This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Aside from that coming across like a reason to never bet on anything that sounds like it might matter, I did explicitly caveat lump value risks. And MadMonzer isn't putting all his chickens in one bet, for better or worse.
((and to bite on the obvious bait: that hasn't stopped you from offering that style of wager unsolicited.))
I dunno!
Half of the time, Monzer's definition of and pathway to fascism is absolutely trivial, or even stuff the Democratic party had done for years or even decades. Oh, the Republican party might bring politically-driven lawsuits to shut down disliked opposition media sources in the scuzziest ways possible (successfully)? They might crack down minutia of contracts when enemies are around, and find myriad exceptions when given political donations? Fire a bunch of federal officials based on nakedly political criteria, and damn the disruption? Defy SCOTUS by just lying to everyone?
Not great stuff, but it's also not exactly the end of the world.
And those are the things that actually seem remotely plausible. MadMonzer loves to ponder deeper hypotheticals, but either they require trivializing the matter to such a point as to set it wholly within the first category ("arrest political opponents" is technically hit by arresting Don Lemon; "concentration camps" by holding people in jail after they've gotten an order of removal before deportation, and I'm not going to insult MadMonzer by implying that it's what he's talking about)...
... or hilariously implausible.
Are you even pretending to believe that there's a 10% chance of Trump suspending the Constitution? Pulling off his suit jacket, falling back on his WWE bonafides, and punching the shit out of Mamdani? Invoke the Insurrection Act "on some spurious pretext" (when several cities have already had politicians and staff directly coordinating groups trying to block enforcement of federal law)? "[W]aging a war against political opponents" with the actual military?
It's just a word, and it just means 'something you don't like'.
Dayum, you managed to find a reason to use that one again! That's some dedicated hatin'! Okay, I'll give you that one, though I will point out that I didn't actually demand money stakes to "prove he really believed what he was saying."
No, that I'd put closer to 1%.
(I'd pay to see him get in the ring with Mamdani, though.)
No, as someone who has complained about overuse of fascism myself, no, I do not use fascism to mean "something I don't like" and you should know better. I do not think Trump is literally a fascist, nor the Republican Party, nor ICE. I think the US government, including the past several administrations (not limited to Republican ones!) have shown an increasing tendency to appeal to identify politics, cults of personality, and disregard for previous Constitutional limits, and that there is a ~10% chance this will lead us towards an actual fascist state (for some value of "fascist" - we can argue over exactly what the definition is if you really want to, but I am talking about something we would both broadly agree looks and smells like fascism, not "something I don't like"). In other words, the actual end of the Republic as we know it, at least in all but name.
I do happen to think Trump has fanned the flames worse than Biden or Mamdani or Nancy Pelosi or whomever you'd prefer to blame, but he's not the sole or first cause. (Note also that this is an admission that I have updated my priors somewhat since that argument I had with @FCfromSCC way back when - I still mostly believe the things I said then, but with weaker confidence. On the other hand, the fact that Trump was reelected should have made him update his.)
It's almost like you drew a line in the sand, shrugged and said you weren't impressed when I pointed out the line had been trampled already, and specifically said I "should be able to point this out in a few years" when you were wrong. And now it turns out that of course this isn't the sort of prediction that anyone actually commits to, on the basis of your long-extant experience?
Yes, that's the sort of thing that's pretty memorable.
No, I don't know better. That's a good bit of the frustration, here.
You keep talking about how you push back against unreasonable claims of fascism, and that happens, sure. But in this conversation you KoolAid manned in to nitpick about poker tactics while the other poster is saying 10% Literally Hitler (and making up autogople meetings with generals, and yada yada noonecares).
You dive into conversations about students yelling at professors with discussions of concentration camps, throw calling homosexuality a sin into conversations with the Day Of The Rope, put "don't have free speech (as you fedpost on reddit)" alongside with literal "gulags" out of your own volition.
