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@3RU7AL
if by "democracy" you mean "tyranny of the 51%" then the answer would be "no"if by "democracy" you mean "consensus government" then the answer would be "yes"
Let’s try this again. Do you believe in the idea that the people should be able to choose who represents them within their government?
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@Public-Choice
Trump could have done it to Hillary and Joe Biden but he didn't.
No, he actually couldn’t. Executing a search warrant requires the DOJ to show probable cause that the subject not only committed a crime but that evidence of said crime is in the location requesting to be searched, and have all this signed off by a federal judge. The law is not Twitter where you get to just say anything. Facts actually matter here.
And this is of course assuming Trump manages to corrupt the DOJ entirely to the point where the president is giving the orders, something Trump always wanted because unlike Biden, Trump doesn’t understand why it is important for the DOJ to operate independently.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
After carefully sifting through many possible interpretations the only one that makes any sense is that Biden was protecting Hunter in his demand
You think this makes sense because you have ignored or just hand waive away every fact which does not align.
The Vice President does not have the authority to make this decision on his own, so it wasn’t even coming from him.
Everyone within the federal government including the intelligence agencies and congress, and even the European Union all agreed with this move. Again, this wasn’t Joe Biden, it was official US policy.
The investigation into Burisma was dormant at the time Biden did this, and the events that were under investigation occurred on 2010, years before Hunter joined the board so he had no personal exposure regardless.
Meanwhile the Trump/Ukraine couldn’t be any more obvious but you cherry pick your facts there as well to make it seem plausible that he was just out to stop corruption. Why?
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@3RU7AL
That’s not an answer.
If you want to argue that there’s an equivalence between the two parties then by all means go right ahead. In the absence of that case my question is still relevant and still unanswered.
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@3RU7AL
i agree with you that the republicans are dangerousbut they are NOT "more" dangerous than the democrats
Do you believe in democracy?
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@ADreamOfLiberty
You forgot to apply your own definition, in particular, self interest.
This is what makes the Biden example vs the Trump example miles apart, to the point where comparing the two is remarkably absurd.
The message Biden delivered wasn’t Biden’s personal wishes, it was official US policy. Everyone from all of the intelligence agencies to Obama himself was on board with this. In the story that you are trying to pass off as a smoking gun, Biden recounted telling Ukraine “call him”. Him being the President. Because as you may or may not be aware, the Vice President does not have the authority to stop payments to a foreign ally.
What’s more, this wasn’t just the US that wanted this, it was the entire western world. The reason Shokin was well known was for his corruption. Specifically, for not investigating corruption. The international community was well aware of this.
Which brings us to Burisma, the supposed reason Biden did all this according to those accusing him. Except Burisma wasn’t being investigated at that time because Shokin already shut it down, so there was nothing for Biden to be concerned about here.
The entire allegation here is ridiculous.
Meanwhile, what Trump was looking for was entirely personal and he was using the power of his office to achieve it.
The transcript demonstrated clearly all of this, and it is clear to anyone who understands how language works that out wasn’t a request. One of Zalensky’s advisors who left government steward gave an interview on it and made clear that they all understood what Trump wanted.
Trump would then proceed to hold up the funds until News broke off the scandal. Then, he released it. And it wasn’t till congress got wind of it that he released the transcripts. Trump wasn’t being transparent, he already got caught.
These two scenarios are not comparable.
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@bmdrocks21
Ok, but hypothetically speaking in a vacuum, if we could half the poverty rate and half the amount of people voting, would you say that’s bad because the ‘people’ didn’t choose that fate?
If a society’s biggest problem was poverty, the best way to ensure it gets addressed would be to ensure all Americans, especially those living in poverty, are represented. And if we were going to half the voting population, it would be the half not in poverty we should be cutting out.
There is no scenario where we could be guaranteed a particular outcome by getting rid of a large block of voters, unless the intent was to deprive that voting block of their prosperity or basic rights.
I suspect however that the idea behind your hypothetical was the notion that the half of the population we would be cutting out would be the “dumber” half, which is to suggest that society is where it is because these folks are an impediment to progress. To that I would just say that you can believe your solutions are better without believing you’re better. There really is no explanation for believing other people should not be allowed to vote without the holding the latter attitude, and if that’s the case then you’ve disqualified yourself from being considered to have any rational basis in what you are advocating for.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
It's a trade + spookey bad cloud. Like greed is self-interest + spookey bad cloud.
