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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   2898 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 2, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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You've commented this (or something similar) multiple times without any concrete examples. Obviously "Russia is a good traditional Christian country trying to restore her rightful borders and we should support them against Nazi Ukraine" is maximum propaganda, but what does an edge case look like?

Is simply talking about Ukrainian corruption enough to be propaganda? How about bringing up the suspended elections without the context of past suspensions under total war?

Yes. “Ukrainian corruption” is a dog whistle for Russian propaganda.

I’m sorry, but you are a deeply unserious person. Ukraine was widely recognized as a highly corrupt country (as was Russia) by neutral international observers for a very long time before this war began. It is simply verifiably the case that government in Ukraine, from the federal level on down, features a ton of shady money changing hands, graft, oligarchic patronage, etc. You would easily identify these features as “corrupt” in the Russian context; why are you so willing to excuse or overlook them in a Ukrainian context? It’s completely possible — trivially easy, even — to acknowledge that Ukrainian government was (and still is) corrupt and ineffectual, without thinking Russia is any better or that it gives Russia a legitimate mandate to invade.

This is the second reason why I am quitting the Motte. I am so bored of low-effort insults at my character instead of dealing with the subject of my arguments, which is directly against the rules on the sidebar. Constantly having it done with very little moderation shows me this place is not for debate, it’s to dunk on leftists. I’ve said the moderation here is not for me, and it really is.

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You didn’t even make an argument to critique, though! You just said that any discussion of Ukrainian corruption is ipso facto Russian propaganda. There’s no attempt to justify this with evidence. (Was nobody discussing Ukrainian corruption before Russia said we should? What if there’s counter-evidence of neutral parties acknowledging corruption within the Ukrainian government, regardless of anything that Russia has to say?) There’s no attempt to grapple with why somebody who is not Russia-aligned might independently arrive at the conclusion, based on observable evidence, that Ukraine’s government is corrupt relative to Western standards. It’s just “These conversation topics give me the ick.” That’s not a valuable contribution to this forum.

So, if someone makes an argument that you personally think is not valuable, it’s okay to insult them? Can I start calling you unserious for claiming to want to debate and discuss while undermining the entire ethos of the site and driving away the very people you want to argue with with low-effort pot shots? No. Because that’s against the rules, and I would be rightly moderated.

Yes, of course you can call me unserious! I wouldn’t be offended if you did! (Particularly because I know it’s not an accurate characterization of me, and also because I don’t respect the source!) I don’t interpret the rules of this site as prohibiting any commentary on the quality of a user’s output, provided that said commentary is not egregiously acrimonious or ad hominem.

I’m not saying you’re a bad person, or even that you’re dumb. In the last extended exchange I had with you, while I strongly disagreed with your arguments and I don’t believe you’re conversant with all of the available data, I think it’s fair to say that you engaged in a serious and effortful way. That’s the opposite of what you’re doing now, which is just saying that any discussion of a particular topic you don’t like is tiresome and illegitimate, and threatening to pick up your toys and leave because some people here have the temerity not to share your same visceral aversion to the discussion of those topics. That is corrosive to the purpose and ethos of this forum; me calling you unserious in response is small potatoes in comparison.

No, I can’t. Calling you unserious is an insult to your character, which is against the site rules. Arguing about what I’m insulting, or how insulting it is, is also against the rules. Consistent rulemaking protects all of us; otherwise it starts slipping from “no insults” to “no acrimonious insults” to “well I think your argument was unserious even though I didn’t say “your argument is unserious” I said “you’re unserious” and you should have known what I meant” to “fuck it, open fire free-for-all”. Which is also why the rules are “speak plainly”. You think it’s small potatoes, I think it’s a further indication that the moderation on this site is not for me.

Alright, then let me offer a clarification: I think that refusing to engage with the substance of people’s arguments, and instead accusing them of being unwitting stooges of a hostile foreign power, is the mark of someone who is not willing/able to be a serious interlocutor.

I think that probably a lot of your opinions are rooted, ultimately, in your exposure to top-down messaging which I would characterize as, if not overt propaganda, then certainly propaganda-adjacent. I’m sure you think the same of me! However, this does not give me license to simply dismiss those opinions as “regurgitating propaganda” and making a big show of being scandalized by the fact that someone here would dare to express them. If I did so, I think it would be extremely fair to accuse me of not taking the spirit of open debate seriously. And if I did it repeatedly, I think it would be fair to accuse me of not being a serious person generally. Perhaps that would be an insult, but I personally believe it’d be permissible within the rules of this forum because it is directly related to the question of whether you ought to continue to participate. (Not, to be clear, whether or not you ought to be allowed to participate; I’m certainly not calling for you to be banned or censured.)

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