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One side of the court is applying legal reasoning to the facts to reach their decision. The other side is picking a winner and tailoring their legal reasoning to reach it. You decide which side is which.
@The_Nybbler, @Nantafiria, @orangecat, @arjin_ferman, @Primaprimaprima...
Yeah, maybe. This entire subthread seems to be both a reflection of the current state of the Motte and the current state of the world.
I'm not modding anyone in particular here (meaning, no mod notes have gone on anyone's account, despite reports flying right and left), just observing a few things, which you can take for whatever it's worth (likely nothing):
Yes, @The_Nybbler's incessant one-note doomerism "Doesn't matter, nothing changes, rules are all fake and gay and they're gonna keep stomping on my face forever, whatever you post, I'm just gonna say The Left won dooooooooooom!" is tedious and annoying. Even if you think this is true, consider contributing... something else? Anything else?
@Nantafiria - stop with the "no u" bullshit. You may feel understandably backed into a corner, being one of the few outspoken leftists left, but if you believe this place has "gone to the dogs" and engaging with people like adults is no longer worthwhile, then it seems like a healthier response would be to just leave instead of seeing how annoying you can be before you get banned.
@Primaprimaprima - I don't think we have ever followed the rules "to the letter." This is a frequent source of grief from people who want to rules lawyer us ("You must mod every rule exactly as written and you cannot mod anything that isn't breaking a rule exactly as written, and I will write pages and pages arguing about exactly what the rule as written mean...")
So no, you don't have to argue everything from first principles every time, but you also can't start with ground-level assumptions like "As we all know, wokes suck."
This thread, generally, is bad because no one is actually arguing anything, you're just exchanging dunks and rimshots back and forth.
"Your side bad!"
"No yours."
And if that's all you have left, well, why are you even here?
My two cents. The official mod statement here is: knock it off and write gooder, all of you.
Your mod warning might be right, but this post is an example of being a bad mod. You mocked three users to various degrees of uncharitability and antagonism and then warned them when you could have just warned them. And I'm not saying you need to be a robot or in deference to other posters all the time, just you know, mod comment gooder.
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Under a Democratic SCOTUS, the team looks out for the team. Under a Republican SCOTUS, it's just the opposite.
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