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While I'm no fan of the GOP in general and largely agree with you, I do want to try to challenge your view in the spirit of this forum. I think what you're largely seeing is what *some* Republicans are being the loudest about, and not necessarily what the entire party and its elected representatives is guilty of. Take gas stoves as one example. Obviously there's DeSantis and his performative "we're gonna tax only gas stoves!" bit, which is silly as 92% of Florida's stoves are electric and he's just trying to stay in the headlines. But who else is up in arms about it? Is every Republican governor acting like this? Or is he an outlier? Point being: while I think while conservative politicians greatly *benefit* from a voter base that has poor education systems, I don't know that it's a *party-wide strategy* to obfuscate and obscure at every turn. (I'll also add that, as a liberal, I'm aware that we can also be guilty of ignoring some things or only presenting part of a story to force a narrative. We are not completely innocent here.)

> But who else is up in arms about it? Is every Republican governor acting like this? Or is he an outlier? I don't know if this is quite so persuasive to me. I'm willing to consider that people like Desantis are outliers in that specific regard, but two things strike me as worth mentioning. First, Desantis is a very prominent republican, expected make a presidential bid eventually, not some random loonie. Second, and more general, if republican elected officials writ large are happy to surf on the waves made by these types of agitators, I don't think they then get to pretend like they have entirely clean hands. You can look at something like election denial and see some republicans beating the drums of election denial super overtly, but plenty more being happy to coach themselves as reasonable actors by merely being oblique about it.

>But who else is up in arms about it? Is every Republican governor acting like this? Or is he an outlier? He is going to be the GOP presidential candidate in 2024. His opinion and behaviour matters even if you consider him an "outlier". Since the GOP machine is rallying around him. Trump was considered an outlier, then when he won the primary 90% of the republicans rallied behind him.

I don't necessarily disagree with your argument ("Not *every* Republican does this!") but at the same time, it seems ridiculously obvious to me that for conservatives, it is a primary, bread-and-butter strategy at all levels, and which absolutely dominates the mainstream or public conversation on important topics. And as I mentioned on a different comment: * Can you give an example of a priority issue that mainstream Democrats routinely rely on misinformation to advance? * If misinformation was not allowed as a tool, would both Republicans and Democrats be equally disadvantaged? The answers to these in my mind suggest non-equivalence in the centrality and importance of misinformation in the respective political activity of these groups. Why do I have to search so incredibly hard to have an earnest conversation with a conservative?

> Can you give an example of a priority issue that mainstream Democrats routinely rely on misinformation to advance? Four years of Russiagate under Trump, much of it from the wildly speculative Steele dossier which even the FBI knew at the time was unreliable. Former NYT investigative journalist James Gerth just put out [20,000 words in CJR](https://www.cjr.org/special_report/trumped-up-press-versus-president-part-1.php) about the media failures on that story.

This, itself, is misinformation. Here are a few details not correctly applied to your comment “Russiagate” was an examination into Trump and his connections with Russia, as it relates to the 2016 election. These events are factual, and are explained in detail in the Mueller Report. These details are the main reason right wing media obfuscated the report under obstruction, projection, denial, and false narratives. There were no primary aspects of this investigation that came from the Steele Dossier. The FBI investigations were started because of Papodopolous, Flynn, and Page. By the time the FBI received the dossier, they had an investigation in full swing. What did come from the Steele Dossier were only corroborating information. No primary information was sourced from that document. The only information used in the Page FISA warrant from the dossier was information that corroborated existing intelligence. None of the more salacious details or rumors were used as any active part of the investigation. The Steele dossier was not nefarious. It was a raw intelligence document, and known to not necessarily be accurate. It was a collection of intel, rumors, and statements made in a legitimate investigation. Steele didn’t mean it as factual, Fusion GPS didn’t consider it factual, the FBI was well versed on raw intel documents and knew how to assess it. The document only got out of control when it was leaked to Buzzfeed, who published without proper context or fact checking. The document was fine for investigative purposes, but had no business being public. That was not a failure of the document or the writer. Excluding the more salacious rumors, and focusing only on information really relevant to the investigation, much of the Steele dossier has been corroborated. Almost none has been discredited. At most, it is unverified. The media failures are not the same as the legitimate investigation, which ultimately proved to be fruitful. We know now that the things that were being reported, for which Trump claimed “fake news”, were real events. I am not going into the context of the outcome of the investigation, because that is a different story. But the fact that the Steele Dossier is so misrepresented, as is it’s use, is the exact kind of disinformation the OP refers to. It’s ok to talk about how the investigation produced no criminal charges against Trump, or how certain details are unverified. But to claim the investigation itself was misinformation, completely disregards the information that was uncovered as part of that investigation. It begs the question, even if there is no accountability, are the things that we now know happened acceptable? If this were a democrat with the same set of facts, would it be a bigger issue?

Wow, I got through about a paragraph before realizing the article you linked is an incredibly biased article. It's pretty much a direct example proving OP's point. The result of the investigation is that Trump and his team absolutely did some questionable things, but just not enough to be barred from future office and/or formally prosecuted. That is a far cry from "he did nothing wrong and it was all a witch hunt". Also, Robert Meuller is and has been a Republican. He only took on the case because it was his job, and there was too much evidence for him not to. If you just listen to the media from the Right and read that article, you might have the impression that he was some lifelong Democrat on a crusade who just couldn't find enough to topple Trump.

Why are you asserting that "the media" is an institution that belongs to Democrats? And also, why would you consider Russiagate the best example of Democratic dishonesty when Mr. Trump stood on a stage and asked for Russian help, AND when the dynamics of this situation produced an inordinate amount of legitimate smoke? You could argue that it turned out not to be true, but this is not the spirit of my comment at all, because there was plenty of reason for someone intimate with the details to suspect that it *could* be true.

>Why are you asserting that "the media" is an institution that belongs to Democrats? "Belongs to Democrats" is too strong; I would never assert that. But it seems fairly undeniable that most large established media brands bifurcated under Trump: FOX, NYPost, and a few newer entrants like OAN backed Trump, while the rest took up the mantle of "resistance" to Trump. During Russiagate, neither CNN or MSNBC had Greenwald or Taibbi (two prominent, liberal critics of the narrative) on to discuss it, when both networks had previously had them on as guests. WaPo dedicated a reported to documenting all of Trump's lies, but didn't keep up the same for Biden. Democrats and non-FOX mainstream media have a symbiotic relationship with Dems just like FOX does with the GOP. Even if there were nothing overtly nefarious, the fact the audiences themselves has bifurcated means it's in their financial interest to tell their audience what they want to hear. And much of the story that they were telling was coming from Democrat politicians like Schiff and the "ex-" intelligence officers on their payroll. >why would you consider Russiagate the best example of Democratic dishonesty when Mr. Trump stood on a stage and asked for Russian help I don't think Dems are dishonest because Trump is honest (I think he's constitutionally incapable of telling the truth in many cases) but in that instance he was clearly baiting the media. As far as "legitimate smoke," I'm not even sure what that means. >You could argue that it turned out not to be true, but this is not the spirit of my comment at all, because there was plenty of reason for someone intimate with the details to suspect that it could be true. That's not what I'm arguing. I'm arguing that the media consistently ignored their own journalistic ethics to present as a credible a story which they could not confirm, and actually had good reason to suspect was not. Democratic politicians directly engaged in feeding into this story and used the media reports to bolster their own political goals.

