faceh
8mo ago
Do you resent any other politician for their lies?
Anyone who pays attention knows politicians tell tactical lies nonstop.
If you hold Trump to a special standard I think that's ridiculous. Otherwise yeah, resenting the lie is probably the most rational response possible.
As to WHY?
when instead he could have just said 100% of the truth up front? Why are people giving him a pass for wildly inflating so many of his claims?
IT WORKS. CONSTANTLY. Because when it comes to politics most people are fully prepared to accept lies from their team.
This is my great frustration. I have the superpower known as "a functioning memory that recalls events older than a week" so I know how much all politicians are lying at all times, and they count on people forgetting or forgiving things that happened too far in the past. And I'm doomed to watch the voting public fall for this every time.
This is another instance of “conservative politician says something that gets immediately ‘fact checked’, but it turns out is at least directionally and likely just literally true.
Ironically, I think Trump uses this (maybe unintentionally?) to his advantage. He can say something that sounds outrageous, and is indeed only half-true. But the second somebody goes to do any research to confirm or debunk it, they discover that the actual truth is less bad but... still pretty fucking bad. And now they have that information in their head, and it makes them marginally more likely to vote Trump.
By making his puffed up lies that have a core of truth so ridiculous-sounding, it basically invites someone to be like "NO WAY that is true" and actually look up information.
People here have talked about how Trump lies like a used car salesman whereas most politicians lie like lawyers, and that's an example. Same with him making claims about dogs and cats getting eaten. Maybe not literally true, but a bit of research will bring other things to people's attention.
faceh
8mo ago
I'm NOT watching the debate and it still feels that way. Just seems like its in the air now.
faceh
8mo ago
With the parties' microphone being muted while the opponent is speaking, that prevents Trump from shooting his mouth off too much, and it prevents Kamala getting her true girlboss moment where she shuts down the misogynist orange man.
If we get the relatively restrained Trump from the first Biden debate (feels forever ago, honestly!) I think he makes it out okay.
I can't think of a single Trump debate moment that actually hurt his standing, there may be a couple but he's a known quantity. Unless someone else takes a shot at him during the debate it won't be anything remarkable.
I don't see how Kamala makes it through the entire thing without at least one 'gaffe' and it is possible her normal demeanor, once its on full display for an extended period of time, just grates on everyone.
I'd argue that Kamala has the really hard job to make herself look both competent and collected, and if she doesn't land a single solid blow on Trump she loses by default.
I think there is potential that Kamala has a complete cackling brain fart moment where she spews a genuinely absurd answer to a question she didn't anticipate. This will be somewhat relevant but will depend on whether its 'memeable' or not, I'd guess.
Mainstream coverage of the debate will declare she dominated the entire time in any case.
faceh
8mo ago
Thing is, nobody ever gets fired or cancelled or arrested for coming to the defense of a woman, be she deserving or not.
Whereas getting the reputation as the person who thinks women should sacrifice for men sometimes, even if they don't want to, will get you some sidelong glances at best, and fired, cancelled, and possibly arrested at worst.
This is one of those situations where it is probably best to have a Chesterton's fence that is as strict as possible because there are no real limiting principles to say when to stop extending Euthanasia to people, even when it becomes a major negative.
That said, it wouldn't surprise me if a more advanced alien race observed us and said "Wait, rather than throwing all your spare resources into fixing conditions that deprive humans of quality of life, you're just keeping nonsentient humans alive indefinitely while ignoring the problem that caused it? Why aren't you killing off the resource drains and working frantically to save billions of future lives from their fate?"
To make my point clear, I would be much more inclined to accept 'widespread' Euthanasia policies on the basis of preventing suffering and wasting resources IF ALL OF THE RESOURCES THAT WERE PURPORTEDLY SAVED WERE BEING DEVOTED TO TRYING TO SOLVE THE UNDERLYING PROBLEM.
That is, if severe autism is so bad that someone wouldn't want to live with it, then we should be aggressively pursuing an actual means of preventing, avoiding, or even 'curing' the condition! Same with so many other things.
Instead, it comes across like we're basically trying to off people for purely for our own convenience, not giving a care about all those potential future lives that might end up with the same fate.
faceh
9mo ago
Men are clearly getting something out of the voluntary side of dirty, violent, tough jobs. Even setting aside the prospect of pay.
Because it helps them work towards something. Same reason young guys might join gangs, even though the ends of such a group are antisocial, because it feels like a purposeful life. Controlling territory, feuding with rivals, terrorizing the countryside. We can't easily separate the male from his violent nature, but we can prevent it from falling into destructive patterns.
