Total posts: 5,890
Over the past year as the world has grappled with a once in a century pandemic we have seen an entire political movement against masks, vaccines, social distancing… pretty much anything we can do to stop or slow down the spread of COVID. These folks will often hide behind notions of freedom or whatever other excuse they find to justify their positions.
Actions taken include the banning of mask mandates, not only at the county level but also in schools. In Florida they banned cruise ships from requiring patrons to be vaccinated. And then there’s the nonstop onslaught on right wing television aided by these public officials against health experts, science, and any confidence the public could possibly have that this virus is real, dangerous, and that we have vaccines that can get us out of this.
Imagine the following scenario: You are a secret agent of a foreign country and your mission is to do whatever you can to get as many Americans as possible killed through COVID, so first, you manage to get yourself elected governor of an entire US state. My question is, please tell me what you would do to complete your mission that republican governors are not already doing.
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@TheMorningsStar
That is a consequence of the ban, yes, but that is not what the ban itself is or the ethics/values behind the ban. To try and frame it in this way is, in a way, a strawman of the pro-life position.
The point you made was that mask mandates were different from abortion because mask mandates told you that you “must do X” while abortion is saying you “cannot do Y”, but this is not true. Pregnancy is an either/or proposition. You cannot tell a women that she cannot end the pregnancy without telling her that she must have the child.
My point had nothing to do with the motivation behind the position, so there’s no strawman here. We were comparing two things to see if they are different. They’re not, at least not in the way you claim.
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@TheMorningsStar
Abortion bans are saying 'You cannot do X' while mask mandates are saying 'You must do Y'. These are entirely different
No, they're not. A women must either carry her pregnancy to term or not, so banning abortion is forcing her to carry out her pregnancy, which I find to be a much greater violation of personal liberty then telling someone they just put on a mask.
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I find the free will debate to be ultimately pointless. If we don't have free will, then whatever it is, is something no one has ever experienced before. Therefore not only do we lose nothing, but we don't even know what it is we are supposed to have lost.
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@TheUnderdog
You didn’t hear a single thing I said.
We can debate whether government should impose seatbelt mandates or whether abortion should be legal another time. The argument I was responding to was the charge of hypocrisy by explaining why the left holds different attitudes towards these two things.
Again, the left believes in governments role to protect it’s citizens. That applies to seatbelts, it does not apply to the abortion debate. Now imagine if abortion couldn’t be done safely and thousands of women were dying on the table every year. That would change things for many on the left.
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@TheUnderdog
You'd figure pro choicers would want seatbelts to be optional, since they are the ones so obsessed with choice
Choice is the left’s focus when it comes to abortion because the entire debate comes down to how ones body will be used by someone else, so the beneficiary of the pro-life position is not the person whose body is in question.
Seat belt laws are the opposite. Is there any situation where someone without a seatbelt goes flying through the front windshield, is resurrected and given the opportunity to do it over again and still chooses not to wear the seatbelt? I doubt you would argue there are, so these laws are at least intended to be in the best interests of the rider.
Whatever you think about these two positions, the principal to understand is the idea that government has a responsibility to protect its citizens, even in some cases from itself. Abortion isn’t about protecting its citizens, it’s about choosing which citizen to favor; the one that is alive or the one that isn’t (depending on your definition, which is of course another big part of it).
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@bmdrocks21
Lefties will not too uncommonly say the same types of arguments when we propose abortion bans. They say that we just want to control women/hate women and that's why we do it, when the vast majority of people who oppose abortion do so because they think it is literal murder.
Agree 100%. This is what I have started calling the “pro-con” fallacy. If you’re pro-life then you hate women and are anti women’s choice, if you’re pro choice then you just wanna kill babies. It’s lazy and intellectually dishonest, but sadly it works on both sides and is one of the biggest reasons we can’t have civil political conversations.
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@fauxlaw
So, what is it to you if Trump said that Stormy lied by accepting money to shut up? The money was for her to keep quiet; it's a legitimate deal, which she broke. Half of Trump's counted "lies" [deliberate deceptions] fall into that category, yet are still counted.
Perhaps you have never sat down and watched this man speak off the cuff and instead only watch Fox News highlights.
Trump lied about everything, and I mean everything. Didn’t matter how big or small, nor how obvious.
