See, the difference between our perspectives is that you’re punching down at voters rather than punching up at politicians. Maybe if every single person who stood by their valid moral principles was convinced to abandon them, it would’ve changed the outcome. I don’t know how that’s supposed to be achieved, exactly, aside from trying to shame people for having morals, which I don’t expect to be particularly effective.

Alternatively, instead of changing the public in order to be in line with what politicians want, we could change politicians to be in line with what voters want. I think the word for that is “democracy.”

If the status quo was enough to address Trumpism, then why is Trump president?

I don’t say that the two parties are exactly the same, but 1) they will both lead to the same result and 2) they are both fundamentally unacceptable.

The democrats are not “the tourniquet party.” Tourniquets stop bleeding, the democrats want to cause more bleeding. They are the “stab your femoral artery again” party. They don’t fix shit.

If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there’s no progress.

If you pull it all the way out that’s not progress. The progress is healing the wound that’s below, that the blow made. And they haven’t even begun to pull the knife out, much less pull, heal the wound…

They won’t even admit the knife is there.

Throughout history, there have been plenty of times when people supported genocide on the premise that it prevented some greater threat. I’m not aware of a single time in history where that position was the correct one.

I have not seen that movie.

You must also wish Socrates had it, since you don’t know what basic logic looks like, at all.

In case it went over your head, the story I told you did not turn out the way I described, in fact, what Socrates said became an enduring concept in philosophy, they even came up with a special term for it, the two “horns” of the Euthyphro dilemma, like the two horns of a bull, if you grab one, you get impaled by the other. It is considered a compelling argument precisely because it’s a no-win situation.

I actually watched the video you linked earlier. It’s a good video, you just completely misinterpreted it. Again, I don’t know how many times I have to explain this to you: just because a line of logic makes you look bad, that isn’t enough reason for you to reject it. That’s absolutely not what the video is saying.

That’s a lot of words to say “no.”

Yeah, liberals do have insane, uncompromising, unrealistic opinions and are very unwilling to accept others having different opinions.

Depends, if for example they’re destroying a rail line used to conduct the Holocaust and it coincidentally caused that, then yes. If it’s entirely unrelated, then no.

Not sure what that question has to do with anything.

Yes, I do consider basic fucking logic pretty damn important.

Besides it being an obvious trap, you absolutely admitted it was a trap, and then you said that you were intending to incriminate me either way. Don’t play these fucking games.

You. It doesn’t magically stop being a trap in the same way that a puzzle doesn’t stop being a puzzle because the puzzle maker said that’s what it was. I even linked to the video explaining how those incriminating statements work. Don’t piss on my leg.

Once upon a time, Socrates had a discussion about the gods with someone named Euthyphro. Socrates asked, “Are the things the gods command good because the gods command them, or do the gods command things that just happen to be good? If you say it’s the first, then saying that the gods command good things is really just saying “the gods command what the gods command,” a meaningless tautology. But if you say the gods command things that we independently judge to be good, then there must be some other source of goodness, and in that case, why don’t we follow that directly, without needing the gods?”

Euthyphro responded “AHA! YOU’RE TRYING TO LURE ME INTO A TRAP!!! I CAUGHT YOU11!!! THAT QUESTION MAKES ME LOOK BAD EITHER WAY SO IT’S OBVIOUSLY BAD FAITH!!!” and Socrates said, “Aw, dang, you got me” and it never came up again.

Never pretended I wasn’t anti-Nazi.

Do you know what meta is? Did you know that you can describe the concept of a topic and aspects of said topic without necessarily going into it? Because I clearly was talking about the hyper-fixation people have on the genocide as a topic

And that is, itself, a statement about genocide. Saying that people are “hyper-fixated” on genocide, and that they shouldn’t be, that they should “move the fuck on” and that “the world doesn’t revolve around genocide” is saying that genocide isn’t that big of a deal actually, that it’s just a matter of preference, like whether you like waffles or pancakes.

The fact is that genocide is a moral abomination and people are perfectly right to “fixate” on it, because that’s what you do when something abominable is happening in front of you. If I see somebody pull out a gun and start shooting people, and start complaining that everybody is “hyper-fixated” on the shooter and that they shouldn’t be, then I am making a statement about the shooting and how significant it is. This isn’t hard to understand.

