Considering leaving the forum (attention whoring)

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

The position that I took in the thread about the Pope's comments on the Charlie Hebdo massacre (which is in U.S. General for some reason) is one that I genuinely hold but that I'm having such difficulty coherently defending that I'm beginning to come to the conclusion that I'm not fit to argue my beliefs and values in this venue any longer. I'm despairing of being able to present my beliefs and values in a cogent or convincing light, and I've developed the suspicion that, by trying and failing, I'm not living up to them. So I'm considering leaving the forum.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Oh please. He's not going to leave. He just wants, after his defeat, for everybody to tell him what a smart, good person he is so he can feel better about himself because all of his fragile ego is based off of the acceptance of an internet forum. Suck it up! So what if your viewpoint isn't popular? Life isn't a popularity contest. People are not always going to agree with you and tell you how smart you are. Take it as a life lesson and learn from the experience rather than throwing yourself an online pity party.

First of all, I haven't been 'defeated', because I'm not actually wrong.

I'm not going to react to the rest of this.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Oh please. He's not going to leave. He just wants, after his defeat, for everybody to tell him what a smart, good person he is so he can feel better about himself because all of his fragile ego is based off of the acceptance of an internet forum. Suck it up! So what if your viewpoint isn't popular? Life isn't a popularity contest. People are not always going to agree with you and tell you how smart you are. Take it as a life lesson and learn from the experience rather than throwing yourself an online pity party.

First of all, I haven't been 'defeated', because I'm not actually wrong.

I'm not going to react to the rest of this.

I'm wrong and I should probably just shut up.

You know, you're right that I find myself retracting or dissembling away from statements that I've made kind of a lot, and doing it again in this instance is probably just going to give you more ammunition, but I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to officially retract having said that I was wrong and go back into that thread and defend the position in question, just to spite you.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I'm going to ... defend the position in question, just to spite you.

the important thing is that you're doing it for the right reasons.

Oh, it is a genuinely held position too and one that I shouldn't have (melodramatically, insincerely) said was wrong in the first place. The possibility of spiting memphis just makes it even better.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

So you're confirming that this thread is a self-serving waste of time?

Was that ever in any doubt?

In all seriousness, the original post in this thread was sincere when I made it but, well, I think a lot of us knew from the get-go how long these sorts of moods tend to last.

In the interest of preventing the self-serving waste of time from perpetuating itself I'm locking the thread.