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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 23, 2024

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No, I do not need to defend the meaning of words no matter how much confusion you try to impose on the English language.

Yes, you do need to provide studies that support the motte position you are claiming if you want to claim studies support the motte you are claiming.

Particularly when one of the more influential past works that forms a foundation of the community ethos you are posting in is on the Chinese Robbers fallacy, which is always relevant to topics that mix media posting and China and would also be applicable to gish galloping examples that do not prove population-level assumptions.

Another foundational work being I Can Tolerate Anything Except The Outgroup, which reviews why ethnic solidarity is not the pre-eminent automatic loyalty determining factor for in-group/out-group dynamics.

I'm sorry, I thought we were talking about whether relying on foreign talent left countries wide open to treachery and manipulation?

You may be, but no.

We were talking about the amusing mix of irony and self-awareness for you to argue for a presumption of suspicion of treachery and manipulation on the basis of foreign origin, when you are not only a foreigner to the majority of your audience, but you routinely express credulous confidence in foreign-controlled social media known to try and manipulate foreign audience perception at an algorithmic level, and you regularly praise foreign policy thinkers who make exceptionally blunt arguments of the properness of manipulating foreigners-to-them like yourself for their own nation's benefit.

A US government official using critical theory, misrepresentation and legendary goalpost manipulation to defend US government policy sounds like something a deceptive and disingenuous US government official would say to manipulate opinions.

This, too, sounds like something a foreigner would say to manipulate other foreigners with whom they share no shared identity or loyalties. Truly, such foreigners should be viewed with suspicion and their potential contributions to the community of one's own should be rejected out of hand as obvious manipulations to influence. Particularly when so heavy handed as with the amusingly blatant use of forum pejoratives tailored to the sub-audience.

(I shall update my list of accused pejoratives to now include 'critical theorist,' which will sit nicely next to the 'neocon,' 'neoliberal,' 'fascist,' and other such ideological slurs. Unfortunately, American was already included in my (multi)nationality mutt pedigree.)

Unfortunately, rejecting such foreigner influence out of hand would require incorporating the influence of said foreigner, which would not be rejecting the untrustworthy influence, hence categorically invalid on its own premise.

It's a particularly shameless given how well Australia has behaved as an ally. Australia shows up to even the silliest US wars, regardless of where they are. Australia provides good bases and good signals intelligence. Australia is paying for America to get its submarine production up to standard. It is not 'treacherous and manipulative' for an Australian to straightforwardly urge friendly countries to pursue national interests.

Unless you have put on an unprecedent amount of weight over Christmas feasting, you are not Australia, and no one would particularly confuse you for a continent, a nation, or about 26,000,000 other people of various ethnicities, of which only a minority are even ethnically Anglo-Celtic.

I also highly doubt you have ever in your life shown up for even a single American war, based a single American solider in your home, provided the Americans any intelligence function, or made a single decision in the Australian defense community that would warrant anyone to identify you, individually, as an 'ally' of the US, as opposed to someone who lives in the geographic landmass of Australia with a hobbyist level of interest in geopolitics.

I'll leave it to other self-identified Australians of the forum to say whether you are representative of Australians in general. You are certainly not representative of various wings of the Australian foreign policy establishment.

Can you dial down the contempt a little bit? You are great at long-form arguments and there is nothing wrong with taking apart someone's post, but trust me, you don't need to layer the condescension on that thickly for the subtext to get through.

Sure. I'll even disengage from this topic and any not reply to any replies from him for the rest of the year to clear the air.