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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   29444 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 31, 2023

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I think there's an important distinction between "choosing who to prosecute because of political loyalties" and "choosing when to prosecute them in order to affect news cycles". There are examples of behaviour similar to the latter from the Blue Tribe (the coverup of Hunter Biden's laptop, and the postponement of the vaccine announcement until after the election), but "Hillary Clinton wasn't arrested" isn't especially pertinent here.

I don't see how anyone remotely intelligent could make this argument in good faith. It is not only "especially pertinent", it's the point.

You're not giving me a lot to go on, but at a wild guess I'm going to assume your unstated thought process is something along the lines of "both are malfeasance for political gain". If I've made a mistake here, please point to it.

My point is that these things don't necessarily feel identical to the person doing them. To someone sufficiently mindkilled, the "who to prosecute" bias doesn't feel like a bias; it feels like normal prosecutorial discretion where you go after the especially-bad people (but your sense of who's especially-bad is way off). On the other hand, the "when to prosecute" thing requires consciously paying attention to these kinds of Machiavellian factors.

Since the former can be done without the full mens rea required for the latter, it's not great evidence of the latter; there are people who will do the former but balk at doing the latter, because the former is much easier to justify to oneself. As I've said, though, there are examples of the latter actually happening, which would have supported your point better.

Please keep your focus to the argument rather than its host's intelligence.

I felt like I was being pretty charitable, and abiding by the spirit of the sub's rules regarding charity, by adhering to Hanlon's Razor.

Would you have been less inclined to moderate me had I gone with the alternative?

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