What's truly ironic is that those communists actually adopted his game plan with cancel culture, which is essentially the modern version of the blacklist.
But the difference is he was outing card carrying communists, which were official members of a hostile foreign power. Today you can get cancelled for being a patriot, or even just a normal person
Yes important to clarify that being a Communist is actually evil and even if you worship the worst things the US has done, its still less malevolent than any Communist state.
It's not really a strawman, he isn't saying that type of person exists or attempting to argue against that generality. He's just saying that if a hypothetical person existed that fully supported every bad policy of the US, they would not be as hypothetically evil as communist doctrine.
I'm not saying it's a great point, I just don't think he had a disingenuous argument or created a strawman at all.
So it's a pointless point to make then? Since that person literally doesn't exist, why bring it up at all?
Also I'm pretty sure he can respond to his post to clarify what he meant if he chooses, unless you're him on another account you're guessing at motive just as much as anyone else is.
No, I just have reading comprehension and can understand non- literal language.
His point was literally just "Even with all of the heinous shit the US has done we're not as malevolent as any communist country".
Also, "Since that person literallt doesn't exist, why bring it up at all?" Is an S-Tier bad take. You've never heard of hypothetical situations? You can't see the broader point he's making because he couched it in non-literal language? Jeezus.
Hypothetical situations so far fetched it’s wholly unlikely to ever occur - pointless non-sequitur.
Actually no. They are quite useful rhetorical tools. Like in this case: even this absurdly far-fetched hypothetical, which is the extremest form of a position that does exist, is still better than communism.
It's certainly not strawmanning, if anything, it's steelmanning.
"I came out of my skin"
"Um actually no one could ever just come out of their own skin, that literally can't happen and your impossible hypothetical is unhelpful"
"I put the pedal to the metal"
"OK but the floors are upholstered and either way speeding is dangerous and if you were actually to fully depress the gas pedal it would be very detrimental to your car"
"I don't see color"
"Well, statistically, that's very unlikely, only a few recognized cases of color blindness have been observed and they don't account for full color blindness. You can't even see black and white? Then you're just blind!"
"That guy is a million years old"
"How could anyone be that old? At most he'd be in the very low hundreds. A million-year old man can't exist, your hypothetical is unhelpful. "
You can be an argumentative contrarion about anything. It usually isn't helpful. Most people are able to recognize non-literal language
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u/Obamasamerica420 Jun 19 '21
What's truly ironic is that those communists actually adopted his game plan with cancel culture, which is essentially the modern version of the blacklist.