[s1artibartfast]

I love that Alex Jones example.

Atrazine is causing hermaphroditic frogs, chemically castrating them, and turning male frogs into behavioral females.

Trump often plays in a similar gray zone (e.g. dual meaning, hyperbole, simplification) with language because It is often a winning tactic.

Trump and Jones generate soundbites that cant be easily refuted with democratic soundbites. Overly simplistic rebuttals often end up even less accurate and more detached from reality.

I have given some thought to why this is, and I think it is for a few reasons. First, I think that democratic respondents don't share as much linguistic & conceptual framework with the target audience (e.g. a feminized male frog = a gay frog).

Second, and relatedly, I think rebuttals are afraid to engage with certain topics, and therefore end up tying themselves up in knots.

Last, is they have an oppositional defiant disorder where everything must be denied. "YES and" responses are off limits.

They cant just say "Yes, and poor chemical regulation is turning the frogs gay, and that is a bad thing"

[watwut]

I think it is more simpler. The actual message is not something about frogs and chemicals, it is "liberals are stupid and demented" or "gay are feminine losers" or "fear, liberals harm children". It is basically just exaggerated stereotypical schoolyard bullying, except with massive audience. When you analyze chemicals and hermaphrodism frogs in response, you area acting like a stereotypical nerd who does not understand the social situation or just does not have it in him to hit back.

The message is not scientific complain about frog, read message is that "we" should band up against "them" and collectively now bully this or that person/group. It is in-group bonding based on common enemy that is vilified.

You can not counteract that with rational rebuttal. That never works, not on schoolyard, not in work, not in politics. The whole things is about making people feel certain way.

[fc417fc802]

> does not understand the social situation or just does not have it in him to hit back.

So I should adopt poor behavior because some other group did? There's sometimes a point to that for in person interactions with small groups but I don't see how that applies at larger scales. It becomes nothing more than an excuse for the poor behavior of your own in-group, which further exacerbates polarization for little to no benefit.

Realize that such behavior isn't going to change the mind of the opposition, and those in your group already agreed with you regardless. Then the bad behavior is a particularly harmful form of virtue signalling.

[watwut]

Self defense is not poor behavior. Responding to attack is not poor behavior. Submission is not good behavior.

On a larger scale, demanding that victims enable and accommodate their own bullies achieves exactly the same as in school yard. Bullies get stronger and dominant while victims get blamed for what bullies do.

That is why Canada is responding to tariffs. Whan goes on here is that republican enablers really want everyone else to just accept insults, lies and attacks passively and ineffectively. It feels good to them, because they are in group and harm to out group feels good.

[fc417fc802]

I don't disagree with what you literally wrote there but I don't feel like it's really a response to what I wrote. It seems to me that you are misconstruing the definition of self defense in order to justify poor behavior.

As far as I'm concerned, responding to immature behavior or misrepresentations or whatever with your own similarly poor behavior is not (at least in general) a form of self defense. It's just childish behavior.

If your argument amounts to "they behaved like a child so it's okay if I behave like a child" then I guess we just have fundamentally incompatible worldviews.

The much more important point that I was trying to make though is that, even if you feel 100% morally justified that doesn't make it an effective tactic. The behavior you described in your earlier comment serves only to further divide parties that already disagree while actively eroding social standards. It isn't just pointless behavior, it's actively harmful.

[Galatians4_16]

How do you choose to defend yourself? What attack(s) do you percieve? What is your response to percieved attack?

The rest I pretty much agree with.

[FeepingCreature]

I mean, I kinda feel you can say the same thing about many left talking points. "Republicans are evil and thuggish cavemen" has been barely subtext for well over twenty years!

[FeepingCreature]

I don't have a source, but I half-remember that some initial study on Atrazine assumed that the frogs were turning gay because the researcher hadn't realized the behavioral sex change.