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Notes -
I'll be honest with you, that's one of my least favorite arguments, and says more about the sayer than the situation. "The fact that I'm able to believe something terrible about my outgroup, even if false, is just another indication about how bad they are!" It's tiresome whether it's the Left, the Right, the Orange, the Purple, the Monarchists, or the Revolutionaries. "I may be wrong about this" should be cause for self-reflection about other cases where oneself may be wrong--"I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken"--not as an excuse to double-down against the group being unfairly maligned.
After all, if my hunch/info turns out to be incorrect, and the situation as originally presented was 100% truthful, would you say to me (with sincerity) "That's alright: the fact that you considered it believable that the news might be misrepresenting the situation or jumping the gun speaks volumes about how terrible and inaccurate the reporting usually is on these things?"
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