He lied over and over again saying the Mueller report was a “complete and total exoneration” when the report literally states it “does not exonerate him”.
He lied about the veterans choice program, which he took credit for even though it passed in 2014 and was signed into law by Obama. He told this one lie over 150 times.
Or how about when he lied on multiple occasions saying he had a healthcare law he would be signing in two weeks? That’s more in the category of how stupid do you think we are? Did he think we wouldn’t notice two weeks later? Multiple times?
Or how about the ego stroking narcissistic lies, like when he said the Boy Scouts in a phone call called his horrific speech “the greatest ever” when no call ever happened, or when he claimed to win Michigan’s man of the year award, or when he claimed John Oliver invited him onto his show? I mean how small are you to lie about this kind of stupid stuff?
Or how about the vile vicious lies, like when he said Ilan Omar supports Al Qaeda? That’s just dangerous, but it’s not him he was endangering so who cares right?
How about wind mills cause cancer? Nuff said.
And of course, his consistent firehose of lies about the 2020 election. That’s a category in its own.
I could write another 20 posts just like this one and never use the same lie twice. He’s told so many lies I constantly find myself being reminded of lies he’s told that I couldn’t believe he was saying at the time but yet I have completely forgotten about since. There is nothing about Biden or any other public figure you could possibly compare this to. So please stop making yourself look like a mindless cult following drone and just admit that his lying is unprecedented and not comparable.
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@Athias
You're the one who attempted to associate the government's attempt to encourage/mandate vaccination with its attempt to save your life.
Um… yeah, that’s kind of the entire point. Unless you’re stupid enough to think a bunch of democrats sat around at a table saying “hm, how can we control the people’s lives today? I know, let’s pretend this pandemic is serious and give people $100 to get it”.
And evidence that the COVID-19 vaccines "saves lives" has yet to be produced.
So you think it’s, what… coincidence that 99% of COVID deaths at this point are of the unvaccinated? No seriously, do you really believe that?
Evidence of deaths after the administration of the vaccine are easily available.
Of course there are, on places like Info Wars and Facebook. Places where people are too stupid to realize that being vaccinated and dying does not mean the vaccine killed you, and who also don’t understand basic probabilities… namely that the same people most vulnerable to the virus and therefore the ones who got vaccinated first were also the people most likely to die soon due to their age and/or medical condition.
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@TheUnderdog
I personally think the government should encourage but not mandate seatbelts as people should be free to decide their own risk tolterance.
Do you also believe women should be free to choose what they do with their own body?
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@Athias
Your rationale is flawed. There's no empirical evidence that a COVID-19 vaccine has saved a life. *It's a method of inoculation* There is evidence that COVID-19 vaccines immediately after administration have led to death. So in accordance with your rationale's logic, the government wants you to die.
So the fact that 99% of COVID deaths are among the unvaccinated is not evidence to you that vaccines are saving lives, and you believe based on evidence you didn’t cite (because there isn’t any) that vaccines are killing people.
I remember when info wars was the only place you would find complete lunatics. Now they’re everywhere. We’re so fucked.
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@3RU7AL
It isn’t the same in the slightest. I was talking about laws governing how we have sex - something that has absolutely nothing to do with anyone outside of the bedroom. Mask wearing, vaccination passports, or take your pick, whatever you think about them, absolutely impact other people.EVERY SINGLE THING YOU DO IMPACTS OTHER PEOPLE.
So now you’re going down the rabbit hole of just equating everything.
If you think there is a valid comparison between the government telling you what sex acts you are allowed to partake in vs the government telling you that you must take precautions to avoid spreading a deadly disease to other people then you have serious issues I can’t resolve.
GOVERNMENTS abhor any perceived threat to their absolute whimsical authority.This is easily demonstrated by even a cursory review of history.Occam's razor says,GOVERNMENTS will use any CRISIS, whether "real" or "imagined" to erode INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS AND PERSONAL FREEDOMS.
Not one thing you are saying makes any sense and you are completely ignoring the central point of this entire thread.
I already went through this in the OP.
Governments are made up of individual people, so when you say “government wants X” you are saying that the individual people within the government want X. Yet the thing that you are claiming they want is detrimental to their own personal interests as citizens under this same government. Explain how you think this makes sense.
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@Wylted
Your right, the aids epidemic was not started in bath houses that spread disease, and a degenerate society does not effect the children in those societies.