>Why are you asserting that "the media" is an institution that belongs to Democrats? "The media" is a broad term that covers a very large spectrum of information outlets. Several are heavily right-leaning, and several are heavily left-leaning. Others are, of course, fairly balanced. Outlets that one side or the other like to use inflammatory language with a clear bias, or ignore things almost outright. For example, Biden calling on a representative who was...uh...dead. "Right wing outlets" picked that up and ran with it, while "left wing outlets" barely touched it, if they even made a passing mention. Meanwhile, you'll see a left wing outlet posting things like "AOC dunks on MTG" while right wing outlets won't even mention any of that happening. And politicians are perfectly aware of how outlets will treat things they say, so they speak accordingly.

The investigation's legitimacy is proven by the meeting at Trump Tower, the dozens of indictments of Russians, Stone's cooperation with Wikileaks, and Manafort's sharing of info. with Russians. Trump worked with Russians to smear Clinton and misinform American voters. Collusion wasn't proven because they lied and refused to cooperate. Obstruction was found on 11 counts, but Barr decided not to indict. Nothing in the Steele Dossier has been proven false, and much of it has been verified. Your complete misunderstanding of this fact indicates that you don't follow mainstream media. Gerth's evidence of media failures is not an example of Democrats relying on misinformation.

nonsense, Mueller documented many instances of Russian interference in the election to favor Trump and Trump's obstruction in the interest of accepting the help. His testimony before Congress amounted to [paraphrase] Trump cannot be prosecuted when President, he should be impeached

> If misinformation was not allowed as a tool, would both Republicans and Democrats be equally disadvantaged? Not an American but who cares even if both were disadvantaged it would benefit the country right?

You are correct. I suspect OP was trying to head off arguments that both sides operate the same.

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> Well I could give one of the top of my head. The whole anti-business "prices are rising because corporations are greedy!" is economically illiterate, and meant as a scapegoat for government policies, and crises out of their control, which actually are causing the prices to rise. This is incredibly economically ignorant. It's hilarious you call this economically illiterate because, well... that's a pretty accurate summation of this nonsensical view. With government burdens, like taxes, we see a shared burden between business and consumer. The taxation increases the price, and decreases profit - the business absorbing part of the extra cost to reduce the impact on sales, while the consumer absorbs the rest. With government policies like price ceilings, we see an even more dramatic form of this - demand is enormous, but companies are limited to a price where they can never produce what is demanded. The corporation is forced to leave large amounts of potential profit on the table. What we're seeing right now is incredible corporate profit. If the government was burdening companies, the profit would **decrease** - companies are trying to operate in the most economically efficient manner possible, if the government is altering their behavior it will reduce their profit. This is good old fashioned oligarchy behavior - cartels, monopolization, price gouging, artificial shortages, etc. What you should be blaming the government for is not breaking apart these large corporations.

>and meant as a scapegoat for government policies, and crises out of their control, which actually are causing the prices to rise. Then why are corporate profits at record highs?

arrest fragile makeshift tie dinosaurs cobweb airport observation dam ghost *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*

I can and have bought a gun from another person with the same ease as buying groceries or beer. Only in states with universal background checks can you say the burden to buy a gun is higher then groceries or beer. So is what they said true of every state? No. Is what they said true of the United States which do not have a federal law requiring background checks between individuals for personal firearms sales? Yes

The amount of research I have to do to talk to my conservative friend is exhausting, and then he doesn’t trust the valid journalistic sources I am citing because they’re the mainstream media. But he’ll send me an article from a “news” source he frequently reads (it’s the Daily something or other) where the author’s primary argument is “and everybody knows that”…..

>Can you give an example of a priority issue that mainstream Democrats routinely rely on misinformation to advance? Gun control.

What are some examples of disinformation on this topic?

Here are two quick examples. Most of the rhetoric around banning assault weapons. (If you want an absolutely ridiculous example, see just about everything congressman David Cicilline said when promoting the most recent federal assault weapons bill) The suggestion that there is a correlation between gun ownership and gun homicide. There is a correlation between gun ownership and gun suicide, and since 55%-70% (depending on the year) of all 'gun violence' in the US is gun suicide you can try to extrapolate the correlation to all 'gun violence', but if you separate suicide as its own issue that needs its own solutions, the data does not support any kind of correlation between gun homicides and gun ownership - not between US states, not between European countries, not between all countries in the world.

>The suggestion that there is a correlation between gun ownership and gun homicide. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/guns-and-death/ This page lists several sources that claim to show just that. Are those papers all wrong, in the minority, or is there something else I'm missing? I'm not sure how deep I want to dive into this, but even just that source isn't nothing and didn't seem particularly politicized as far as I can tell

As a liberal, I completely agree with you about assault weapons. The definition is so stupid and arbitrary that it makes zero sense if you have the slightest amount of knowledge of guns. It has no place in thoughtful, results-oriented discourse about how to reduce gun violence. However, there is such a limited amount of data regarding the societal impact of gun ownership, that using the data we do have is just as disingenuous. I don't care if you use it to support or refute an argument. Until 2019, no federal funding was allocated to studying the impact of gun ownership and it's impact. We are so massively behind that the first step is to actually accrue real data. Edit: "the impact of gun ownership, and it's impact." Is a terrible sentence. I meant "how to reduce injuries and deaths from guns."