Ok, I’ll take this albeit simplistic and childish definition.
Now can you explain how the Biden example meets it?
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@Public-Choice
Does this mean the search is not justified? Tbh, I think it was because he has classified documents.
And did he ever take a second to wonder how that would look to the general public? Just unleashing the FBI on political opponents?
So the FBI executed a justified search warrant, and by doing so they were unleashing their agency on their political opponents.
In other words, the narrative that the FBI and more broadly the “deep state” or whatever we’re calling it, is out to get Trump must stand regardless of the facts.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
Biden quid-pro-quoed to stop the truth from coming out, Trump's alleged quid-pro-quo was to bring the truth out.
Do you even know what a quid pro quo is?
The Biden/Trump/Ukraine example really is the perfect encapsulation of how the political right ignores basic facts and logic to create their own reality.
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@TWS1405
It's called commonsense. One simply cannot gather the town's citizens and ask them to join the militia if they have no weapons to fight with.
What you consider common sense is irrelevant. That’s not how we interpret the constitution.
There is much talk in the federalist papers about the militia’s, how they would be organized, what their responsibilities would be, how they would size up against a tyrannical federal government, etc. I can find nothing in it suggestive of the idea that the militia’s they talk so much about were to be made up of every Tom Dick and Harry who decided to pull a gun out of their shed at any point. That’s why I ask. As far as I can tell this idea is purely made up.
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@n8nrgim
They need jobs which would be stealing from poor Americans.
According to this logic, every “new” person in a society who gets a job is taking a job away from someone else who was already a part of that society.
So if we extrapolate, anytime there is a population boom the local economy would crash and unemployment would spike. But yet this almost never happens. Why do you think that is?
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@oromagi
You asked if Richard Dawkins believes in God and I explained his thoughtful, nuanced, clearly heartfelt response to that question as best as I was able including direct quotes… Since I am not Dawkins and do not represent him in any way and Dawkins clearly refuses to answer that question with a simple yes or no I demurred and referred you back to Dawkins entirely sufficient and satisfactory reply multiple and will continue to do every time you demand it.
If I asked you whether Donald Trump believes in the principals of the constitution you would not hesitate to tell me “no, he does not”. You wouldn’t sit here quoting paragraphs of his statements and telling us you can’t speak for him.
But it’s so much worse then that because you know damn well that Richard Dawkins was not the point, at all. The only reason I was asking you about him was to use him as an example to illustrate why your stated position is complete bullshit. So your refusal to provide a yes or no has nothing to do with some principal you all of a sudden believe in that you can’t speak for others but rather a clear attempt to stop the conversation dead in its tracks because you know your position is logically untenable.
The obvious answer that I don’t need to prove to anyone because everyone knows this already is: No, he does not believe in a god.
And because he does not believe in a god, that means he does not hold a belief in any deities.
And because he does not hold a belief in any deities that means that when it comes to a belief in a deity… Dawkins lacks this belief.
Which means that Richard Dawkins lacks belief in any deities, the thing you claim is not true by trying to argue that he disbelieves which you tried to argue is different.
Except that as demonstrated above, lacking belief in a deity is not mutually exclusive to disbelieving in a deity.
The reason why and demonstration of how these are two different things was laid out in post 93.
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@3RU7AL
the key "problem" here is that some people think we should rally behind "democrats" because they are "less wrong"
We should. In our current system there are only two practical options, so if you don’t get one you’re going to get the other.
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@3RU7AL
even iff you "prove" one side is less-wrong than the otherthat does not make the less-wrong side "objectively good"
He never claimed it did, neither has anyone I am aware of.
This was literally the point he was making about democrats being held to a higher standard. Falling short of being “objectively good” is not an argument against voting for them or for voting republican.
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Imagine not trusting yourself so much that you think you have the right to say to other people they should not trust what they feel and experience because it's not your experience
No atheist I know of tells theists they should not trust what they feel. It’s the idea that their feelings inform them of what exists beyond the observable universe that atheists are telling theists they should reject.
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@3RU7AL
this claim is not supported by your citation
It actually is. That’s where the “now we’re just arguing any the meaning of words” part comes in.