Sodomy laws have been around since before the constitution was drafted. AIDS has nothing to do with it.
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@fauxlaw
Both factors are violations of the system by the organizer, acting, not within the system, but outside the system, on an individually chosen basis. Individual, not systemic discrimination.
Wow, you really twisted that example into whatever you wanted just so you wouldn’t have to deal with it.
The system was set up so that black people started 400 meters back while white people started 300 meters back. You can’t argue anything was outside the system when that’s literally the way the rules were set up from the beginning.
From there once the gun goes off, the rules are the same for everyone - first one to the finish line wins. So since the rules are the same *at that point* don’t we then consider all of the inequalities at the outset no longer existent?
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@Fruit_Inspector
Should laws that are intended to benefit one racial group over others also be considered racist then?
Laws intended to benefit one group over another I would call racist. Laws intended to level out the playing field by targeting minorities who have been historically marginalized… I would not.
My problem with this line of reasoning is that it requires one to create racial identities that apply to everyone in the group. Crack becomes associated with blackness, and cocaine with whiteness.
What created that was reality, not my line of reasoning. The laws then followed.
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@Wylted
just like there is good rationalization for power grabs by elements of the left as well
Then please provide one
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@Wylted
It is, but the moral justification is different.
It isn’t the same in the slightest. I was talking about laws governing how we have sex - something that has absolutely nothing to do with anyone outside of the bedroom. Mask wearing, vaccination passports, or take your pick, whatever you think about them, absolutely impact other people.
I think what you are saying is that most politicians on the left had good intentions, so therefore no politician on the left hot off on power grabs that they could rationalize later by saying they were following guidelines of certain experts.
Not entirely clear here on your point. I never said “no politician on the left” about anything. There are always outliers no matter what the subject.
Regarding convenient rationalizations, that will always be a thing in politics as well. Like the way legislatures around the country are using the myth of rampant voter fraud as justification to roll back voting rights knowing that when less people vote they have a better chance of winning elections. The question at the end of the day will always be; how do we sort through good faith arguments and made up pretexts?
This is where I go back to the simple test of Occam’s razor and I ask again… please explain what makes it more plausible that politicians are passing these laws (mask mandates, curfews, etc.) out of a desire for power? What do they get out of that? How does this idea make sense? And how does this make more sense than “because they believe we should listen to the health experts”?
I would really love for just one person in this thread to explain this.
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@3RU7AL
FAUCI on 60 Minutes March 2020 - "People should not be walking around with masks"
You do know what science is and how it works right?
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@3RU7AL
It seems, and I'm actually asking you, it seems like you believe that a "logical fallacy" is only, and can only be a "logical fallacy" in some sort of formal setting, like in a debate, or as a specifically formatted claim, like a syllogism.Is this what you're suggesting ?
No. A logical fallacy is an error occurring during the process of reaching a conclusion from a given set of premises. We point these out during debate and write them out in syllogistic or other forms to communicate them and to more easily identify the errors, but that’s all separate from the errors being made.
Logical fallacies occur before the conclusion. Racism starts after the conclusion. There is no overlap, which is why I have been pointing out that they’re irrelevant to each other.
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@Fruit_Inspector
Wait, why is criminalization of drug use racist?
The question of whether any given law or action is racist is entirely a question about motivation, so pointing to a law and asking how the law itself could possibly be racist will always get the same answer.
Regarding drug use, I would point to the sentencing of crack vs cocaine. They’re literally the same substance, yet one might get you a few months, while the other will damn near lock you up for life. So why the disparity? Well, I’m sure the fact that cocaine was widely found in white neighborhoods while crack was mostly found in black neighborhoods had nothing to do with it.
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@fauxlaw
Cite a law. Cite a policy. That's all. The caveat is that they must be current.
Imagine I hold a 400 meter race and award the victor $10k. All White people get a 100 meter head start.
Question: Once the gun goes off, aren’t the rules for everyone at that point, equal?
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@Wylted
The same batching was taking place when they said Republicans were trying to control who people fuck by creating Sodomy laws and anti gay marriage laws.
Now that is actually a good example of government controlling the lives of its citizens. There is absolutely no justification for a government to tell its citizens how to have sex. What any two or more people choose to do with their bodies, it has no impact on anyone else. So if a law like that were passed today I might echo the talking point.
