I think I have one more response left in me and then I’m going to call it quits.
Regarding Trump’s character: you are still not fully engaging here. You didn’t respond at all to my point that we can see him bullying private citizens on Twitter knowing full well that his supporters will rain down harassment on anyone he calls out there. As far as unfounded rumors go, the voting thing is just one of many, many examples, but let’s talk about that. I appreciate that you provided evidence for your case, but you failed to mention that that evidence is disputed in what I find to be a convincing rebuttal by Harvard researchers. Sure, the claim that zero undocumented immigrants vote in elections is probably untrue, and I would not be surprised to learn that it happens once in a while. But millions of votes? The backup for that claim is pure speculation and hearsay. I stand by the characterization of that rumor as unfounded.
More to the point, I have counted two instances now in this thread where you have provided sources to back up factual claims you’ve made that have later turned out to be misleading or downright false. (The other example being the story about settling 1000 refugees on a small island when it turned out that there were just a couple dozen). Say what you want about outlets like the New York Times, but they issue corrections when they get facts wrong, and even employ a public editor to call them out when they screw up. When has Breitbart ever issued a correction for anything? I think that should be a red flag for you to reconsider the relative reliability of the mainstream media vs. your preferred sources. Perhaps you don’t know anyone who works in mainstream media. I do, and they are honest people who believe strongly in journalistic ethics and integrity. I understand you have a worldview that is not well represented in those spaces and I support a reasonable degree of skepticism about any source, but when you find your views challenged there you should apply some of that skepticism to yourself as well. That’s what we all do.
Regarding authoritarianism, if the best example you can come up with for a worst-case scenario in a democracy is seriously Angela Merkel, I think that speaks for itself. (Agreed that Hitler came to power in a democracy, but it was an extremely compromised democracy and the fact that he immediately moved Germany toward dictatorship supports rather than undermines my point.) The idea of Merkel “destroying her own country” seems, uh, inconsistent with a nation that is the 16th-happiest in the world.
Regarding social ostracization of “thought criminals,” that is going to happen in any society, democratic or not. If it’s going to happen, I’d prefer that the people who are ostracized are those who cause the most harm to others by their words and actions. It seems from your response that you don’t believe in white privilege. I hope you can see that if one accepts white privilege as a reality, than the progressive double standard on racism makes sense and is justified. So it then becomes an empirical question of whether white privilege exists, for which I think there is ample evidence that it does.
So you are correct, I’m not convinced. I do appreciate you being realistic about that, and the time you’ve put in to explain your views. It seems we will continue to disagree.
Happy holidays (or, if you prefer, Merry Christmas) to you.
I’m afraid this debate has gotten overly partisan.
On Trump: I didn’t engage your accusation about Trump bullying private citizens, because “bullying” is a subjective and partisan term, and you didn’t provide any specific examples. My perception is that Trump plays tit-for-tat and attacks those who attack him.
As for the reliability of the sources I provided, you are not operating in good faith.
Illegal immigrants voting: You point out the Harvard study rebutting the study about illegal immigrants voting, despite the fact that my link mentioned that rebuttal. Well, the authors have their own response to that rebuttal (short version in Washington Post, long version). They defend against the charge that their results were just due to measurement error and they provide reasons to believe that their measures were valid. Since neither of our comments captured this larger debate, I object to your characterization of my comment as “misleading,” because I could just as easily say the same thing about yours.
The larger point was about about whether Trump spreads unfounded rumors. I showed that one of the supposed unfounded rumors spread by Trump (illegal immigrants voting) was in fact supported by research. Yes, that research is under ongoing debate, but Trump was painted as a madman for holding a similar to position to some scholars in that debate.
On Breitbart: I provided a Breitbart article about British police arresting a man for criticizing Syrian migrants. AGP and you are picking on a totally tangential part of the article, where it mistakenly said that migrants were getting put on the island instead of in a larger area of Scotland. This seems like a deflection from the key point of the article. I agree that Breitbart isn’t perfect, but it reports on politically inconvenient events which the mainstream media is trying to sweep under the rug for political reasons; it’s a good source because its biases are anticorrelated with mainstream biases. We could have a larger discussion about the credibility of Breitbart vs. the New York Times and their errors and retractions, but I think we are going to have to disagree because you believe that people in the mainstream media have journalistic ethics and integrity.
White privilege: Yes, I reject the concept of “white privilege” and all such social justice concepts. The concept of white privilege is that whites and non-whites are fundamentally similar and would have the same outcomes if it wasn’t for the evil oppressiveness of white people. I believe that human tribes are sufficiently different that underperformance of one cannot be blamed on another. There are also plenty of bad historical things that non-white people did that are erased by the concept of white privilege (e.g. the Barbary Slave Trade). Social justice and anti-racism are purely a recent political invention for elite white people to dispossess poor and middle-class white people, using non-white people as the excuse.
I recognize that you are putting in effort to engage me in detail, but I’m happy with leaving this here because we are clearly operating in two completely different realities.
I think I have one more response left in me and then I’m going to call it quits.