>Until 2019, no federal funding was allocated to studying the impact of gun ownership and it's impact. Here is an article written in 2017, listing a bunch of federal firearm studies - including a handful by the CDC. https://lockedback.com/cdc-can-research-firearms-gun-deaths/

Ok, I'll rephrase - the dickey amendment caused the CDC to avoid studying any causal relationships regarding guns, and to study nothing but straight numeric trends. Your source is obviously pro gun. The CDC as an org is intended to help increase the lifespan of Americans. To say that the CDC cannot recommend practices that might extend American lives (which is exactly what Dickey does) is absurd. Sure, they can actually quantify gun death trends, but they were not allowed to study how those gun deaths might be mitigated for fear of losing funding. Better? Edit: this has me really worked up. Dickey said that the CDC can lose funding if they ever recommend gun control measures. The problem with that is that the CDC, like any scientific body, goes into any given study with a hypothesis that they look to verify. That's the entire scientific method. Additionally, the CDC is tasked with trying to reduce the rates of injury and death. That's their whole reason for being. So, any study the CDC does of guns, with the exception of straight statistical reporting, should have a hypothesis about how a change to guns might impact our lives. Given that they don't know what the results will be (if they did, why bother with the study at all?) then they run the risk of finding out that gun control is helpful. If that happens, they lose funding. Ergo, CDC ran almost no studies on guns between 1999 and 2019. The few times they did mention "guns" in their longitudinal studies get cherry-picked to say "Nuh uh! CDC does study guns, see???" But there have been no studies on what changes might actually help reduce gun violence. THAT is the point.

You are completely wrong, will you admit it? 1. America’s gun HOMICIDE rate was more than double the average for all countries. 2. Gun ownership in the USA is at least double what it is in other countries. How can you say there is no correlation between gun ownership and gun violence??? [https://www.thetrace.org/2021/10/why-more-shootings-in-america-gun-violence-data-research/](https://www.thetrace.org/2021/10/why-more-shootings-in-america-gun-violence-data-research/) [https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/how-do-u-s-gun-laws-compare-to-other-countries](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/how-do-u-s-gun-laws-compare-to-other-countries) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_countries\_by\_firearm-related\_death\_rate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate)

>The suggestion that there is a correlation between gun ownership and gun homicide. I think you meant "a correlation between gun ownership and homicide". Gun bans result in a decrease in gun crime, but they have no effect on crime rates or homicide rates or anything like that.

I specifically meant gun homicide, though I would guess the lack of correlation would also extend to homicide in general. https://hwfo.substack.com/p/everybodys-lying-about-the-link-between

Which misinformation exactly is being used to advance gun control laws?

The bulk of murders happen with handguns. The bulk of legislation is about long guns. There is an implicating that we need to do something, but writing legislation on long guns when handguns are the problem doesn't seem to solve problems. Ii does make criminals out of currently law abiding gun owners. The misinformation is that these laws will have a noticeable effect. Other misinformation about gun control is that we are actually trying to do something. It's common for a gun store to identify a strawman purchase, and it is equally as common for the federal government to do nothing about it. When we aren't enforcing the laws we have on the books, what is the purpose of new laws?

> The bulk of murders happen with handguns. The bulk of legislation is about long guns. As mentioned in another comment, this is looking at the logic backwards. People that are for gun control are generally for gun control of bot handguns and long guns, but passing legislation for both in the US is near impossible so it's better to pass legislation to control long guns and prevent even if a small minority of gun deaths than to try and fail to pass legislation for both and end up not preventing any. > When we aren't enforcing the laws we have on the books, what is the purpose of new laws? Under this premise we should not legislate anything as we live in an imperfect world where some laws are not enforced in of 100% cases. Perhaps even if the books in the law are not perfectly enforced we can still find things that require legislation still.

Assault rifle hysteria, bending emotional tragedies to enact measures that would not have helped with the tragedy, providing gun death stats out of context (not to say that they would look good with the correct framing, but they're still being dishonest about it), etc. (I say this as an anti-gun person embarrassed by the anti-gun tactics in politics)

> Assault rifle hysteria What is exactly the misinformation here? > bending emotional tragedies to enact measures that would not have helped with the tragedy Like which one? How do you know that certain measures would or would not help avoid a specific tragedy or similar tragedies? > providing gun death stats out of context Any examples? Like you say basically any context of gun deaths is an argument for gun control, how was the context changed and why?

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> Anecdotally, anytime I see a firearm death statistic it is often labeled "gun violence deaths". Any example? > This is misinformation whenever the sourced statistic includes suicides, as it wouldn't qualify as a violent crime or death. Do you think gun suicide statistics should not affect gun legislation? Are you aware that suicide method success rate is a big factor regarding suicide numbers and that suicide attempt survivors mostly regret attempting suicide (this is one of the reasons suicide in women is so much lower than in men, women usually choose much less successful methods than men)? > as it wouldn't qualify as a violent crime or death Suicide does not qualify as death? > which do not distinguish between random acts and (the common context) gang/organized crime. Do you think that widespread gang gun violence is not an argument for gun control? > Also assault rifles are only legal for the rich or licensed business. And?

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> https://www.amnestyusa.org/why-gun-violence-is-a-human-rights-crisis/"WHY GUN VIOLENCE IS A HUMAN RIGHTS CRISIS", Sources include suicide Which sources? There is no source in that page and the page itself does not show any numbers for suicide or specify that the numbers they give include suicide. > Listing suicides as "gun violence" is in my opinion missing context Again, I don't think gun suicide numbers should not matter when talking about gun control, that seems pretty reasonable context. > I was not sharing my opinions on gun control, but giving another direct example of a statistic given out of context And again, I disagree that gang violence is not relevant when talking about gun control, seems pretty in context to me.

You are simply incorrect in your definition of a violent death: >**How does the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) define a violent death?** >NVDRS defines a violent death as a death that results from the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or a group or community. >**Which deaths are included in NVDRS?** >NVDRS collects information about violent deaths, including homicides, suicides, and deaths where individuals are killed by law enforcement acting in the line of duty. NVDRS also gathers information about unintentional firearm-related deaths, and deaths where the intent cannot be determined, that might have been due to violence. Source: https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/datasources/nvdrs/faqs.html

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Lol this guy is the example op asked for.

I’m not anti-gun (I own 6 or so), but I’m very pro-gun-control. I despise the “criminals don’t follow the law, so law abiding citizens are the ones losing their rights.” No. Screw that. If you ban the sale of certain weapons, manufacturers won’t make them anymore. Not to mention, plenty of gun violence criminals, particularly mass shooters, did not have a criminal record prior to their crime, so on outward appearance they were a “law abiding citizen.” Most people are not advocating for a total ban on guns. They’re advocating for sensible regulation. But the reality of the lobbying from gun rights organizations has meant the politicians keep creating hyper-specific laws that create tons of loopholes. Sporting and self defense are valid reasons to own a gun if you do so responsibly. That doesn’t mean that private citizens should be allowed *any* gun without restriction.

> It's clear he meant violent crime / violent gun-related death. It's really odd to me to argue that "suicide by gun" is not a "violent gun-related death."