((and, of course, when it turned out that we didn't have free speech to fedpost on reddit, or to fedpost here, because of course there's wildly hypocritical and politically biased sanction and investigation of Red-leaning fedposting even under a Republican administration, it doesn't even seem like it matters. But, hey, you'll invite me to talk about how I can violate the rules of this website, in case I'm dumb enough to think that anything I could offer would be anywhere near as persuasive as the sword of damocles that a federal subpoena would.))
Fine, there's a range here. Where's the dividing line? Because the Blue Tribe sure as hell hasn't provided an example beyond "things we don't like", you haven't provided an.
And all of that would be fine: you're allowed to have your wrong opinions. But it's never a matter of actually defending these positions, or even defining their borders out to say what they are. It's throw out a cloud of ipse dixit, say whatever can be proven doesn't count, and jam.
Spell it the fuck out, and actually commit to a bit for long enough to risk being proven wrong.
For someone who doesn’t care who’s the wrongest person in Wronglandia, you sure do love to insist that this guy is The Worst One ever.
(while coincidentally glossing over the obvious competition for past examples that could compete on "appeal to identify politics, cults of personality, and disregard for previous Constitutional limits"? The last couple Dem presidents that didn't have brain damage only had scandals about a tan suit and a luxurious cigar, right?)
Is this something that you're actually willing to discuss and provide concrete examples around, or should we just be taking it as gospel that, hey, there's a ton of protesters that you can see, it must be a new level of escalation.
Can we engage with the bit where supposedly sober and serious actors, the best and brightest available from the ratsphere community, are just repeating made-up hundred-kilodeaths numbers because they don't like a policy this time around, when last time they were crying themselves to sleep every night over a photo that -- whoops! -- turned out to be from the Obama admin?
Thank you for at least occasionally updating on evidence.
This punchline would be funnier if a) FCfromSSC, rather than Nybbler, had predicted Trump could never ever ever ever be reelected or b) a bullet hadn't come within inches of making very sure he didn't, or c) that judges didn't order already-cast (primary) ballots for him to not be counted.
I think the only thing we agree on is that we are both frustrated. And I'm answering here because when I throw up my hands and let it go, I later get accused of refusing to answer. But as wrong as you think I am (that's about the only thing I can discern for certain here), I am not being glib or sarcastic or dismissive here when I tell you that there is something about your j'accuse posts that are, besides being annoying, really hard for me to follow.
I don't know if it's the way you write, and I can even entertain the possibility that I'm just not smart enough to get you (I doubt this, but I'm humble enough to own that I am no longer as smart as I once thought I was). But I go through your laundry lists of accusations and feel like sincerity requires me to try to answer them point by point, and I get bogged down in a mixture of "That's completely not what I meant," "That is not what I said and I think you're straw manning me," and "What does he even mean?"
So, really and truly, I'm not sure what you want from me. I mean, besides a wholesale admission that I'm on the bad side and everything I've said for the last five years is wrong. I'm afraid I am not willing to oblige you there. I dunno, some people attack me and at least I know what they are accusing me of, even if it's wrong. Some people attack me and they're just crazy, so I can roll my eyes and move on. You attack me in a very effortful way and I don't even know where to begin rebutting because it's all "You said this and here's a long paragraph about what other people did and isn't this funny and here's something you said four years ago."
I realize this leaves us back where we started.
You don't have to respond to every single point. You don't have to respond to a majority of my points.
But if you genuinely believe that I've gish galloped you or straw-manned you, you should be able to pick two or three meaningfully false claims or clear misquotes or obviously unfair rephrasings, using actual quotes of words I've actually used, and then provide grounds for disagreement based on facts that exist in the world that can be discussed. And then, if I'm able to support my claims in response, either engage with my counterexamples, or justify how your position survives those counterexamples.
I'm not demanding that you admit you're wrong. I'd like you to be right! But it's hard to come away from conversations like this thinking we're debating what the actual state of reality is, rather than trying to discuss what we're even talking about.
((I'm sorry that I'm being both circumspect and prone to digressions, but from my perspective it feels like I can't have a conversation with you unless I nail down every possible aside. Best case, we end up spending ten posts relitigating the bare existence of a topic that we already discussed at length; worst case, I get lumped in with Soros conspiracy theorists and KulakCatgirl fanboys.))