The proceeding example I provided in the post you quoted was about the usage of the term “conspiracy theory” to talk about something that does not fit with any of the major ideas the term conveys. That’s not a debate over substance, that’s a debate over terminology. My point was that by using that term you are distorting the conversation, and then when I point out why, you point to a dictionary to claim the word is not defined that way. But that’s the whole problem I’ve been talking about out for weeks now; dictionary definitions do not always represent popular usage, and popular usage accounts for a significant portion of the ideas conveyed in most conversations.
Again, language is about using words to communicate ideas, and the overwhelming majority of words we use every day are learned through conversation with other people, so to downplay the significance of popular usage of words is a mistake.
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@thett3
I don’t think that black people don’t “experience racism” (whatever that means) but random racially motivated attacks on black people by white people are so unbelievably rare that when they do occur they make front page news.
I think it’s clear we’re never going to see eye to eye on this. I also think, and I don’t mean to sound dismissive when I say this, it’s clear that you do not have any close black friends or spend much time talking to black people.
The fact that something doesn’t end up going viral on social media or make the front page of The NY Times doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Nearly every black person I know has experienced something while not as egregious certainly just as upsetting in their own lives. My friend Julian and I went to Atlantic City NJ one time (not exactly hillbilly country) and a group of 4 guys in a parking lot for absolutely no reason at all started yelling at him calling him a nigger and were ready to beat his ass. We walked away because we were clearly outnumbered, but even then we spent the rest of the day wishing we hadn’t.
We base how realistic something is off of our own lived experiences, we have little else to go by. So for a white person to claim these kinds of things rarely happen is quite amazing. But more to the point here, the topic is about the propensity to believe misinformation. Part of the reason people like myself are on the left is because we see these things happening in real life, not just on social media. So the fact that we would be more inclined to believe a story like that is frankly common sense. It is not indicative of anything this thread highlights. What matters is not our initial reaction and how accurately our intuition aligned with the actual outcome. What we’re talking about is what we did once presented with the evidence that the allegations were false. No one I know or am even aware of held on for dear life once it became clear the story was false.
This is splitting hairs. The poll showed that between January and February 2021 Republican “confidence index” dropped a net of 35 points while Democrats rose a net of 49 points. For “current economic outlook” Republicans dropped a net of 25 points and democrats rose a net of 17 points. They did the same thing.
Your own source quotes different numbers
“The first component of the index -- the net ratings of current conditions as excellent or good minus poor -- finds improvement among Democrats (+16 points) since Biden's inauguration. At the same time, Republicans' and independents' assessments have fallen 33 points and eight points, respectively.”
“Fake News” actually originally came from the left immediately following the 2016 election but was coopted so quickly by Trump that people forgot about it.
No, fake news was a term used by the intelligence agencies and it referred to articles planted with the intention of providing false information to the electorate, normally as part of some foreign interference campaign. Democrats used the term because they were pointing to these instances. This is categorically different from what the right wing has done with the term.
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@zedvictor4
Belief.Is simply a lack of definitive evidence.If something is factual then belief is irrelevant.
Belief is a state of mind. Specifically, it’s the acceptance of something as true.
That is categorically different from the question of whether there is evidence to support a claim or whether something is considered a fact.
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@oromagi
did you have any plans of responding to post 93?same answer as the first two times you asked that question.
You didn’t answer the question, that was the whole point of post 93. I went into painstaking detail to explain why.
But that’s cool, you can tell yourself whatever you like.
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@3RU7AL
I'M QUOTING YOUR SOURCETHIS IS YOUR SOURCEWHICH SEEMS TO CLEARLY CONTRADICT YOUR POINT
First of all, it doesn’t contradict my point in the slightest. It said exactly what I’ve been saying for days. Let’s look at it once again, take note of the bold;
So what does the phrase really mean? It’s usually a shorthand way of saying, “That’s trivial or unimportant,” or “Now we’re just arguing about the meaning of words.” It can also be a way of saying that both sides mean the same thing but use different language to express it. In short, you can agree to disagree because the dispute is negligible.
What part of this are you under the impression contradicts anything I’ve said?
But more to the point, what I asked for in my last post was for you to present an actual argument instead of just posting the same words I linked you too. Why are we having this conversation? What is your issue? Links are useful to support an argument, they are not themselves, an argument.
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@oromagi
On the OP "Atheism is simply "a lack of belief" I think I made my point quite clearly in my vote on that debate in mid-June - that the definition of ATHEISM means more than simply "a lack of belief" and ought to continue to do so.
