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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?
Stop backseat modding.
If you think someone is breaking the rules, report them. Don't start public slapfights. Those do not end well for any participants.
Here is the actual guideline at the top:
Many people interpret this as "sarcasm is against the rules" or "you must state everything implicitly and never imply any conclusion that is not stated outright or invite people to infer your meaning."
Sarcasm is, generally, frowned upon, because it tends to be used for condescension and mockery rather than humor, but sarcasm is not outright forbidden and in small doses we usually let it pass.
Likewise, the "speak plainly" rule. This applies to, for example, pretending you are arguing one thing when you're actually arguing something else, or implying something that is so unclear so as to invite confusion or misunderstanding. It means "don't try to gotcha" people. It means "make your point reasonably clear," not "make your point so obvious that even a literalistic autist cannot misunderstand it." It means "Don't play games with meaning and don't pretend you weren't saying what you were clearly saying when someone asks you if that's what you're saying."
I am a non-fan of @magicalkittycat, and this:
is like most of his posts, not great. He's been told to stop being so annoying, but "annoying" is subjective, and a lot of what gets on the nerves of the people who report him is not his style of argumentation but what he's arguing. We let posts like this pass all the time, and not just from MKC, because there is only so much "tone-policing" we are willing to do. Lots of people want us to ban him because he's an annoying leftist. We're not going to ban him because he's an annoying leftist. (You want me to start banning people because I think almost everything they post is disingenuous and annoying? I have a list and MKC is not in the top 10.)
You know what also contributes to the degradation of the Motte? You losing your temper with someone who seems to get under your skin every time they post.
Take it from someone who has a list of people whom I mostly consider aggravating shitposters - you will almost always regret getting into it with them, and you will almost never regret just closing the thread.
I apologise for what comes across as backseat modding — I don't agree with the characterisation, but it's a reasonable one, and I might be wrong.
I don't agree that pointing this out contributes to the degradation of the Motte.
I didn't think that mkc's comment was bad enough to warrant reporting. I thought about it, but that seemed petty and wrong. If I'm wrong about that, I'd welcome the correction.
Yes, I read this. I figured the additional context weighed in favour of pointing out the rules violation, not like some gotcha that I'd missed.
This is exactly what mkc is doing. My comments explain how.
If I'm backseat modding: fair. Ding me for that.
But I literally explain how mkc is deliberately avoiding holding a stance so that it's impossible to debate him.
I don't think that deserves a ban or anything, so I didn't report it. But if the rule is I can't even point that out, then that's a bad rule. And I don't think that is the rule.
I don't have an issue with mkc being annoying. I'm annoying!
I want him to commit to a position so we can discuss it.
Yes, I correctly received a ban for this, and said so at the time.
Given that we agree on this, I'm not sure it's relevant to what we're talking about now.
If your position is that I'm doing the same thing again, which I don't think it is, then that would be relevant.
Many reports are petty and wrong. While I don't like spite reporting, I like people declaring that someone else is breaking the rules less, because if someone is breaking the rules, you should let a mod adjudicate that, and if they're not, it's just going to start a fight with the person you're accusing. (Or it turns into an argument with the mods, and yes, you're allowed to disagree with us too over whether or not so-and-so in fact broke the rules, but it's probably not going to leave anyone feeling satisfied.)
You are allowed to point out that you think his argument is terrible and you don't appreciate his tactics.
I don't think you're losing your temper and I am not threatening you with a ban. I am, however, noticing a pattern and I'm recommending you notice also when someone is getting under your skin.
And if you really think someone is breaking the rules, report it. If you don't really think they are breaking the rules (or not severely enough to warrant mod intervention), then don't publicly accuse them of breaking the rules.
That's reasonable. Thanks for taking the time to explain.
I want to record some general observations — they're not specifically about mkc, but obviously the context of this interaction is going to be read into them.
This is difficult to mod. Some people are going to call it "subjective" — I disagree, but there's a grey zone. Modding this too heavily is going to cross into tone policing, or outlawing people just misunderstanding each other. It's reasonable to err on the side of not modding this.
But it's still corrosive! Consider this exchange:
ALICE: Water is poisonous. BOB: Water isn't poisonous. Maybe you're confused about "dihydrogen monoxide" [insert effortpost] ALICE: if you're confused about the existence about poisons, I recommend this link. Obviously water itself isn't poisonous (idiot). If you're imagining that poisons can't be dissolved in water, I'm prepared to prove you wrong on that stupid position.
In this situation: does Bob report Alice? I don't think so. Maybe it's worth putting in more effort to point out the bullshit Alice has just pulled by lying.
But multiplied across many interactions... Alice can keep lying with zero effort, while the truth has to put in tons of effort to constantly correct the record.
If that's the recommended paradigm (I'm uncertain to what extent you endorse this), then backseat modding is kinda an implicit pillar of this ecosystem. People have to keep putting in effort to point out "no, you just lied — you said X earlier, and now you're pretending you said Y".
I'm aware that this gets under my skin. I'm correct to get really, really annoyed by this. I don't care if a person is a rightist, a leftist, or whatever — I care when they lie in a way that's easily disprovable by looking at the transcript, but that the average Motte reader wouldn't bother to go and read.
The correct behaviour is for me not to respond to this by flipping out, as I did in your link.
... but it's also a problem that someone keeps lying so much that they make someone flip out. You don't actually need to have a long list of shit posters who aggravate you.
I'm not proposing banning anyone for being annoying, or for having the wrong politics (that would be insane). I just want to register that there's this middle ground where disingenuous people can DDOS the Motte with truth-agnostic comments without any kind of restriction or punishment, so long as they stay below the level where they'll get actively modded.
I don't know the solution, I just don't think the current situation is... eh.
You're not exactly wrong. And you're not the first person to point this out. And mods have talked about how to deal with people who are "really fucking annoying but just below the threshold of needing to be banned" before. We don't have a perfect or consistent solution. What usually happens is the really fucking annoying people eventually cross the line, or become so annoying that we apply the "egregiously obnoxious" wildcard rule, which we don't like to do because it's easy to abuse.
But there are a number of corrosive patterns of behavior, and most people have very... partisan ideas of who's corrosive and annoying and who isn't. And we mods are most of all trying to avoid letting partisan biases make us start wanting to ban certain people.
Darwin, for example. MKC seems to have taken a few pages from his playbook.
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