I've been trying to figure that one out too … But then, Seattle seems to vacillate …
Nine years ago↗:
In a larger context it's one of the things that is frustrating about the American political discourse, right now; for years, there has appeared to be a strong coincidence between being conservative and refusing to actually attend the discourse one asserts to participate in. In the microcosmic presentation it's just annoying and seems deliberately insulting ....
.... We're in an age of rising Know-Nothingism, in which the way to relitigate lost political fights of history is to pretend ignorance, that the discussion might start all over from the ground up, and in this case the ground is usually fixed somewhere in the Long Decade.
And this reset is required because some can't deal with the fact that there really is no logical way to establish supremacism as a prerequisite of equality; how can we possibly find different outcomes unless we change the presuppositions?
But in order to change the presuppositions, one must pretend astounding ignorance of history.
And
even before that↗:
And as our discussion proceeds here at Sciforums, we see once again an upwelling of know-nothingism, in which people who have argued related issues fluently in the past start behaving as if they need a remedial civics course. To the one, it's not shocking to consider the proposition that most Americans don't know the difference between a grand jury investigation and a criminal trial, but at some point the ignorance these people are posing for us really does stand out.
So, here's the trick:
When Seattle was going on about inflation↗, and all that, it was in a different thread; that's why it has nothing to do with his "broke ass" bullshit. It's kind of like his
pretense of confusion↗ about neo-Nazis.
Pretending ignorance↗,
playing dumb↗, there are various ways to describe the behavior; as it is, the point is to disrupt discussions, dragging them out to futility,
e.g.,
"Muskovite Birds of a Feather" (pp. 9-11)↗,
"Congratulations America" (pp. 75-78)↗.
It's not an original trick; indeed, around Sciforums, it's not uncommon. Moreover, if you watch closely, the behavior clusters in certain ways, and this, actually is an important point. Generally, we see the behavior in lieu of a stronger argument. To wit, it occurs in certain ranges of argument specifically because those arguments require or intend such cover.
A question that has long haunted Sciforums is when the expectation of supportable argument becomes the spectre of tyranny, and the threshold apparently has to do with which arguments require support. What we demand of "theists", or people who believe in ufos and ebes, is far too much to ask of other beliefs and evangelizations; inasmuch as we would not wish to silence political views, time and habit make clear what political views require lowered bars. When the mere prospect of evidence-based argument is viewed as a censorship threat, we can only wonder at the actual merit of the argument that requires such shielding. By one standard, the difference between crackpottery and an arguable political view has to do with arguability; by another, the difference is entirely aesthetic. By the one, merit is found in the evidence that supports an argument; by the other, an argument has equal merit by dint of having been uttered.
For someone like Seattle, the point is to disagree with certain people; the merit of his argument is that he has deigned to utter, and as his vacillations remind, the only real point is to disagree with and complain about the politics and people he disdains. In short, if the discussion is not going to go his way, then the discussion should not go at all.¹ Again, it's not any new trick.
†
At Sciforums, there has long been a question about the idea of good faith, though it's not really unique to our little corner of nowhere. But at the intersection of supportable argument and the silencing of political views, it really does read like a compelling question of what views cannot survive without exemption. And if,
for instance↗, at some point they start to sound like the religious crackpots, the skeptical face shown religion and ufology around here has long faltered when approaching conservatism and the right wing.
Moreover, if the
blindly insistent↗ fail to understand the moral of the story, or maybe that's redundant; part of the point, though, is to observe,
that's how easy it is to do their part.
As such, if some might suggest that's somehow unfair, that they never intended to, well, therein lies the point:
That's how easy it is.
Because, sure, maybe Sciforums is just it's own thing, and we certainly can't blame this place for the ills fo the world, but even still, in that limited context, it is true that, these years later, people continue to behave this way because they have no reason not to.
That's how easy it is. Because they have no reason not to ... in social media circles, at the pub, over holiday dinner with extended family, among the church crowd. By the time we get around to what we expect of a news market intended to pander for market popularity, it's hard to contain the metaspill of conservative self-infliction in an easy sentence; short form, they are disinformed by increasing competition in the deregulated marketplace they prefer.²
†
When we abide deliberately unequal standards; the favored politic shows through. What this inequality protects against is the soft silence of low standards. The problem is that one side of a generally dualistic argument is so bereft that basic expectation of honesty and supportability are somehow unjust to the point of tyranny, so that a setting in which people are expected to be able to support their arguments apparently causes the whole of the American conservative argument to collapse into silence.
Or do we need a toned-down, PC, self-regulated version in hope of accommodating oversensitive senstivities:
「The problem arises when one side of an ostensibly dualistic argument cannot stand on fact and evidence …」
But it's not universal behavior; or, rather, the behavior clusters not simply around arguments that need such cover, but those arguments must also be subjectively,
i.e., prejudicially, tenable. That is to say, on average, one cannot slide by on crackpottery for liberalized change so easily as for preservation of traditional comfort.³
「… if this happens to coincide with a particular political argument, perhaps the problem is that particular political argument.」
For some, "winning" certain arguments, as such, is simply out of the question; the best they can do for the sake of such beliefs and views is forestall discussions they disdain or disagree with. It's something to watch for. Kind of like the fragmentary tabula rasa by which nothing someone said in any prior discussion can have anything to do with a different, later discussion. It's almost like they're just saying stuff in the moment, just to get through, and don't take their own words seriously.
____________________
Notes:
¹
cf.,
"Ineffective Government, an outcome of our definition of 'Freedom'?"↗ with attention to how he responds to consideration of any definition of freedom that doesn't suit his fancy; it's one thing to consider ineffective goernment as an outcome of our definition of "freedom", but that can only be applied to the definition of freedom that empowers him to yell at drug addicts about growing up; any larger question of what freedom lends to ineffective government is somehow problematic. It really ought to be a straightforward tell when the argument must be prohibited any more general application, protected against any expectation or test of its consistency.
² It's kind of like how Christian moralists voted for politics and economy that contributed to the perceived necessity and justification of unmarried cohabitation; in the end, Horation Alger trumped Jesus Christ, and many who voted for things to be that way then complained about the result.
³ To be clear about that difference, the point is not that liberals should be somehow entitled to crackpottery, but, rather, to remind how easy it is to facilitate traditionalist fallacy.
