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So, there's a difference between 'You think these actions were closer to insurrection than anything Trump did, therefore you find it unjust that only Trump was punished for insurrection' vs 'The prosecutors in question thought that those actions are closer to insurrection than anything Trump did, therefore their choice to only punish Trump for insurrection is intentional malice.'
Can you grant that, even if it's motivated reasoning or driven by propaganda and disdain, many of your opponents really and truly believe that Trump committed insurrection?
Because if so, that's sufficient to say that they are being honest (even if not fair/just) in prosecuting Trump for things they believe to be insurrection, but not prosecuting others for things that we all agree are not.
What difference does it make? I never said I thought it was unjust - it transparently is, but that wasn't part of any argument I was making.
Anybody who does actually believe that is mis/underinformed to such a degree that they don't have anything of consequence to say about the political situation involved. If someone says that Satan planted dinosaur bones in the Earth to test the faith of True Christians, I don't think it's worth listening to their opinions on the fossilisation process because I know that it is going to be garbage already. If someone genuinely believes that what Trump did falls into the category of insurrection, either they're just not thinking seriously or they're grossly misinformed - and their opinion isn't worth listening to either way.
But furthermore, the people who are actively prosecuting Trump (and who I was talking about) cannot really and truly believe that Trump committed insurrection, or they would not have acted in the way that they did (i.e. they would have prosecuted him immediately rather than timing the prosecution and important court dates specifically to interfere with his election campaign). There is a possible world where those people genuinely believed their claims, but that is observably not the world that we live in.
It was the central question of the original conversation you jumped in on, here.
'Anyone who disagrees with me is so stupid that it's not worth listening to them' is not typically a stance that ends up with you yourself becoming educated and well-informed on a topic.
He's not being prosecuted for insurrection!
What we are talking about here is the Colorado election board saying he's not eligible for the primary ballot.
Colorado does not have the standing tocriminally prosecute a former President for insurrection. Only federal courts can do that, and they still haven't decided to do so.
The only reason the Colorado election board can make a finding about insurrection is because it is relevant to the construction of their state ballot, which is why they had no standing or reason to do that before he would appear on a ballot.
Things like this are why 'anyone who disagrees with me is too stupid to listen to' is such a dangerous position to take. The real world is complex, and if you're supremely confident you already understand it well enough then you're probably just going to miss all the nuance that actually matters.
Was it? From my reading, the central question of the original conversation was
Whether or not the ruling was just is largely immaterial to that question, which is why I didn't find it particularly relevant.
I agree with the point you're making and have even made it before on the motte, but that isn't really the case in this situation. I'm perfectly happy for people to disagree with me, but that disagreement has to take the relevant facts into account. We know how the Steele dossier was made, and there's undeniable video evidence that Trump's speech was not the cause of people entering the capital. You can absolutely still make a case against Trump when you take that evidence into account, but you have to deal with that evidence and look at what actually happened.
Again, I'm not saying you can't disagree with me - but if you say that Trump flew a KKK flag and ordered the proud boys to violently take over the capital and pronounce him Emperor, I'm going to dismiss your argument out of hand unless you've got some really compelling evidence to prove your case and I really don't think I'm wrong to do so.
You are of course free to disagree - but the consequences of that include an inability to object to fictional evidence being brought into an argument, which is not a position I think you'd be willing to take (though I'd love to give my imagination a workout if not!)
I was under the impression that the topic of conversation had broadened to include things like the Smith special counsel. If that's not the case, then your objections are all valid and I don't even disagree - these particular dates weren't chosen specifically to mess with his campaigning, unlike the special counsel ones.
I agree, which is why I don't take that position. But I don't think "Young Earth creationists are not worth listening to when it comes to proposed evolutionary pathways" is particularly dangerous. To provide another example, I'm perfectly willing to hear people defend the NSA and the current USG panopticon - but if someone says that XKEYSCORE is just fiction and the NSA's existence is a conspiracy theory, they aren't even making an actual coherent argument and aren't worth engaging with.
Ok, it looks like I'm once again in the situation where I'm 10 comments deep into a single string of replies and my interlocutor has changed 3 times and I'm still arguing my original point without noticing that the new people who replied later are trying to talk about different related points. So, sorry for the miscommunication.
No worries, it happens! I've definitely left comments unreplied to when I start airing my unpopular opinions too.
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