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by nothingnew2 992 days ago
I like how you get to read it in the direction you most agree with. Very politically balanced!
3 comments

It’s actually the opposite of balanced; it’s polarized.
Polarised, but still balanced due to the symmetric nature of the poem's structure!
Polarized-but-balanced is at least as misguided as separate-but-equal.
It's better than "polarised but unbalanced".
I’m not sure; an unbalanced opinion is obviously unbalanced, and it’s easier to see it as not being the whole picture. But a seemingly reasonable opinion combined with a straw man of an opposing view, is harder to unlearn.
That is true enough. In this case, I think a useful learning outcome is that the backwards reading is, in theory and ignoring the emotional word choices, as politically extreme as the forwards reading. However, I doubt most will see it this way.
Not really, it's more of a 'construct-a-box-to-have-an-argument-in' approach. E.g. one could go off laterally in many directions. We could say, 'easy immigration policy is a neoliberal plot to drive down wages in the USA to ensure that current wealth inequality is maintained' or we could say 'immigration is wonderful because it brings in highly skilled people with unique talents and perspectives that are of great benefit to the US economy', and so on. It's a complex topic with a lot of historical context and there are at least half a dozen ways to analyze it from a cause-and-effect perspective - just the kind of discussion that social media can't handle well.

The reversibility trick is kind of cute - but can anyone write a legitimate Python code statement that also works in reverse? I sort of doubt it, the function declaration has to come first.

The point was to read it both ways, so someone can score a political point on open borders policy.

Needless and pointless on release notes page of a programming language.