And that the least women can do to remedy this, the only way to make up for the hardships they’re imposing, is to “give him a kid or three.”
Kids intrinsically provide you with purpose, once you're 'saddled' with the responsibility of protecting these hapless, defenseless little humans from a fairly dangerous world. And in most cases you DON'T need to enact violence to keep your own kids safe (although if the need arises, you better have prepared for it, you won't pull John Wick skills out of your ass), but having CONFIDENCE in yourself, being able to stare down any problem without flinching, and defending your family from those that would harm it requires one HELL of an ironclad mindset, which I daresay most flabby 'soyboys' simply aren't able to cultivate.
Some people develop that motivation after the kids, but in my mind the capacities should be developed as part of becoming a worthy partner, and being able to demonstrate the 'value' to a mate.
And so I want to build up men who are capable of violence, but also capable of controlling it, reining it in, and deploying it only where necessary. And once that's done, you've got a male who is more secure in their ability to operate in society because he does not cower due to the everpresent risk of physical confrontation. And THAT is the sort of guy who is 'worthy' of finding a high value woman.
And I want to give those guys a PURPOSE to pursue. I do not want to loose a cadre of violence-trained men on a world without direction, goals, or purpose. But there are exceedingly few purposes that are going to appeal to such men other than those inbuilt instincts to procreate, build a family, and defending a homestead.
The male urge to be violent works to get them hyped up to go and kill the hated enemy in military operations, especially if you tell him he can plunder wealth in the process. On the homefront, you also have to appeal to his instincts to protect his family, his kin, his property, and give him enough direction that he doesn't HAVE to go around killing to assert his masculinity.
Or if you like, you have to balance the Testosterone with Oxytocin.
But there are lots of things in the modern world that are literally engineered to pull people on valueless, counterproductive paths. For men, video games, porn, gambling.
Yep. I've commented on the Superstimulus issue. Superstimuli are much more prevalent now than ever before, I don't think anyone can deny that. Livestreaming platform Twitch (a Gen Z staple) has been informally taken over by people pushing gambling websites or e-prostitutes hawking their wares. EVERY mainstream game played by literal twelve-year-olds has some kind of subtle or not-so-subtle gambling mechanics in them.
I think its fair to say that Gambling is more ubiquitous, drugs are more potent (and, potentially, deadly), porn is more mainstream, and outright scams are a constant danger. Hell, FOOD is more delicious and probably more fattening with sugar being in basically EVERYTHING. And getting sucked down any of those rabbit holes can be nigh impossible to escape, because they're much better adapted at keeping victims trapped than we are adapted to escape.
"Who would win, a literal child whose brain hasn't even developed higher reasoning, with a smartphone and internet access, or a remorseless, massive corporation that has spent millions upon millions of dollars optimizing its products and services for extracting money from every single person it gets its clutches on?"
Yeah, if we can, we should be trying to snip off the major downside risks that can ruin a guy if he strays just a little from the Basic Life Script at a young age.
I guess the 'rational' way to describe it is that to the extent we have base instincts that form part of the variables of our utility functions, and while it is certainly possible that other aspects of the utility function can override or counteract those, it is also possible that neglecting them entirely will make us much less happy than we would be if we 'indulged' them.
Like by all means, make childbirth less painful, but the joy of having children seems to be a top 3 source of pure happiness for humans.
faceh
9mo ago
You tell me! It sure looks like she thinks she just made a blistering rebuttal.
They're going to end up homeless and alone of they can't find some way to produce value, that is all but certain.
faceh
9mo ago
Military Service.
Mining.
Policing.
Construction.
Firefighting.
Relevant Tweet from EndWokeness who is not a preferred source but put all the info in one place.
The most miserable, uncomfortable, physically demanding jobs are inherently male-dominated. As it really should be, given that the role of producing new humans is exclusive to women, and men have to make sure they have a safe, functional society to give birth and raise kids in!
And here's a response to EndWokeness that proves the point, unless you think seamstresses and makeup artists are critical social infrastructure that are miserable to perform.
What percentage of women can land a relationship with a high-quality man?
This is a function of how many high-quality men there are, which is probably somewhat a function of how many men are raised in intact families and instilled with the necessary discipline, commitment, and common sense needed to maintain a family from an early age. And having family resources on tap in a pinch is probably a major help too.