I would also note however that there is nothing like that being considered today, at least certainly not on the left.
A lot of democrats were using covid as an excuse to temporarily have more power. For example they restricted business hours. This was a mere power thirst thing. Everyone knows if you limit the hours grocery stores are happening, it means everyone is shopping in the same periods of time as opposed to spreading it out, so the only viable explanation for such a measure is somebody having a hard on for power.
Perfect example of why I started this thread.
States imposed curfews because when everything is closed down at night people are far more likely to stay home and not spread the virus, and also because it sends a signal to the community regarding the seriousness of the situation. Now you can disagree with that rationale or just think it’s not worth the imposition (as I do) but to say there is no other reason other than power for the sake of power is nonsense. These recommendations weren’t even invented by politicians, these are what various health experts have said, so are the health experts “just seeking power”? And again, what are they getting out of shutting their own neighborhoods down? How is that power?
The ultimate issue here is the Occam’s razor test. I just don’t understand how anyone looks at a situation and thinks “the explanation with the fewest assumptions is that they just want to control our lives for power”. How do you get there? Is it projection? Does this sound like something you would do? If not where did you get this from? I just can’t make any sense out of this.
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@Fruit_Inspector
I think you need to read this paragraph again and focus on the words "could be," which is only implying a possibility of said outcome:
It doesn’t really change much. Anything is possible, so it’s a meaningless statement. The reason most people use such caveats it is to avoid having to own the message they are spreading. But I don’t know your motivations so who knows.
Would you say that the government allowing slavery was a form of controlling them?
Was it a form of government control? I would say no, but an argument can be made for a yes. They were enabling the slaves to be controlled which I don’t see as the same thing.
I don’t see the relevance here.
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@3RU7AL
Racism and reasonableness do not go hand in hand. They are entirely separate things and most racists are clearly unreasonable people.
What is your point?
This conversation started because you equate racism (a negative emotional reaction to ones conclusion about another’s race) to a logical fallacy (an error in arriving at a conclusion from a given set of premises). You have yet to explain how these entirely separate things… are the same.
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@Fruit_Inspector
So it does not seem irrational to say that governmental authorities could be seeking more power over citizens' lives.
You are, once again, completely ignoring the entire context of the situation. There’s nothing rational about that.
If I have a migraine and I take medicine for it that tends to have a side effect of diarrhea, that doesn’t mean I was seeking to give myself diarrhea. Context matters. Please stop ignoring it.
And beyond that, You are also making a false equivocation between government officials abusing their power for their personal benefit, and government officials abusing their power for the purpose of “controlling you”, which does not benefit them one bit. Like I asked in the opening… what does a lawmaker get out of “telling you what to do”? Do you seriously think that is what they are seeking here? Please explain this.
My argument is that restricting a person from participating in society for any other reason than imprisonment for a crime is the government trying to control your life.
Please explain why government trying to “control your life” is more plausible of an explanation than government trying to protect society at large, especially given that this is literally the number one reason we have a government in the first place.
And BTW, what do you even think government is? If mask mandates or vaccine passports become law, why do you seem to focus on the individuals in the capital and not the millions of Americans pushing for these kinds of measures to keep us all safe? It’s as if you think government is a separate entity having nothing to do with the population it serves.
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@Fruit_Inspector
Do vaccine passports give the government more control over the lives of individuals?
It’s an odd question and one of the main points of this thread… what does this even mean? If the government passes a law mandating something, now its citizens have to follow that law. That’s not controlling someone’s life. Each individual can decide for themselves whether to take part in whatever is being restricted or not.
Control over someone’s life means you get to make their choices for them. Government isn’t making your choices, they’re putting in place restrictions on what people can do. Those are very different things.
And again, this question seems to ignore the entire point about why the restrictions are even being considered in the first place. Imagine randomly offering someone $1M a year to be a butcher, then accusing them of “just wanting to slaughter cows”. This is equally absurd.
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@Fruit_Inspector
Do you believe that Trump tried to overstep his authority and use "government control" to accomplish his own desires? Do you believe other Republicans do this too? What would they get out of it?
Regarding Trump… absolutely. Trump did everything he could get away with to try and overturn the results of the election to keep himself in power, the only reason he didn’t do more is because the people surrounding him were smart enough to know better (unfortunately he was not).
