Three Lefts Make a Right, and Three Rights Make a Left

C'mon. If you have time to contradict them five times, you have time to respond in a little more detail one time. This isn't a time thing. You just don't want to.

I don't think saying an incendiary thing and then refusing to meaningfully engage with people who question it is polite at all. I certainly appreciate that you're at least polite in the superficial sense of not saying overtly hostile things much, but that's a really low bar to clear.

So, your claim is simultaneously simple and self-evident, but also requires a lot of time and a "close reading of the material" to demonstrate?

Seems pretty out there, regardless, to suggest that the rules of engagement in war are not a "complex idea" with "lots of gray area." They're kinda the first topic I'd file under those headings.

Yeah, because I don't want to take the time to respond in a little more detail. Responding in detail essentially means I am telling someone they can't read and then breaking down whatever they posted to show them how they don't understand it. That's just rude.

See my above. I can either, in a largely pompous way, insult someone's intelligence and explain things to them like a student. Or I can just post what I think and the other person can do with that as they will.

No, one claim required a close reading and another claim was simple and self-evident. Not all claims are equal.

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"This is that human freedom, which all boast that they possess, and which consists solely in the fact, that men are conscious of their own desire, but are ignorant of the causes whereby that desire has been determined." -Baruch Spinoza

Precisely my point. You're willing to expend more time saying you don't want to do it (and to deflect questions about it) than you would spend with a substantive reply. Every round we go on this only underscores the point.

This is literally exactly what you already did with cricket, and what you're doing with me right now, though! Saying "this proves my point" again after someone has said they don't see how carries the exact implication above. Ditto when you your point is "self-evident" when I've told you I don't see how it is.

Your position is that there's no middle ground between being pompous and just straight-up stonewalling?

In that case, you're using the excuse for not responding in one case to explain another where it isn't applicable. If the military thing is "simple and self-evident," why aren't we talking about it right now?

We are not talking about it BECAUSE it is simple and self-evident. I thought that would have been clear by now.

Unless you think you should have the power to simply declare something to be so, and henceforth be immune to questioning about it, that obviously isn't gonna fly. And it's a lot more "rude" than deigning to explain yourself. Which, by the way, I was perfectly happy to do with my position (note how little time it takes when a position really is self-evident):

I don't know if you feel having to explain yourself is somehow beneath you, or what, but whatever you think, it should be obvious that just repeating an assertion over and over really is a waste of time.

If the person you're talking to isn't worth explaining yourself to, they're not worth contradicting either.

@Yoda: It takes zero time. That’s sorta the point in it being self-evident.

But this really all comes back to whether or not you think bombing civilians is a good thing if it allows for a certain outcome, and you obviously do. I take the stance that bombing civilians is bad. Always has been and always will be.

Now, once again, how was I wrong? Have we ever not bombed civilians? Discuss.

Given the alternatives, yes. Evil men occasionally create situations where they will inflict death and suffering if they are not stopped, and where stopping them will incur casualties. This forces good people to engage in difficult, disturbing moral calculus to try to minimize these things.

It's obviously "bad" in the sense of "not a good thing in and of itself," and no serious person would disagree. But that's not under dispute. What's under dispute is whether it's always bad, on net. Is that your position? That no action which leads to a single civilian death is ever justified?

Keep in mind that you haven't simply taken this position; you've taken the position that it's obvious, and not only that, but so obvious that you shouldn't have to explain why it's obvious. Which is quite a heady claim for something like the rules of engagement and international conventions of war, which have been debated among the nations as long as there have been nations.

The idea that the U.S. indiscriminately or carelessly bombed civilians is wrong. The country went to tremendous lengths and engaged in considerable self-sacrifice to reduce casualties. It's probably plausible to critique the war effort at any number of points, simply because that's the nature of war, but the issue was seriously considered, led to substantial changes in the war, and came at tremendous cost.

@Yoda: Ok, now I know why you’re getting so bent out of shape. You thought this was some elaborate discussion about the finer points of warfare and the merits of it, which it is not.

What we are actually discussing is how you were wrong and I was right. I said we bombed the crap out of civilians, and then you refuted said fact. Now you have acknowledged said fact. Everything on MoFo does not need a 16 page treatise on the subtleties of grayness.

You were wrong. We bombed civilians. It’s cool if you want to get into a discussion about the merits of said bombing, but I suggest you pick someone who actually wants to have that conversation before flying off the cuff at someone for stating a fact.