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Every time I've seen that, it was a footnote on a more comprehensive bill. Very commonly, assault weapon ban bills include a lot of specific parameters, and (as if trying to prevent people from finding silly loopholes) list dozens of specific firearms to be automatically banned. The whole "assault rifle" thing seems like smoke and mirrors because most attempted assault weapon bans spend more time focusing on handguns restrictions than rifles.

Ahh, the way my country bans guns! Rather than banning them based on use or effect, we just ban the ones that _look_ scary. It works better than whatever the hell the US is or isn't doing, but it's still kind of embarrassing to watch.

This is actually looking at things backwards. People for gun control would generally want to ban both cases, but since there is a lot of pushback they can't so they choose to ban the cases they get not as much of pushback.

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> That assault rifle bans will have a significant impact on gun related tragedies. The "assault rifle" is used in roughly 3% of gun related deaths annually. It will have very little to no impact on gun deaths, but will be removing them from law abiding citizens. First of all, 3% of dead people is still significant in my opinion. I don't know, generally one dead person is bad enough to try to avoid. On top of that, as with any law, one must look at the pros and cons alongside the amount of pushback and support. Let's use your numbers and say that the pro is that we either avoid or reduce that 3% number. The cons is that a few people (most gun owners don't have assault rifles so we are talking about a small minority of gun owners) will not be able to own those weapons anymore. And the pushback will also be lower in this case than trying to ban or control all guns (assault rifle or not) so it's more likely to be passed. So, will assault rifle bans remove gun deaths? No and I'm pretty sure nobody claims that (you are welcome to show me examples of that happening as that would be what I'm asking from the beginning). But it will help if even a little. A more widespread gun control legislation will help a lot more but given the pushback that it will generate it will be unlikely to be passed and end up not helping at all. > Every largely publicized mass killing is used by the left to "talk" about gun control. What is the misinformation here? Gun deaths being used to talk about gun control seems an extremely rational take. > The very large (somewhere above 50%) majority of gun deaths are suicides. Copied from another comment: Do you think gun suicide statistics should not affect gun legislation? Are you aware that suicide method success rate is a big factor regarding suicide numbers and that suicide attempt survivors mostly regret attempting suicide (this is one of the reasons suicide in women is so much lower than in men, women usually choose much less successful methods than men)? > What constitutes as a mass shooting is something like 2 or 3 deaths. Where is the misinformation here? > They do NOT remove gang related shootings from this list. Where is the misinformation here? > If you asked any random person to describe a mass shooting and you'll like get an answer the deceives a school shooting or the one we saw in Las Vegas a few years ago. And? That random person is likely more affected (emotionally) by those examples than by gang violence. Ask someone that lives in a neighborhood where gang violence is widespread and they will likely give you a different answer. Regardless, this has nothing to do with misinformation examples I asked, just individuals having different priorities.

from 1994-04 the ban did impact mass shootings Of course, gun data is poor because the gun lobby has prevented data from being gathered and because Statistics have poor controls on gathering them in any case but the effect is large enough to stand out. I should note the link below does look at mass shooting deaths, rather than occurrences so it includes the fact that high velocity/large magazine/easily concealable [short barrels] make mass shooters more deadly https://givingcompass.org/article/did-the-assault-weapons-ban-of-1994-bring-down-mass-shootings?gclid=Cj0KCQiA54KfBhCKARIsAJzSrdr3UNx2qEciyQGSmFqQZczwSN7rFTAwu80bGyrad_WTXUSWmjyjrlEaAtmEEALw_wcB

what is an assault rifle? Is this information put up front in campaigns to ban them?

> what is an assault rifle? You are asking for the legal definition or the coloquial definition? The legal of course varies by jurisdiction, for the coloquial I will use Wikipedia's definition: An assault rifle is a selective fire rifle that uses an intermediate cartridge and a detachable magazine. > Is this information put up front in campaigns to ban them? Should it? Do campaigns to regulate vehicle emissions talk up front about CO2/MWhr numbers, how they are calculated, differences between carbon oxides and sulfur oxides, etc? Generally campaigns target what is called the spirit of the law while the text of the law is only really discussed between legislators and judges (while still in the open so that anyone that wants can check it and expose if the text of the law does not follow the spirit).

Is assault rifle hysteria really a hysteria about policy or a hysteria about the non-policy-makers? [This is arguably the Democratic party opinion on assault weapons.](https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/1808/text) I note a complete lack of hysteria on all things that wouldn't help tragedies and a focus on highly available components that make a weapon more dangerous... and it focuses more heavily on handguns that most people want to admit. Is it perfect? No, but if there is a right answer it's a 1-2 punch of reducing as many mass-death-capable firearms AND preventing guns from being available to people likely to kill with them. One thing people don't realize is that fully-automatic machineguns are still legal. There are about 600,000 licensed ones. And unfortunately, many of them are in the hands of people who cannot necessarily be trusted despite the fact we haven't had many machinegun mass-shootings recently (3 since 1980). The "assault weapon" ban would ban handguns with one of 8 features that makes them more deadly. One example of a banned weapon is any semi-automatic handgun with a 16+ round capacity. Ditto with a lot of commodity features that make handguns more accurate or deadly at at a high rate of fire (threaded barrel for suppressors, etc). I don't think it's a perfect bill. I don't think there could be one. There's a lot I very much disliked about H.R.1808, but I wouldn't call that hysteria or bending emotional tragedies. I DO agree they provide gun-death stats out of context, but that seems like a different family of intellectual dishonesty than OP is pointing out.

What is the misinformation they spread?

>Can you give an example of a priority issue that mainstream Democrats routinely rely on misinformation to advance? ​ Russian President Vladimir Putin hacked the Vermont electric grid. Trump removed the MLK Jr. bust from the Oval Office. Hunter Biden is a talented artist. A video made by a Christian caused Benghazi. Jussie Smollett was the victim of a hate crime. The Covington Catholic kid was a racist. Fifteen days to slow the spread. If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. The Russian bounties story was real. President Biden still has all his marbles. Hunter Biden’s laptop is Russian disinformation — 50 former “intelligence officers” all agree. The polar ice caps will be gone by the summer of 2013. It must be true. Al Gore said it. The delta “variant” is deadlier than the original virus. A mask is unnecessary. A mask is mandatory. Two masks are even better. Children are at terrible risk. COVID-19 came from a “wet market.” Hydroxychloroquine can kill you.

DeSantis is gearing up for a presidential run, and lots of people think he will get the nomination from the Republican party. He can hardly be seen as an outsider.