As far as other republicans… certainly not on the same level, Trump is unusual in his disregard for all of the norms this county has been built upon. But of course, every politician will do whatever they think is in their own personal interests. That’s human nature, so you’re always going to find that in any form of government.
What they get out of it is entirely dependent on the situation. In most cases it’s about holding into their offices, in some cases it’s about enriching themselves, in others it’s about securing cushy jobs or benefits for their friends or family. Every situation is different.
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@3RU7AL
And yet no one who points to someone claiming them to be a racist is talking about logic, so this is all completely irrelevant to racism. What is your point?
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@Fruit_Inspector
Bernie Sanders, a self-proclaimed Socialist,
A self proclaimed democratic socialist. These are not the same thing. Socialism is where the means of production are owned by the state. Nothing in Sander’s platform has anything to do with that, nor anyone else subscribing to this label. And even if they did, there’s like 2 democrats in all of congress using this label. Now if we’re going with the right wing definition of socialism, which is basically any government that has social programs, then literally every developed nation on earth is a socialist country, so this talking point is meaningless.
There is nothing inherently wrong with having lots of money. Can you point to a valid ethical standard that says having money is, in and of itself, evil?
I’m not making that claim, and neither are the vast majority of people pushing for things like higher taxes on the wealthy. Attacking the system and attacking the people benefiting that system are not the same thing.
You can't complain about someone having too much money as you are constantly handing that person your money.
You miss the entire point.
The individual will always do what’s best for the individual. If the best deal I can get is on Amazon, that’s where I will shop. I’m not doing it to give Bezos my money, I’m doing it because that’s what’s best for me as an individual. That’s human nature, which is also the flaw within capitalism.
Recessions demonstrate this best. When the economy takes a downturn, the best thing is for everyone to go out and spend. So what does everyone do? Stop spending, thereby causing the economy to crash. Each individual doing what’s best for them individually results in everyone getting screwed.
The problem is the system. Especially as technology progresses and continues to interconnect us, capitalism doesn’t cultivate an environment where people are compensated for their contributions, it cultivates monopolization. Bezos didn’t invent the Internet, didn’t invent or make the products he sells, he didn’t pave the roads his products are delivered on. What he did was win the competition of delivery services, and for that he gets all the marbles. And while he takes him his prize, those who collectively contributed every bit as much as he has get scraps. That is what people like myself take issue with.
In the U.S. today, there are many of us who view recent events as a power grab by governmental authorities that will eventually lead to oppression of the people. Even if we're wrong (though it daily seems more apparent we are not), there is a historical precedent to governmental overreach that at least makes our suspicion rational.
It’s not rational because it’s a slippery slope fallacy. Broadly speaking, the right tends to make this argument while ignoring all of the context surrounding any of the “power grabs” you are talking about. We can for example disagree on whether mask mandates are beneficial, but to argue that this is just a power grab or that it will lead to oppression is absurd and it’s ignoring the entire issue at hand.
There is nothing rational about projecting nefarious motivations onto your political rivals and then using those attacks as a basis to reject their proposed solutions.
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@3RU7AL
WHY DOES SOMEONE DISLIKE SOMEONE BECAUSE OF THEIR SKIN COLOR ?
Because they’re vile human beings, which is why being called a racist is offensive
THE ONLY REASON TO DO SO IS BECAUSE OF THE BROAD-BRUSH.
The broad brush is not a reason, it’s a description of the process itself. More specifically, it’s a description of the flaw within the process. You are still confusing two totally separate things.
YOU'RE LITERALLY DESCRIBING AND THEN RE-DESCRIBING THE BROAD-BRUSH FALLACY.
Logical fallacies are flaws in logic that, when properly identified, explain why an argument is not valid. We’re not talking about validity, we’re talking about the state of mind by which one cultivates a negative attitude towards people who look different than they do.
A person’s attitude or feelings about someone can be based on a logical fallacy, that does not make said attitudes or feelings… a fallacy.
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@Greyparrot
The only authority you seem to trust always has a D
Because you put a D next to the name of anyone who disagrees with you. Dr. Fauci has been the nation's leading infectious disease expert for decades and has served in both Republican and Democratic administrations. There is nothing partisan about him, you just don't like what he has to say so you take a page out of the Trump playbook and demonize him. It's politics pure and simple. That's partisanship. Following the recommendations of science is not.
