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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 18, 2023

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It was the central question of the original conversation you jumped in on, here.

Was it? From my reading, the central question of the original conversation was

In what way does the observed evidence differ from what we would see in a world where these officials genuinely care about and want to preserve democracy, and genuinely believe that the Constitution has been violated and that this is the appropriate legal remedy?

Whether or not the ruling was just is largely immaterial to that question, which is why I didn't find it particularly relevant.

'Anyone who disagrees with me is so stupid that it's not worth listening to them' is not typically a stance that ends up with you yourself becoming educated and well-informed on a topic.

I agree with the point you're making and have even made it before on the motte, but that isn't really the case in this situation. I'm perfectly happy for people to disagree with me, but that disagreement has to take the relevant facts into account. We know how the Steele dossier was made, and there's undeniable video evidence that Trump's speech was not the cause of people entering the capital. You can absolutely still make a case against Trump when you take that evidence into account, but you have to deal with that evidence and look at what actually happened.

Again, I'm not saying you can't disagree with me - but if you say that Trump flew a KKK flag and ordered the proud boys to violently take over the capital and pronounce him Emperor, I'm going to dismiss your argument out of hand unless you've got some really compelling evidence to prove your case and I really don't think I'm wrong to do so.

You are of course free to disagree - but the consequences of that include an inability to object to fictional evidence being brought into an argument, which is not a position I think you'd be willing to take (though I'd love to give my imagination a workout if not!)

He's not being prosecuted for insurrection!

I was under the impression that the topic of conversation had broadened to include things like the Smith special counsel. If that's not the case, then your objections are all valid and I don't even disagree - these particular dates weren't chosen specifically to mess with his campaigning, unlike the special counsel ones.

Things like this are why 'anyone who disagrees with me is too stupid to listen to' is such a dangerous position to take. The real world is complex, and if you're supremely confident you already understand it well enough then you're probably just going to miss all the nuance that actually matters.

I agree, which is why I don't take that position. But I don't think "Young Earth creationists are not worth listening to when it comes to proposed evolutionary pathways" is particularly dangerous. To provide another example, I'm perfectly willing to hear people defend the NSA and the current USG panopticon - but if someone says that XKEYSCORE is just fiction and the NSA's existence is a conspiracy theory, they aren't even making an actual coherent argument and aren't worth engaging with.

Ok, it looks like I'm once again in the situation where I'm 10 comments deep into a single string of replies and my interlocutor has changed 3 times and I'm still arguing my original point without noticing that the new people who replied later are trying to talk about different related points. So, sorry for the miscommunication.

No worries, it happens! I've definitely left comments unreplied to when I start airing my unpopular opinions too.