Well, yeah, that's the problem. I mean, I already told you I literally have trouble figuring out exactly what you are accusing me of, and here you are returning almost two weeks later to go at it again! (I'm not saying you have a time limit on responding, but come on, I thought we'd both walked away from this one, and now I have to reread the whole thread to remember where we even were.)
I think I already apologized for accusing you of being a Kulak fan, and I honestly don't remember calling you a Soros conspiracy theorist. I suppose you have a link where I implied it or something. You're not a Soros conspiracy theorist. Are you happy?
Look, as I once said to you in private: what do you want? Is it really that specific post you have been hounding me about for years, that argument I had with @FCfromSSC? I have said repeatedly that I regret that exchange and have reconsidered how I expressed myself, even if don't repudiate the core thesis. So if "Admit you're wrong" is not what you're after, what are you after? You really just want to replay that particular argument again? After five goddamn years? Really?
Apologies. Work and STEM outreach have been busy, and I've been limiting politics-writing when in those environments even where I have idle time for the obvious reasons that are kinda my point. And then I'll realize half-way through a response that I'm relitigating stuff you clearly didn't want to litigate the first time, and have to start again.
I don't think a neutral observer would have read that as an apology, but I'll take it under the intent you meant if that's what you meant.
"I'll use a common public figure or trope and you object "I never mentioned George Soros." No, you didn't, but Soros-like social manipulation seems to be the sort of thing you are alleging."
And I'll spell out specifically that my claim was "I get lumped in with Soros conspiracy theorists".
Happy would be overstating things, since that wasn't the claim I made, but I'll take it in the spirit it was intended.
My problem has never been your tone, as I've said at length. I care about your core thesis. I think it's wrong, I think it's been wrong for years, and I've shouted in every way short of going full-caps at you about it. Literally, to quote my PM to you, "I would like to know which of us is right, and which is wrong. From you, I'd take a serious argument why you believe I'm wrong."
((Yes, I'm going to keep referencing the five-year-old post that, in its closest to a followup, specifically spelled out "gattsuru's list does not impress, but if I was wrong, he should be able to point this out in a few years", when I still think you're wrong and you've done less than nothing to even attempt to actually confront that list, or the specific claims you made then.))
I'd love to think otherwise! Whether it's that the lists of things I offer aren't actually happening or are gish gallops or are purely hypothetical, or that they don't seriously impact my freedom of speech or civil rights, or that if they do it's just social conformity not partly the state actions I've already linked, or that it's really going to just ebb and flow in way that actually leaves me whole or my enemies feeling genuine mirrors of my problems. But we don't do that discussion. I can't even get agreement on what level your thesis actually holds on long enough to debate the facts, and when I've attempted to draw out a literal branching graph of options, the closest we got was a thesis of "I still think the evidence does not say we are as far along down the slippery slope as you think we are".
What evidence? What point on the slippery slope? What could possibly change your mind, before it was too late?
But if we can't have that discussion, hell, I'd just take a serious engagement with the thing that brought you into this thread. You popped in to insist that it's a bad idea to make single bets, even at steeply favorable odds, and that no one's saying literally Hitler. Well, MadMonzer's willing to bet often, claimed the odds are wildly favorable, Arjin didn't demand anyone go all-in or even beat pizza money. Oh, and MadMonzer said specifically "10% chance that Trump is Hitler". Does this say anything? Do you have some other reason to believe that MadMonzer actually believes that number, when you yourself are saying that it's clearly absurd?
In that five-year-old post, how many of the things I have said wouldn't happen have happened? (Noting that I gave a time frame of 20 years, so we still both have time to be wrong.)
