First, the obligatory “How can anyone look at themselves in the mirror and support this woman and a party that would try to win an election by hiding what its Presidential candidate believes?”
Now the latest bit of deliberate obfuscation:
In April 2019, Senator Kamala Harris supported an electric vehicle mandate when she co-sponsored the Zero-Emission Vehicles Act of 2019. The bill, which was introduced by fellow far-left Democrats Senator Jeff Merkley and Representative Mike Levin, was promoted as a “bold plan for transitioning the United States to 100% zero-emission vehicles.”
Yet today, Harris’s director of rapid response, Ammar Moussa, wrote that “Vice President Harris does not support an electric vehicle mandate” and that any statement by Donald Trump and J.D. Vance that she does is a “lie.” Of course, the easy way to settle the issue would be for Harris to submit to questioning from reporters so she could explain how legislation designed to force the nation to have “100% zero-emission vehicles” isn’t a mandate, or why she now believes her 2019 position (announced as she was running for the 2020 Presidential nomination and thus a sop to the climate change hysteric Democratic base) was a wrong one, or why she disagrees with the Biden tailpipe emissions rule issued by the EPA that would by design force car manufacturers to significantly reduce the production of gas-powered cars. “The regulation would essentially require automakers to sell more electric vehicles and hybrids by gradually tightening limits on tailpipe pollution,” that relentless critic of Democratic polices, the New York Times, reported last March.
As Ed Driscoll wrote on Instapundit, “Until Harris herself publicly denounces her past positions, assume that they’re still her goals. But even if she did announce a change in her worldview, why would anyone believe her?”
Good question! That’s another one journalists should ask Harris, if we had any.
Ethics Alarms 
Why do the Democrats not want their candidates talking to the press? Biden campaigned from his basement and gave virtually no press conferences (When Trump cut down on making appearances at press conferences, it was treated as a violation of Freedom of the Press). Harris isn’t giving any interviews.
It’s almost as if they don’t want you to hear them speak or give answers to awkward questions.
Harris won’t answer because, in the desperate view of the unholy creatures that actually run the Democratic Party, she doesn’t need to. At least, that’s their hope – and they may be correct. All they need to do is drag her across the finish line with one more electoral vote than would throw the race to the House.
2020 proved that a weak candidate doesn’t have to actually be out there as long as they mouth the market-tested platitudes. Then you can do whatever you want. As for Harris, she won’t actually address positions because she doesn’t really have any. If one has followed her career, she’s much like Biden: she says whatever plays best to the audience of the moment, carefully scripted all the while.
And hey, that approach has gotten her THIS far (well, that – plus a few carefully distributed blowjobs, and (of course) having both extra melanin and two X chromosomes). She will, of course, ultimately accept a much-ballyhooed interview with a friendly reporter who will throw softballs (my bet is Chris Wallace). And that will be that.
But near as I can tell, it doesn’t really matter WHAT she thinks anyway. She’ll be a sock puppet just like Biden. In the short term, for whatever it’s worth, the fact that she won’t talk to reporters is one of the few things the floundering Trump campaign has going for it at the moment. Not that that Trump has the self-discipline to consistently or compellingly make that argument.
”And hey, that approach has gotten her THIS far (well, that – plus a few carefully distributed blowjobs, and (of course) having both extra melanin and two X chromosomes).”
Yes, being a black woman is such a huge advantage when it comes to running for president. That is why there have been so many of them.
Cheap shot. You’re either qualified to be President or you’re not. Black women haven’t bee in the upper levels of politics long enough to build up much of a talent pool (look at the terrible records of the many black female mayors). In any normal process in a party with any shame or integrity, Harris wouldn’t get within a mile of the White House, and not because of her race.
Wait—are you saying that Arthur in Maine’s claim that Kamala got her position because of her race and gender is a cheap shot, or my objection to it was?
Was his claim that she got her position through blowjobs a cheap shot?
Arthur’s “blow job” comment was a metaphor: the reference is to the fact that Harris owes her entire career to being the mistress of Willie Brown, the black Democratic political boss and power broker. As Brown has mentioned several times.
It’s a sexist accusation, and not backed up by any of Willie Brown’s comments on their relationship. Calling her his “mistress” is misleading; he was publicly separated for a decade when they began dating. Most of her higher-profile were elected; she didn’t get them by blowing the voters.
If this is the type of blatant misogyny and deceit that is promoted on this site I don’t see how it can be properly titled “Ethics Alarms” or be seen as a reliable source of ethical analysis.
Wrong. She achieved her success by sleeping with a powerful man who cleared the way for her. That’s a fact. If you are offended by “blow job” as opposed to “sleeping with,” I’ll mark that as a fair objection, but it’s not substantive, and we don’t know the sexual habits of the pair involved.
And being separated from a wife does not make a man less married—the term mistress means, according to most dictionary definitions, “a woman having an extramarital sexual relationship….with a married man.” My use of mistress was not ‘misleading,” it was accurate.
Ethics Alarms does not “promote” “blatant misogyny,” and Arthur’s comment wasn’t that. Nor is referring to a married man’s mistress as a mistress “deceit.”
You now have two strikes.
Do you want to be a constructive commenter or do you want to go for three? Your choice.
I’m out of the loop of Kamal’s sexual escapades to advance her career. What can I read to learn about that?
https://www.factcheck.org/2024/08/posts-mislead-about-harris-romance-with-willie-brown/
and
https://www.reuters.com/article/world/fact-check-kamala-harrisandwillie-brownhad-a-relationshipover-adecadeafte-idUSKBN26Y2RJ/
The first link (but not the second, strangely) confirms that Brown as speaker, while having a relationship with Harris, appointed her to the California Medical Assistance Commission. That’s nepotism, straight up, and the kind of thing DC’s equivalent of Brown did with his various girlfriends. Those commissions provide ways to make contacts and political networking.Brown pooh-poohed the idea that there was anything wrong with his appointing his mistress to political positions. So did Barry.
Definitely nepotism but I don’t think that negates everything she’s done since that appointment.
There’s lots of nepotism in politics but that doesn’t say much about Harris since it was so long ago and she’s accomplished so much since then. I’d agree he helped her get a leg up.
