[naravara]

> And all of this comes up against the simple and obvious truth that all someone in this position has to do is speak what so many would like to hear; that they didn't understand what this person was doing, that it isn't what they believe, and to create distance. But they won't. I wonder why?

The thing is we have lots of perfectly good examples of people associating with conservative people with a few noxious views. John Legend and Chrissy Teigen, for example, were well known as family friends of Kanye West but they managed to go years asserting they were personal friends and disagreed with his political views and hoped he would come around. Eventually Kanye went a little overboard and they started distancing themselves further, but pointedly that was Kanye’s fault and not the Teigan-Legend family’s.

It really is not that hard to adopt a “love the sinner, hate the sin” position. But when people adopt this position of hemming-and-hawing any time someone asks “do you really hate the sin though?” it understandably raises some questions. People have blogs where they engage with bad ideas all the time. There’s a style in how they present and engage with the ideas that doesn’t leave much room for doubt.

I also don’t think advocates for “places to debate” these things really understand the purpose of debate. These arguments for scientific racism are well known and understood and mostly debunked by actual well-regarded experts in the associated fields. There is no value in debating bad ideas ad nauseum with randos online. You’re not learning anything from that, you’re just engaged in a sort of rhetorical sparring match. Is society well served by you trading bad faith arguments with strangers? Maybe. At the expense of exposing impressionable spectators to arguments with poor empirical grounding that are nonetheless seductive for taking advantage of common misconception and flattering peoples egos? Not so sure about that.