You remind me of those guys who I used to argue with on whether or not Walter White was a bad guy. Which he was. At some point, you are just a bad guy. When people like you get emotionally attached to a character, you can't listen to rhyme or reason. It's just about what you think, and anyone who doesn't think like you is wrong.

And your ad hominem attempts to get me to repeat my arguments will not work. Claiming that your arguments are profound, and everyone who has "attempted" to refute them did a poor job, isn't going to get me to REPEAT my same argument over and over again. Nice try. But you're not here to present an argument. You're here to claim that your opinion is right and everyone who disagrees with you is wrong.

@TheShredder said:

@LadyGigi said:

@chrisjdel said:

@LadyGigi said: I still don't understand how you presumed that from what I wrote.

You're trying to excuse the actions of the Oceansiders based on what they've gone through. Well everyone else has gone through a lot too. In fact most others are worse off, it seems like the majority of people there have at least some surviving family with them. I mean, if Rick was like them the sign in front of the gate would say "Alexandria Safe Zone: If you're close enough to read this, kiss your ass goodbye!". They'd have sharpshooters up in the tower gunning down any living person in view right along with the walkers. Yet you compare Rick with Negan and talk about Oceanside like they're blameless downtrodden victims. Mind boggling.

I'm not even completely sure that what you said about Oceanside killing outsiders on the spot as being true. I'm pretty sure they weren't that way. But I'll have to re-watch that episode.

I've never seen a grown dude with such a huge hard on for Rick before. Wow.....

Lol. It's unreal. You just can't get through to him.

@TheShredder said:

You remind me of those guys who I used to argue with on whether or not Walter White was a bad guy. Which he was. At some point, you are just a bad guy. When people like you get emotionally attached to a character, you can't listen to rhyme or reason. It's just about what you think, and anyone who doesn't think like you is wrong.

And your ad hominem attempts to get me to repeat my arguments will not work. Claiming that your arguments are profound, and everyone who has "attempted" to refute them did a poor job, isn't going to get me to REPEAT my same argument over and over again. Nice try. But you're not here to present an argument. You're here to claim that your opinion is right and everyone who disagrees with you is wrong.

You've made zero attempt to refute them. Or did I miss something in my look back at the thread? You just keep babbling about emotional attachments and repeating yourself over and over again. Of course you don't want to go point by point and refute my reasoning: because I'm right, and you're wrong, so all you can do is blow smoke. I am too strong an opponent for you little man. Not trying to match wits with me was the right decision.

@chrisjdel said:

I'm right, and you're wrong

Lol, can I say I called it?

@TheShredder said:

@chrisjdel said:

I'm right, and you're wrong

Lol, can I say I called it?

It's the truth, and I laid out quite a few very solid reasons why. You haven't done anything but state your opinion as fact. Probably just as well; you're not as smart as I am, trying to out-think me is a losing proposition for you.

@chrisjdel said:

@TheShredder said:

@chrisjdel said:

I'm right, and you're wrong

Lol, can I say I called it?

It's the truth, and I laid out quite a few very solid reasons why. You haven't done anything but state your opinion as fact. Probably just as well; you're not as smart as I am, trying to out-think me is a losing proposition for you.

There is no right or wrong answer. This is a difference in opinion. You're defending an opinion just like we are.

@LadyGigi said:

@chrisjdel said:

@TheShredder said:

@chrisjdel said:

I'm right, and you're wrong

Lol, can I say I called it?

It's the truth, and I laid out quite a few very solid reasons why. You haven't done anything but state your opinion as fact. Probably just as well; you're not as smart as I am, trying to out-think me is a losing proposition for you.

There is no right or wrong answer. This is a difference in opinion. You're defending an opinion just like we are.

You've at least said more. The only thing he's done is attack me for my position without ever offering any counterargument. Challenge my reasons. Explain why I'm wrong and maybe I'll change my opinion (or at least modify it somewhat). He can't just pronounce me wrong like an edict from on high, and expect to be taken seriously.

@chrisjdel said:

You've at least said more. The only thing he's done is attack me for my position without ever offering any counterargument. Challenge my reasons. Explain why I'm wrong and maybe I'll change my opinion (or at least modify it somewhat). He can't just pronounce me wrong like an edict from on high, and expect to be taken seriously.