Jen: That was basically the rationalization Ted Kennedy got after Chappaquiddick, no? Yeah, he killed a girl and covered it up, but look at what he’s done since!” That’s an “ends justified the means” argument. I’d also ask, “What’s “everything”?” That’s a more persuasive argument if there is something readily demonstrable that shows a productive career since Willie got her over the hump. Is there? I’m ready to be amazed. Again you say, “she’s accomplished so much since then”—what is so much? Getting into a position like AG or Senator isn’t a substantive accomplishment from a societal viewpoint. George Santos “accomplished” getting elected to the House, and so what? He was wildly unqualified. I am starving for any demonstrated skill by Harris that created an unequivocal beneficial outcome that can be pointed to as justifying trust. Again, it its there, I’ll applaud. Where is it?
As for the last, everyone gets help from someone. However, women who rely on hooking their metaphorical wagon to a male star are ethically estopped (by my standards) from pretending to be feminist warriors. If you benefit from the patriarchy, I don’t take your condemnation of it and proclamation of independence from it as evidence of integrity.
There’s lots of nepotism in politics
And that’s the hoariest rationalization of them all! (Have your reviewed the list?) The fact that it’s done all the time doesn’t make it any less corrupt.
And that’s the hoariest rationalization of them all! (Have your reviewed the list?) The fact that it’s done all the time doesn’t make it any less corrupt.
See! You’re doing what EC said you do. You took a part of one sentence and ignored the rest, more substantial part of my argument.
It’s very frustrating trying to have an honest debate with someone who constantly does this.
“Yeah, he killed a girl and covered it up, but look at what he’s done since!”
This is another example of that EC is talking about. A totally dishonest representation of my point. Did Harris murder someone?
The rest of your comment is actually a normal, substantial argument but a different topic since we’re discussing “She achieved her success by sleeping with a powerful man” and my argument is she definitely got a leg up, but that was 30 years ago. What she’s done since that appointment is what matters.
But then you shift the goalposts to “her success isn’t actually success”
So if you want to discuss THAT, it’s a slightly different topic from the original comment I was replying to. But I just totally disagree someone who got an appointment 30 years ago negates all the other success they’ve had since. If the appointment was recent, you would maybe have a point.
You stray off topic way too much.
Would love to hear what EC thinks.
I’m glad you think you’ve found an ally, but you’re only demonstrating your own deficiencies. Rationalizations like “everybody does it” are a tell: it means you don’t understand ethical analysis. Misinterpreting the obvious point of the Ted Kennedy example I gave means that you don’t understand analogies either. It’s literally impossible to have a rational discussion when the other party lacks the tools and vocabulary to communicate.
Given that deficiency, I don’t need to be told that I stray off topic.
I’m invoking the Stupidity Rule here.
You’re banned too. Again, I don’t have time to argue with those who use rationalizations as arguments. I asked a simple question: what success? You wouldn’t answer, because you can’t, and then attack me.
Any further comment will be spammed. You’re welcome to read what others post.
I’m going to translate this passage into effective communication:
“Based on what you’ve seen, read, and heard of Kamala Harris, she may have proven herself in your eyes. You may consider her relationship with Willie Brown irrelevant. But do you see why that relationship introduces a conflict of interest that gives other people legitimate reasons to doubt her skills, and why we therefore expect stronger, clearer, more reliable evidence to overcome that doubt and convince us that she could make a good president?
“As a side note, we don’t practice double-standards based on sex here; the same conflict of interest issue was raised here with the sexes reversed, although the names of the people involve escape me. It was a female mayor and a male attorney, if I remember correctly. The issue is the conflict of interest, not the presumption of either gender in particular using sex-for-position quid pro quo. Does that make sense?”
Great answer. 1) It would not have any more effect on someone like “May I” than a tougher response. 2) I barely have time to write four posts a day (that’s about 2500 words, often more.) I’d be happy to outsource specific replies to you, since you would only have to compose one careful response while I am dealing with comments on many posts across the blog. 3) I don’t have to engage with commenters at all. Almost no bloggers do, and none to the extent that I do. So when a Jill writes, “My issue is him saying it’s wrong for someone to take off from work after they discover their spouse just died because duty to one’s job is more important than “feelings” and their duty to their family” and that is not what I wrote, think, or the issue under discussion, I should just hope that another commenter shoots it down, or otherwise be misquoted and misrepresented on my own site?
Not me. I don’t roll that way, never have, never will.
1) That’s your prediction. Would you call it a “fact”?
2) I’d be happy to. Feel free to ping me when you run into someone frustrating and ask them to wait for me to address their concerns. You can put the argument on hold in the meantime, and I’ll clarify things when I arrive.
3) I’m not sure what your point is here or what point of mine it was meant to address. Do you mean to say that we should not expect effective communication from you because you are busy and aren’t obligated to engage with commenters at all, but that we also should not expect you to remain silent because there are some things you can’t let pass, so we get an unhappy middle ground of ineffective communication?
There’s a difference between a commenter being wrong about what you believe or say versus a commenter just being wrong in general. By all means, set people straight about what your position is. Just don’t overclock yourself trying to get them to subscribe to it.
1. I clearly stated it as my guess, not a fact. Don’t get snotty.
2.I’ll take you up on that, but its too late for Jen. I just banned her.
3. I’m saying that those who don’t run this blog are ill-equipped to tell me what I should or shouldn’t spend my time on. I’m saying that not one of this months bannees were 1) capable of having any change of mind or heart and 2) worth even the time I spend talking with them. Take the argument that its more ethical to virtue-signal grief after the death of a loved one when that action has no substantive value than it is to avoid harming a hundred people by defaulting on a commitment to them. How does one argue with that contention? Anyone making it simply doesn’t comprehend ethical values, and your method, pretending there is value to a position that has none, is like pacifism: it doesn’t work and can’t work.
A commenter who misrepresents or can’t comprehend what I say—I’m pretty clear (as you are)—lacks the integrity or the ability to be productive here. A commenter who is just wrong in general has a problem—bias, prejudice, bad training, low IQ scores—that can’t be fixed by diplomacy.
1) Are we talking about the same passage? I was referring to when you said “[EC’s answer] would not have any more effect on someone like “May I” than a tougher response.” I said that was your prediction and asked if you would consider it a fact. In response to my question you said “I clearly stated it as my guess, not a fact.” I checked and was not able to find the place you “explicitly said that you guessed.” Then you restated your prediction, saying “I’m saying that not one of this months bannees were 1) capable of having any change of mind or heart”.
Whether or not they are worth you talking to them is your choice. I can’t say that’s objectively wrong, but I’m disappointed.