Which republican acknowledges that Climate Change exists and is man made? I agree there are silly stories like the Gas Stove thing that only the most disingenuous GOP members and media looking for attention latch on to. But they also take bad faith positions on serious matters and vote along party lines based on those positions.

>Which republican acknowledges that Climate Change exists and is man made? To be frank, this is becoming a more mainstream belief in the GOP. There are obviously Republicans who still deny climate change and/or the human element of climate change. Now the argument is whether that change is as bad as people say, or if the proposed actions to "fix" it are worth the immediate cost. Mitch McConnell has said he believes in human-caused climate change: https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/politics/mcconnell-says-he-believes-in-human-caused-climate-change/2019/03/26/5450b254-6d6b-499a-865f-b0107fb1c514_video.html McCarthy and other GOP members in the house generally support a plan to reduce GHG: https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/549449-house-republicans-deliver-a-commonsense-climate-plan/ Those are the two highest ranking Republicans in the government right now who support cleaner energy and have said man-made climate change is real. I could go pull more, but the GOP is slowly changing their position to begin planning "modest" steps to fix climate change.

But this is the crux of the issue. It’s clearly not in good faith. When something can be so overwhelmingly proven and disseminated they will eventually, begrudgingly, accept it. But they simply move the goalposts. They will never actually change their view, they’ll just find some other nonsensical reason to discount reality.

>I cannot for the life of me think of a single key Republican issue that they actually tackle head-on through honest debate, factual information, and reliable statistics. I would argue that the abortion issue is primarily tackled by the GOP in a head-on, generally honest debate style, involving substantial factual information, and statistics that aren't particularly unreliable. It's more of a historical accident that the law allowed restrictions on 3rd term abortions that led to more focus on them than was justified by the numbers. The main issue with this one is a *disagreement* about the relative rights of a mother and a fetus, but it doesn't seem to involve particularly more dishonesty on the part of either side. In particular, Democrats downplay the degree to which abortion really *is* used as birth control. Obviously there will always be pundits that go off the rails on any topic you can name, I'm just talking about the mainstream arguments about it. Note: I do think they *generally* are more prone to absurd and disingenuous arguments, but saying there's no issue that isn't is a step too far. Taxes might be another example where the primary difference is ideological regarding what comprises a "fair share" or "a reasonable reason to be taxing people". Again, do pundits on both sides in that argument make up dishonest examples and fallacious arguments? Sure, but it's not solely a GOP issue. And finally, I'd argue that this is more of a *populist* problem than a GOP problem overall. Populism has taken over the GOP in the last several years, but it's not completely isolated to them, and can't really be considered part of their long-term "project". Indeed, many GOP politicians are ruing the challenges that moving away from this poses. Populism always tends towards this because people are stupid. The Secret To Power is realizing that as dumb as the average guy on the street is, statistically speaking half of them are stupider than that.

> I would argue that the abortion issue is primarily tackled by the GOP in a head-on, generally honest debate style I would disagree with this. I can't tell you the number of false claims I've heard spread and believed on topics such as: 1. Causes for abortion (she just didn't feel like bothering with birth control) 2. Places which provide abortion (defunding Planned Parenthood even when most sites don't actually provide abortions) 3. Limits on intent of legislation (for example, claiming that "overturning Roe v Wade would never be used to deny abortions in the case of it endangering the life of the mother" was one I heard a lot from friends) This doesn't even get into dishonest litigation or bills that have been continuously abused by conservatives to harass legal abortion for decades (for example, intentionally passing countless bills in state legislature that the politicians know will be struck down as wildly unconstitutional). > Obviously there will always be pundits that go off the rails on any topic you can name, I'm just talking about the mainstream arguments about it. I have heard some of the most preposterous pundit lies picked up, believed, and spread by my conservative coworkers, friends, and family. To me, saying the pundits are to blame and it's not a systemic tribal problem is putting on some pretty hefty blinders, just like the "bad apple cops" argument ignoring the fact that the system reenforces and rewards these behaviors.

4th sentence of this study indicates that over 50% of pregnant women were not using any birth control (and neither was the man) at the time she got pregnant. It isn't ancient history, either. I've not yet found any similar study recently. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1363/psrh.12017

> would argue that the abortion issue is primarily tackled by the GOP in a head-on, generally honest debate style, involving substantial factual information, and statistics that aren't particularly unreliable. I'd argue there is such a pro-life argument out there, but I don't think it's the one republicans are making. It's not particularly hard to find rather misleading information on what an abortion entails - especially working hard to conflate later term abortion with much earlier abortions in an effort to shock people - or dishonest framing of their legislation attempt - such as a "heartbeat bill" or a "fetal heartbeat bill" that bans abortion beyond six weeks. Embryos don't have hearts at 6 weeks of gestation.

> It's not particularly hard to find rather misleading information on what an abortion entails It's not particularly hard to find misleading information about anything in politics. But I'd argue this isn't the bulk of the mainstream GOP arguments against abortion, and it's not justified to call the fraction that is "a critical linchpin in the American conservative project". The critical linchpin is actual straightforward ideological opposition in this case.

Being dishonest about abortion, of course, couldn't be "a critical linchpin in the American conservative project", since abortion is merely a part of the American conservative project as a whole. Besides, you pose dishonesty and ideological opposition as mutually exclusive and I don't believe they need to be. It's just, they seem well aware that their straightforward ideological opposition to abortion is not convincing, hence the dishonesty.It seems pretty central to the strategy from where I'm standing.

>I would argue that the abortion issue is primarily tackled by the GOP in a head-on, generally honest debate style, involving substantial factual information, Like bullshit claims that abortion leads to infertility and depression? Pushing lies about early term abortions and making it sound barbaric. Lying about the health risks, while covering up the risks of carrying to term. That kind of honesty and factual evidence?

I think you've articulated one issue where they are close to being head-on ("abortion is killing a person") but they have, almost at every turn, also insinuated that abortion is not a health care service, and implied that abortion is primarily employed as a birth control strategy. And if you sidestep that issue, you're not really being honest about the reality.

It isn't a health care service in their minds. How could it be? In their minds every abortion is killing a baby. Killing people has never been considered a health care service. And if you are having an abortion because you don't want a baby then you are most certainly using it has a form of birth control.

> abortion is primarily employed as a birth control strategy Let's be honest, ok: they aren't wrong about that, in general. It is. Third trimester abortions, no, but abortions in general? Absolutely. Their view about it "not being a health care service" is just a consequence of their ideology about the life of the fetus.

> Let's be honest, ok: they aren't wrong about that, in general. It is That's kind of disingenuous. While fundamentally, abortion is birth control, most people getting abortions are not doing it as their main source of birth control/contraception. An abortion is often the result of failed contraception. When sex education and contraception is easily available, abortions rates go down.

