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See, if you had said "this is a weak argument" and asked OP to justify their position that'd be one thing. I can respect that. But you're grasping at the straw of "consensus building" when there's nothing in OP's post that is actual consensus building. Dropping a hot take without argument isn't consensus building, it's just... a hot take without argument. Which is actually against the rules! But come on man, if you're going to accuse someone of breaking the rules then at least cite the appropriate rule.
Laying out an array of controversial opinions and then inviting other people to discuss questions which are only coherent if one a priori regards those opinions as true is absolutely a form of consensus-building. It's not as explicit as saying 'we all agree that...', but it's equivalently powerful, because it still essentially obliges the subsequent discussion thread to conform ideologically to the root comment, lest the whole debate lose its consistency. The question 'Did Poland really need money so badly that it had to join the EU?', and any responses to it, are trivially incoherent unless you assume that the EU is an inherently malignant entity.
In fact, this form of consensus building is more potent than the syntactically explicit form ('we all agree that...'), since though it is equally able to enforce conformity among respondents, one cannot as easily demonstrate with a quotation the manner in which debate is being ring-fenced.
I think you're reading a whole lot of things that just aren't there in the text. For example, this:
This isn't remotely true. What the discussion presupposes is not that the EU is inherently malignant, but that joining the EU is undesirable for Poland. There is an implicit claim, but you've (wittingly or unwittingly) rephrased the claim in a much stronger way and set it up as a strawman.
And further, even if one disagrees with the premise (which is fair), that doesn't render subsequent discussion incoherent. One can respond to such a question by saying "you seem to believe that joining the EU would be bad for Poland, but I don't think it is in fact bad for them", and go from there. That's a perfectly coherent discussion to have. So no, it isn't really trivially incoherent to have such a discussion if you don't agree the EU is evil.
I disagree. The clear subtext of the original comment is that the EU is inherently malignant.
Yes, just as one can say: 'actually, we don't all agree that xyz' in response to explicit-style consensus building. The problem is that to do so cuts against the grain of the discourse, requires sticking a shovel into the ground instead of simply building constructively, and so is more arduous and less likely to be well received even if done in good faith.
See, now you're moving the goalposts. Before you said "it isn't coherent to have the discussion if you don't agree". Now you're saying it's harder to have that discussion. Those are two very different things, and the latter doesn't support your original argument for why the OP counts as consensus building.
And to be honest, your claim here is pretty silly. Yes, of course it's harder to have a discussion where you don't agree about the premises. But it's still worthwhile, and indeed is kind of the point of this board. If you personally don't want to, that's definitely your right. But it's not a problem for most of the people here in general.
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Well I was always perplexed by Poland joining the EU because they are consistently among the black sheep with Hungary who oppose a lot of what the EU members collectively stand for.
I'm legitimately asking what was the original idea behind Poland joining the EU which implicitly and formally comes with a certain set of requirements, among which giving up some of your sovereignty, when in the 2000s Poland has been rejecting a lot of these requirements
So, rephrasing, did Poland really need money that badly that they had to join the EU, despite knowing that they would down the line not want to fulfill some of the requirements, like not going against EU rules created by countries that are much more pro-immigration and anti-Christian-family than them?
The short answer is yes. Poland was dirt poor and no longer wanted to be a European backwater. Twenty years ago European progressivism was a tiny unimportant worry compared to what it is today, and to this day even Polish Varsovians are regularly surprised by how different the West is to their expectations.
Sad. I can see how this is yet another consequence of the industrial revolution, a disaster for the human race.
The EU's advanced bureaucracy can be seen as a more advanced version of the technology used to manage the USSR and before that the Russian Empire/Polish-LithuaniaC/HRE etc...
Technology just doesn't go away. Can't put the dating apps back in the hat.
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