Whether or not they are capable of changing their minds is your prediction, and I am confident you are wrong, because I deal with this sort of thing all the time. You have ventured outside your area of expertise and entered mine. Ironically, single most difficult topic to reason with people about, in my experience, is the topic of how reasonable other people are.
I’m not sure if it is brought on by stress that you force yourself to power through instead of acknowledging it and taking dedicated recovery time, or if you were always like this and it just didn’t come up as much in my awareness, but you appear to be having increasing trouble distinguishing between ignorance/malice and misunderstanding. I don’t know about all the recent bans, but I’ve seen three of them, and all three could have been averted with a single sentence to resolve the mismatch of assumptions between you and someone else.
It’s not that either of you were wrong, but that you weren’t on the same page. That’s unavoidable. What’s avoidable is that each party continued speaking as though the other party were wrong, instead of taking a step back and looking to find the disconnect. Eventually, one or both of you attributed the misunderstanding to an inherent flaw in the other, and wrote the other off. That’s nothing to do with politics. That’s just a problem with establishing mutual expectations.
Sure, you’re maintaining this blog for free, and it’s noble work, and many people are grateful for it, including myself. But doing it for free doesn’t excuse you from upholding the expectations you yourself set. The Comment Policy does a decent job of explaining to people what to avoid, but it’s entirely predicated on whether people can trust you to evaluate their sincerity and recognize the difference between ignorance and misunderstanding, and deal with the latter appropriately.
If people come here expecting a space where they can freely engage in earnest discussion, they’re going to be rudely disappointed when you summarily brand things that disagree with you as not merely wrong, but intellectually dishonest. If they wanted to be labeled as misinformation, they could go back to Facebook.
On the other hand, we could solve the problem overnight by having a rule where instead of people stating things as “fact” they phrased it as “I was under the impression that…” Then if anyone disagrees they look at the evidence and at the consequences of false positive and false negatives.
1. Nope. I didn’t know that’s what you were referring to.It’s an opinion, but I’m confident that I’m correct.
2. “Whether or not they are worth you talking to them is your choice. I can’t say that’s objectively wrong, but I’m disappointed.” That’s because your mission isn’t mine. I literally don’t have time to talk to people who can’t grasp basic concepts, resort to rationalizations (Nepotism happens a lot) and come here to fight rather than to learn.
3. “The Comment Policy does a decent job of explaining to people what to avoid, but it’s entirely predicated on whether people can trust you to evaluate their sincerity and recognize the difference between ignorance and misunderstanding, and deal with the latter appropriately.’ So? If they don’t, then they shouldn’t comment. Rewite that statement using “laws” isntead of “Comment Policies” and “law enforcement” instead of me.
4. “If people come here expecting a space where they can freely engage in earnest discussion, they’re going to be rudely disappointed when you summarily brand things that disagree with you as not merely wrong, but intellectually dishonest. If they wanted to be labeled as misinformation, they could go back to Facebook.” If they want free discussion without knowledge, perspective or critical thinking skills, then Facebook is the place for them. I am confident that most of the time whan I call out intellectual dishonesty, I am correct. I am also confident that much of the time the one I am addressing doesn’t have a clue what the term means.
3. You’re going to hate this answer, but when the disconnect is “This commenter just isn’t very bright,” or “This commenter has an agenda” then I see no value in having them around.
4.
3.
EC, I’d really love for you to read the comments here and see if Jack was misrepresented in his argument:
https://ethicsalarms.com/2024/08/26/ugh-ethics-dunce-again-university-of-houston-law-professor-renee-knake-jefferson/#comments
Do your own advocacy. EC has enough irons in the fire already.
I have deconstructed the situation. I decided to put the comment in that post, for simplicity: https://ethicsalarms.com/2024/08/26/ugh-ethics-dunce-again-university-of-houston-law-professor-renee-knake-jefferson/comment-page-1/#comment-874102
Stipulated: There have not yet been any female presidents of color because for most of U.S. history both of those demographic traits have been subjected to several unfair disadvantages.
That said, when a large number of people seem to believe that breaking that pattern (of presidents, not of unfair disadvantages) is a goal more important than (or somehow equivalent to) making sure that the new president can effectively solve problems, then yes, having more melanin and two X chromosomes is an advantage in that context.
Does that make sense?
Sure, if there were evidence that a large number of people seemed to believe that. But most of the people supporting Kamala believe she can effectively solve problems. Others don’t have as much confidence, but believe she’d at least be better at solving problems—or at least not cause as many—than the other guy. Whether you think either is true doesn’t mean that her supporters all secretly are only voting for her on account of her race and gender (subjects that she hasn’t really brought up all that much considering how unique they are to her candidacy).
If it were just Harris versus Trump, I’d consider it likely that people who vote for Harris trust her to effectively solve their problems more than they trust Trump. The issue that many people take is that it wasn’t Harris versus Trump… it was Harris versus many other potential Democratic Party nominees, and then Trump. Some of of those erstwhile Democratic competitors have, to me, demonstrated a better understanding of the nation’s problems and how to address them constructively than Harris has.
As far as I can tell her demographic traits and her willingness to placate voters with platitudes rather than challenging the status quo with new ideas have been great advantages to her in defeating those other Democrats… or rather, in gaining the favor of those who choose who the voters get to vote for.
Perhaps Harris could have defeated Dean Phillips, Marianne Williamson, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Jason Palmer in a Final Five open primary. Her advantages are such that we were denied the chance to find out.
Does that make sense?
This doesn’t: “If it were just Harris versus Trump, I’d consider it likely that people who vote for Harris trust her to effectively solve their problems more than they trust Trump.” That belief is a totally fact free belief based on bias and dislike of Trump along with automatic party loyalty, in addition to what Harris IS (blackish, female) rather than any demonstrated accomplishments or abilities.
Nor this: “Perhaps Harris could have defeated Dean Phillips, Marianne Williamson, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Jason Palmer in a Final Five open primary.” Those were the four who sort-of ran against Biden after the Party made it clear that it would tolerate no opposition. In open primaries where the sitting President wasn’t running, Harris would have had to defeat far more serious and formidable opponents, like Gavin Newsome, Amy Klobuchar, the absurd Secretary of Transportation, and others.
It’s called “arguendo”. I suspend my judgment on points that are more difficult to address and less immediately important, so I can address key assumptions at the core of someone’s position. Once I have addressed those assumptions, it’s easier to address the points I accepted arguendo, or I may not need to address them at all.
