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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 25, 2023

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As I said earlier, I am 100% confident that some Romney supporters voted for him out of anti-black animus, and some Obama supporters voted for him out of anti-white animus. The numbers are probably quite small in both instances. But I disagree that that is the source of the heat.

  • -11

You haven't actually done what I suggested.

What percentage of people that voted do you think did with that as their primary motivation to do so? 0.1%, 1%, 5%, 20%, 50%? You can even give a number range, like 1 - 20%. If you can't do this then you're speaking with no conviction in your thought.

You might be thinking why does this matter? Well, it matters because it reveals your motivation for making that statement. If you think 50% of voters did so with racism as their main priority, it tells me that your view of the world is flawed and I should view any argument/statement you make with more scrutiny. If you think it's 0.1% of the voters, then why did you even bring up the point? It's so miniscule that it's irrelevant. You failed to provide any other reason for why people might be against the opposition candidate other than the race factor so it's reasonable to assume that you think racism is a significant enough contributing factor.

When you're providing an explanation for something but that explanation is like the 8th or 9th in the list of reasons that matter and you provide no other reasons, and nobody else has provided the more likely reasons, well it seems to imply you have some kind of agenda or you want to push some kind of perspective. It's poisoning the well, and it's not conducive to a productive conversation. There probably is something interesting and insightful in the point you brought up, after all I've seen some amazing conversations here based on disagreements but the resulting comment chain so far has not been enlightening on anything of substance other than the nature of your character at this moment in time.

The charitable view is that you just some off-hand remark you made without giving it much thought, but the fact that you continue to argue rather than saying it was just some careless wording on your part seems to suggest something else. I get that it's human nature to get defensive, especially when you get piled on like this, but it's not doing you any favors here.