Change of subject? That's cool, time to move on...
So, since we're back into this... did you have any plans of responding to post 93?
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@TWS1405
More than that, in order to form a militia for the very purpose history proved effective, citizens needed to be in possession of their own arms.
Been looking for this... Can you please point to me where in the constitution, the federalist papers, or anywhere else the framers discussed this?
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@3RU7AL
@oromagi
So what does the phrase really mean? It’s usually a shorthand way of saying, “That’s trivial or unimportant,” or “Now we’re just arguing about the meaning of words.” It can also be a way of saying that both sides mean the same thing but use different language to express it. In short, you can agree to disagree because the dispute is negligible.
Perhaps instead of host posting articles, either of you two can explain why we are still having this conversation? What is your point?
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@oromagi
All of this because you found out so troubling for the word "semantics" to be used as shorthand for "semantic argument", something any normal person does in any normal conversation.
When I said "this conversation began..." I was talking about this particular conversation between you and I, not the entire thread.
I don't know what you really think you are accomplishing by posting examples of people using the word "semantics" in the way it is technically defined. That refutes nothing I've said. I never argued that it doesn't mean what you say, I argued that it can be and is used in other ways which is a perfectly normal thing in communication. Perhaps you should get away from your computer/phone and have real conversations with real people where it is not normal to chime in to every conversation with Google to correct people's usage of words as technically incorrect.
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@thett3
They definitely should be skeptical of something like that, yes, especially in a place like Chicago. Two white hillbillies trying to lynch a black guy in Chicago yelling "this is Trump country!" in below 0 weather was clearly something that didn't happen.
Is it your belief that black people in Chicago do not experience racism?
Is it also your belief that someone is less likely to experience racism because it's cold outside?
How does that track with the right being more hateful?
Because, these are different things. The hatred I'm talking about is political. It's easy to think your opposition is the devil when the opposition has no face, or when the face you put on it is just a symbol. I think CNN is a good example. Trump supporters talk about CNN like it's the enemy of our way of life, but then when they meet CNN reporters in person they are overwhelmingly friendly to them. It's indicative of a massive disconnect between entertainment and real life, which is not surprising considering that the figure head for the party is a former reality TV star.
Very true, although democrats experienced the exact same effect in 2020
No, they didn't. Your article talks about economic outlook, that's a very different thing. That's about confidence in the future, the study I referenced was about their views of the economy they were actively experiencing. Your study talks about this as well, and in that regard democrats voted improved 16 points under Biden while decreasing 33 points, so again when it comes to the reality we experience republicans are twice as more likely to shift based on whether their party controls the White House.
Not to be rude but I don't think the "four steps" thing was really an intellectually rigorous analysis
I don't think the article was written very well. I think the 4 steps were vague as you pointed out and I dunt think they used the clearest examples, but I think they were definitely onto something.
For now let's just focus on the last step applies to the left the same way as it does on the right? When was the last time you went to a Biden rally and heard people in mass use the term "fake news"?
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@thett3
I would totally disagree with you that the left happily owns it when they get things wrong instead of also trying to sweep it under the rug or ignore it.
I never suggested that the left "happily" owns it when they are wrong, nor have I implied anything contradicting your point about human nature, how people want their versions of reality to be correct and will go to great lengths to maintain whatever comfortable view of the world they prefer. What is different about the two parties is the way that the republican party uses these flaws in human nature as an overt and unapologetic political strategy.
In the OP I quoted the 4 steps the article is to make it's point. Can you point to any examples where the left has used this strategy on a mass scale? Can you honestly tell me both sides use this strategy evenly?
I don't know what reason you had to believe the Jussie Smollet example was a hoax from the start, but I suspect based on what you wrote that it was intuitive rather than a fact based assumption. If so, that's not worth much in this conversation until you can explain why the story of a black man experiencing a hate crime is something the left should have been skeptical about.
The idea that one side would be far more susceptible to this is not difficult to imagine especially if you look at what would cause such a disparity. I believe this is a symptom and even to some extent a cause of asymmetrical polarization. The political right hates the left more than the left hates the right. This can be seen in a number of ways, Biden vs Trump's poll numbers for example. Right wingers love to use poll numbers to claim Biden is doing worse than Trump, but if you look at the partisan split the difference between the two is not the disapproval of the opposition, it's the disapproval of the president's own party. Democratic voters are ok with criticizing their own, on the right that gets you thrown out of the party.