I don’t need to prove the defendant is a good person if I can produce an alibi. Even if we assume arguendo that the defendant were as wicked as the prosecution says, the defendant still could not physically have committed the crime. That’s easier to prove.
You have a habit of pushing back on every point you disagree with, whether or not it’s feasible to argue and whether or not it matters for finding common ground to build on. You bury the lead with the alibi and waste time arguing about the defendant’s character. It makes you much less effective than you could be at inspiring people to reconsider their assumptions.
You know I know “arguendo” because I use it frequently.
Guilty as charged…but yielding on smaller points gets one no where with people like “If I May.” Isn’t it obvious that she’s not open to reconsidering anything, but simply here to take an intractable position and to use the blog as a platform for it?
I know you know arguendo, but you don’t use it when it matters. You’re a lawyer, but you don’t use the empathy mindset skills of a lawyer. Dissenting commenters aren’t the opposing lawyers… they’re the jury. You’re supposed to be convincing them, not insulting their intelligence for not already knowing the verdict you expect them to reach and why.
No, it’s not obvious that If I May is not open to reconsidering anything. What I saw is that you once again asserted your conclusions as facts and you skipped the part where you identify and address the reasons why other people disagree with your conclusions. You’ve decided which conclusions are and are not reasonable, and anyone who doesn’t already agree must be intellectually dishonest. That’s not how a healthy democracy functions.
What’s the source for this statement again? What words did Biden use? Based on how you elaborated on this assertion, I think you based it partly on a quote from Biden about specifically seeking women of color for VP and partly based on your own opinion (well-reasoned though it may be) that Harris in particular has nothing else going for her. I doubt Biden explicitly said that Harris didn’t have any other political assets, unless he was lucid enough to realize it but not lucid enough to keep it to himself.
Playing the “you’re dishonest” card is not only unhelpful, it’s also unnecessary. If you deconstruct people’s arguments, it becomes easier to reveal the inconsistencies, and if people still don’t acknowledge them, you keep going until you find something that people really cannot ignore. Instead you declared that If I May secretly agreed with you but dishonestly expressed disagreement for selfish reasons. (Just to illustrate the point, guess what the easiest way to alienate an atheist is?) Now look how we ended up. You both called each other liars, and If I May got banned because it’s your space, and nobody learned anything. Good job.
What’s the source for this statement again?
I published it recently…don’t have time to track it down. No, this was a specific statement with Biden saying that Harris was an example of DEI and he was proud of it.
That she had no other political assets isn’t opinion, it’s fact. Nobody has ever identified any, and there aren’t any. As a student of the Presidency, I can cite many, many reasons other VP’s were selected who were less than impressive. There literally are no other reasons. She called Biden a racist. She was from a state, as I said to May I, that Biden knew he would win. Her statements in the debates were widely mocked. Her performance as a prosecutor would have alienated some blacks if they were voting based on the VP. We’ve had this dispute before: enabling positions that can’t be factually defended serves to allow misconceptions to spread and dig in.
And May got banned because she told a commenter to fuck himself and insulted everyone else on the blog, including, presumably you. I gave her an opportunity to keep commenting, and she didn’t take it.
I assume your position, then, is that I should tolerate commenters who claim that the assessment that the mainstream media is biased is a conspiracy theory? The opposite case has been made and made again here, beyond a reasonable doubt. Why should I accept a demonstrably false position “arguendo”?
Maybe once we keep hitting a topic ad nauseum, you could add to the site other compilations like the Presidential Impeachment Plans, and then ask obnoxious commenters to start there? Or maybe someone from the commentariat could make the compilation and hand it over for inspection before it goes live. Either way, it could shortcut the initial exchanges, and an honest commenter might actually get the chance to come up to speed without making an ass of himself. I wonder if there’s a way to make a checkbox on those where a prospective commenter has to agree he’s read those posts before he’s allowed to comment?
Even if we assume, arguendo, that new commenters are obligated to go back and read all your posts on mainstream media bias, and that they know to do that, they may still not be convinced. Those posts are data points, but they aren’t sufficient to convince someone of a trend if that person is not prepared to accept the implications. Additionally, many of the posts use shorthand arguments relying on premises established by posts that came before. They’re written for the regular crowd, not for the newcomers. New people don’t know all that you know; that’s why you’re trying to communicate with them. You’re failing to communicate with them because you expect them to already believe what you’re trying to show them.
You should accept a demonstrably false position arguendo because it lets you make a point that’s easier to demonstrate to people and accomplishes the same persuasive purpose. That is literally the entire point of arguendo. If a jury doesn’t believe the defendant wouldn’t commit a crime, you can’t just ban them and get a new jury. You have to accept their bias and move on to what you can prove to them. That does not mean agreeing with them or letting them think you agree. It means moving the conversation forward so you can address the most important problems first. Once people realize they were wrong about their core assumptions, they will be more open to reevaluating the peripheral ones.
I work with people trying to end racism, and one point they make is that for people of pallor (my phrase) to shun racists isn’t very helpful, because one fewer racist in their life doesn’t mean one fewer racist making the world a hostile place. The same principle applies here. You can kick people out of your online space, but they’re still voting. You won’t make a difference if you don’t get through to them.
If I May was not insulting me, because I spoke with humility from my own perspective rather than contempt from a presumed objective standpoint.
You inspire people to insult you because you give no indication that you understand or care about their perspectives or fears that lead them to legitimately disagree with you. Most people register such treatment as arrogance and contempt, and will respond in kind. Should they behave more maturely than that? Yes, that’s the society I’m aiming for. However, if your method of creating positive change in society relies on other people to behave with more humility in an argument than you do, you will not accomplish your goals. That’s a key part of being taken seriously.
“That she had no other political assets isn’t opinion, it’s fact.”
For the last time, this is not how “facts” work. Political assets are subjective. If Harris’s words and actions inspire the trust of someone, somewhere, even if that trust appears foolish from your perspective and even if you’re probably right, that’s still a political asset. If you want to call your assertions “facts”, though, I can play along. Fact is as fact does.
If someone disagrees with you on “facts,” it’s more effective to look the parent facts those facts were derived from, and if those parent facts are in dispute then you go one level deeper, and you keep going until you find something you both agree on. Then you can examine why you disagree on what comes after that. Rationalists call this process “double-cruxing”. You just proved you could do it by pulling out all the reasons why you consider Harris’s lack of political assets a fact. The trick is identifying what’s relevant in order to reduce the epistemological framework to something manageable. That’s where my toolbox of foundational concepts makes things much easier.
