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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 11, 2023

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covid killed one million people in the united states. Yes, mostly old people, but we're talking about protecting old people here. No reason to pretend otherwise.

Unfortunately this site also gives him no reason to speak plainly.

Speaking of plainly, do you mean "the site encourages him to be bombastic about covid because it doesn't push back", or something else? Not immediately obvious

I mean that the mods don't care about whether he says that, regardless of the fact that it's literally false and solely exists as rhetoric.

I don't hold voters or commenters on this site to any standard because the whole point of mods is that "the people" lack the coordination to have/enforce healthy norms.

When people say false things, you can just say as much, and provide some evidence?

Sure, then the mods can remove the hot-take rule and be honest about that fact that proactive defense of claims is nice, but that they won’t/can’t enforce it.

I mean that the mods don't care about whether he says that, regardless of the fact that it's literally false and solely exists as rhetoric.

We don't judge truth values. The mods do not want to (and you would not want us to) start modding people according to whether or not we think what they said is "true." Making inflammatory claims without backing them up is against the rules*; saying things that @you-get-an-upvote thinks are false is not.

  • However, contrary to what many people believe, "inflammatory claim" does not mean "an assertion that inflames me, personally."

I'm not interested in another conversation with the mod who thinks all I really want is to silence my outgroup. Happy to talk to literally anyone else, since at least two other mods have shown the ability to be charitable, even if they disagree with me. Also happy to not talk since it's unlikely either party will leave convinced.