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Actually, no. The rules say "speak plainly".
Stop doing this.
If you believe that Trump and Vance would lie and/or act irresponsibly, say so. Ideally in a substantive, interesting comment that adds to the discussion. Obviously, taking this path would be incompatible with what you want to vaguely but vigorously hint at: something like "Trump is paedophile". If that's an uncharitable distillation, then maybe try speaking plainly so people don't have to guess.
If, on the other hand, you don't think that Trump and Vance would lie and/or act irresponsibly --i.e. you want to disavow the entire smug point of your comment as, well, a lie -- then you can absolutely use Vance's comment as part of a chain of reasoning to connect Trump to Epstein, like you're salivating to do.
You want to have your cake and eat it. You want to simultaneously claim:
... can you please pick a principled position? You might learn something, if you actually made a single falsifiable claim and tried to honestly discuss it, rather than throwing out a general shitstorm of "my outgroup is bad" without ever committing to a single coherent position.
You're forced to guess either way. As the highest officials of the US government, there's good arguments we should presume they act in a mature manner and generally tell the truth. The courts do this with the executive (or at least generally did it). I, and you, don't know if Vance is lying here or even what parts (if he is) are lies and what are truths. None of us can know. I can not say that Vance is lying because I do not have access to all the redacted and hidden information he does.
So if we take the stance: "The executive branch is filled with honest, serious and mature people that should be given the benefit of the doubt" then we should assume that Israeli and US intelligence likely were involved with Epstein. If we don't take that stance, then it's hard to say because again even if he's lying we don't know which parts are lies and even if we did we only know that it is lies and not what the truthful alternative is. Given this site is extremely pro MAGA, I assume most people here take that stance and thus I reasoned from there.
If you want to explore the "Vance is lying" hypothetical instead and discuss what implications that could lead to, go ahead and do that instead of whining.
These can both coexist! Even the worst liars don't lie about everything. They are perfectly willing to be truthful if the truth benefits them. And you can't just flip around a lie and find the truth, not how lies work. We don't know what the truth is and what the files show. Even if he is lying about some parts of the Epstein files, it doesn't mean he is lying about every part!
Both possibilities here are suspicious.
Vance is lying about something, in which case what is he trying to coverup and which parts are a lie?
Vance is not lying anywhere, in which case what do those connections mean?
You are breaking the rules and wasting everyone's time.
Pretending that pointing that out is "whining" is pathetic.
Speak plainly.
No, I wouldn't be forced to guess about what you believe if you actually stated what you believe. I wouldn't have to guess, because I would assume you were attempting to honestly represent your beliefs.
I want you to be honest and state what you believe. Not just on this, but in general. I want you to make comments where you actually stake out a position that people can discuss, rather than just flinging shit at people you don't like, but in a way where you can't be pinned down on any particular claim, because you veil your claims behind ambiguity, sarcasm, and contempt for people you consider to be less intelligent than you.
No, they can't. Not inside the same argument!
Then say that. Ideally, pick one possibility, explain why you think it's true, and explain what it would imply.
Or, less ideally, construct a position of "one of these two things must be true", explain why you think that, and explain what each of them would imply.
What's juvenile is to simultaneously push for both being true. "Hey guys, Vance and Trump are pieces of shit and lie all the time. Also, Vance said this thing, and because he said it, it must be true; and, if true, it implies Trump is a paedo".
That's pathetic and contributes to the degradation of the Motte. Why is it so hard to just present a principled position? Why do you insist on marshalling a troop of mutually contradictory ideas-as-soldiers?
You are demanding the impossible, I can not know what is and isn't truthful in Vance's statements. I do not have access to the full unredacted information. I can only operate in the hypothetical and I addressed Hypothetical 1: He is being truthful here.
That's why if you notice a key part from my statement
I will not make bold claims like "Vance is definitely lying" when I can not know that. But I can analyze some possible conclusions if we assume Vance is being truthful, like many assume about Trump's statements, then what does that possibly imply?
"Speak plainly", how about you bother to read instead? I did speak plainly. I plainly said it was a hypothetical assumption! The word is right there.
Again even if we flip the assumption around and observe the hypothetical where he is a liar, it doesn't tell us what parts are a lie and what is truth.
That wasn't what he was asking for at all. He was asking for your priors, not the content of the truth of Vance's statements. That would give important information ('why are we forced to guess?' and 'why is this important to you, much less the conversation?') That is certainly within the possible, if you weren't so evasive about it.
Let's flip the script on you. If I said 'Now we can all assume that Magicalkittycat both tells the truth and lies', that would be superficially true (no one is completely honest 100% of the time, and even if they tried to be, they would make lies of omission on occasion). The statement tells us almost nothing about which parts of your speech are truthful and which ones are lies. But besides being useless, this statement certainly isn't smuggling in a trojan horse's worth of assumptions against you, which certainly wouldn't be used against you in a partisan way. Certainly, I wouldn't imply you tell the truth when it looks bad for you, and you lie when you argue in your defense.
I mean, I'm just saying the truth, aren't I?
My priors are I don't know! I think Israel likely had some connections to Epstein, and thus Vance might be saying something true here (even if you or I believe he often lies elsewhere) but I don't have anything to prove it, cause I don't have access to all of that.
I can't tell you which way is which cause I don't know. All I can do is give some hypotheticals, which is
If we assume this recent statement is true from Vance because we assume he isn't lying to our faces, then what could that suggest? Well, Mossad and Epstein both want/wanted involvement in Iran, so that could be something they utilized. And we know that the Trump admin is currently wanting to hide something that's still covered up in the Epstein files, so presumbly it has links to him or his allies. Thus within this hypothetical we can propose the possibility that the coverup and Iran war are connected in some manner, and that perhaps Mossad uses their connections to coerce (or at least push a little) on the president for his unpopular war.
If people want to explore the alternative assumption where Vance is lying, they can go ahead and do so. What they shouldn't do is blame their inability to properly read on me proposing a hypothetical
That isn't what you did.
Then say that up front, instead of pretending.
Your original comment had nothing to do with hypotheticals.
People want to explore the alternative timeline where you say what you mean.
You think it's cute when you go "oh, you disagree with my unflattering framing X? Well, if you want to explore even-less-flattering-framing-Y, go ahead!"
The problem is that this hinges on everyone around you being stupid.
You are being criticised for obfuscating your position to try and head off specific criticism.
No one is saying "hey, you're being too charitable when you said Vance isn't a horrible liar!"
Please stop pretending that the latter is the case.
You are lying.
You did not propose a hypothetical.
Stop blaming people for not reading something you did not write.
Look dude I pointed out to you already where I said assume, and at least to my knowledge and all the ways I've used and seen it before, an assumption implies and in many contexts requires a hypothetical. I've never seen a person say "Let's assume X is true" about a claim they know to be true, it is always one that they are not sure about it.
As Google says for the definition
To me, it must be a hypothetical then, cause proof and evidence would make it not hypothetical anymore and as I said above, I've never seen "Let's assume X" in any context that isn't theorizing.
"Now we can all assume" does not posit a hypothetical.
If you'd like, I can patronisingly link you to the definition of every word in that sentence, as that's the level of discourse you've decided to operate on.
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