Personal favorite is ‘do you have a source for that normative argument?’
The worst people doing this don’t even know what a source is for. They’re just shuffling cards. They’ve seen people win conversations by asking for a source - and winning or losing is the only way they understand conversations - so that move goes in their deck, to be slapped on the table at some critical moment. And if you try explaining why that’s not how it fucking works, well, you’re just not playing fair.
Right. It’s like when conspiracy assholes cry “straw man”. They can’t explain how the argument is a straw man; they probably don’t even know what a straw man is. They just saw somebody use that phrase in a debate once.
Their defenses work the same way: ‘he’s joking!,’ ‘he never said that!,’ and ‘that’s out of context!’
‘he’s joking!,’ ‘he never said that!,’ and ‘that’s out of context!’ get thrown around interchangeably, despite being wildly different claims.
They’re so sadly predictable that one might bumble through this thread and performative roll their eyes at how often they’ve heard those claims from the other side… as if the problem is saying so. Not whether saying so is correct. Judging a claim as right or wrong requires evaluating claims, and in the loyalist worldview, that is not what claims are for.
Personal favorite is ‘do you have a source for that normative argument?’
The worst people doing this don’t even know what a source is for. They’re just shuffling cards. They’ve seen people win conversations by asking for a source - and winning or losing is the only way they understand conversations - so that move goes in their deck, to be slapped on the table at some critical moment. And if you try explaining why that’s not how it fucking works, well, you’re just not playing fair.
Right. It’s like when conspiracy assholes cry “straw man”. They can’t explain how the argument is a straw man; they probably don’t even know what a straw man is. They just saw somebody use that phrase in a debate once.
Their defenses work the same way: ‘he’s joking!,’ ‘he never said that!,’ and ‘that’s out of context!’ ‘he’s joking!,’ ‘he never said that!,’ and ‘that’s out of context!’ get thrown around interchangeably, despite being wildly different claims.
They’re so sadly predictable that one might bumble through this thread and performative roll their eyes at how often they’ve heard those claims from the other side… as if the problem is saying so. Not whether saying so is correct. Judging a claim as right or wrong requires evaluating claims, and in the loyalist worldview, that is not what claims are for.