You do realize that that is not the same thing as Biden saying that Harris had no other political assets, right? Because that’s what’s being argued here: whether or not anyone has any reason to believe that Harris might be any good at the job, ignoring the existence of Trump as an alternative.
I recommend in the strongest possible terms that you do what my father taught me, and start phrasing your assertions with the acknowledgement that they are your subjective conclusions. You may have noticed that I frequently use phrases like “I suspect,” “as far as I can tell,” “we may want,” et cetera. It’s a different way of presenting assertions that doesn’t change the meaning of what you assert, but does signal that you are open to considering other perspectives. It invites people to engage with you, which is the first step in them reconsidering their own opinions. It sets an example for them.
Phrasing your conclusions as objective absolutes signals to people that you are not open to considering dissenting opinions, and from that they infer that you reached those conclusions because you are closed-minded. They may be mistaken, but they won’t find out, because you give them no reason to consider that possibility and investigate by engaging with you.
This is the worst possible hill for you to die on. Political assets may be subjective,but they are still real, illusory, or absent. Harris had neither real nor illusory assets except her race and gender. I’ve analyzed every VP choice for both the winning and the losing parties. There are literally dozens of political assets that led to these choices, but only two that could be rationally assigned to Harris. Anyone making the counter case must be able to cite what that third asset would be, and no, I don’t have to accept a desperately fabricated one like “people trust her to get things done” when nobody did, or could. There is no arguendo, any more than “arguendo, maybe the sun rotates around the earth.”
Find a better example, and I’ll agree with you.
Methinks you’re missing the point of arguendo. Sometimes, “arguendo, maybe the Sun revolves around the Earth” is exactly the right move, because that’s what leads to a reductio ad absurdum or an experiment to show that it doesn’t. “If the Sun revolves around the Earth, we would expect a person traveling around the world to be able to see the entire set of zodiac constellations. But they can’t. Some of those are behind the Sun and hidden by its light, and we only see them when the Earth is on the other side of the sun. Ergo, the Earth revolves around the Sun.” Or you could find something that makes that whole line of reasoning irrelevant, and you can take up the geocentrism issue with the person later.
“I don’t have to accept a desperately fabricated one like “people trust her to get things done” when nobody did, or could.”
But that’s the truth. People do trust her. I agree that they shouldn’t, and that that trust comes from manufactured consent, and that being trusted by fearful voters is woefully insufficient to do a good job as president. Nevertheless the trust exists and it’s a political asset. You don’t get to decide that someone doesn’t have a political asset just because they don’t deserve it. Trust is a choice. You can’t change someone’s choice just by reciting your own reasoning for making a different choice. You have to figure out why they would make a different choice and walk them through it. When you don’t, that tells them that you’re not worth their effort to listen to. That is also their choice.
I’m explaining the ways you can inspire people to listen to you that still allow you to indicate disagreement on all the points you desire to. When you use these methods, the population of reasonable people will appear to skyrocket. If you don’t want to try them out, how about you point me at someone you would otherwise write off and just hang back and see what happens? You can direct me to a person on another platform if you prefer to maintain zero tolerance of misinformation on yours.
I would also argue after reading this blog for quite some time Jack partakes in eristic arguing.
That is, not really trying to come to terms with another point of view, but simply arguing his point and nothing else.
Isn’t “eristic arguing” a tautology?
That depends on if you consider “arguing” to be unproductive by definition, and “discussion” or something similar to be the productive counterpart of arguing. If your definition of “arguing” includes productive interactions, then eristic arguing is an unproductive form of arguing.
The point here is that regardless of what you call it, what you’re doing is not accomplishing what we assume your goals are.
Why do you think a handful of partisan, ideological trolls who come here just to advocate a pre-set point of view are interested in changing their positions or capable of it?
I’m going to reply at the bottom because it’ll be easier for people to read.
You do realize that that is not the same thing as Biden saying that Harris had no other political assets, right?I
I am very glad you brought this up because this is a perfect example of what I’ve been noticing with this blog over the years, and I’m glad it came from someone Jack trusts.
This is called a few things, not quite moving the goal posts but a sort of obfuscation, arguing in bad faith, spinning, etc.
What Jack does is argue X (Biden said he only choose Harris because of DEI), X is challenged, then Jack gives evidence for Y, then Y is challenged, and the cycle repeats.
People view this as dishonesty and leave (see the USA Today writer)
Jen, if only one political asset is verified and mentioned explicitly, and no others are specified or even suggested, what should you, I or anyone assume from that? Again, look at the two other women in Biden’s pool. What do they share?
If someone says the Holocaust is a myth, to what extent am I required to accept that assertion “arguendo” and a basis for discussion? At what point is the only rational response to point out that the assertion is wrong on its face, and why, without giving currency to that false assertion? I know…. Holocaust denial is an unfair (sort of) analogy, but outside of its seriousness and the terrible consequences of denial, the evidence of, say, left-leaning mainstream media bias is nearly as overwhelming, just not so emotionally powerful, and the assertion is similarly evidence of either bad motives or ignorance. When do you draw the line and say: nope, I won’t give that position the benefit of the doubt?
EC—the organization you put me in touch with, which I admire for their mission as quixotic as it is, solicied me for a policy debate over “illegal immigration,” except they termed it “immigration.” I said I couldn’t participate with that false framing, and if you frame the issue honestly, there’s nothing to debate. Laws have to be enforced. If the laws are seen as flawed, fix the laws, but until you fix them, laws must be enforced. I do not accept “but…but…all they want is a better life!” as an excuse not to enforce a law, any law.I am 100% certain that “May I’ finds that a persuasive approach. You know, feelings.
It isn’t. Not “I don’t think it is,” but it isn’t. Because it isn’t.
That’s easy. You don’t. The deconstruction method works on anything. If you don’t want to go that deep, you just tell people you’re not up to it, and/or bring them to a specialist like me. Just because you’re not willing to do it yourself doesn’t mean it isn’t an effective approach.
I’ll demonstrate. The motivation behind Holocaust-denial is that the Nazi ideology and/or some people associated with it are sadly the only things a person has found found that make them feel valued (welcome to Cults 101), and they therefore need to rationalize the ideology as being compatible with being a decent human being. The thing is, even if you go as far as removing the Holocaust from the equation, is there really any way to do that?
1. Make them comfortable (alright, let’s assume arguendo…).
2. Make them think. *Make them explain themselves.* The most effective way to dismantle someone’s worldview is from the *inside*. Take it apart using the things *they themselves* believe, not the things *you* believe.