Trusting or questioning Fauci should not be a partisan issue, yet you see it as such.
I have no problem with questioning when it's done honestly. You're not honest. That's obvious by the way you "question" him by misrepresenting what he said, and then paint anyone who corrects you as a partisan who is just blindly following authority. When you attack others for pointing out your logical fallacies it becomes quite clear that you are not operating based on logic. The alternative is emotion, which comes from having an emotional vestment in your original position. That's what a partisan is.
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@3RU7AL
Racism is not a fallacy. You're confusing the presumption of what someone's race or ethnicity is with how one feels about it. Racism is the latter.
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@Greyparrot
Democracy is irrelevant because you just stated most people are too stupid to make democratic choices, about themselves OR you.
I'm not the one stupid enough to end up intubated because I didn't want the government telling me what to do.
And I didn't say anything about democratic choices, you made that up.
The idea behind democracy is that we have our own lives to live. I've got my own profession to study and worry about, so I don't have time to sit around learning about the latest study on the effects of mask wearing on COVID, or the best way to connect states to increase economic productivity, or what the data shows on the latest vehicle safety report. This is why our communities come together to select someone we trust to do the work for us and represent us in that decision making process. That's democracy.
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Says Fauci? Why is appeal to authority so rampant among Marxists?
You didn't listen to a word I said, which isn't surprising coming from you.
Appeal to authority is when one makes an argument and then points to an authority as their support for their argument. An appeal to authority fallacy is when one points to someone who is not an authority.
Neither of those is what I did. You made a claim (Fauci said he was science), so I explained why your claim is nonsense (what Fauci actually said was that what he was relaying were the actual findings of science). And I did all that to get to the point... How absurd is it when the right makes health experts to be the bad guy, such that you invent attacks on them having nothing to do with anything they actually did or said?
Why do you have to be so insufferably partisan?
I'm really not partisan. I dismiss the things you and others say as "right wing nonsense" when it's so absurd that I refuse to believe you actually came up with that idea on your own, free of the kind of emotional manipulation one often succumbs to when they base their personal identity on their political affiliation.
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@Fruit_Inspector
It is no secret that many on the Left are pushing for Socialism.
Almost no one on the left is pushing for socialism. We’re pushing for expanding social programs to combat the fact that our country is growing ever more monopolized by the top one percent every year, a perfectly appropriate and rational response. Or, do you see the fact that 3 individual Americans own more wealth than the bottom half of the country to not be an issue? Perhaps they just work 50 million times harder than everyone else.
This would lead to extreme government control over the lives of individuals. That being said, the idea that certain governmental authorities from a particular party are trying to assert more control over our lives is undeniable based on their own ideology.
But what does that even mean? "Trying to" is as phrase that points to motivation. Please help me understand how you make sense out of claiming that their motivation is to control you're life. What does any politician, who mind you will likely end up a private citizen themselves in the near future subject to the same"government control" you are asserting, get out of it?
And that aside, what is it with this attitude of "I'm not going to let the government tell me what to do"? Because that's what I hear everytime I hear someone talk about government control. We live in a society and societies have rules. Everyone wants to be able to take the car to 100 when they're in a hurry, but no one wants to drive on a road where other people are doing 100. That's the cost of living around other people.
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@fauxlaw
You do understand the difference between a gaffe and a lie right?
And I don’t know why you claim they’re “alleged” lies, the majority of his lies were easily provably false. The man couldn’t even tell the truth about the crowd size at his inauguration. This isn’t hyperbole… Trump lies more than any human being I have ever seen in my life and certainly more than any human being we have seen in public service. How are you being serious comparing that to Biden’s gaffes?
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@Greyparrot
So which of the following two scenarios would you prefer:A) No government action, 3,000 automobile accident deathsB) Law mandating seatbelts, 2,000 automobile accident deaths?Q2: How does choice B make democracy irrelevant?[crickets]
…
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@Sum1hugme
Pretty much every law has some rationale behind it. The point is I think, that the result is more government control into formerly independent aspects of our lives.
That’s not what I’m referring to. I watch enough Fox News and consume enough Twitter to get a sense of what the talking points are and this is perhaps the one I hear most frequently. It isn’t arguing that the result is more government control, it’s arguing that the left is motivated by having power over us, which can then explain everything we see coming from the left.
