| I am not calling you a contrarian -- few people can be defined with a single word -- but you do have a contrarian position here. Your disdain for conservatives is palpable, and that is your business. The response some people have, especially nowadays, to even a whiff of conservatism is to reject everything out of hand often before reading or comprehending anything actually said. It is tedious. Especially with the in vogue tactics of rewriting what somebody says into the usual talking points (both liberals and conservatives do this ad nauseam). > you just keep repeating an argument that boils down to "change is bad because of change" For the last time, that is _not_ the argument presented. Try to read again carefully, without assuming I am a conservative, and better yet, without viewing everything through the prism of politics. > than generically saying "it will harm the British defense posture". Why? This should be your one and only concern. I hardly care where it fits in some provincial spat between liberals and conservatives. Change is not bad, change is a fixture of life. Change for the sake of sticking it to your local political opponents is foolish short term thinking. Whether those subs are optimally placed truly has nothing to do with Scottish independence and the linking of the two subjects is due to myopic populism. It is not difficult to understand how an external player could exploit these "cut off one's nose to spite one's face" feelings to get people to act irrationally. For example, Brexit exploited English conservative desires to stick it to liberals and moving subs exploits the Scottish independence movement and their desire to tell the English to get stuffed. The winner in both cases is one and the same. > You even fail to see that you are not really elaborating on the reason, which only adds to the feeling of bias. Search your feelings better. |
This is ridiculous; the reason I defended myself, is because _I think of myself as a conservative_. But this doesn't free one from having to justify oneself; rather the opposite, and I very much understand that.
> For the last time, that is _not_ the argument presented.
Okey , so what is the argument presented?
Why is this creating destabilization? I only see two arguments in the entire conversation:
* Moving the subs "weakens the British defense posture". Why? Because it weakens it. I guess I should apparently read this again and again until I understand it.
* Change "for the sake of sticking it to the opposition and for the benefit of one's adversaries" is bad. Yet this is both a strawman and at the same time begging the question. First, you have not justified why this is done only to "stick it to the opposition", there are valid arguments for (some of them presented above) and against which you are not even entertaining, just discarding. Second, "for the benefit of adversaries" is _your conclusion_, not a premise, not an argument.
With this type of reasoning, it doesn't matter how many times you ask for people to re-read your comment; we are just going on in circles here.
> It is not difficult to understand how an external player could exploit these "cut off one's nose to spite one's face" feelings to get people to act irrationally.
Or to _prevent_ people from taking the rational course of action out of FUD.