My favorite example however is what happened after Trump won in 2016. We saw both parties views on the economy change drastically despite there being no significant measurable change in Trump's first year. Democratic voters favorable view of the economy went from the high 70's at the start of the year to the 50's by the end of it. Republican voters meanwhile went from the teens at the start of the year to the high 90's by the end of the year.
That's clearly not a result of changing economic fortunes, it's about our desire to be right and for "our side" to win. That desire is not the same on both sides.
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@oromagi
Because how you ever win an argument if the same word meant the same thing from one post to another?
Recall that this particular conversation began when you decided to chime in on my use of the word "semantics" to rant about how what I actually was talking about was a "semantic argument".
As if it was ever unclear to anyone what the term "that's just semantics" means.
Then when I pointed out to you that everyone (except you apparently) knows what the term means you went on another rant about how I'm using argumentum ad populum. A retort that could only make sense to someone oblivious to the fact that all words are made up by people.
Now you're acting as if the idea of people using words in a way which it was not originally intended is tantamount to blowing up all language. It's not.
The only thing that matters in conversation is that the two people speaking understand what the other is trying to say. If I have explained to you what I mean when I use a specific term then that's all you need to understand my point. If you want to keep playing this game then that's you're problem, I'll move on to someone who cares about actual issues.
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@Greyparrot
Everyone cannot have what they want. If 60% of the population wants weed legalized and 40% do not then guess what... One of these two groups will have to deal with an outcome they did not want. The only question remaining is how do we resolve this issue? The answer; majority wins.
If you have a better solution to this problem the floor is all yours, yet somehow I suspect that emotion invoking rhetoric (i.e. calling the majority "a mob") is all you got.
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@thett3
The Jussie Smollett case is really a perfect example of what this thread is about and what the article is talking about by specifically calling these tactics "republican".
The reason people believed the story is because that's what was first reported and it was big news around the country. The story wasn't created by MSNBC, CNN, or Kamala Harris, the story that spread was the story the self alleged victim reported. And while it may have been slow at first, once it became clear that the story was a hoax it was widely accepted and criticized on the left. But that's not what happens on the right, when stories like this are disproven they just disappear. Look at the 2020 election lies. Everyone in Trump's orbit including Ivanka, Bill Barr, and Jason Miller all said it's BS. Do they talk about that in Fox News or OANN? No they just ignore it.
No one is claiming the political right has a monopoly on lies and misinformation, what is unique to the republicans is it's widespread use of misinformation as a political weapon and their refusal to back down once that misinformation is exposed.
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@Greyparrot
An individual and not the tyranny of the majority mob.
You do know that mobs are made up of individuals right?
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@bmdrocks21
I think that having 80% of people eligible to vote voting versus 60% isn’t necessarily better. It may lead to better results, and it may also lead to worse results.I think getting hung up on this idea of democracy as a some axiomatic good instead of simply being a system that tends to lead to better outcomes is a mistake.
Who gets to decide what a "better" outcome looks like?
Is it a better for Roe v Wade to have been overturned? Is it better that the US pulled out of Afghanistan? Is it better that we remain in NATO?
We're not a company, where every action can be objectively scrutinized by analyzing its impact on shareholder value. Elections determine who we are as a people, as a society. That's a question that can only be answered by the people of that society, which means everyone. The more people left out of that process the less and less we can say that the people are determining their own fate, which is supposed to be the whole point of holding an election.
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@oromagi
The problem with just going along with the crowd, context as you wrongly label it, is that actual meanings of words get trampled.
"Going along with the crowd" is what you are doing every time you post a dictionary definition to argue what the meaning of the word is.
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@oromagi
So...what you are now claiming is that when you saidLanguage is using words to communicate ideas. Semantics is using words to distort ideas in order to make it seem like a valid point is being made when it is not.That was not meant to be read literally, but figuratively. You don't actually mean "Language is using words to communicate ideas" but rather that sentence is used metaphorically to suggest some alternative meaning.
In all my years of debating and reading other people's arguments, any time I have ever heard someone respond to an argument by saying "that's just semantics", I've never heard of situation where everyone reading it didn't know what that meant.
Yet according to you, when you hear that what you actually hear is "that's just [the study of the meaning of words]".
Language is about more than just definitions. There is this thing we call context.