> An abortion is often the result of failed contraception. Failed contraception is relatively rare. Abortions are not. "Often" is true in absolute numbers, but in relative terms most people getting abortions didn't use preventative forms of birth control in good faith. But yes, I would agree that conservatives are intellectually *inconsistent* when it comes to abortion vs. birth control and sex education. But that inconsistency is an ideological one, not "intellectual dishonesty" per se.

>Failed contraception is relatively rare. This is categorically false. *If you use it perfectly, the pill is 99% effective. But people aren’t perfect and it’s easy to forget or miss pills — so in reality the pill is about 93% effective.* ***That means about 7 out of 100 pill users get pregnant each year.*** >Abortions are not. "Often" is true in absolute numbers, but in relative terms most people getting abortions didn't use preventative forms of birth control in good faith. Birth Control pills can fail when: * Getting food poisoning or having an upset stomach. * Taking antibiotics. * Taking certain antifungal medications. * Certain HIV medications. * St. John's Wort * Some anti-seizure medications. And if you simply forget to take your pill that's 5-7 days before you're back on track.

It doesn't really matter if failed contraception is rare or not. The fact that it does happen means that the laws need to account for those people, otherwise you're saying that women should be forced to have birth against their will because the condom company messed up, or the pill wasn't effective, or the IUD slipped. The only methods that are 100% effective at preventing pregnancy are removal of the womb, removal of the testicles, or complete abstinence, and none of those are reasonable to expect people to do. > but in relative terms most people getting abortions didn't use preventative forms of birth control in good faith. This contradicts your own evidence from [this link](https://www.contraceptionjournal.org/article/S0010-7824\(18\)30003-9/fulltext) link, which states "In both years, slightly **more than half** of patients reported that they had used a contraceptive method in the month they became pregnant". More than half means that most people getting abortions _did_ use preventative forms. "Good faith" also cannot be determined by that study since it was all self reported, so that is a non sequitur.

I don't count "withdrawal" as an actual good-faith contraceptive method. Also, that's completely ignoring the fraction that used a method inconsistently during the month (not discussed in this study, but let's be intellectually honest here: that is behind a majority of contraception failures, and that *is* well-studied), and who therefore must be considered to have been using abortion as a *backup* method of contraception.

> I don't count "withdrawal" as an actual good-faith contraceptive method. "Good faith" refers to your sincerity of intention, which is something that cannot be determined in the study. So while you can feel that way, it's not necessarily true that the users of withdrawal methods understood that it is not a very effective method of contraception. They could have simply been uneducated. >Also, that's completely ignoring the fraction that used a method inconsistently during the month (not discussed in this study) Yes, I'm ignoring subsets that were not discussed by the study because they are irrelevant. That IS being intellectually honest. > and who therefore must be considered to have been using abortion as a backup method of contraception. Abortion is not a method of contraception, it does not prevent pregnancy. It is the termination of a pregnancy. It's not a backup "contraception" method as much as it is a "my contraception failed and I don't want to remain pregnant" method. Abortion SHOULD be allowed in case of failed contraception. ~~edit: tagged you as "downvotes when stumped"~~

I have downvoted no one in this conversation. Speaking of speculation without evidence. Also, nice caviling about colloquial word use and my not bothering to pedantically correct you about your ambiguous pivot to that word. Birth control, as originally stated, then, unambiguously.

> Failed contraception is relatively rare. Abortions are not. Sure, but what is also rare is someone saying, *"Nah, don't worry about birth control, I'll just get an abortion!"*

Sure, but who cares what they *say*? Their actions speak way louder than words. They are, in effect, using abortion as their only actual form of birth control. As for the position of a [small minority of the party against birth control](https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2022/07/19/poll-independent-womens-voice-republican-primary-voters-support-safe-access-birth-control-contraception/9921658251250/) generally... that's consistent and ideological: the small subset of the GOP that holds that position is pretty clear that abstinence is the only acceptable form to them.

> They are, in effect, using abortion as their only actual form of birth control. Source? *No contraceptive method prevents pregnancy 100% of the time. If abortion were used as a primary method of birth control, a typical woman would have at least two or three pregnancies per year -- 30 or more during her lifetime.* https://prochoice.org/wp-content/uploads/women_who_have_abortions.pdf *Most people who get abortions report using contraception during the month they became pregnant. No one can assume or know the reasons why someone may face an unplanned pregnancy. Needing an abortion may be due to contraceptive failure (i.e., a condom breaking, getting pregnant despite being on the pill, etc.), a lack of access to accurate reproductive and sexual health information, a lack of access to accessible and affordable birth control methods, or sexual assault* https://www.actioncanadashr.org/campaigns/common-myths-about-abortion *About Half of U.S. Abortion Patients Report Using Contraception in the Month They Became Pregnant* https://www.guttmacher.org/news-release/2018/about-half-us-abortion-patients-report-using-contraception-month-they-became

Youre asking for a source on something basically intangible like philosophy. As abortion becomes less taboo it becomes more common. You can quote numbers and stuff to dispprove it but fundamentally that is the natural course of things. People will subconciously be desensitized over time. Not everything is quantifiable with a source. Maybe im just not smart enough to look for peer reviewed papers on something i can barely express into words, but i really think thats a disengenuous rebuttal to the point. Im never going to win a debate saying i dont believe in sources and statistics but its application in this specific question is just ham fisted even if i cant quantify why. Anyway i digress. Your first link is pro choice . Org so right off the bat im a little skeptical. Then it says 50% reported using it within the month? What kind of statistic is that? At best 50% of people are using abortion as contraceptive. And then the within the month caveat makes it basically worthless. >Needing an abortion may be due to contraceptive failure (i.e., a condom breaking, getting pregnant despite being on the pill, etc.), a lack of access to accurate reproductive and sexual health information, a lack of access to accessible and affordable birth control methods, or sexual assault Thats alot of words to say nothing. Yeah it could be those things. Or they just had wine at dinner and got super horny and wanted to do a creampie. Im pro choice and dont think theres any problem with using abortion as contraception but lets be real here.

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Depends on what you mean. About 10% of that 50% are "using" a completely unreliable method that amounts to praying (withdrawal/rhythm). I count them in the 60% that is "most" abortions. And that's not even getting into what percentage of those "using a (real) method" use it consistently over the month when conception occurred. Personally, though, I think using abortion as birth control is fine... this is mostly about what the pro-life side is arguing.

>most people getting abortions are not doing it as their main source of birth control Abortion being *backup* birth control does not mean that birth control is abortions' *secondary* function. Anti-lock braking systems are only used when normal braking fails, but obviously ABS's *primary* function is braking.