I already told you that I am less confident in my assertions than I was. The reason I am less confident is that what I see is that we are locked in a game of tit-for-tat-only-harder. Trump is unquestionably ratcheting up the retaliation for past misdeeds by Democrats. Assuming that the Republic does not die with this administration, eventually the Democrats will come to power again. I fully expect them to escalate (they are already bragging about how they are going to prosecute anyone who collaborated with Trump and ICE). I think that's bad, in case you're unclear. At some point we really are going to wind up in a failed dystopia, whether or not you believe we are already there. We will probably disagree about whether the starting point was during a Republican or Democratic administration, but if it happens during a Democratic one you can say I was wrong for all the satisfaction that gives you. Yes, we're clearly on a slippery slope. We're farther than I thought we'd be five years ago- but right now, we're on a slippery slope that Red tribe is pushing us down. (Yes, I know the response is "They started it, tit for tat is the proper game theory response," and that is how we keep going down the slope. No, I don't know what the exit looks like.)
If you want to cite some specific thing for me to respond to or agree with or rebut, I will do my best, but I do not think it is reasonable for you to demand I revisit a five-year-old post and answer all the questions you don't think I answered satisfactorily five years ago.
I was just being pedantic about poker, ffs. And also expressing my general dislike of the "Put money on it or you don't really believe this" form of argumentation.
I said "literally Hitler is absurd." That is my opinion. I did not say "no one's saying literally Hitler." Obviously there are people saying literally Hitler. I think they are wrong. Do you think you fairly characterized my position just now? Do you think the way you do things like that might contribute to my frustration and reluctance to engage with you point-by-point?
I am not MadMonzer. Don't get indignant that I lump you with KulakRevolt and then try to associate me with whatever other left-leaning person is in the thread.
I think there is a pedantic argument about whether "literally Hitler is absurd" and "a 10% chance of Trump suspending the Constitution is too high a probability" are the same statement, and I do not think they are, but if for the sake of argument I grant that they are (because I would stand by both statements), my reasons for believing MadMonzer believes that number is that I know that many, many leftists believe that number or a higher number, and they clearly sincerely believe it whether or not they are willing to put money on it. That their belief is often driven by hysteria and/or detached from actual facts does not mean they don't seriously believe it. How this applies to our five-year-old argument I think is pretty obvious, but that argument was never about whether I believed that you or @FCfromSSC really believed the things you were saying. Are you trying to debate me, now, about whether @MadMonzer (or liberals with TDS in general) really believe the things they are saying?
Hm...
It has not. Trivially, we've had discussions about how I've found out the hard way that people -- meatspace people -- find it hilarious when a political activist got assassinated and needed to wave it in my face. I won't call that unimaginable in 2020, but I wouldn't have let them live in my house had I considered it a plausible thing. Now?
I'm not going to self-dox and I wouldn't demand you believe me even were I to do so, but the examples exist regardless. The Biden ATF's expansion of FFL regs in direct contradiction to the text of the statute -- and the inability of any court but the Fifth Circuit to issue an injunction or stay on the rule, and for even the Fifth Circuit's injunction to be meaningfully applied -- is no small part of why the Administrative Warrant No Real people are driving me up the walls, and doing so for a reason.
California just started a lawsuit against some randos for the awful crime of running a website demonstrating how ineffective their gun control program is going to be, and while it's 'only' 20k per 'violation', it's also alleging thousands of 'violations'. ((This is the Code Is Not Free Speech reference from here.)) It's a matter of federal law what public radio stations a shipping company may allow its employees to turn on. The EEOC has held that wearing a coworker wearing a Gadsden Flag hat was sufficient evidence to that someone could be subject "to discrimination on the basis of race". The final punchline to the Damore fiasco is that the NLRB held that "anti-discrimination or anti-harassment policies must be afforded particular deference in light of the employer’s duty to comply with state and federal EEO laws", aka the law required Damore's punishment. The only reason Governor "Can't Remember if It Was Blackface or KKK Costume" Northam stopped declaring emergencies every VDCL day was that he termed out from office.
Out of my parade of horribles from five years back, the only one that's no longer true is Demkovich, and that only for the specific case of a religious employer talking to a ministerial employee (... in the Seventh Circuit). Everybody else? Fuck 'em.
And that's just a small selection of the explicit law stuff. If you're willing to admit social power or non-state force, I've got a long long array of examples, no few of which hit me personally. As FCFromSSC said back then "I can't do this now, not without an unacceptable level of risk to my career and livelihood. I am exceedingly careful about proclaiming my right-wing views with my own family members in private."