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@Athias
Suffices to say that in retrospect it should have been no surprise that your "warning," as you pointed out, followed immediately in post #112--that is when my questions were no longer "contributing."
I never said nor suggested that I considered your questions to be contributing to the conversation. Whether they are a contribution depends on whether you are going somewhere with them.
The point where it seemed apparent that you were not going anywhere with them was when you asked me how the scientific method tells us what's true.
It's not that there are not interesting philosophical questions here. Concepts like observability, repeatability, predictability, etc. are at the core of our epistomology. But that is miles away from where this conversation started. So by this point, if I'm going to veer this far off of the subject, I need to know why.
In the proceeding posts you verified my suspicions by admitting that you saw nothing wrong with my answers, in other words you were going no where with these questions, thus this conversation was a complete waste of time.
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@3RU7AL
what makes you think it was "cherry picked" ?how could you even claim it was "cherry picked" unless you yourself found what you consider "BETTER" examples of "january 6th convictions" ?
Cherry picked does not necessarily mean you intentionally went through a list and discarded otherwise valid examples, it means you are relying on anecdotal examples when you had access to more information.
To date there have been at least 884 charges filed, the vast majority of those are still being litigated so to suggest that a lack of convictions is indicative of a lack of criminality is just silly.
No one is claiming that charges = guilt. You are the one bringing up court rulings as if that is relavant here. It's not. Again, we're talking about the court of public opinion. I don't know how many times I have to repeat that, but every time I do it just further validates that there is no reasonable argument to be made here that the case I laid out is incorrect. In case you forgot...
Again, I laid out 6 points explaining the central allegation in regards to January 6th and explained in detail how these 6 points leads to the unmistakable conclusion that the central claim is correct. Are you going to address that, or just keep pretending it was never said?
When one has no valid argument, deflection is the only option.
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@oromagi
You are conflating the term SEMANTICS with the term SEMANTIC ARGUMENT- not the same thing.
Rocket: "his people are completely literal, it's going to go over his head"
Drax: "nothing goes over my head, my reflexes are too fast"
That's all I could think about as I read this post.
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@Athias
I will maintain that you have not proffered a sufficient explanation because YOU CAN'T. I'm not egging you on, or provoking,
Read that sentence again. Out loud.
given that a simple request should have sufficed.
It wasn't a simple request. Stop pretending your request was made in a vacuum. It wasn't. Let's recap;
You have been asking me questions since post 79. Since then you have asked me to explain my position via multiple questions in posts 89, 97, 99, 104, 109, 111, and 117. I have responded by answering every single one of your questions in detail in posts 84, 96, 98, 102, 107, 110 and 112. At the end of post 112 I warned you that you needed to contribute to the conversation if you wanted this to continue. You completely ignored that warning in post 117 so I drew the line and let you know that you need to contribute if you wanted this to continue.
Asking questions is not contributing. To do that you have to provide actual thoughts and ideas of your own.
So to pretend like I just tucked my tail between my legs because I can't answer your questions is just plain stupid.
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Inserting article from the daily beast on how the republican disinformation machine works. Below is a snippet...
The entire right-wing ecosystem unleashed its full arsenal to discredit the 10-year-old girl as a liar, intimidate her physician, demonize liberals, and continue its march backward, undeterred, in its quest to make Handmaid’s Tale cosplay a reality—in an America that subordinates and punishes women for having the audacity to control their own bodies.
To achieve its goal, the right uses a now familiar four-part strategy.First, Republicans use any means necessary to achieve power and promote their unpopular, extremist, counter-majoritarian agenda.
Second, they create and promote disinformation and lies to frighten their base and Jedi mind-trick them into believing they are being oppressed by the actual victims.
Third, they create a specific villain, target them, and then attack them through scapegoating, smearing, and intimidation.
Fourth, they never apologize or back down once their lie is exposed, but instead, they double down, and in times of doubt, always pivot towards racism and fear-mongering.
Thoughts?
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@3RU7AL
and if you don't see how every single conversation you've ever had is "just a semantic game" then i have no idea what you think language is
Language is using words to communicate ideas.
Semantics is using words to distort ideas in order to make it seem like a valid point is being made when it is not.
An example of this is someone claiming January 6th is a conspiracy theory while ignoring the fact that the connotations (aka ideas) behind the term "conspiracy theory" communicate something that is not present with regards to January 6th. In other words it's an attempt to use language in such a way as to smuggle in ideas that could not be supported if argued directly.