In olden times, a father might not have let his daughter be married off to a guy who didn't have the proven resources to support her! It seems like we've removed this kind of guardrail and haven't replaced it with anything, thus leaving it to the women herself to correctly ascertain the quality of her suitor. Which is a task she may not be well adapted for.
Bit of a feedback loop, in that respect. Men raised by single mothers, in particular, are less likely to become 'high quality men' later in life, and will certainly be at a deficit when it comes to their assets. More intact families = more high quality men. More high quality men should, likewise, correlate with more intact families.
Now, I'm not saying this in a "men need to step up" kind of way.
At the very least ensure there's a Basic Life Script for them to follow which gets them some kind of reward for making reasonable sacrifices along the way and shouldering the responsibility of creating a family.
It feels like we're in the middle of oscillating social defections where both men and women are refusing to 'improve' for the other sex because they perceive the other sex isn't willing to improve for them. Men, for example, perceive that many women aren't good at cooking, aren't willing to clean, and may decide to divorce them on a whim and take away their children and wealth. Women perceive that many men are childish and just want a live-in maid/mother substitute who will basically care for them while they indulge in meaningless hobbies. They're both right to an extent.
Men aren't willing to step up and sacrifice their independence for a woman with zero domestic skills or willingness to help maintain a household. A guy may as well get a male roommate if that's all a woman will provide.
Women aren't willing to learn domestic skills for a guy who isn't going to handle his own business, support her, raise her status, and execute on all his husbandly duties. She may as well be taking care of a child in that case.
I think that men are going to have to start making the first move here in asserting higher standards across the board, but if women don't reciprocate, what other options do men have?
“pregnancy and childbirth are just an absolutely brutal experience for most women, and it’s totally natural and inevitable that they should wish to avoid going through it.”
I think we really need to grapple with the fact that the revealed preference of nearly every intelligent and high-quality woman is for having few if any children.
Ah, fuck it. I'll be blunt on the point. Yes, childbirth isn't pleasant, nor are certain elements of the pregnancy process.
But generally speaking society expects men to take on tasks entailing similar levels of discomfort (military service?) and for much longer durations than asked of pregnant women, in the end. And the guys might not even have a reward to show at the end of it all. The least a woman can do if a man pledges his eternal love and support to her, even if it means he has to work his ass off at an unpleasant job for almost his entire life, is go through the pregnancy process and give him a kid or three.
And "women can't overcome their fear of temporary discomfort to do the thing that ensures the survival of the species and can produce a lot of long-term benefits for her" is NOT EXACTLY A STRONG ARGUMENT FOR LISTENING TO THEIR CONCERNS ON THIS MATTER. If she wants to make the case that yeah, pregnancies can go badly, kids can be a nightmare, she has other priorities she wants to pursue that's fine, but I suspect the raw statistical analysis isn't going to overcome the fact that every single generation before her had kids. Many, many good things can only be attained by absorbing short-term pain or even extreme, drawn out discomfort. Being unwilling to bring new life into the world because it might hurt for a bit seems... immature... on the face of it.
Of course, we can agree that she is allowed to make her individual choices! But I think we should also agree she, as an intelligent, high-quality woman, should be internalizing all the costs of that decision.
That is why in my screed yesterday I suggested that we need to stop subsidizing women in the workplace and with welfare, so that the 'cost-benefit analysis' of finding a husband and giving him a kid falls more in favor of the family formation.
In which case, an "intelligent and high-quality woman" might be able to do the math and decide the discomfort of childbirth is worth all the benefits it would bring.
Because as I've pointed out, a woman who lands a high-quality man early on can literally have it all. He can take her on trips and out to parties, he can give her a career boost as needed, and he can give her kids and help her raise kids.
Attempting to do it all on her own seems like a real self-defeating premise when the historical model through which she can get support and companionship for her entire life is always available.
Anyhow, my brother and his wife had their first child just about a month ago, and having met her now, I can say that I would happily kill to protect her even though she shares a somewhat smaller portion of my genes than a child of my own would. Its crazy how much evolutionary wiring there is to make us attached to babies and find joy by merely holding or looking at them. The value of such experiences that are tied deep into our biology shouldn't be flippantly discarded.
Yes, absent a serious upheaval in the vein of the Iranian revolution, incrementalism is the best/most realistic hope for getting stuff like this implemented. If you're going for one big upheaval, attacking full bore the political bloc of single women seems like the best 'all-in' approach. If you can restrict unmarried females' political power (and not just the vote, but their influence on almost every bureaucracy) then every subsequent policy proposal becomes easier to implement.