If someone thinks a genocide was faked, that implies some combination of three alternatives. 1: People were fictitious. They disappeared because they never existed. 2: People were real, but never died; they just went into hiding and nobody noticed the appearance of more people elsewhere. 3: People were real, and really died, but for non-genocide reasons.
So if we accept the fake genocide hypothesis arguendo, that begets the questions, what do people think happened instead of the Holocaust recorded in history, and why is that alternative hypothesis more likely than a regime that explicitly considered some people worthless and declared their intention to get rid of them… doing exactly that? Are people saying that the Nazis were so incompetent they couldn’t kill people they had rendered largely powerless (there’s a grain of truth in that–some people thankfully escaped due in part to Nazi incompetence) but that most of those people just happened to die *anyway*? Or that the Nazis didn’t want to kill them but were too incompetent to keep them alive?
3. Make them choose. For best results, you must show them a viable path to becoming a decent human being, because if they don’t think there is one, they’re going to cling to what makes them feel good about themselves, no matter how toxic.
People do this in real life. There are established practices for this process. Check out how people deconvert adherents to extremist ideologies. You don’t have to do it yourself, but don’t tell me it’s not possible.
***
I’m sharing this side note because I don’t know when I’ll next have a chance. Hopefully it’s good enough to provoke only mirth: Inspired by https://xkcd.com/496/ (“You disrupted a 9/11 truth meeting, insisting the Twin Towers never actually collapsed?”) I wrote a whole satirical comedy bit based on conspiracy theory judo: what happens when a Holocaust denier meets a *Nazi denier*? A person whose anti-Semitic conspiracy theorizing is so strong that they think that *Nazi Germany itself* was a hoax?
“Tired of the relentless discrimination, of the ghettos and pogroms from the fall of the Roman Empire up through the early 20th century, the Jewish people decided to astroturf the rise and collapse of a fascist regime in order to finally get some respect. Adolf Hitler was a fictional character played by a Jewish man named Abel Herskovitz–a bit of an overactor, but very convincing.
The sockpuppet dictator project was by and large a success. Even the people who rejected the story of attempted genocide bought into the existence of the Nazis, without realizing they were admiring a Jewish fabrication.
As a side benefit, the Nazis make iconic movie villains, contributing key plot and thematic elements to dozens if not hundreds of films, from Casablanca to Indiana Jones. Their popularity as antagonists allowed many people to transition smoothly from staging Nazis in Germany to staging Nazis in Hollywood. Incidentally, Mel Brooks revealed that *The Producers* was based on an early attempt at the Nazi project which was scrapped when test audiences couldn’t stop laughing.”
“That’s easy. You don’t”
Bravo. That’s the only ethical answer you could give from your position.
? What does this refer to? (see the USA Today writer)
I agreed with you in 2020. I didn’t vote for Kamala or Biden in the primary. But the majority of Dems voted for Biden, and then a majority of the country voted for the Biden/Kamala ticket knowing that given his age, she’d likely replace him. And then she did. She gained the favor because she was the sitting vice president, not because of her race and gender. This is only anti-democratic to people who don’t understand what a vice president is. (And she would have easily beaten RFK Jr. and Marianne Williamson at the very least.)
“But the majority of Dems voted for Biden, and then a majority of the country voted for the Biden/Kamala ticket knowing that given his age, she’d likely replace him.”
That’s simply not true. There has never been a VP voted for in that way, and many others have run with Presidents who were infirm and a risk to die. Harrris never “gained favor,” according to polls, she was increasingly unpopular as Biden’s term went on.
And this: “This is only anti-democratic to people who don’t understand what a vice president is” is intellectually dishonest. The issue isn’t that it would have been undemocratic for Harris to succeed Biden if he died in office. The issue is that unlike every other Presidential nominee since the mid-19th Century, Harris faced no democratic process at all in gaining the nomination. The argument that a vote for Biden as President was really intended as a vote for her is specious and unserious.
Then you default to two non-competitive candidates who would not have been her major competition if Harris had to go through primaries as a Presidential candidate—as I already explained, and it shouldn’t have had to be explained. Again, bad faith argumentation.
More dishonesty: she was the sitting VP only because of her race and gender. No other reason, and Biden said so himself. She didn’t bring a state to the Biden column (Cal. would go Democratic if Donald Duck were his running mate) and she had no evident public support (which is why her try for the 2020 nomination flopped). Senators are not qualified to be President: she had no executive experience. She was in a small pool of three mediocre black women, one of whom was Cori Bush, a nurse, an anti-Semite, and a fool. The other was Staci Abrams, who was on her way to becoming a joke. Tough field. In that group, I might have picked Kamala too.
Did they really know that, though?
Biden campaigned on a reputation of being a moderate centrist, stated specifically his running mate would be a black female – effectively ruling out any other candidate who was male or of a different race – and hid in his basement for much of the race.
This was done to conceal the fact that he was an elderly man in failing health whose best days were behind him. The only people pointing out that he would be lucky to survive a first term in office or who suggested that this was a plot to get an old white man elected in order for a black female to replace him when he inevitably couldn’t do the job were accused of being conspiracy theorists.
And here we are.
I think it’s a stretch to argue that people who voted for Biden knew they were actually voting for Harris to succeed him. No rational person votes for a President believing that he will die in office and have to be replaced by his VP. They voted for Biden because the true extent of his health was hidden by his family, his party and a complicit news media and because he was billed as someone who wouldn’t rock the boat.
Agreed. Biden declared that only God Almighty would remove him from the President’s race. He was “in it to win it.” His opinion may have put him straight with the Lord but he didn’t count on Obama, Pelosi, Schumer, et al, being a bit more hard-nosed. Harris, in fact, openly rejected claims that he was too old, feeble, and incoherent to run for office.
Additionally, voters did, in fact, get a chance to choose her and flatly rejected her. Her 2020 bid ran out of money and support, leading her to pull out of the race in December 2019. This year alone, major new outlets were advising Biden to jettison her as VP. Now, she is held out as the savoir of the western world. How is that possible?
jvb
“believe she can effectively solve problems.”
Based on what? What problem has she ever solved that she was responsible for solving?
As far as I can tell, the highlight of her Senate career was yelling at Brett Kavanaugh. The highlight of her time as attorney general of California was locking up black men and making sure they stayed locked up to give the state a cheap labor force to rely on. She has never solved any problem, and the solutions she is proposing now, at least the ones that have come out, like price controls, are insane.