Wrong! It's not my problem if you can't read or comprehend what I'm saying. My argument was, that everyone has blood on their hands. There is no essential, "Good" or "Bad" guy. It's just people doing stuff. That's it. Then, I went further to point out the FACT that your bias perception of Rick is hindering you from being rational. You might not like it, but the general consensus from those who posted in this thread seem to agree with me on that subject as well.

Look at yourself. Are your arguments based on rationalization, or bias emotion?

@chrisjdel said:

@LadyGigi said:

@chrisjdel said:

@TheShredder said:

@chrisjdel said:

I'm right, and you're wrong

Lol, can I say I called it?

It's the truth, and I laid out quite a few very solid reasons why. You haven't done anything but state your opinion as fact. Probably just as well; you're not as smart as I am, trying to out-think me is a losing proposition for you.

There is no right or wrong answer. This is a difference in opinion. You're defending an opinion just like we are.

You've at least said more. The only thing he's done is attack me for my position without ever offering any counterargument. Challenge my reasons. Explain why I'm wrong and maybe I'll change my opinion (or at least modify it somewhat). He can't just pronounce me wrong like an edict from on high, and expect to be taken seriously.

Actually what we are doing is making fun of your blind support of Rick even to the point that you've contradicted yourself. You just don't get it. You don't understand what this show is about and have an even worse understanding of the motivations of the characters. You've proved that time and again by supporting the bad decisions of the main characters even after watching them do some of the same things the antogonists do.

Hey, Morgan is a murderer too. He doesn't deserve his stick anymore. It should be taken from him!

@TheShredder said:

@chrisjdel said:

You've at least said more. The only thing he's done is attack me for my position without ever offering any counterargument. Challenge my reasons. Explain why I'm wrong and maybe I'll change my opinion (or at least modify it somewhat). He can't just pronounce me wrong like an edict from on high, and expect to be taken seriously.

Wrong! It's not my problem if you can't read or comprehend what I'm saying. My argument was, that everyone has blood on their hands. There is no essential, "Good" or "Bad" guy. It's just people doing stuff. That's it. Then, I went further to point out the FACT that your bias perception of Rick is hindering you from being rational. You might not like it, but the general consensus from those who posted in this thread seem to agree with me on that subject as well.

Look at yourself. Are your arguments based on rationalization, or bias emotion?

No, you and one other person have been making the argument. If you really want to go there, Good and Bad are abstract concepts that exist entirely in the eye of the beholder. If I kill people, cut them up and freeze them in plastic bags to eat for dinner, who's to say that's wrong? Maybe your bad is my good. Moral relativism taken to the extreme is neither right nor wrong in an absolute sense. I can't imagine a society being stable if everyone thought this way though. And most of us don't. It's part culture, part genetic hard wiring, but we have an innate sense of justice, of good and bad.

Not everything the protagonists of TWD have done is morally justifiable. But none of them, including Rick, view the apocalypse as a grand opportunity to exploit the lawlessness for fun and profit. Negan's mentality is completely different in that regard. He's a criminal sociopath. A genuinely bad guy, whereas Rick is a basically good guy who's done some bad things. He hasn't crossed that line. At least not to this point in the story; if he decided to burn Oceanside to the ground while he was there, after taking his choice of the most attractive women to coerce into his harem, then he'd be like Negan. Here's one of my earlier posts:

@chrisjdel said: I'll be the first one to acknowledge Rick and his friends have done some pretty brutal stuff. Like when Rick strangled that claimer guy in the bathroom, before he knew very much about them, or when he hit officer Bob with his own cruiser and then told him "You can't go back Bob" before shooting him (an obvious reference to Gareth, who said the same thing to Sasha's Bob at Terminus). Most of the cast would be serving very long prison sentences if law and order still existed. Carl included, for shooting that Woodbury kid even after he surrendered and lowered his weapon. And Rick has shown a certain amount of mental instability too. Seeing Lori all dressed in white, getting phone calls on a dead line, etc. He tends to hit overload and check out for a while, every so often. Michonne or even Carl would probably make better leaders because they have it together more consistently.