ALL THAT SAID, we'd 'only' be turning back the clock about 60 years, it seems like it would only take a single generation of incremental change to do so, if the will existed.
I wonder how much modern technology has made a return to previous settings impossible, though. Honestly, if I had to pick a policy I wouldn't ban video games, I would ban dating apps and severely restrict social media usage. That seems like it would be broadly beneficial if only by forcing more face-to-face interactions.
faceh
9mo ago
Well based on my understanding most churches are struggling to attract under-fifties AND most churches are watering down teachings in hopes of attracting the younger crowds.
So the number that DO have non-negligible under fifty populations AND keep to the old ways are presumably small both in absolute numbers and in their relative share of the churchgoing population. At least according to my priors. No data I've seen locally refutes that, I can say for sure.
Happy to receive new data to contradict this though.
Yes, but they both can play a role.
On the margins, lower sperm counts are going to make conception take longer which will make the problems of delaying the process even worse.
Like I said, there's probably 'hidden' feedback loops. Women go to college for 4 years, and delay childbirth, and get habituated to delaying childbirth, and there's no real social pressure to remind her that she's got limited time to act, and each year of delay is making it harder. Its a problem that ends up making itself worse, especially if feedback from other sources is included.
One policy I've tongue-in-cheek suggested is that every woman should be forced to wear a timer that counts down to the day she becomes infertile, so as to create some pressure to hurry up the process.
faceh
9mo ago
The other concern is that extant religions are watering down and suborning to modern norms, rather than the reverse.
Also if you count Progressivism as a religion then technically we might be in a historic high for pure fervor.
faceh
9mo ago
Somehow I figured in this screed that basically calls for Making Women Subservient Again someone would zero in on male side of it.
I'm sympathetic, I hope I got that across:
Males need good role models. Andrew Tate is the solution they've turned to because any "truly" Masculine Positive Role Model is simply disallowed in the current Zeitgeist. They need a reliable path/script to follow, and they need a meaningful, valuable reward to pursue. Family formation does a lot of the lifting here if men are willing to pick up the weight. An attractive woman is the short term 'reward' (so women need to be attractive, see above), then the kids provide the ongoing motivation.
I'm trying to make ways for guys to have meaning in their life. To get rewarded. Its in your blood. I'm never going to hold a gun to your head to take away what you love, but I am hoping to provide you a better offer.
faceh
9mo ago
Fair point.
This brings in the uncomfortable idea that there might need to be punishments and negative consequences for these anti-family forces for all they've done.
I didn't touch on that one in the screed up there but, uh, there will probably be some portion of the population that will keep trying to undermine family formation, and our policies should also be keeping them at bay too.
I think its that, COMBINED with messaging that makes Careerism and casual sex and travel appear to be 'high status' is a big factor, yes. Hence my triangular model of female ambition (the name is a work in progress).
If the biological urge to have kids is strong, it shouldn't be easy to scare them away from it. But get them engaging in activities that preclude childbearing for a while, and they might fool themselves into thinking "there's time for that later."
Epistemic Status: Befuddled. A little gobsmacked, even.
Every time a new major cause for low TFR is discussed, there seem to be decent counterexamples readily available. Is it chemicals in the environment? Sperm counts do seem to be going down. Purely a social phenomena? Or more broadly economic, where the increased expense of raising kids and the increased earning (and consumption!) potential of high IQ individuals makes kids less important since you don't need 10 of them to help you tend crops.
Status seems like the popular explanation du jour so I'm pretty enthusiastically exploring it. BUT I do now believe the problem is multifactor and there are likely hidden(?) feedback loops. But it can't be THAT tough a nut to crack? We've successfully produced hundreds of generations of humans, it is our default setting, it shouldn't be hard to put us back in that setting!
So my model of Western Women does work with the status argument. Women are perceiving that being a girlboss or free spirit are high status, and that motherhood inhibits pursuit of both those lifestyles, so their status-seeking instincts pull them into and keep them in a metastable position that diverts them from motherhood until some large force (possibly biological clock) knocks them back over to that portion of the graph.
And I sincerely believe that if we flooded the zone such that every commercial, every movie, every other T.V. show, and our news media in general, was promoting motherhood as an ideal, we'd see almost overnight improvement as women gravitate towards the Schelling point for high status.