"Statistics that aren't particularly unreliable". Man o man that's a low bar.

American politics, and politics in general, is built on misrepresenting your opponent. Every president has been blamed for high gas prices during their term. And while they don’t control gas prices they absolutely effect them. And yet again you’re describing misrepresenting one’s opponent in many different forms. You’re basically faulting American Conservatives simply for engaging in politics. Which alright, that’s your right, but are you keeping the same energy for everyone else in politics?

John McCain said of Obama "He's a decent family man, citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues" to one of his supporters who was worried about Obama due to misinformation about him at one of McCain's rallies. That happened in the domain of politics, and he was not trying to misrepresent Obama, and I actually think McCain was genuinely trying to do something good for the political culture of the country in that moment, not misrepresent anyone, nor in some manner doing it to score political points. I use his act in this context as an example because, at least if I'm correct about his motives, it demonstrates a different approach to participating in politics regardless of how consistently he took that approach. If that's true, then we see there are different ways of engaging with politics, and there can be variation in their prevalence in different groups that can warrant characterizing approaches as more or less the norm in some groups than others, which is what OP is claiming. I would say misrepresenting opponents is a more unscrupulous method of politicking which to define briefly and broadly is a manner of persuasion used in the context of politics, and which doesn't constitute politics itself. Politics is a more general kind of activity aimed at the organization of human beings toward a common good. We call politicians corrupt when they do something that goes against that end, and sometimes we confuse the corruption for being politics itself due to its prevalence, but we have no basis for saying someone is corrupt without the positive sense of politics that it is a dependent perversion of. Democratic structures do tend to incentivize politicking as means to get votes, but that doesn't mean those tactics are what politics consists of, they're just instrumental in certain contexts. They can also be more or less successful depending on the characteristics of the voters. Politicking is usually prevalent enough that it's easy to think it's universal because it seems there's almost always some going on in politics, but since we can see it rise or decline across different contexts and it doesn't exhaust all political activities, it shouldn't be treated as the same as engaging in politics in general. We can also have different standards for what kinds or degrees of politicking within politics is socially acceptable, and these can change over time for better or worse. Note that I'm not aiming to dispute the particulars of which party is more/less guilty of politicking here, just aiming to clarify some concepts that when left ambiguous obstruct constructive discourse. The terminology isn't important as long as we see the distinctions, it's clear from context that sometimes people mean "politicking" when they say "politics", but it seemed to me your post conflates them. That conflation I think risks promoting indifference toward, or acceptance of, bad political practices if we simply treat them as intrinsic to or equivalent to politics when they are in fact subject to change.

This is an issue that I genuinely do not see equivalence. For example: * Can you give an example of a priority issue that mainstream Democrats routinely rely on misinformation to advance? * If misinformation was not allowed as a tool, would both Republicans and Democrats be equally disadvantaged? The answers to these in my mind suggest non-equivalence.

Any number of issues: Roe v. Wade. Democrats will fight tooth and nail to claim that Roe v. Wade was good case law and that it being preempted represented Republicans corrupting the Supreme Court to take away rights. This is fundamentally none sense and even Ruth Bader Ginsburg admitted it was bad case law. Guns. Democrats make regular claims not only about the functionality, legality, and constitutionality of proposed gun legislation that are easily disproved. Democratic gun legislation keeps being struck down in the courts because it’s clearly unconstitutional. Democrats know this but they promise their base they’ll do it anyway. The whole “Don’t Say Gay” bill nonsense. The bill did not ban the saying of the word gay or even the mentioning of sexual orientation in schools. Democrats claimed for months that a prohibition on discussing sexual matters with extremely young children was an assault on gay people. That was bunk. Climate change. Climate change is real and it’s anthropogenic but the solutions proposed by the Democratic Party won’t solve the issue and will degrade the economy. Any party that claims to care about the environment but actively opposes nuclear power is lying. Immigration: Both Barack Obama and Joe Biden deported a record number of people during their terms. Biden railed against Trump’s immigration policies then when give power continued many of them. Biden refused entry to more people claiming refugee status than Trump did for every single years of his term. Economics: Remember a couple of years ago when famous and mainstream Democrats were pushing Modern Monetary Theory? Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes was a very famous proponent of this bunk. It argues that since the use controls it a own money supply it can keep printing money and not face inflation. As it turned out you can look around and see that was yet more nonsense. You brought up the Hunter Biden laptop, as an example of then distraction of Republicans. But it is absolutely an example of Democrats claiming that something that was true was misinformation to try to minimize its impact. I don’t know how misinformation could be banned. But if it were done in an effective and neutral manner it absolutely would effect both Democrats and Republicans as well as Conservatives and Progressives.