But in case that's unacceptable as a hypothetical, and I'll spell out now: I tried to be exceedingly careful, and I wasn't careful enough, and it's cost me badly. The Saga Of Forge isn't a specific one to hit me, personally, but it rhymes with one of the online cases. There have been offline ones.
Five years ago, I specifically spelled out : "There was a news story last week about the Trump administration trying to end them for specific jobs. Do you think that the next Democratic administration will decide that he declared "no takebacks"?"
The Biden administration did, in fact, decide to go full takebacks, both specifically for that executive order on Day One, and in terms of expanding those rules far more expansively than ever before. By 2023, according to a Pew survey: "52% say they have trainings or meetings on DEI at work. Smaller shares say their workplace has a staff member who promotes DEI (33%)".
I do, in fact, have struggle sessions where I'm told to reflect on my privilege, and that's after having worked hard and made significant sacrifices to avoid the Blue Tribe stranglehold.
((This gets even funnier given my orientation and demographic background, and I'd rather take a butane torch to my junk than try to actually get my interlocutors to confront that paradox.))
The Trump administration tried to claw them back. Ebb and flow, right? Eh, sometimes after enough fuckery from the courts (although note that it took over a year for the supposedly-unlawful nation-wide preliminary injunction to get slapped down), sometimes not. Doesn't really matter, though. A lot of lower offices are just ignoring it.
In the sense that TheNybbler's not right, and occasionally people with Rs after their names will be elected? Sure, sometimes even in Blue States. If you just said 'the Blue Tribe is not going to be 110% effective at blocking every single Republican candidate ever' I'd have agree with you, and if you just said every single conservative candidate ever I'd only have been able to quibble.
I think you have already updated on both the 'a bullet nearly Gallagar'd a Presidential candidate' and 'judges ordered already-cast (primary) ballots not be counted', so I don't want to hammer this bits too hard, but it's still one of those 'not for lack of trying' bits, though.
There's a mess of court cases percolating right now about when and how this breaks down in divorce, and whether foster licenses can be pulled for speech against homosexuality or be made conditional on requiring prospective foster parents to condone specific LGBT things. Even where the religious orgs get a victory, it's only to find that their religious beliefs can't be the sole determining characteristic. It was considered a major compromise (aka 'sign he's running') when Newsom vetoed a bill requiring child custody hearings to consider parental acceptance of trans stuff, California still encourages judges to consider it.
So fair, yes, this is one of the spaces with the most clearly mixed results.
Yes, the Democratic Party is sure doing their best to make sure they're a relevant concern for everyone.
Matthew Dolloff shot and killed Lee Keltner in October 2020. Do you think he was convicted of homicide or manslaughter? Went to a grueling trial where his self-defense theory was broken down into every component? ... plea bargain for his well-documented other simultaneous unlawful behavior, such as acting as an unlicensed security guard?
Yes, people will argue. I'm more interested in whether people will argue using the facts.
Has a single person been brought to a criminal court for attacking Andy Ngo? When San Jose police steered pro-Trump activists into a riot, where the activists were beaten by unmasked protesters, was anyone throwing punches given a custodial sentence, or anyone forcing political activists into a pile of their enemies fired?
Hell, are we even at the point it makes news, anymore? I can give more recent examples. There's a fun meme going around tumblr literally this weekend praising a high school student who punched a pro-ICE counterprotester, and they might not even be wrong to call the punchee a troll; Portlandites beating the shit out of conservatives and the police solemnly informing everyone that Nothing Can Be Done is a regular ritual. But it's not like it's going to end up on CNN, and it's not like there's anything interesting to discuss here.
We're not on Reddit, now.
There will be some tiny fraction of political discussion allowed on whatever the actual successor site ends up being, between some small selection of approved politics. Anything else will either need to happen on a site with an explicitly free speech (aka 'right-wing') stance, or it's going the exact same direction, and Elon Musk isn't a reddit addict.
I could have bought an alternative back in 2010; there was a short golden hour where RPGnet could slice a thick line between UKIP and BNP and hold to it, where Nazi didn't just mean Something You Don't Like. You know, exactly as well as I do, where that's gone.
