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I could steelman it, but I don't particularly agree with it so I'm not sure I particularly want to at length. It's a meaner variant of the Great Sort hypothesis offered by a Murray or a Lee Kuan Yew in the past. That first worlders have been "sorted" successfully into the smart and the dumb by various mechanisms, such that those "still" poor are the absolute worst, the hard cases, the genetic dregs. LKY talks about this when discussing the professionalization of union organizers in Singapore: in the early days there were many smart workers in the union, but today any intelligent Singaporeans end up in white collar jobs, so if you continued to draw union chiefs from the shop floor you would get people too dumb to function as good union chiefs.
My problem with banning him has less to do with people I like vs people I dislike as with wanting to avoid calcifying the userbase of the motte. Near as I can tell, this is being banned for jimmy-rustling, rather than for any content problems. Certainly we see similar posts about groups that are primarily out-groups to mottizens, the "bioleninists." A similarly structured argument about Palestinians, negroes, women, gays, illegal immigrants, etc would be skated by. ((Though I will note again that those posters who get obsessed with that kind of posting do tend to eventually catch bans anyway)) I'm positing that if we label it banworthy to offend the userbase of the motte, then at that moment we set the userbase in stone and preclude any changes in the future, because anyone who wants to join will find offensive material targeted at them to be common, and that turnabout is not fair play. That is akin to announcing official forum positions: one can, but is not required, to believe that blacks or arabs are inferior; one cannot believe that working class whites are inferior.
Those whose jimmies have been rustled can simply choose not to participate.
I should note that I recently complained about the Count in another comment, for his use of a minced oath, which I find to be annoying behavior.
That's the thing though, I didn't mean "come up with a defensible version of what he said" I meant "defend what he actually said". I don't mind someone having and promoting his point of view, I'd love to have a conversation with someone who actually believes it, and I'd have a hundred questions for them that I'd love to ask. The thing is it's the kind of questions that quickly point out various issues with the worldview, and so, from past experience, they tend to go unanswered. Which in turn leads me to believe he doesn't actually hold any of these views, and is not willing to debate them, he's just looking for a reaction from the resident chuds.
That's what rustles my jimmies, not his views. Yeah, people shouldn't take the bait, but it will always be easier for a single troll to throw a granade and delight in the ensuing chaos, than it will be for a group of people to maintain discipline and not respond.
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