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Come on man, @ymeskhout is routinely one of the highest quality and most evidence based posters here. Plus he’s got great legal knowledge.
We’re lucky to have him, especially if we actually care about not becoming a far right echo chamber.
I'll always remain amenable to substantive criticism about the way I write about this topic or any other topic, as seen here. The challenge here is that good faith criticism is indistinguishable from bad faith attacks when details are absent. Sometimes people just have a particularly fragile worldview, and so they get really reflexively upset when I present a conclusion that they viscerally dislike. I put effort in laying out my arguments and citations in a transparent manner, so if I happen to be wrong, it should be rather trivial to demonstrate how and why. If someone refuses to do this and instead chooses to resort to an irrelevant drive-by snipe, I have to assume they're just airing out their frustrations because they lack the ability to show where I'm wrong.
So I welcome any substantive criticism you have about anything I've written. In this instance, if you believe I'm acting in bad faith or just here to shit on the so-called other side, as an example one thing you could do is take any sentence in my post above and show me how you would rewrite it. If your criticism is not related to the specific way I string words together, you're welcome to tell me what other meta changes I can make which would address your concerns. After all, if there isn't even an illusion of good faith on my part, it should be fairly easy for you to demonstrate so with specificity.
I have no real rebuttal that this topic isn't a waste of my time. I'm aware that if someone is immune to evidence or otherwise unwilling to falsify their theory, then they're not going to change their mind, but perhaps there is some residual utility in drawing broadly applicable lessons from the scenarios (for instance, the incentives that people in the media face, why/how so many people claim to believe things that were so fanciful, etc.). I do concede that I find this topic very entertaining in addition to just interesting, but that's also true of many other topics we talk about here. The world is dreary so it's nice to laugh a little.
Regarding the Italian satellite issue, I conceded that I used the motte-and-bailey in an erroneous manner (you may not have caught the edit to my post when you linked it). I do maintain it's fair of me to bring up what a top level Trump official earnestly asked the investigative arm of the US government to investigate. I can't be accused of nutpacking when I'm highlighting the actions of someone so central to the issue. I gather that much of the negative reaction I get when I mention the Italian satellite thing is that it's acutely embarrassing and impossible to handwave away. it's relevant because it's illustrative of the credulity the Trump administration was operating on regarding the stolen election theories, it shows they were willing to entertaining virtually any theory, no matter how implausible it was on its face. I understand it's an extremely inconvenient fact for anyone who wants to argue that Trump was acting in good faith in investigating election fraud, but as Abe Lincoln said, facts don't care about your feelings.
I really appreciate your feedback.
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I’d hope that most of us are having fun as we’re shitting on the other side. There’s a reason this is called the Culture War thread!
As long as people are reasonably intelligent and polite while doing the shitting I don’t see a problem.
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