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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   29326 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 12, 2022

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In colloquial English, when a person is referring to a large group of people who are defined by a single property, they are not making any claim about some infinitesimal small fraction of that group.

I think colloquial English also has many instances of people saying "the vast majority" or "most X" or "the general Y" or some other variant of that, in which people make it clear that while a category may contain some particular sub-faction, that sub-faction isn't the average case. So I think even people defending their points admit that the category includes the undesirable sub-faction, only that it isn't representative. So when Trump says "American patriots", both a Trump supporter and I would agree that this group who supported Trump includes the rioters, but that the vast majority of Trump supporters are not rioters.

Would any reasonable person interpret it this way in different contexts? For instance, when Biden said veterans are the backbone of the country, is he telling us that wife-beaters and murderers are the backbone of the country? If AOC says she is committed to protecting POC, does this mean she intends to protect serial killers and terrorists?

I think they're referring to the modal person of those groups, who are not bad people. Not that those bad people don't exist in those groups.

  • -10

So why isn’t Trump referring to the modal “great American Patriot” who voted for him?

He is. We just can't forget that "modal" isn't shifted much by the rioters.

What is that supposed to relevantly imply here?

That the rioters are both part of Trump's "American Patriots" and that they do nothing to shift who the modal supporter is.

But if "American Patriot" refers to the modal supporters and the rioters aren't the modal supporters, then it doesn't refer to the rioters.

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