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Calling people who support Ukraine aid "too stupid to vote" is just "boo outgroup", and if the valence was flipped it would probably be considered banworthy.
I don’t believe we’ve modded anyone for the reverse sentiment, though it’s possible I missed something.
It wasn't with the opposite valence but rather in a goofy thread about bats vs knives about a month ago. The use of the word "retard" probably didn't help, but the part about not being able to vote was also quoted by the mod giving the person a warning.
And I'd say that probably should be a warnable or banable thing to say. Saying a group of people is so stupid that their right to vote should be taken away is a textbook case of "boo outgroup".
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I'm going to add "too stupid to be allowed to vote" to my list of mod-approved ways to characterize people I disagree with.
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I'm sure there's no post on the site where someone was modded for the literal string "people who don't support Ukraine are too stupid to be allowed to vote", but I think the appropriate comparison is to look at other posts where people were modded for "boo outgroup" and compare the aggressiveness of the boos. Like, if "Canada seems to be doing its damnedest to ski down that slope right off that cliff" is worthy of getting modded, then I would think that "too stupid to be allowed to vote" is also in mod territory.
(I'm aware that FarNearEverywhere's post history was an aggravating factor here, but presumably if the linked comment itself didn't cross some absolute threshold then it wouldn't have attracted mod attention in the first place regardless of her post history.)
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That is a bad comment. You are replying to a comment that claims there have been twenty-four years of disasters and laments that people are not learning. Have there been twenty-four years of disaster? Does past performance predict future performance? Is this time different? There is plenty to engage with. But your comment is negative, low effort, and unresponsive.
Huh? Nobody's obligated to either respond to an entire post or nothing at all. I called out a bit I found particularly objectionable.
I could easily turn it back on you: why did you respond to MY comment without addressing the issue of whether a statement like "is too stupid to be allowed to vote" should be disallowed or not?
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I would like to argue that "supporting Ukraine" and "writing blank checks to the American foreign policy apparatus" are not equivalent. For an example, the people who argue that we are and should be supplying just enough material to Ukraine to prolong the conflict indefinitely, as this will maximize the death and destruction inflicted upon Russia, with the maximization of death and destruction inflicted upon the Ukrainians being a price they're willing to pay, are not writing a blank check, but rather making a straightforward, coherent cost-benefit analysis. My objection to this latter group is not that they're stupid, but rather that they're straightforwardly, appallingly evil.
There's also the people who aim for total victory through unrestrained escalation with a rival nuclear power, and think we should roll American tanks and aircraft into direct combat with Russia. These people are not stupid like the first group, and not evil like the second group, but rather crazy. I object to these people the least, as their craziness seems likely to be self-punishing in a way the stupidity and evil of the first two groups lack.
Presumably, there's in theory a group that can argue coherently the reasons why our current engagement is going to secure our Sacred Values where the previous several did not, while threading the needle between pointlessly-destructive large-scale attrition as an end unto itself or the threat of a disastrous escalation spiral. I haven't actually seen these people, but I'm ready believe they exist. I think such people would be wrong, given the available evidence, but am open to their arguments should anyone wish to present them.
I disagree that this is "boo outgroup". We are talking about a set of geopolitical actors that have burned down four countries, are currently directly involved in burning down a fifth, and bear considerable responsibility for millions of deaths. At some point, some degree of moral responsibility for all that destruction, death and misery must intrude. Maybe I'm wrong in my assessments, but I don't think so, and at some point people must make their bets and take their chances. This is mine: this shit will not end well, and ten to twenty years from now it will be generally accepted that Mistakes Were Made. I am going to hammer the point because I am confident I am correct. If I'm wrong, I want to learn from it. If I'm right, I don't want the people I'm arguing against to be able to forget it. I think many of the people who discuss this issue are being unbelievably, unacceptably casual about the lives of millions of other humans. I hate them for it, and I find that this hatred cannot be suppressed or masked to any great degree.
If that earns me a ban, so be it, and I'll attempt to modify my behavior in the future.
I wish we had RemindMeBot? And is your prediction that general sentiment is "Mistakes Were Made"? Or is it the general sentiment that some particular group of people are too stupid to vote? They are not the same claim. The latter seems to be generally shared sentiment about the political outgroup in the US politics since I can remember, so I am uncertain how it can be verified. Perhaps you intend a more specific claim about responses about stupidity that is more strong than more than stable trend of everyday political animus?
Nevertheless, I don't think observable presence of either kind of sentiment would tell much about the objective facts of the war. Watching MAS*H, made 20 years after the Korean war, the generally accepted sentiment of the producers of the show is that the Korean war was a mistake (naturally the show was for a large part about Vietnam, also thought a mistake). I don't think the evidence proves that either war was a mistake. South Korea is clearly a victory for all of mankind, only complicated by their later problems with their birth rate. Vietnam is more difficult to assess. There were faults in execution of the war, both strategically and on home front, but containing the Communism probably was not one of the mistakes. The domino theory worked, sort-of. Who knows what would have happened in SE Asia if North Vietnam would have had a shorter, more victorious war. What if Second Malaysian Emergency would have started earlier and turned out differently? Would Singapore had been the success story it has been?
In general, if the overall American mood during "Freedom Fries" moments are not the most rational, it is mostly information about the state of American mood than anything objective. The consistent prediction is, the American mood ten years before or after "Freedom Fries" is equal in its rationality, no matter its current polarity or valence.
Concerning casual discussion: The amount of death during the course of human history is of such magnitude, any discussion about it will appear nothing but casual or callous in comparison. Also an isolated demand.
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