Dick Heller still can't register, lol, his gun from Heller I. SFFA happened, and then the next year Harvard decided that it would just discriminate less against Asians and more against non-minorities. NRA v. Vullo said of course you obviously can't bring iffy non-profit governance claims while clearly motivated solely by the politics of that non-profit, and then lower courts decided that it wasn't obvious enough so qualified immunity for everybody (and a similarly-motivated prosecution in a different jurisdiction just got a settlement from the NRA). SCOTUS has punted on the question of But It's Mean on Free Speech. Hell, guns aren't even the only thing in the guns cases. The court has similarly punted on the question of whether But It's Guns on Due Process, or But It's Guns on Free Speech [see also], or But It's Guns on Court Settlements, or even But It's Guns on the very caselaw that SCOTUS thought so beyond the pale that they'd managed to scrounge up a 9-0 before.
Separate from the relitigating:
No! The response is 'the only alternative is rolling over, lying down, and taking it without lube or a reacharound'! It's been clear for over a decade, now, that the only way to delegitimize a supposedly bad tactic is for someone on the Right to use it, and the only revelation in the meantime is that much of the Left will nitpick why they should be able to continue to do it while objecting to the exact same thing being done by the Red Tribe.
That's why I keep highlighting the complete and abject failures of any group, even groups originated from here, claiming to oppose escalation and political violence to actually oppose it when it comes from the Left. That's why I keep highlighting that these weapons worked, sometimes even in ways I'm a beneficiary from their success, and that any shocked and appalled monocle-dropping is going to ring false when deescalation needs be done by their opponents first and foremost and their side Soon (TM).
It's not just that you don't know what the exit looks like. It's that even if one dropped out of the sky, ringed in halo'd cherubs, no one would or could take it.
Your literal only answer, ever, was to say "gattsuru's list does not impress, but if I was wrong, he should be able to point this out in a few years."
Either tell me to stop and I'll stop, actually engage with the problems, or I'm going to keep noticing that you're playing this game and spell it out.
... sure.
And here's the crux. You don't like that? Fine! Actually say it, and then actually support it with factual claims, and then when people point out those factual claims are wrong, engage with them! Which, coincidentally, I'll note that you haven't done:
Fine, mea culpa. Do you have a recommended pattern for how we challenge people when making obviously absurd beliefs? I don't play poker, is there some term about calling a bluff relevant here?
My reason for not believing MadMonzer when MadMonzer says that number is that four months ago he called anyone making it an idiot. Insert the Frieren meme here.
A ton of leftists say it; we've all seen Darwin and its alts. But a scarce sub-Lizardman Constant handful act in accordance with those beliefs in any way, and I don't mean that in the 'do something to get an FBI visit' sense or even a 'act under perfect knowledge regarding enemy capabilities' sense.
A hundred thousand leftists say that they think Brandon Sanderson wants gay kids to undergo electroshock therapy, or that the Sad Puppies were going to march around WorldCon in ghost costumes with nooses. Kelsey "The Good One" TUOC cried herself to sleep for years over an Obama-era picture for a Trump-era policy that had already ended before she first heard about it, wrote long paeans about how Reporters Like Herself needed to do better about bringing this to the forefront early, and then spent the next four years informing anyone who asked that oops immigration isn't her schtick... only to get instantly promoted back to that January 21st, 2025.
They do not sincerely believe this just because they've worked themselves into neurotic hissy fits repeating the words like parrots. They say the words because:
It's just a word, and it just means 'something you don't like'. You don't have to bet on it to prove otherwise, but you can't just point to people saying the word for 'something you don't like', while they collect countless accolades and prizes and rewards for their false panic, and have anyone else take it seriously.
Nope. I don't care about MadMonzer, and you've not tried to present any information showing actual belief, and it's not worth either of our time, and the best-case scenario would turn into a discussion about dissolving definitions that I also don't care about.
I care about the actual facts on the ground.
I care whether the facts on the ground point to one thing or the other. Same then, same now, and the same problem where we keep getting pulled away from it.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link