But it is hard for me to believe that effective policies can be built that won't have huge second-order effects that we can't predict. And those second-order effects will emerge whether or not we achieve the actual policy goals. I'm just skeptical that social problems can be fixed with increasingly complex rulemaking! But it does seem obvious that current policies are bad, too.
Yet, another component of the problem is single motherhood. We can't just have women spurting out babies if they're going to be dependent on state resources their whole lives, and the well-known issues that children raised in single-parent homes tend to exhibit. So you have to glorify families and encourage men to stick around, on top of making motherhood high-status. And about 1-in-5 women in the U.S. is a single mom! (note: not controlling for race)
This likely means removing any subsidies or incentives for females to enter the workspace, and stop subsidizing degrees with little economic value, since those create the double-whammy where a woman ends up burning 4 or more (high fertility!) years on the degree, then gets stuck in a career path that almost certainly isn't economically productive enough to justify the loss of her childrearing years. I will go ahead and say that there certainly are cases where women are able to be economically productive in a career, and it is possible to balance career and childrearing!
I would hope that removing incentives, gender balance requirements, and subsidies is all it takes, but maybe there also have to be some kind of direct legal barriers to women entering careers and becoming Married to a Corporation that can give her everything she needs for a 'fulfilling' life... except kids. I'm hoping that the free market is still going to select for exceptional women to make economic and social contributions, but... exceptional women should also be passing on their genes, one hopes!
There would also have to be some goal of preventing women from becoming Brides of the State, where big daddy government is picking up the tab for her kids and making sure she never falls below a certain level of economic destitution even if she's disabled, not working, not married, and raising 3 kids, possibly all from different fathers.
So a side effect of keeping women out of the workforce is it would immediately make marrying and staying with a man more appealing because now there's a certain amount of 'necessity' to having a provider in the picture, since she can't rely on governments or a subsidized career path to support her forever. And remember, this is on top of raising the social status of motherhood!
(I would be willing to couple all of that with a one-time loan forgiveness act to give women who already made that choice a break. Probably tying it to conditions that they get/stay married for 5 years and have at least one kid during that time)
Also, women themselves need to shape up. Okay, very unfair to generalize, but also a blunt fact. Running the numbers on a superficial level shows a pretty damning picture, with Gen Z showing staggering amounts of obesity, absurdly high rates of LGBT identification, mental illnesses (I'm choosing to make those separate categories, but I daresay its related to the LGBT thing), attendant pharmaceutical dependence, and some indeterminate amount that have become sex workers via Onlyfans and such, which is all to say not very appealing as spouses.
AND they lack the sort of domestic skills that would actually make them good wives and mothers. So even if we raise the status of motherhood and marriage and stack the economic deck to encourage family formation, you have to make them an appealling prospect on their own if men are going to jump on the role of partner and provider instead of sticking with porn and video games. And yes, perhaps bans on porn and restrictions on video games should be on the table, as much as that offends my libertarian sensibilities, I think there's a major problem of superstimuli sucking young people into inescapable loops which partially explains the TFR problem.
I somewhat accept the argument that the mere act of having a child can encourage people to step up, so to an extent I'm willing to just say "SEND IT!" and let the chips fall where they may. I don't endorse that particular study, mind, and indeed assume its probably bullshit in some key way as most social studies seem to be.
And now the big one. I'm not sure how to solve it in real life, but the issue of so many women being childless does indeed have direct political implications, and these women seem to form the core political bloc that votes in favor of policies that destroy all the aforementioned incentives for family formation.
I don't necessarily want to say "repeal the 19th", but I worry about the incentives that come from targeting female voters and the ways that political actors will try to influence said voters with handouts and emotional pleas and the further incentive to keep these women childless and unhappy to ensure they continue to support the party.
This relates back to the 'Brides of the State' point above, to keep them from defecting from the pro-family arrangement they can't have outsize political power to vote for redistributive policies that will allow them to be single and childless (or unmarried but fruitful!) for their whole lives.
The best option I've really heard on this point is to give married persons some extra voting power, and maybe scale it by how many children they have. It literally does seem like we're going to have to create a sort of 'tiered' system wherein families with kids get treated better, politically, than everyone else, to keep the single and childless ones from dragging the system in a different direction.
But don't you worry, I'm not letting men off the hook, we gotta get dudes to rise to the occasion (there's a pun in there I'm not going to dig out) to help bring about more kids too, and be worthy of raising them and capable of defending them. And it so happens Dr. Faceh has a prescription for that!
