of a widespread bias on Wikipedia. NapoleonX (talk) 20:37, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

Yes, Wikipedia has a pervasive Left-wing bias (most editors will say this is merely because "reality has a Left-wing bias"). However, because most of the media and nearly all of academia (i.e., our "reliable sources") share this Leftist bias there is nothing that can be done—except adding the occasional attributed counterpoint and ensuring that Wikipedia's line isn't even farther Left than that of the most-respected reliable sources (as it so often is).

Since you brought it up, please forgive the following digression: Most Wikipedia editors are, indeed, exactly the sort of "champions for human rights and social justice" you describe—the kind that reveal their true colors by refusing to describe Castro as a dictator (or, say, demanding that the Brexit referendum be repeated until the voters vote the right way). In fact, I'm the only Wikipedia editor I know of that openly condemns the madness and evil of the regressive far-Left, as it sanctimoniously lectures college students on the moral necessity for all white people to commit suicide and defends socialist dictators for allegedly "doing good things for their people" or "killing mostly former oppressors that deserved it." (All one has to do is imagine how the Left would respond if the shoe was on the other foot, and public intellectuals were allowed to defend Pinochet for actually doing good things for his people or mostly killing Marxist terrorists determined to transform Chile into a totalitarian terror outpost of the Soviet Union, to immediately see through the unspoken premises of Leftist propaganda, which is by no means particularly clever or subtle to anyone with half a brain.)

All that said, as is common for most major Wikipedia biographies, Richard M. Nixon largely takes an apolitical and even sympathetic view of its subject. That Nixon faced almost certain impeachment is not open to serious dispute. If we can agree that Barry Goldwater's conservative credentials are not in doubt, consider what he told Nixon the day before the resignation: "Goldwater told Nixon he had perhaps 16 to 18 Senate supporters left—too few to avoid ouster. Congressman Rhodes said House support was just as soft ... [Goldwater] himself would now vote for conviction."TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 23:07, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for responding to my commentary. Thanks also for acknowledging the liberal bias on Wikipedia. I think we should strive to state facts, and call leaders dictators if they truly are, regardless of whether they are of the Right or the Left. I don't think either is preferable, they are equally evil tyrants. The only thing that differs is their level of evil, they are all illegitimate tyrants. Thanks also for showing I'm not alone as the only Conservative on Wikipedia. It sometimes seems like that. I feel a bit like Winston Smith in 1984 conversing with O'Brien, with O'Brien contending that reality is what the Party says it is. My point is not that only liberals thought it was "Almost certain impeachment" but rather it is speculation. It's fine for somebody to have speculation or an opinion of how something would have gone. But an encylopedia is not an editorial or Op-Ed piece. Its job is to report facts, and if they were to cite Barry Goldwater, quoted him as saying that he was sure Nixon would have been impeached if he hadn't resigned, that would fit in with what an encylopedia is supposed to be. But to state as a fact that Richard Nixon resigned "faced with almost certain impeachment" is not encylcopedic and contaminates the facts in WP. Yes I know there will always be bias, but I was trying to correct the stating as fact what was opinion or speculation. It's not because I'm a Republican that I do this, while I am a Conservative Republican. I pointed out a statement of opinion in Adolf Hitler's WP page and as you can imagine I have NO sympathy with that psychotic demon. I simply wanted "just the facts"as Joe Friday of Dragnet would say NapoleonX (talk) 01:05, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

I don't think Nixon would have resigned if he thought he could have held on. Regardless, because Richard Nixon is a Featured Article—meaning it is considered among the best articles Wikipedia has produced—we would need a clear consensus on that article's talk page to modify or delete any long-standing material.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 23:44, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

Dear TTAAC. I see you are playing your usual provocative games here, on your talk page; that is unacceptable. You say that "most of the media … share this Leftist bias". It is with nothing less than frighteningly extreme pleasure I present you with this. Please, enjoy. From your loving friend on the extreme, Chomsky-kissing Left, BowlAndSpoon (talk) 22:23, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

And for a radically different point of view, why not try some Unqualified Reservations?TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 23:00, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

That's funny

I'm not going to put it back, but Daniel Pipes would be absolutely horrified by the suggestion that calling someone a pro-Israeli lobbyist is defamatory. Zero^talk 04:02, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

"pinko nutjobs"

