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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 27th, 2023

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  • My response would be that if you cannot explain your position, then you cannot defend it, and therefore you do not understand it yourself. This implies that you are simply feeling you way into your position using gut instincts, which are easily created and manipulated without a reasonably sound argument. An ad on TV, a op-ed piece only half heard, a slew of biased headlines, and more all contribute to these gut feelings without providing a rational base.

    In short, I reject your claim that complicated positions cannot be explained. Yes, many can’t be easily explained, but you should still be able to explain and defend them.

    So when the position is challenged and you can’t defend it because you have only these gut feelings at the core, you fall back on the belief that anyone would have the same feelings eventually. This is, of course, not true.


  • I hate that phrase so much.

    It sole purpose is to belittle and dismiss the person you are talking to.

    It tells the person that they are obviously unable to understand because of some unrelated trait. It’s an ad-hominim that just shuts down the conversation.

    It’s only used by people that cannot actually defend their position, but rather than continue to discuss it, they would rather just shut out the other person.

    It’s them telling the other person “you are less than me which is why you are wrong, and you must simply accept that because you cannot possibly understand how I am right.”






  • And what happens in the mean time? Third parties almost always take votes from the Democrats. (That is to say, most of the people who vote third party would have voted Democrat if the third party was not on the ballot.) This gives a huge advantage to the Republican party on close elections. The result is further entrenching of the party that has the larger vested interest in not reforming the system. As a result, any generational movement has no chance of succeeding because the party that directly opposes their goal is always in power.

    (To expand: since Democrats lose votes to third parties, they are the ones who would greatly benefit from any kind of ranked choice voting, so they tend to support such reforms. Since Republicans benefit more from FPTP, they tend to oppose such reforms.)

    It’s all well and good to send a message, but that message will be received by the people who benefit most by ignoring that message.

    The better method is to get people in power now who support election reform, get those reforms passed, then third party candidates become viable.