Because I refuse to believe you’re this dense. I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt that you’re smart enough to understand,

Right, you’re “giving me the benefit of the doubt” by saying that I’m lying.

How?? I said the thing, I jumped through your hoop, I overexplained and keep overexplaining myself. Why is it so difficult to understand? Is it really that inconceivable?

Now you did. I said that you were minimizing genocide. Now, I think you have a completely incoherent and self-contradictory position.

No, you set up a trap. You don’t set up traps when you want straight answers.

Brother, it was not a “trap.” I even did you the courtesy of explaining the implications of both of your possible responses. What kind of “trap-setter” explains their trap?

I asked you a very simple, staightforward, and perfectly fair hypothetical. I did not realize that you don’t understand how hypotheticals worked, or that a hypothetical apparently killed your family or something to the point that you would take this much offense over it. Again, just because a hypothetical makes your position look bad, that is not sufficient reason to reject it. That’s just like, how arguments work, on a very fundamental level.

YOU dragged the conversation to c/memes. YOU wanted to “expose me” over here, “in front of the class”.

Who do you even think you’re fooling?

My comment was on the topic of genocide

Yes, that’s what I said, you were talking about genocide.

You PRETEND

Why do you keep saying this? Are you a mind-reader? I haven’t “pretended” a single thing this conversation. I genuinely, 100% believe that you were minimizing genocide. I’m not aware of any other possible interpretation of what you said.

Why should I if that was not the topic?

It seems like it would’ve been really fucking easy to say “No, that wouldn’t justify the Holocaust” and then explain whatever other interpretation supposedly exists for what you said, instead of playing this game where you refuse to answer and then answer like 20 comments later in a different thread.

Who the fuck is talking about genocides?

Both you, and the person you originally replied to.

I gave you an explicit example where I literally removed the word genocide from the sentence to explain my meta-comment,

You attempted to minimize genocide by suggesting that being pro- or anti-genocide was merely a matter of personal preference an abhorrent and repugnant thing that you keep coming back to for some reason, as if it wasn’t abhorrent and repugnant.

Then you’re all Pikachu-face confused when it turns out that I’m well-read on genocide and that I denounce it freely.

Then why couldn’t you earlier? Why couldn’t you “freely denounce the Holocaust” when I asked if a particular line of logic would justify it.

Where the fuck do you get this idea that I’m justifying the Holocaust or any genocide at all?? Hello? Why is this a thing we have to discuss and for me to defend?

BECAUSE IF A LINE OF LOGIC IS VALID IN ONE CASE OF GENOCIDE THEN IT IS EQUALLY VALID REGARDING OTHER GENOCIDES!

Except that you did say that “the world doesn’t revolve around genocide” and people upset about it need to “move the fuck on” which are both clearly pro-genocide.

If you overload the premise, it’s not exactly analyzing anything of value.

This is the first time you’ve said anything close to an argument of why you reject my hypothetical that isn’t just rejecting hypotheticals altogether, so I’ll address it. I didn’t overload the premise. I literally changed one thing: I made it about the Holocaust instead of Gaza. That’s it. How does doing that “overload the premise?”

Your hypothetical was asking a loaded and incriminating question regardless of how I answered it.

Yes! If would incriminate you either way, because it forced you to either double down on what you had said and say that the Holocaust was justified, or contradict what you had said and say that the Holocaust wasn’t justified. The only reason you were in that situation was that you said shit that would also justify the Holocaust if it was valid. That’s your fault for painting yourself into that corner by using arguments that would justify the Holocaust! It’s not somehow my fault for pointing out that your arguments would also justify the Holocaust.

Just because a hypothetical makes you look bad doesn’t mean it’s invalid.

I was listening before when you were pro-genocide and I’m also listening now that you’ve changed tact to being anti-genocide.

Oh, right, we’re still doing that bit, pretending we don’t understand basic analogies

Are you talking about the analogy where you compared a moral stance about genocide to a mere preference between liking pancakes or waffles? I understood that analogy perfectly, as well as how utterly monstrous it was to make.

The burden of proof falls on you to prove that I am.

I did.

All you have are your stupid and loaded hypotheticals.

It’s not my fault you don’t understand hypotheticals.