TTAAC, you're well aware of WP:NPA, surely you know that edit summaries like this one, or the long rant you posted on that talk page, are not a good idea? Keep your comments to the content, for goodness sake. Vanamonde (talk) 05:35, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

"Safe spaces," huh? My penchant for polemics may not be wise and it may be a character flaw, but I didn't personally name any editor, and lecturing me probably isn't going to change my behavior.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 05:55, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

NPA is a policy, period. If you want to interpret that in terms of liberal notions of "safe spaces," go right ahead: but the policy remains in place, and odds are the next person to notice will haul you to the drama boards rather than leave a message here. Me, I just want you to stop, not interested so much in sanctioning you: but hey, it's your lookout, not mine. Vanamonde (talk) 06:02, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

Well, golly, if you really think anything in that "long rant" is actionable, you should report me! After all, that's the right thing do. (Not that it will accomplish anything.)TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 06:09, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

May I? @Vanamonde93: Describing filthy liberals as "pinko nutjobs" is perfectly merited. If he was also speaking of out-and-out Leftists, then he has indeed erred most grievously, and I will take him to the relevant board myself.

In any event, here is some Phil Ochs, and I also really like this section by Frankie Boyle about those droopy liberal Remainers (Run the vote again! Have Parliament vote to ignore it!) who don't understand democracy:

Milexpert101 (talk) 19:15, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

Remainers have spent so much time online calling people racist that Chinese primary school children are getting a raise for mining the lithium for their new batteries. Seriously, do you want the right to stop acting as if the Brexit vote was a mandate for racism? Stop telling them that it was a mandate for racism. A generation of liberals who voted for Blair and then Clegg are demonising the people who gut their salmon at 4am for not knowing that leave were lying to them. "We were changing the EU from within!" cry a group of people who stayed home watching Netflix while 21 Ukip members were voted in at the 2014 European elections. Meanwhile, Farage spent the referendum taking a group of undecideds and, with Nazi imagery and a pledge to let Syrians die, got their support. A trick he learned from Hillary Benn.

Everyone hates liberals. With <3. --BowlAndSpoon (talk) 19:14, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

Austin, the Cold War is over!

- Basil Exposition, Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery

Milexpert101 (talk) 19:11, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

There is no need for ad hominem attacks or political rants on Wikipedia. WTF is a "safe space" anyhow? Content and quality of sources is what matters here; the editors perceived political orientation has no relevance. I take it you were probably referring to me as a "Pinko Nutjob", which is presumptuous to say the least. I want objective content and information and have no political motives here. I WANT FACTS. If you have good solid sources on the extent of Cuban and Eastern Bloc Involvement with the Guatemalan guerrillas or any information on the guerrilla infrastructure it would be awesome if you could put it here or at least steer me in the right direction. I've been able to find allot on Israeli, Argentine and North American involvement but very little on the involvement of Eastern Bloc countries. Milexpert101 (talk) 19:11, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

@Milexpert101: What kind of liberal are you, if you don't know your safe spaces? Anyway, you lot are just so narrow-minded. Right-wingers, like TTAAC here, are immeasurably more interesting than filthy libbies like you and Vagabond.

My advice? Leave TTAAC alone, stop the lectures, and get a grip. I repeat: get a grip. Shame on you. #sickofit --BowlAndSpoon (talk) 19:53, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

I apologize to everyone for the editor formerly known as Iloveandrea's bizarre sense of humor. To the author of the above comment: Can't we just agree to disagree, and leave each other's talk pages alone?TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 20:01, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

@TheTimesAreAChanging: BowlandSpoon is a constructive editor with deep insights. I am appalled that you would try to deny him the right to use this page as positive space to express his feelings. Don't you think he should be able to do that without feeling marginalized. Milexpert101 (talk) 23:51, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

@TheTimesAreAChanging: Milexpert101 makes a valid point: my edits are constructive and betray intimidating erudition. I am likewise appalled, and suggest you let me continue to post here so that your right-wing mind may soften and morph into something more human. Until that process has taken place, consider this. --BowlAndSpoon (talk) 08:28, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

WP:AE

Your editing was brought up at WP:AE, here - [1], but the editor doing this didn't bother to notify you. Epson Salts (talk) 21:38, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