As vice president she has accomplished nothing, and has in fact had to be shuffled off into the background because she cannot even speak effectively.
She’s finally going to give an interview to CNN, which will not air live, and I’m sure will be edited to put her in the best possible light. What is more, Tim Walz will be with her, since apparently she can’t handle this interview on her own.
Thia country is going to elect her president without once asking how she went from being the least effective and most unpopular vice president to the second coming of Obama overnight. No one goes from being terrible to being brilliant overnight.
this country is also going to elect her president without her ever having won a single primary vote. Biden was nominated because he was not Bernie Sanders and he was elected because he was not Donald Trump. Harris has been nominated not because she was so great at what she did, but because she just happened to be there when the Democratic party powers that be pushed Biden out, not because they thought it would be better for him or for the country, but because they could see he was going to lose and they wanted a do over with a different candidate. The only bright side to this is that Biden didn’t pick Stacy Abrams or Cori Bush, because then this country would really be in trouble.
Woop! Woop! Woop! Woop! Woop!
“people believe she can effectively solve problems.”
My talking points detector is fully pegged. That’s not anything any disinterested observer would say. That’s clearly a talking point that’s been ginned up by the propagandists at the DNC. If I May is surely a paid troll from the DNC. Do not engage. I repeat, do not engage.
I was literally using EC’s exact words when I said “people believe she can effectively solve problems.” That was his phrasing. And I heavily qualified even that phrase.
But you only paid attention to the part that triggered the conspiracy theorist part of your brain.
Go away. Earn your salary somewhere else.
This is your Moderator: Oh good. “If I May” got herself banned. In her remaining posts, you can see that I gave her every chance to hang around if she would only argue in good faith and show some semblance of an open mind. She couldn’t, or wouldn’t do it. In this banned comment, her last, she insulted all commenters here out of evident frustration, because her weak grasp of facts, ethics, logic and critical thought was not prevailing.
I’d rephrase that if I were you. We are not “fucking crazy” here. A bunch of us are lawyers and even a few college professors. A lot of us are decidedly right of center, because, except for a few people, the people on the left can’t handle it here without being rude or profane or resorting to plain invective or mockery. Most of us don’t buy Democratic Party talking points, so if you’re going to engage with us, you have to do better.
(Too late!)
The point of lifting weights isn’t to move the weights somewhere else–it’s to become stronger so you can move the things that matter. Even if you think someone’s not arguing in good faith, you can still practice constructively addressing the points they raise, because real people will still subscribe to those points and you’ll be able to engage with those people.
Engaging with points also avoids the risk of telling someone arguing in good faith that you will not respond to them because nobody could sincerely hold their point of view.
I make a point of deconstructing an argument while taking it at face value (but also addressing underlying fears). No matter the outcome, one of us learns something.
A propos of nothing, Beverly DiAngelo is in a pickle: https://nypost.com/2024/08/26/us-news/white-fragility-author-robin-diangelo-accused-of-plagiarizing/
John, Please. Beverly D Angello, aka Mrs Clark W Griswald, is not in a pickle. (file this under non substantive comment)
Took me a moment. Nicely done.
Erm . . . Robin, not Beverly. I hang my keyboard in shame.
jvb
Comment eaten by WordPress?
Just noting that Beverly D’Angelo (Mrs Clark W Griswald) is not up for plagiarism.
Yup—found it and rescued it. Sorry.
(Jesus H. Christ. All these damned theater/acting aficionados and experts around here. Sheesh. I had to wade through the entire plot summary for that awful movie to get to the list of people playing the various characters to finally get this joke.)
Donald Trump touts his policies to an annoying extent. Kamala Harris denies her positions. Why would you deny your own policies unless you feel you need to hide them from the voters because no one supports them? The only 2 policies that Harris has stated since becoming presidential candidate are “No tax on tips” and “Build the Wall”. Expect more policies from agenda 47 soon. Why buy the cheap knock off when you can get the original for 50% less?
Ammar Moussa, wrote that “Vice President Harris does not support an electric vehicle mandate” and that any statement by Donald Trump and J.D. Vance that she does is a “lie.”
Clearly, there are some Clintonistas and their understudies in the Harris/Walz camp. This is pure “it depends on what your meaning of ‘is’ is” stuff. It depends on what your meaning of “mandate” is. These people have the morals and maturity of a third grader caught red handed doing something wrong and being called down to the principal’s office.
Tell-tale signs a “commenter” is “commenting” in bad faith:
While I agree there’s some of that, the challenge from Jill on the ethics of Jack teaching a seminar on the day his wife died, and of others who have not refunded clients when tragedy prevented them from delivering on promises, doesn’t necessarily seem to fit the mold. At least, that doesn’t seem like a DNC talking-point (though I haven’t actually explicitly read the DNC platform).
There is a phenomenon where people are really craving validation, and they will keep at a topic long after the horse is dead and beaten to a pulp, just so the other person will cave and validate them on at least one point. (I can use a Venn Diagram to show that the overlap with DNC operatives not empty…)
Whatever they are, Ryan, they are ridiculously similar, and they all stand out like sore thumbs
That they do. I just agree with EC that to some degree there’s utility in some engagement, for the sake of sharpening our own analytical and rhetorical skills. But if there are some that aren’t in fact DNC operatives, just needy people thirsting for affirmation, then maybe there’s a way to engage that. I don’t know what that method would be, since any effort at finding common ground seems to be hijacked.
EC, any thoughts on finding that common ground without that effort being hijacked, by which I mean the interlocutor claiming that you supported her position, when you didn’t intend that, and perhaps didn’t even hint at that? Or is that the point where OB’s “do not engage” takes effect?
Ryan, I definitely do not have the Job like patience EC advocates. Half Irish.
I find that being open and transparent about one’s own concerns and the provenance of one’s own conclusions dissuades people from trying to take things out of context. They’ll try and catch you in a perceived inconsistency if they think you’re being defensive and doing mental gymnastics, and especially if they feel the stakes are high for them. If you’re straightforward about expressing what matters most and you express appreciation for their values, it opens their options for addressing your concerns without sacrificing what’s most important to them. Does that help?
I’m not sure who has the inclination or time to spare, but I’m offering the Values Reconciliation Workshop to any Ethics Alarms regular. Or if you’d like me to consult on how engage with people and build on common ground on a specific issue, I’d like to help with that as well. I’m just trying to help people learn to do what I do, because it seems like nothing will get done otherwise.