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@3RU7AL
this is the best possible approach to a debate with a theistall of their stock arguments against atheismcompletely fall apartif you call the big bang "god"they cannot draw a straight line from classical deism to their own theistic beliefbut it's fun to watch them try
It might make theists stumble over their words but that doesn't make it a good argument. It's just a sematic game.
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@Greyparrot
i'm not sure why this particular building is any more importantTemple of the gods.
It wasn't the building that mattered, it's what was going on inside the building that made this a historical event.
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@3RU7AL
protests have occupied government buildings before
And none of those would reasonably be considered "just a protest" now would they?
i have no idea what examples you might consider relevantfeel free to present some examples at your leisure
It wasn't my argument. I was asking for your logic because it made no sense.
A riot, uprising, inserection, whatever term you want to use - these are all terms that are defined by group activity, so the bar to charge any individual with something like this is extremely, cripplingly high. And the activity it would take to prove any individual is guilty here is not even what's being alleged with respect to the individual rioters.
I'm of course ignoring the sedition charges filled against various oath keepers members because I think that's a distraction from the point of this thread. So setting them aside, this whole "no one has been charged for inserection" is a BS cop out because it has nothing to do with what people like myself are saying.
Again, I laid out 6 points explaining the central allegation in regards to January 6th and explained in detail how these 6 points leads to the unmistakable conclusion that the central claim is correct. Are you going to address that, or just keep pretending it was never said?
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@Athias
I don't necessarily see anything "wrong."
Hence my point, if you don't have a point you're getting at then this conversation is a waste of time. And you are free to pretend that's a reflection on me all you want if it makes you feel better.
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@3RU7AL
it was just a protest
If you strip away everything that made it more than a protest, what you will have left is "just a protest". That's not an argument, that's not insightful, that's not meaningful.
Protests occur outside the US Capitol every day. Never before has a protest forced congress to evacuate the building.
I gave you point after point after point explaining the claim, the evidence for the claim, and how the evidence supports the claim. All you did was ignore everything I said to repeat your original claim as if all of that has not been debunked. You're not being serious.
For Example, "Paul Allard Hodgkins, the 38-year-old who pleaded guilty on Wednesday to a single count of obstruction of an official proceeding."noticethe actual charge is not "treason"the actual charge is not "attempted murder"the actual charge is not "insurrection"obstruction of an official proceeding
There have been over a hundred charges filled against January 6th rioters. Please explain what pointing to one example cherry picked out of the bunch accomplishes. What is your logic here?
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@3RU7AL
a deist might add, some people call the "thebigbang" "god" (and that literally changes nothing)
Someone who calls themselves a diest and justifies that label by calling the big bang a god is just an atheist in denial.
When I use these terms i'm conveying actual ideas. If all you're going to do is find some technicality where you can substitute one word for another then this conversation is pointless.
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@Greyparrot
No, they didn't.
The court of public opinion is what determines who enjoys the public's trust. A court of law determines who gets to enjoy their right to freedom. The Salem witch trials was the latter. My point was specifically about the former.
And even if that point were not valid, your post is still childishly stupid. The fact that a bunch of idiots back in the 1600's thought their neighbors were witches has absolutely nothing to do with what is reasonable to conclude regarding the former presidents actions in 2021.
Your responses here are just another example of validation for my views. You have no argument whatsoever to defend the former presidents actions. When confronted with actual facts and logic, all you can do is scramble to dismiss all of it outright by pretending intent is not something we can dive into, despite the fact that we do it not only everywhere in law but also everywhere in life. Making a determination regarding one's intent is the first step towards deciding who to trust in any context.
This is really basic stuff.
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@3RU7AL
An atheist says "I don't know how the universe and all of existence came about, let's try to find out"
A diest says "agoddidit"
I would say that's a pretty big difference, but that's just my opinion.
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@Greyparrot
Ok, so you can dismiss everything after this. The courts don't mindread a person's intent and then prosecute for thought crimes. Not yet anyway.
Intent in the central element of almost any crime genius. You can go to jail for attempted murder, and it's the literal difference between whether any of the actions prosecutors are looking at with regards to Trump are illegal.
That aside, the legality thing is such a cop out. This thread asks for your opinions as a voter so we're not talking about a court of law here, were talking about the court of public opinion where reason, logic, and common sense are all you need.
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