Regarding Trump’s character: you are still not fully engaging here. You didn’t respond at all to my point that we can see him bullying private citizens on Twitter knowing full well that his supporters will rain down harassment on anyone he calls out there. As far as unfounded rumors go, the voting thing is just one of many, many examples, but let’s talk about that. I appreciate that you provided evidence for your case, but you failed to mention that that evidence is disputed in what I find to be a convincing rebuttal by Harvard researchers. Sure, the claim that zero undocumented immigrants vote in elections is probably untrue, and I would not be surprised to learn that it happens once in a while. But millions of votes? The backup for that claim is pure speculation and hearsay. I stand by the characterization of that rumor as unfounded.
More to the point, I have counted two instances now in this thread where you have provided sources to back up factual claims you’ve made that have later turned out to be misleading or downright false. (The other example being the story about settling 1000 refugees on a small island when it turned out that there were just a couple dozen). Say what you want about outlets like the New York Times, but they issue corrections when they get facts wrong, and even employ a public editor to call them out when they screw up. When has Breitbart ever issued a correction for anything? I think that should be a red flag for you to reconsider the relative reliability of the mainstream media vs. your preferred sources. Perhaps you don’t know anyone who works in mainstream media. I do, and they are honest people who believe strongly in journalistic ethics and integrity. I understand you have a worldview that is not well represented in those spaces and I support a reasonable degree of skepticism about any source, but when you find your views challenged there you should apply some of that skepticism to yourself as well. That’s what we all do.
Regarding authoritarianism, if the best example you can come up with for a worst-case scenario in a democracy is seriously Angela Merkel, I think that speaks for itself. (Agreed that Hitler came to power in a democracy, but it was an extremely compromised democracy and the fact that he immediately moved Germany toward dictatorship supports rather than undermines my point.) The idea of Merkel “destroying her own country” seems, uh, inconsistent with a nation that is the 16th-happiest in the world.
Regarding social ostracization of “thought criminals,” that is going to happen in any society, democratic or not. If it’s going to happen, I’d prefer that the people who are ostracized are those who cause the most harm to others by their words and actions. It seems from your response that you don’t believe in white privilege. I hope you can see that if one accepts white privilege as a reality, than the progressive double standard on racism makes sense and is justified. So it then becomes an empirical question of whether white privilege exists, for which I think there is ample evidence that it does.
So you are correct, I’m not convinced. I do appreciate you being realistic about that, and the time you’ve put in to explain your views. It seems we will continue to disagree.
Happy holidays (or, if you prefer, Merry Christmas) to you.
I’m afraid this debate has gotten overly partisan.
On Trump: I didn’t engage your accusation about Trump bullying private citizens, because “bullying” is a subjective and partisan term, and you didn’t provide any specific examples. My perception is that Trump plays tit-for-tat and attacks those who attack him.
As for the reliability of the sources I provided, you are not operating in good faith.
Illegal immigrants voting: You point out the Harvard study rebutting the study about illegal immigrants voting, despite the fact that my link mentioned that rebuttal. Well, the authors have their own response to that rebuttal (short version in Washington Post, long version). They defend against the charge that their results were just due to measurement error and they provide reasons to believe that their measures were valid. Since neither of our comments captured this larger debate, I object to your characterization of my comment as “misleading,” because I could just as easily say the same thing about yours.
The larger point was about about whether Trump spreads unfounded rumors. I showed that one of the supposed unfounded rumors spread by Trump (illegal immigrants voting) was in fact supported by research. Yes, that research is under ongoing debate, but Trump was painted as a madman for holding a similar to position to some scholars in that debate.
On Breitbart: I provided a Breitbart article about British police arresting a man for criticizing Syrian migrants. AGP and you are picking on a totally tangential part of the article, where it mistakenly said that migrants were getting put on the island instead of in a larger area of Scotland. This seems like a deflection from the key point of the article. I agree that Breitbart isn’t perfect, but it reports on politically inconvenient events which the mainstream media is trying to sweep under the rug for political reasons; it’s a good source because its biases are anticorrelated with mainstream biases. We could have a larger discussion about the credibility of Breitbart vs. the New York Times and their errors and retractions, but I think we are going to have to disagree because you believe that people in the mainstream media have journalistic ethics and integrity.
Merkel and Germany:This 16-year-old German girl. A 31.6% increase in crime doesn’t sound happy (article in German but readable with Google Translate).
White privilege: Yes, I reject the concept of “white privilege” and all such social justice concepts. The concept of white privilege is that whites and non-whites are fundamentally similar and would have the same outcomes if it wasn’t for the evil oppressiveness of white people. I believe that human tribes are sufficiently different that underperformance of one cannot be blamed on another. There are also plenty of bad historical things that non-white people did that are erased by the concept of white privilege (e.g. the Barbary Slave Trade). Social justice and anti-racism are purely a recent political invention for elite white people to dispossess poor and middle-class white people, using non-white people as the excuse.
I recognize that you are putting in effort to engage me in detail, but I’m happy with leaving this here because we are clearly operating in two completely different realities.