“Good faith EA commenters are skeptics. Professional disrupters are irrationally dogmatic. Hence their ability to stir up the good faith commentariat who try to respond with rationality. In short, resistance is futile. If you engage with them, they’ve won.”
That seems contradictory. The remedy for abuse of free speech is more speech. If you engage with people, you’re doing the work of democracy. Dogma is what fears engaging.
“They don’t argue, they simply go down their talking point list so any Democrat voter who might stumble into EA will not be convinced of anything asserted here.”
Logically, wouldn’t the best response be to respond in good faith rather than shutting them down or ignoring them, so that other people who drop by can see how weak the talking points really are?
In a perfect world, EC. Yes. Absolutely.
Note my nom de guerre. I’m 73. I’m too old to suffer fools lightly or in any manner at all. Life’s too short. And besides, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. Something strange has happened to at least half the nation’s populace, and at this point the problem strikes me as irremediable.
The perfection of the world is the result of constructive behavior, not its cause.
If old humans were as wise as they liked to believe they were, we wouldn’t even have these problems. But you mistake calibration for perception. You learned how to conform to the world and live your own lives according to your preferences, but you didn’t learn about other people or how to set up robust systems they can learn to maintain and improve on.
The “horse to water” cliché is a threadbare excuse for failing to develop persuasive skills, if you really care about someone learning something. Making a horse drink is easy if you spend any amount of time thinking about why the horse would want to drink. Give me a horse, an apple, and a container of salt, and I shall demonstrate.
If you are familiar with human history, or any countries other than the United States, you’ll recognize that what’s happening is not strange at all. The people in power are making people afraid of each other, and people don’t know how to reach out and reconcile with each other, so they’re letting it happen.
There are several organizations dedicated to fixing this, and the single most useful thing I can do is make sure they succeed.
“Why do you think a handful of partisan, ideological trolls who come here just to advocate a pre-set point of view are interested in changing their positions or capable of it?”
Humans in general are capable of changing their positions. You don’t observe this phenomenon because you create conditions under which it does not happen.
Yes, people come here and they think you’re wrong and they want to stand up for what they think is right. They want to change your mind. They don’t expect to learn anything from you. Where I come from, only a novice-level educator lets that be an obstacle to causing them to learn something anyway.
Part of the issue is that you don’t see a need to learn anything about them. One must study human stupidity in order to cure it. Understanding what you disagree with helps you come up with something that was better than what you already had, because bad ideas cannot simply be destroyed. They must be replaced with better ideas. That is how bad ideas die.
You’re correct about a great many things, but you’re not much more persuasive than a flat-Earther. By contrast, some people are very persuasive, but they’re not much more correct than a flat-Earther. But someone with both the perception to be right and the communication to be persuasive will find themselves learning better ideas and being more persuasive than anyone with just one of those skills. (That’s not even mentioning how effective we get when we add in action and facilitation.)
People’s fears speak to us, if we’re willing to listen. You fear the pain and destruction that ignorance causes, and you fear that unless ignorant people get a taste of that pain, they will not be dissuaded from their ignorance. You provide the facts as you see them, and you do your best to make them feel bad for ever having believed anything else, because it’s very important that they agree with you. After all, why would they listen to you if you don’t make them feel bad for not listening? You’ve been inflicting pain on them for years, waiting for them to learn from it. How is that working out for you?
Harsh lessons are not necessarily more effective than gentle ones. They often backfire. People either rebel against artificial pain, seeing it as a tool of control (which it often is), or they learn the lesson too well and cling to it in situations where it is ill-advised. You present your thoughtful insights in a manner indistinguishable from dogma. You think you can teach someone economics by smacking them with the textbook?
People avoid learning they were wrong because they know that they will inflict pain on themselves for having been ignorant. They don’t need your help to feel regret. They need your help to soothe the regret that is waiting to punish them for learning they were wrong. That is our job.
Everything you say may be justified, but that’s only one piece of the puzzle. “No one quality or virtue is enough,” as I found on a page of Teddy Roosevelt quotes while searching for the source of this one which he might have said: “Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care.” You can know all your lines, but if you put no effort into the delivery you’ll lose the audience.
You have a choice, Jack. How satisfied are you with putting in a level of effort that is justified, versus how much do you want to be effective at teaching people what they need to know?
You didn’t address the practical problem, which is paramount. I take time to engage with commenters I think are productive to engage with within my time and effort constraints, and in many cases “productive” means demonstrating to third parties, if not to them, that they are full of beans. I expect a post to provoke thought and organized dissent along with substantive arguments. If my push back doesn’t prompt these, then I don’t share your optimism.
I have testimonials from many, many readers who say they have learned a great deal here. That’s enough for me to score this project a success. And surely you don’t think it is a coincidence that I have had to ban 12 commenters since June 1 and none from November of last year to June—seven months? Why would that be, do you think? Is anything going on that would bring devoted partisan ideologues here do battle? What could it be?
My theory? The wave of EA attackers come from my becoming active on my Twitter account in Jume, where I now only share political posts.
It’s good that you post things that stir dissent, but if nobody demonstrates how to deal constructively with that dissent, then a lot of people who disagree with you will feel vindicated when you kick them out without giving any indication that you care about them or understand them in the slightest.
You’re far better than I am at maintaining a space where people actually show up, but when it comes to getting people to take you seriously, you’re still operating at high school level. Work smarter, not harder. It takes very little effort to get someone to listen to you. The barrier most people face is that it takes more than a little maturity.
Can you just point me at people and let me do my thing? Maybe keep other commenters out of it as well? I can take a look within 24 hours, usually within 6. I’ll show how it’s done and they’ll learn more from you with my help than they will if you try to do it all yourself.
EC, there’s a blog I frequent, Astral Codex Ten, that largely takes the softer approach that you suggest. And the commentariat there, for the most part, is quite civil, however there are still trolls who get themselves banned. I try to be relatively soft as well, but I’m increasingly recognizing that it doesn’t work on everyone, in every format. At some point I have to recognize when I’ve said all I can say and leave it be, even when I’m not 100% satisfied with the outcome. Anyone who runs a blog and wishes to have some level of decorum in the commentariat also has to have that point where enough has been said, and stops things before continued repetition, or just plain bad behavior, becomes counterproductive and drags down the quality of the whole enterprise.
My term for their objective is “gum up the works,” which I find inexcusable given Jack runs EA without compensation and in his spare time!