I used masks as the example; it couldn’t possibly be that the left believes mask mandates will help keep people safe and the right simply disagrees with that premise… that’s not scary enough. The left has to be evil. They must be doing this for some nefarious purpose. They must be trying to control us all… or something.
It almost makes sense intuitively until one stops to think about it for, say, three seconds. Maybe four. Which brings me to the OP.
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@Greyparrot
Fauci was saying that the points he is making are consistent with science, so to disagree with one is to necessarily disagree with the other.
I’m not surprised however that such a statement would get twisted and then turned into a right wing talking point against Fauci. Because health experts are the enemy now, that’s how ridiculous the right has become.
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@fauxlaw
Seems about as governmentally superior, i.e., controlling, as anything I've ever heard from a government representative.
It sounds like a pretty arrogant statement to make, but considering he is the nation’s leading infectious disease expert so he would literally be the one person who gets a pass. Not sure what that has to do with government just wanting to control us.
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@Greyparrot
And BTW, people are often too stupid to make their own decisions. That’s just a fact.
“I’m admitting young healthy people to the hospital with very serious COVID infections. One of the last things they do before they’re intubated is beg me for the vaccine. I hold their hand and tell them that I’m sorry, but it’s too late”
Whether government should step in is another question, and it’s situational. This though has little to do with the narrative that government just wants to control your life, unless by that you mean government wants you to stay alive, which is a pretty terrible argument against government.
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@Greyparrot
So which of the following two scenarios would you prefer:
A) No government action, 3,000 automobile accident deaths
B) Law mandating seatbelts, 2,000 automobile accident deaths
?
Q2: How does choice B make democracy irrelevant?
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This is a talking point I hear constantly from the right; the idea that “the left”, or “the government” just wants to control our lives.
Is the idea here the democratic politicians pass, say a mask mandate, not because they believe masks will help slow the spread of the virus but because they get a hard-on being able to make people do something they otherwise wouldn’t have done? Do they walk into a grocery store and see everyone with their masks on and boast to their wives saying “see, I did that”?
Is there anyone on this site who can explain the rationale here?
P.S. this isn’t about mask mandates, I’m just using that as an example. Thanks.
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@fauxlaw
I don’t own other people’s made up BS. I never said I didn’t know what you were talking about, I said if you were actually making a point I missed it. The reason I am missing your point is because what you said had nothing to do with the conversation.
If I’m going to fast for you let me know.
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@fauxlaw
Typical that you chime into a conversation with comments that have nothing to do with the conversation. Yes, very typical.
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@ebuc
Defending what?
Joe Biden’s comfort level with being awfully close physically with women, including an 8 year old. The fact that whether he pinched her nipple is inconclusive despite the entire thing being on camera is pretty bad. Anyone should be able to admit that.
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@3RU7AL
Since it's impossible to see someone's birthplace or their parent's birthplace, "racism" (as you've defined it) is impossible.
Racism is a mentality. There is nothing about it that requires the person holding discriminatory views to be factually correct.
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@fauxlaw
If there’s a point you were trying to make I missed it.
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@Wylted
anyone defending this needs to be put on a registered sex offenders list.
No one is defending this. I’m pointing out to you that your claim does not meet its burden of proof. The only thing that is a defense of is logic, which you clearly need lessons on.
And what was the point of all this again? That Biden fucks kids? You forgot to explain how any of this proves the title of this thread.
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@Wylted
nor does blindly believing what the majority of doctors say make you an intellectual.
There’s nothing blind about taking the word of the experts, particularly when the consensus is overwhelming. What is absurd is to disregard the experts because you who has never studied this stuff a day in your life know better then they do and all you needed was for some guy in Twitter to tell you your right for you to think you’ve proven your case.
I suggest you spend some time studying what appeal to authority actually is, as well as when it is and is not a logical fallacy.
Maybe it's people's premises that make them right and wrong, not their titles.
That’s why we have a peer review process. Something non of these anti vaxers on Twitter have ever subjected their claims to.
Serious question: do you believe someone who has spent their entire life working in a field is more or less likely to know more about that field than you and/or the average person does?
Serious question #2: If you gather 10 experts and ask them what they think about a particular phenomenon, 9 experts say one thing and the 10th says another, which option do you think is more likely to be true?
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