None of that puts them in the same league as Negan, or even the Oceansiders. They don't execute people just for showing up at their gates. They don't take over other communities, or kill all their men (preteens included), or bash peoples' skulls in as a terror tactic. There's no slave labor in Alexandria. Rick doesn't have his own harem. He doesn't use the town's church to deliver speeches and make everyone kneel in the pews while they listen, like he's the messiah. There's no walker moat around Alexandria filled with the corpses of people who pissed him off. He doesn't burn anyone - or crucify them, or feed them to walkers, or something equally melodramatic - to scare the shit out of his people and keep them in line. There's a big difference between those who try to hold onto civilized behavior as much as possible, and those who have fully embraced the darkness. There may not be a lot of innocent people in this world but there are still good ones and bad ones.

Tell me which parts of that you disagree with. If all you do is repeat that stuff about emotional attachments (???) I'll take it as confirmation you have nothing. Seriously, all it takes to change my opinion is for someone to make a genuinely good point about where I went wrong or what I missed. I'm not just a pigheaded idiot who sticks by their guns no matter what. But I don't respond to being shouted down, so to speak. Simply being told I'm wrong and attacked for supposed biases won't put a ding in my fender. And you shouldn't expect it to.

@chrisjdel said:

If I kill people, cut them up and freeze them in plastic bags to eat for dinner, who's to say that's wrong?

Well, I'm sure the people you cut up and put in a bag might have something to say about it.

@chrisjdel said:

A genuinely bad guy, whereas Rick is a basically good guy who's done some bad things.

I'm going to tell you a personal story and then leave it at that. I've done bad things. In 2005, I was deployed out to Iraq. I was a U.S. Marine at the time. We had orders. We followed our orders. I did what I had to do, because I had to do it. I'm not a bad guy. Just a guy that did bad things.

Now, I bet you a months pay, if you ask any civilian in Fallujah, they will all tell you that I'm absolute evil.

Take that for what it's worth.

@TheShredder said: Well, I'm sure the people you cut up and put in a bag might have something to say about it.

And I would run screaming from the room.

@TheShredder said: I'm going to tell you a personal story and then leave it at that. I've done bad things. In 2005, I was deployed out to Iraq. I was a U.S. Marine at the time. We had orders. We followed our orders. I did what I had to do, because I had to do it. I'm not a bad guy. Just a guy that did bad things.

Now, I bet you a months pay, if you ask any civilian in Fallujah, they will all tell you that I'm absolute evil.

Take that for what it's worth.

A lot of them probably would. But I'm assuming you didn't line the civilians up on their knees and do eenie-meenie-miney-mo, bang! Or exact tributes from people, and burn down their homes or kill their oldest son if they came up short this month. Rick is at least trying to do the right thing as best he can see it, whether or not he always succeeds. Negan isn't. It's like accidentally bombing an apartment building or hospital in an airstrike, versus targeting them on purpose. It may not matter much to the people who died but there is a difference.

You do understand that Negan thinks he's doing the right thing? Right? You said it yourself, "good/bad" is subjective. And so is narcissism, which you also seem to exhibit quite well.

@TheShredder said:

You do understand that Negan thinks he's doing the right thing? Right? You said it yourself, "good/bad" is subjective. And so is narcissism, which you also seem to exhibit quite well.

Again with the personal attacks. Good and bad are not physical things you can put on a table and show someone. They're abstract concepts in the minds of human beings. George Carlin did a pretty good routine about human rights and how we basically made all that shit up and they don't really exist. If you want to take this position (that there is no good or bad) I can't tell you it's wrong because we aren't talking about a matter of fact. But Negan is not trying to do the right thing, nor does he believe so. He's in it for himself. That's the whole purpose of his organization as far as he's concerned. Providing the good life for Negan. Like I said, he's exploiting the lawlessness post-apocalypse for his own personal gain. The fact that they can do whatever they want, whenever they want, and answer to no one: that's what the Saviors are all about. Equating their motivations with Rick's is just plain foolish.

Negan punishes his own people for rape. That, in my book, is a good guy. Thank you very much. Conversation over.