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And that's fine as a stand-alone argument. Just make that argument. Then maybe someone will address your theory that you cannot simultaneously be in favor of desegregation and opposed to blackfacing white characters, instead of just getting wound up at your poe-faced devil's advocacy. This whole stunt is bad for discourse, and if people engaged in this routinely, then no argument could be taken at face value. This is supposed to be a place where you can make arguments and have them taken at face value.
It is a genuine position regardless of everything else.
And no, just stating the argument in the abstract is not the same as actually having the argument in earnest. When you cut the argument from context you remove all necessity and connection to reality. It just becomes a meaningless game of words where someone can, with no reservation, say that they will be having their cake and eating it to.
But you're not having the argument in earnest.
You are taking the position that progressives believe "whites=bad, blacks=good," and that making Aragorn black is a logical extension of that. (Yes, I know I'm simplifying your argument considerably, but that's the gist.) Fine and good, people can agree or disagree that this is what progressives believe, that they believe it in as totalizing a fashion as you've described, or that it's hypocritical to be in favor of racial equality while also being opposed to blackfacing white characters.
The problem is that by "pretending" to be a progressive who actually believes all those things, you may think you are forcing people to confront their beliefs or whatever, but you aren't actually doing so honestly. As you have seen, people are reacting mostly with outrage to "Blacks are virtuous and white civilization is bad" and they aren't actually engaging with your underlying point. When a steelman isn't presented as a steelman, it's just trolling. Is there a point at which you intended to take off the mask and explain what you were really doing, or just keep going and see how much you can get people wound around the axle?
If you go all the way back to his first post, it was clearly explaining-a-position rather than advancing-a-position. It might be interesting to have a discussion about how many rounds of back-and-forth it takes before people forget that it's a devil's advocate (empirically, the answer is too often "zero") and at what point one has a duty to remind one's interlocutor of the distinction (as opposed to the interlocutor's duty to actually read a post before responding to it and not impute a steelman to the author as an honest position, which presumably lapses after some nonzero amount of discourse without a reminder).
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I am making the argument in earnest. I don't need you to simplify the argument, there is no 'gist'. It exists in its totality. It can be read as presented. I don't make any claims about what progressives believe. I don't pretend to be one. I don't care what you think my underlying point is. I found the discussion engaging and worthwhile as it was and would have liked to continue it.
You are free to do so. What you are not free to do is adopt a persona and deceive people.
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