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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 8, 2024

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The required assumption of such a counterfactual is "if a rightist made an attempt on Biden's life". Also assuming the conservative reaction to it isn't making a point by using a counterfactual, it's just exhibiting your own assumptions.

No, the counterfactual and associated, unavoidable assumption is:

"if a rightist made an attempt on Biden's life and the rest of the world operated precisely as I expect it to with the minimal changes necessary from reality to bring about the counterfactual reality."

You cannot divorce one from the other. You might well disagree with @2rafa or me about how reality works, and given that it's pitting one set of observations about how massive numbers of internet partisans behave against another, there's not much room to resolve it conclusively beyond what a given person finds plausible.

That's a useless counterfactual; it doesn't convince anyone of anything. A useful counterfactual would require that the consequences of the counterfactual be agreed upon.

If Trump had died, I think [Blank] would happen.

A few possible responses.

A. Trump didn't die. (breakfast anyone?)

B. [Blank] didn't happen.

C. I don't think [Blank] would happen.

D. I think that [Something else] would happen instead.

E. I agree.

If [Blank] is, [reasonable possible consequence] or [totally unreasonable consequence], does either option make B a good response?

The first two results for Counterfactual in google,

If kangaroos had no tails, they would topple over. The counterfactual is kangaroos without tails, the assumption, is that a kangaroos tails is necessary for balance and without them, kangaroos would fall over.

If Peter believed in ghosts, he would be afraid to be here. The counterfactual is Peter believing in ghosts, the assumption is that the location would be scary for a person who believes in ghosts.

In as much as a counterfactual is used in a conversation, it is to display your model of reality, for instance, your assumptions about the balance of kangaroos, or the mental states of people who believe in ghosts. The discussion that follows would either be to agree with the persons model and the extrapolations that they postulate in the counterfactual, or disagree with it, and argue for something else. Kangaroos actually only use their tails for balance when moving at speed, and so kangaroos without tails but at rest, would not topple. Peter is actually stupidly brave, so even if he believed in ghosts in this spooky location, he would not fear them. Peter's belief in ghosts does not include a belief that ghosts can harm him, so he would be interested instead of afraid.