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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   21715 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 14, 2024

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That's not a motte-and-bailey tactic, that's something that happens whenever a lot of people have ideas about something. There are plenty of naive people who complain about Trump being bad because he eats his steak well done. If other people on the left don't care about steak, and criticize Trump on a different basis, that doesn't make it a motte-and-bailey where the bombastic claim is that Trump is bad for a totally ridiculous reason.

That's true! The problem is the lack of acknowledgements along the lines of "Yes, the Dominion Voting stuff is crazy but this other thing is worthwhile...". And I don't know how many times I need to repeat this, but people go beyond refusing to acknowledge the retarded theories to accuse me of dishonesty/weakmanning. I suspect the lack of disavowals is part of the sanewashing tactic, where the crazy wing of any faction is kept close because their enthusiasm remains useful.

We're not going to get anything from such acknowledgements (which have in fact been given if not as clearly as you would like). No one on the "most safe and secure election ever" side is going to be more likely to seriously engage with the strongest claims because the person wanting to engage is willing to stipulate that other claims are "crazy".

Closing off motte-and-bailey acrobatics is a great way to raise one's credibility.

Perhaps, in the eyes of some sort of rationalist receptive observer. There aren't any of those around here.

Hopefully there are on this site, at least.

god no. Can you imagine a bunch of quokkas going about EA and Skynet every two days on the forum?. The place is better served by users grounded in reality, be they lefties or righties.

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