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by Dylan16807 2961 days ago
The original comment said that there are some reprehensible policies.

You then treated "reprehensible" as meaning the same thing as "not perfectly aligned".

Your followup treated "reprehensible" as meaning the same thing as "don't agree with everything".

We might agree on some things, but we clearly do not agree about what jacquesm was saying, because I think the original comment was fine.
1 comments
dcow 2961 days ago
Well I am extrapolating based on the way the argument was presented, yes. I don't disagree with the essence of what jacquesm said. I think that's what's not clear. I am quibbling with the idea that we should call the republican platform reprehensible in an academic discussion about single issue voting in the US. Why? Because reprehensible carries an implication of blame and it has clearly distracted from the argument and caused at least me to extrapolate from jacquesm's comment in a way that may not have been intended.

I understand that some people will choose to minimize negatives while some will choose to advocate for positives when stepping up to the poll. We all agree on this idea and this has nothing to do with whether one person diesagrees with or isn't fully aligned with a platform. (This is where I'm losing your argument which seems to be harping on this idea.)

My meta commentary is that viewing the other side's policies (_some_) as reprehensible distracts from the politics and pushes people towards the minimizing negatives game because it inflates the impact of negatives because of the association of blame that comes with a term like reprehensible. "If you are republican and vote for their reprehensible platform then you are to blame." Now it's not just about disagreement, it's about social justice. And for that reason I prefer, of late, when people focus on advocating for positive change rather than voting against negative change. That is where the semantics do come in.

A response to this point would involve asserting that their policies are indeed reprehensible and we should treat the entire platform in such a way.

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