The Sega Article

Before you revert the edits on the Sega Article, present me good arguments why the article was good the way it was before. You still haven't responded to my points responding to your concerns. Talk:Sega#Proposed mass deletion

Talkback

Hello, TheTimesAreAChanging. You have new messages at Talk:Khmer_Rouge#Revert.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Random note

Hi, TTAAC. Crossing paths with you in recent discussions, after not seeing you for quite a while, reminded me that long ago I wanted to drop a note here regarding something I noticed in your contributions. So better late than never; the note from me to you would have read something like: "If I find out that you worked for Insomniac Games, and have a license plate on your car that reads 'GO SONIC', I'm going to completely "lose my shit" and demand that you call me immediately." If such a message is nonsensical to you, and it likely is (but I just can't shake this nagging notion), please disregard it. Best, Xenophrenic (talk)

Can't resist poking the beehive

it really seems like Gucci's bitterness is personal; i.e., his Russian background is clouding his judgement, causing him to literally read hidden messages into Brzezinski's innocuous CNN interview that are not apparent to objective observers. I've never denied that all editors have their biases, myself included (in fact, those who claim to speak only the objective truth are usually the most doctrinaire POV-pushers), but I have also maintained that the key to neutral editing is acknowledging those biases, and perhaps taking a step back on topics that arouse one's emotions.

Tone it down a notch. You can yell "thief!" all you want, but you remain the only super-patriot—or any kind of "patriot"—in the debate (putting Wishes' weirdly displaced Valeria Novodvorskaya-style patriotism to one side) . There's nothing that reminds me more of the simultaneously glib and mendacious propaganda I'm bombarded with 24/7 in Moscow than your latest rants. Whatever it is that's "clouding my judgement", it sure as hell ain't Russophilia: that fact should be blindingly obvious from past discussions. Anyway, don't let me get in the way of you patting yourself on the back while demanding self-criticism from others. P.S. I plead guilty to knowing a language other than American and not being a member of the Mayflower club. Guccisamsclub (talk) 15:42, 3 October 2016 (UTC) Btw, your cute apocryphal story about Fusako Shigenobu is a little hard to believe, given that she was half a world away from Japan when the Red Army started killing its own members. Probably some shit Becker made up to go along with her story about how George Habash (and not Wadie Haddad) was the mastermind of the Lod hijacking-massacre. Not an a particularly convincing first attempt at "Leftism in an Nutshell". Guccisamsclub (talk) 17:21, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

• Commenting since I was mentioned here... I think this has nothing to do with any "biases". I think that Guccisamsclub is simply WP:Nothere: what he does in the project is mostly following other contributors and engaging them in very long and unproductive discussions. These discussions are unproductive because: (a) they concern subjects of marginal interest and importance for corresponding pages, (b) I do not think that G. really understands these subjects (this is not really a matter of bias), (c) he frequently resort to Straw man "arguments". Of course he also edits the corresponding pages, but I have an impression that his edits in such cases (e.g. this, this on a page he never edited before and no one else edited for years) are frequently an attempt to engage others in another senseless discussion. My very best wishes (talk) 17:38, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

• Gucci has made many positive contributions to Wikipedia—primarily in the form of correcting serious inaccuracies related to the Second Indochina War and its aftermath (i.e., 1 million "re-educated" in post-1975 Vietnam, 650,000 famine deaths in post Khmer Rouge-Cambodia, 2.7 million tons of U.S. bombs dropped on Cambodia)—but (for whatever the reason) I am reluctantly drawn to the conclusion that Wishes quite accurately describes Gucci's editing behavior whenever the subject is the former Soviet Union.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 19:53, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

Well, you definitely have more experience here. So whatever. I just can see a recent pattern. My very best wishes (talk) 20:13, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

• We can shake hands on that note, I suppose. Although I still don't get why you decided to paint me as an Anti-American Russophile Russian conspiracy theorist. I don't mind personal attacks when they have a grain of truth to them. But that was the equivalent of calling Angela Davis a stooge for American imperialism and a member of the John Birch Society. Bizarre. I mean I even supported the NATO operation in Libya, for chrissake. My interest in the article has nothing to do with blaming the invasion on someone other than the Soviets, as I've stated explicitly. The US "pushed" the Soviets into Afghanistan is the same way that it left Putin no choice but invade Ukraine and bomb Syria, all in the name of "defense". The USSR's security concerns about Afghanistan were probably more legitimate (for various reasons I'll not go into) — but fundamentally these cases are equivalent. Nobody "pushed" them anywhere. Now if you could only see American interventions the same way I see Russian ones, that'd be great. 21:11, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