Hmmm. I just don't think i have the energy to really go down this rabbit hole with you. I'm just gonna say this. We could stop dropping bombs tomorrow. Its still an option we've really never tried.

I would like to go back to something tho if you get time. Earlier in this thread i think you mentioned that shootings are going down? Maybe I misunderstood. Or was it gun violence in general? Anyway, can I ask how you came to that?

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We are both the source of the problem and the solution, yet we do not see ourselves in this light...

Sorry, but that's a clear misrepresentation. Even in your summary just now you start with "I said we bombed the crap out of civilians" (true!) and then pretend the claim was just "we bombed civilians." Those aren't the same thing. The latter was never under dispute, and I never "refuted said fact." I only took issue with the idea that we did it a lot, or excessively, or whatever you meant by "bombed the everliving **** out of" (that was the actual quote).

It went like this:

You did not reply to say "yeah, well, civilians were bombed and that's bad." You specifically argued with the part about scale:

I didn't dispute any fact that I'm now acknowledging, and you did not merely take the position that civilians died. I obviously wouldn't argue with that. Nobody would.

I'm not sure if this is true; lots of military action doesn't involve bombs. Unless you mean refusing to use bombs, for any reason, for an extended period of time? If so, that seems like a tricky thing to commit to given how many rogue actors have bombs. And I think "bombs are bad" is a pretty reasonable starting place, but it ultimately has to grapple with that reality and incorporate it somehow to be a workable political position, in the same way crime policy has to incorporate the fact that people are gonna do some heinous stuff to each other sometimes.

It was homicides by firearm. It was cut in half from 1993 to 2013. IIRC it ticked up in the last year or two (I'd have to check to confirm), but it's still much, much lower overall.

Violent crime in general has been declining for decades. Kinda makes you wonder why it seems like the opposite from the coverage, eh? A question that folds neatly into what I was saying earlier about coming to conclusions from anecdotal news stories and the like. There's so much going on in the world that it's far too easy to create totally opposite impressions based on what gets talked about...

I love it.

Yeah, I worried I'd get another flippant, non-explanatory response like this.

Look at the bits I quoted. That's what was actually said. If you wanna show me where I disputed the "civilians were bombed" part (who in their right mind would dispute that?), go ahead.

What type of condiments would you like whilst you eat your foot? I especially loved how you italicized didn’t.

And then you turned the last two pages into an elaborate word game so you wouldn’t have to admit your mistake. Well sir, you should know that I no longer play that game, so you should keep that in mind when you reply to me.

You conveniently omitted the thing I was replying to. Here's the whole exchange:

The "this" is not "bombed" but "bombed the everliving *** out of," since that's what you, ya' know, actually said.

This isn't really ambiguous, but even if you want to pretend it was, it sure wasn't for long, since we immediately started arguing about the scale anyway, and you denied it even mattered (a clearly untenable position that still hasn't really been addressed).

And really, step back for a second and think about what you're claiming. You're claiming that I disputed the idea that any of our bombs killed any civilians in WW2? Come on.

I think you'll find discussions resemble "elaborate word games" a lot more often when someone's stonewalling and trying to make the conversation about itself, rather than simply address each claim in turn.

Really depressed with how this conversation has gone. Not only because of the lack of substance, and the revisionism, but also because of the spiteful little premature victory dances. It's unreasonable and uncharitable, too, and if this is what you think discussions should be these days, I'm not interested.

Don't refute facts then. Don't twist conversations into a discussion about something entirely else so as to avoid admitting errors from flying off the cuff.

When there is room for gray we will dance the dance of a thousand words, but this is what you will get when you come at me because I state a fact in a way that damages your view of the world and your place in it.

'Nuff said.

Yeah, I didn't, as I literally just showed you. And it's an absurd suggestion, as I pointed out here:

You acknowledge this is your position, yes? Would like to hear you actually say so, since at that point the whole thing will speak for itself. And it'll speak for itself if for some reason you don't want to acknowledge it, too.

I almost never see any outward support for Trump here in Massachusetts, but I saw this today right as I crossed the border into New Hampshire-



A pretty cool riff on what Rashida Tlaib said, I thought.

No, that was your initial position. Then you side stepped to “well, we didn’t kill a lot”.

No, it really wasn't. You're hinging this whole thing, two pages of pointless runarounds and face-saving, on me saying the word "this" and you assuming (why?) it referred to one word of the quote as opposed to the entire phrase.

But again, just to be clear: your claim is that I actually somehow thought no civilians were killed by our bombs in WW2? That's what you're going with?