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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 26, 2024

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Finally, you noticeably did not threaten the original poster with a ban, despite the open egregiousness there.

if "next person who makes a top-level post with a sentiment amounting to 'DAE leftists are whiny bitches?' eats a ban" (and actually following up on it).

What open egregiousness? I admitted I probably could have phrased some things better, but "leftist whiny bitches" is clearly not the sum totality of my post, and I was honestly not trying to be provocative. I actually want to discuss whether the currents/counter-currents situation leaves any actual options for non-leftists, and I think that merits discussion.

FWIW, I agree that it doesn't make sense to mod @KnotGodel's question.

The "with" in that sentence was intentional - I'd say there is ample evidence that the post contains a sentiment that could be summarised in that way, not that the sentiment is all there is to it (though I would go as far as saying that it's a central component of it). As for that ample evidence, just excerpting the sentimental terminology,

incessant leftist whining
infantile tactic
"we win (...) or we whine and complain"
sore losers
scream bloody murder
infantile
still salty (...) and act like he was the worst

Apart from the literal references to "whining", there are also two mentions of "infantile" and ascriptions of bad sportsmanship and emotional deregulation (scream, salty, act, the babytalk in "he was the worst"), which I think is a picture it's appropriate enough to gloss as "bitchy". I don't think this is cherry-picked from a longer post describing the behaviour of leftists, either; apart maybe from the much more indirect statement you ascribe to your "workplace and all local institutions", this seems to be the totality of behaviours you ascribe to leftists in your post, and there are quotes in the collection from every longer paragraph in it.

The "with" in that sentence was intentional - I'd say there is ample evidence that the post contains a sentiment that could be summarized in that way, not that the sentiment is all there is to it

This seems to me that you're backpedalling. Your original phrasing was

with a sentiment amounting to 'DAE leftists are whiny bitches?'

To "amount to" something means:

to add up to, be in total, be equal to, or be the same as

Therefore, by saying my post had sentiment amounting to "DAE leftists are whiny bitches?" you were not saying that my original post had that tone. You were saying that my original post was entirely equal to "DAE leftists are whiny bitches?". As I said verbatim above, that was "not the sum totality" of my post.

Furthermore, I think that saying things like:

It feels like the left, or at least the leftists in my life, are taking an infantile tactic

is actually a very gentle way of putting it, and I was attempting to convey my point while still maintaining detachment. If I wanted to be less, detached, I would have phrased it as "they're being crybabies", or if I wanted to be "egregiously" inflammatory I could have even said things that were far worse.

I really don't think so - if I wanted to say that was the whole post, I would have gone for the shorter "post amounting to 'DAE(...)'".

I also really don't think that "I could've done much worse" is an argument for what you did being particularly good. That being said, I perhaps should remind you that I put the accusation in the mouth of a putative moderator who I took to be taking cjet's action with inverted polarity - given that I was against what cjet did here, it should stand to reason that I'm equally against what Bizarro cjet would have done... (not because it'd be a wrong claim about your post, but because I think that the implied collective punishment is not a good modding strategy).