- In the interest of fairness, I should add that Novodvorskaya (mentioned up top) should at least be credited with publicly defending the Chechen cause in Russia. Wishes is just sloppily (violating all guidelines) pushing some banal "anti-Soviet" POV on the english wiki, i.e. in the West. Guccisamsclub (talk) 21:11, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

"Now if you could only see American interventions the same way I see Russian ones." I'm not the one who supported the NATO intervention in Libya.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 21:17, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

I'll take that as a retraction. Guccisamsclub (talk) 22:06, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

What am I supposed to be retracting? I doubt you can find an edit of mine that could be construed as supporting NATO in Libya, so I'm guessing the retraction must be related to my insinuation that your apologia for the USSR is related to your ethnic background. Well, I could think of a far more accurate slur than calling you a Russian, but—unlike calling you a Russian—it would likely result in my being perma-banned.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 22:41, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

How about calling G's behaviour as attesting to a tragic case of nostalgia for the Soviet Union... Some people seem to think there are golden ages in history, particularly if they didn't live through them. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 22:49, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

How about listening to what the other 'person actually says? Or would that get in the way of POV-pushing too much? Guccisamsclub (talk) 23:02, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

That would only be relevant if the other person didn't leave walls of text (and if the 'person' wasn't actually the 'elephant' in the room). Aside from that, I'm eruditer than you. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 23:10, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

You can go ahead and measure the walls of text in Talk:Soviet-Afghan war with a ruler. Report back on your results. Anyway, enjoy your your eruditiness.Guccisamsclub (talk) 23:20, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

Unfortunately, it often requires more time and energy to refute bullshit than it does to make it up.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 00:13, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

Keep in mind that students who studied humanities in Moscow State University (for example) also studied a "secret" discipline known in old times as "military disinformer". This includes skills how to manipulate other people. BTW, I did not study humanities. My additional, "military" speciality was parasitology. That's funny.My very best wishes (talk) 13:52, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

@Iryna Harpy: "Aside from that, I'm eruditer [sic] tha[n] you." --BowlAndSpoon (talk) 18:21, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

@Guccisamsclub: Your USSR-kissing is so blatant it's embarrassing. --BowlAndSpoon (talk) 18:22, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

BowlAndSpoon is a sockpuppet troll. Do not feed him.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 18:30, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

That's eruditeninity, Guccisamsclub. Stick with me, son, and you'll learn how to speak propa English real good. In fact, you might even learn how to write a terse response on a talk page without other editors having to print it out in order to read it. You must be a marvel in face to face debates. Contrary to what you appear to believe, talking over people whilst bewailing the fact that they're not listening to you isn't a debate. Keep measuring your rewriting of articles based on the fact that you've worn them down as a 'victory'. You're going to be disillusioned when you discover how quickly biased content is overturned once editors have had jack of you. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 20:14, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

As if what anything you just said has any connection to reality. Even if it did, it would prove nothing: for example, the person who writes more is not necessarily wrong, etc.. Your jokes are lame; Wishes "humor" is weird as hell. Guccisamsclub (talk) 23:38, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Why am I not surprised that you take yourself so seriously? Oh, probably because it seems apparent that you have no sense of humour... other than gleaning some perverse sense of 'fun' out worrying the beehive... and you don't appreciate MVBW's jibe. Hornet, meet the para-psychologist (or is that parasitecologist?). He knows more about you than you're comfortable with. Uff, you'd be a truly difficult person to live with. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 00:14, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Ok. Guccisamsclub (talk) 00:37, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

@Guccisamsclub: Imagine living with Iryna Harpy!! Something like this? There is an awesome disparity between her self-image and her actual intellectual abilities. Along with her other obnoxious traits (the magisterial self-regard etc.), this strongly indicates a narcissist: "These individuals often display arrogance, a sense of superiority … people with NPD may exhibit fragile egos, an inability to tolerate criticism, and a tendency to belittle others in an attempt to validate their own superiority." --BowlAndSpoon (talk) 07:38, 6 October 2016 (UTC)