I ALSO think we need to bring back the Basic Life Script that, if you follow it step by step, basically guarantees you'll never fall into poverty and will have a fulfilling if not extraordinary life, and make this the default expectation for young people coming up.
Religion offered a fully generalized method of keeping kids on such a script throughout their lives. I do not know how we're going to replace that with the overall decrease in religiosity. What the FUCK would a 'modern' Fertility Rite even look like, sans the religious undertones?
Males need good role models. Andrew Tate is the solution they've turned to because any "truly" Masculine Positive Role Model is simply disallowed in the current Zeitgeist. They need a reliable path/script to follow, and they need a meaningful, valuable reward to pursue. Family formation does a lot of the lifting here if men are willing to pick up the weight. An attractive woman is the short term 'reward' (so women need to be attractive, see above), then the kids provide the ongoing motivation.
Finally finally, all of this might not actually matter in the sense that low TFR may kill the globalized world, or AGI might kills humans before our population recovers anyway. Even if we could implement the right policies to fix birthrates, this all feels like angels dancing on the head of pins in terms of how it will effect our future trajectory, so much seems baked-in already.
PHEW. SO yeah, this is about the full state of my current thinking on the TFR problem and the broad gender split problem. To be sure it ties into other issues.
GUESS WHAT? Immigration and Diversity may depress TFR too!. I already know there's going to be a couple mottizens screaming at me "ITS THE IMMIGRATION STUPID! Deport all illegals and wages will rise, home prices will fall, and people will more readily form families!"
There's probably a chemical problem too. I read Slow Death by Rubber Duck in college and most of it seems to hold up, especially the parts about certain chemicals interfering with reproductive organs, testosterone, and fetal/infant development.
And yes there's probably an urban-rural factor, as almost every historical example shows that you increase density of humans and they have fewer kids. Yes yes we have to destroy the cities to save the humans. I didn't even discuss the Amish in this bit, but they're a relevant example.
As some people around here are fond of saying, it is possible that a FULL solution to the problem is 'coup-complete', and cannot be achieved without first overthrowing the governments of several countries. Shoutout to @Sloot in particular.
Please guys, I said right at the outset that its multifactor and I'm really uncertain about the major causes! I'm just proposing the policies I think most directly target the issue at hand. I really wish I had better things to do with my time than think about this at length and type long screeds to the internet. Better things like raising kids! That'd be really nice! BUT APPARENTLY I HAVE TO SOLVE ALL THE REST OF THIS to bring my chances up.
Damn. I really need to get laid.
Almost anything can impact the outcome of elections in such a scenario
Which certainly would explain why the sitting government would want to tip the scales so that the odds are generally more in favor of news that helps them coming out whilst stories that hurt them are more likely to be suppressed.
Literally, you're suggesting that even a tiny bit of thumb on the scales would be all it takes to, tip most otherwise stochastic elections towards the party with power to influence the media.
faceh
9mo ago
Am I correct to assume that if I want to suppress others expressing a certain set of ideas A, you would support restricting my speech entirely?
If your proposal is that freedom of speech isn't absolute, I simply ask you to delineate the exceptions to it. And if you want to apply those exceptions to others, you must be fine with them vigorously being applied to you.
And it can't be simply something like "The N-word is forbidden." More like 'words which are offensive to a particular racial or other identity group can be silenced and/or punished." At which point, if you use any words which any racial or other identity group finds offensive, then you, too, will be silenced and punished.
If your position is broader than that, such that "No racially discriminatory language whatsoever," then again, I will apply the same to you.
All I'm saying is that denying someone the blanket protection of 'free speech' as a principle means you aren't later entitled to claim that same protection for yourself. And honestly, I'm not going to protest for you if somebody else is arbitrarily silencing you since I wouldn't expect you to do the same for me.
Instead, you rely on implicit intimidation to deter robbers. Instead of putting the onus on every possible robbery victim to "block" them, many would-be robbers decide not to rob in the first place.
Yes, this is the preferable outcome, but I am making it crystal clear what my intentions are in the event that somebody expresses intent to rob me.
Again, can't complain about the consequences if I've warned you in advance about the risks.
I've already heard two independent reports that some person watching the debate heard the claim about eating cats and dogs and Googled it, thus finding out that there is some controversy over Haitian refugees in Springfield, Ohio and the disappearance of house pets. At that point, they aren't thinking "Trump lied to me!" they're thinking about the crazy story they hadn't heard of yet.
It does happen. Whether it makes a difference? I don't know.
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