"Please go back and tell Tolkien Tom Bombadil's a bad idea. For some reason, he won't listen to Me."

It's not polite to dwell at such length on Ms. Cassidy's dirty pillows. The lady's warheads are her own business, I'm sure.

Actually, that's precisely what it rebuts. (You're not immense on this whole "meaning of words" thing, I find.) And yes, Bolton wrote the Guardian article—now you're adding conditions, after the fact, to what you asked me to demonstrate?

If you'd really care to know more about Boot, for what it's worth, I can refer you to his long-as-your-arm bibliography, including several books and several articles in FT and the Times of London. And you actually quote his in-passing "unlike some supporters," which confirms precisely what you've been at such weird…

It was interesting enough … but in that episode as in every other, for all its show of scruples, the show yet again swallows Cartesianism whole. That's not exactly fearless investigation of the possibilities.

It's indeed a conspiracy theory to treat the war as some sort of profitmaking endeavor, and a particularly lame one. It's also conspiratorial and tendentious to describe combat deaths as "planned for," as if one were planning a vacation or home-repair project. But aside from the conspiracy-mongering, aside from the…

Here, have a lollipop. You've discovered that many people think the war was a mistake in hindsight, which no one (including me) has disputed that many people think. In addition, no one here was disputing that its conduct was botched at several points—the question never even came up in this thread, you see.

What's this I hear about Hillary Clinton doing a Reddit AMA?

Well, the thread's still young.

The entire reason you dove into this discussion was to say that people who disagree with you are so stupid that a discriminating person will avoid hobnobbing with them. Now, you're saying that these same people don't statistically exist. And also that I'm a racist and that I know some people whose names don't ring a…

For someone who "bases his opinions on facts," you're a suspiciously emotive fellow, with an equally suspicious weakness for bandwagoneering. Even if everyone on Earth thought the war a mistake (a demonstrably untrue claim), it wouldn't in itself make that opinion worth squat.

Epistemic closure isn't just a river in Egypt, you know.

Thanks for pointing the latter out. My blood wasn't running quite cold enough.

It can be selection bias if you're surrounded by people whose opinion of the war is intense, comprehensive, and held in numbers out of all proportion to the greater population. FFM's implication that most people consider the war outright "disastrous," and that the contrary view isn't held by many, suggested this…

Because I'm an uncle, providing that sort of toy (along with drum kits) is already my duty and privilege. I'm also authorized to teach him new words.

The most recent Republican president has campaigned on a lot of notions whose majority appeal has been debatable, and has demagogued both the Democratic candidate and fellow Republicans about them. Observing that public opinion has soured on the war (obvious) is a far cry from saying that a majority considers it…

Maybe … but then, many of them may be distinctly worse, depending on the institution. And to boot, I've known many large families that sported a greater diversity of viewpoints than some student bodies (which, after all, have their own vulnerabilities to self-selection and peer pressure).

Yes, not clear, and sure. At the very least: if you think the national consensus is overwhelming on those points, then your circle of acquaintances who think about such things might suffer a tad from selection bias.

This implies that the ideas one gets exposed to are superior to the ideas in circulation at home. I'm not so sure this follows.

I'm thoroughly proud of having voted for Bush twice—thrice, if you count voting for Bush the elder in '88. (I'm not particularly proud to have voted for Clinton last November, but the fates don't always hand us reasonable alternatives.)