https://mobile.twitter.com/daveanthony/status/932153054081589249
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I’m gonna say I agree with a lot of those comments, as a former Alabamian who lives in Long Island, Home to Levittown which excluded blacks, where it is 90% white on the whole island. I hear all the sneers at Alabama. Sure is easy to have great race relations when there are no black people around!
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I’ve found the North to be about as racist as the South. See, Northerners have no problems with minorities existing, but only in theory, and only if they know their place.
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Chomsky slapping at both liberals and Marxists:
I disagree with some of his basic premises, but it’s interesting stuff.
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A few years old and from a centre-right perspective, but interesting:
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I wanted to like this but I ended up disagreeing with this, because what he argues should be done is extremely similar to what is argued as the “correct” approach to hate speech - don’t dismiss the obvious fallacious or sensational argument and use “better” speech to show why the other side is flawed. As an ideal it seems reasonable to demand that people critically engage and determine without doubt what side of the conversation makes sense, however in practice it means that the fallacious argument is given nuance and any derailment it causes continues to an extreme.
In a sense, Adam Johnson is upset because he knows his argument is in the best circumstances a derailment of an issue being discussed, and he really has no good way to respond to why he is trying to force the conversation to a topic he wants to speak on so he has to create a “just more red scare tactics” method of tone policing for people that are justifiably upset about current topics that didn’t necessarily know about the modern geopolitical history of the situation.
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Related to the “whataboutism” thing:
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The problem is that many people who regularly engage in whataboutism is really disliking that their articulate version of it is being noticed when there is the GOP using the truly ham-fisted version as a rhetorical device. It’s easy to point to what Trump does and show how completely wrong it is to dismiss an argument entirely due to a previous sin, but the point of logical fallacies are not actually to quickly weed out what people can instinctively point to as fallacious - it’s to be critical of the reasoning behind very intelligent and persuasive arguments.
There’s a reason I said I almost agreed with Johnson’s point, because what he said sounded perfectly reasonable. However, when I examined what he said more critically he doesn’t actually make an rational argument against whataboustism as a fallacy. He actually uses whataboutism in his argument against whataboutism (what about when it’s used to ignore what the US does wrong, therefore it is a propoganda technique), insults the very nature of the word (loaded, vague cliche used to prevent critiques of our most powerful instituitons), and then insults people claiming whataboutism as brain dead. The entire argument is a house of cards appealing to the sensibilities of the people on his side already in an effort to discredit a very valid thing that exists in the world.
It’s basically every intelligent racist argument ever made, which is why I compared the two. Forgive how this sounds, but this logic is used all the time like so:
I would take “racist” more seriously as a label for a bigot if it wasn’t evoked 99% of the time for the sole purpose of silencing speech.
I mean, google the term. Literally the only time it’s used is as a conversation-ending cliche when one brings up glaring inconsistencies in the behavior of Muslims and how the media treats them.
A loaded, vaguely defined cliche meant to stop critiques of immigration policy? Sounds like the real Nazi call is coming from inside the house.
It’s a natural human instinct to develop a consistent moral and logical framework. Not a perfect one. But something. Yelling “racist” turns this instinct into a sinister ploy. One must accept the moral superiority of the left left they be labeled a bigot.
It’s so fucking degenerate.
The last one is a joke, but the arguments are both appealing to the audience’s own opinion and not constructing an argument - which is very unlike your own post on the subject where you make a valid point elaborating on how you feel the argument gets used. Scahill also has a similar elaboration, but is also extremely guilty of punching down all applications of the world in order to make a contrived counterexample seem more legitimate. It’s really poor logic.
So if someone dismisses your argument as whatboutism, absolutely treat it as Scahill suggests:
From now on, when someone accuses you of engaging in whataboutism, just imagine that what they’re really saying is, “Shut up, I don’t want to hear inconvenient facts.”
But realize that even as a crass statement, those interjected inconvenient facts are indeed mostly off topic. Considering how much work we all do to stem the tide of off-topic nonsense, I don’t know that I can accept well-intentioned eloquent derailments either.
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Leah is so right here. The Dems haven’t just lost the plot with this, they’re in an entirely different book.
What is she talking about? I don’t see the original tweet.
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Original tweet deleted, probably in response to the critique.
This is the main reason why folks often use screencaps; to preserve the evidence.
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Three reasons I didn’t.
- The image was disturbing.
- It doesn’t allow looking into further context the way a link does.
- When I have in the past, I have had people upset because of 2.
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