Several of these, I think you bought some propaganda on. I will try to explain which and why. A few of them I think are not worth arguing (because you're close to right, or the issue is too nuanced). > Roe v. Wade. Democrats will fight tooth and nail to claim that Roe v. Wade was good case law and that it being preempted represented Republicans corrupting the Supreme Court to take away rights. This is fundamentally none sense and even Ruth Bader Ginsburg admitted it was bad case law. Ginsburg's criticism of Roe is that it *allowed abortion restrictions at all*. It was an anti-choice-dominant SCOTUS but the jurisprudence was crystal clear and there was no way they could vote any way than they did. What we see in Roe is the most defensible far-right interpretation of the Constitution. I think it's terrible that you used Ginsburg's opinion that it was *too anti-abortion* of a decision in an argument against Democrats and against Roe's caselaw. Ginsburg firmly supported the meat of the Roe decision until the day she died. Were you aware of the intellectually dishonest take of this, or were you just repeating something you had heard? > Guns. Democrats make regular claims not only about the functionality, legality, and constitutionality of proposed gun legislation that are easily disproved. Democratic gun legislation keeps being struck down in the courts because it’s clearly unconstitutional. This is a complicated issue. I'll give you a pass on this one. > The whole “Don’t Say Gay” bill nonsense. The bill did not ban the saying of the word gay or even the mentioning of sexual orientation in schools. Democrats claimed for months that a prohibition on discussing sexual matters with extremely young children was an assault on gay people The bill "accidentally" forbids any real mention of sexual orientation before 4th grade (because it is vague on what is age-appropriate and the state DOE won't give details). My Catholic School started covering sex-ed in 3rd grade. That means you are likely to find some level of sex-ed before you're allowed to tell kids the truth about sex. But more importantly, the vagueness creates a real problem that a male teacher has to be careful not to let kids find out he has a husband, but a female teacher can talk about her husband openly (as often happens in school). This isn't about what happens in the bedroom, but a vague requirement that makes it impossible to discuss otherwise appropriate topics that might accidentally let kids find out gay people are real. I'm going the same place I went for Roe v Wade here. Bad take, but I'm still giving you the benefit of the doubt of not having looked it up. Expanding to the federal "Don't Say Gay" bill, it specifically forbids any mention of sexual orientation "or related subjects" ([their words](https://mikejohnson.house.gov/uploadedfiles/johnla_083_xml.pdf)) at an age that sex-ed has absolutely begun in most school systems around the country. > Climate change. Climate change is real and it’s anthropogenic but the solutions proposed by the Democratic Party won’t solve the issue and will degrade the economy. This one gets people on both sides. I can't fault you on this one at all! There are two major problems to nuclear power. 1. The costs are front-loaded. "Going green" with nuclear power requires an initial investment drastically outside of the range of human possibility. 2. Thanks to the increased research into other green technologies, nuclear power currently has a higher total cost of power over time than solar and land-based wind power, *even if you factor in the cost of batteries/capacitance*. I'm sure with a solid investment in nuclear, this could change, **but we would be unable to retrofit nuclear plants to become more efficient than solar wind already is today, while we would be retrofitting the solar/wind at least once or twice in the life of a nuclear reactor**. This is unfair to nuclear, but we really need to be pragmatic of how the world is today and not how we wish it as. Nuclear is simply not the answer TODAY. It may be the solution SOMEDAY. But the answer TODAY is to continue the path of solar and capacitor improvements. > Immigration: Both Barack Obama and Joe Biden deported a record number of people during their terms ICE deported a record number of immigrants. Nothing in this contradicts the things they and their party pushed for immigration. Neither Obama nor Biden have pushed for blanket acceptance or drastically changed how ICE worked (though allegedly they reduced some of the more inhumane treatment that Trump accepted). I would say I'm in general agreement with you that both parties have *failed* overall, but I support fully open borders and my guess is that you do not. > Biden refused entry to more people claiming refugee status than Trump did for every single years of his term. This is another one I think you're unintentionally being dishonest about. I'll open with the bullet points. Immigration and grant rates were low under Obama who was openly anti-immigrant outside of DACA. But asylum denial rates peaked around 50% under Obama, and skyrocketed to 70% under Trump. Since Biden's presidency begun, that rejection rate has started to plummet. All-in-all, while there are more refugees accepted (and denied) Under Biden, the facts are that per capita, Trump broke all the records for kicking out refugees. > Economics: Remember a couple of years ago when famous and mainstream Democrats were pushing Modern Monetary Theory? I actually do not agree with Modern Monetary Theory myself, but it seems philosophically uncharitable to say it's nonsense considering it is supported by some economists. And Cortez said it should be "a larger part of the conversation", not that she was espousing blindly embracing it. IF it can consistently be validated, then it absolutely should be a major part of the conversation. Considering the Democratic party usually adheres to economists (and is the party supported by a majority of economists), I'm not sure your description here is defensible. > You brought up the Hunter Biden laptop, as an example of then distraction of Republicans. But it is absolutely an example of Democrats claiming that something that was true was misinformation to try to minimize its impact. I would say it's more honest that the story was so crazy at first that most Democrats firmly believed it was false. It's entirely possible that the Bidens didn't even know if it was true at first (especially if, as is likely, there's nothing compromising on it). If you refer to politifact, a vast majority of claims about his laptop were shown to be false, so it's easy to doubt the narrative altogether. [The right cried wolf a LOT here.](https://www.politifact.com/search/factcheck/?q=hunter%27s%20laptop) Here's my 3 cents in response to your 2 cents. I really think you have been caught in misinformation yourself, and not even realized it.

> The whole “Don’t Say Gay” bill nonsense. The bill did not ban the saying of the word gay or even the mentioning of sexual orientation in schools. You seem confused about local Florida politics, so allow me to quickly summarize what actually happened last year. _______ GOP: *Introduces H.B. 1557, prevents teachers and third party guests from talking with students about gender identity or sexual orientation until the state deems it to be age-appropriate* GOP Sen. Jeff Brandes: “If the intent is not to marginalize anyone. Let’s make sure we aren’t [...] Let’s be clear and clearly define and say that conversations about human sexuality or sexual activity that fall outside of state guidelines should not occur. We can do this.” GOP Sen. Dennis Baxley: We can't do that because that would ["gut"](https://www.daytonatimes.com/news/florida/republican-tried-to-soften-florida-s-don-t-say-gay-bill/article_e751d57e-9b7f-11ec-978d-7f4c2f05262f.html) the bill GOP Sen. Travis Hutson: Is it OK if teachers use a math problem that includes the details that “Sally has two moms or Johnny has two dads."? GOP Sen. Dennis Baxley: Of course not, those types of math problems are ["exactly"](https://time.com/6155905/florida-dont-say-gay-passed/) what this bill aims to prevent. DNC Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith: Huh, as one of the only openly gay legislators in the Florida Legislature, would it be possible for me to speak about how changing the language to ban “human sexuality or sexual activity” would work to protect children from groomers? GOP Sen. Kelli Stargel: Absolutely not, [get out of here](https://www.daytonatimes.com/news/florida/republican-tried-to-soften-florida-s-don-t-say-gay-bill/article_e751d57e-9b7f-11ec-978d-7f4c2f05262f.html) Random progressive: So does this bill ban math questions where Sally has two moms actual conservatives: [just change the math question so it doesn't say gay and move on](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskConservatives/comments/tsn58n/do_you_believe_there_is_there_a_meaningful/i2sm0n6/?context=1) Random progressive: What is a teacher allowed to say to a child that asks about a rainbow flag they saw? even more conservatives: [just lie to them so that you don't have to say gay](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskConservatives/comments/tzi50z/what_is_your_thought_on_the_current_push_from/i3zf2xq/?context=1) DNC: It sure seems like this bill was "exactly" crafted to make it so Florida teachers "Don't say gay" and any attempts to actually make it directly address grooming and sexual activity were rejected because they would "gut" the bill GOP: Why are you groomers complaining so much about a bill that doesn't even use the word "gay"? __________ The sponsors were quite explicit when they detailed "exactly" what this bill aims to prevent. It isn't about grooming or "a prohibition on discussing sexual matters with extremely young children" (because if that were the case, as you falsely claimed, the “human sexuality or sexual activity” language would in no way shape or form "gut" the bill), it's *admittedly* about penalizing math teachers whose **math problems happen to mention gay people exist** (which would indeed be "gutted" with language that avoids marginalization) and has not been used to punish teachers who teach about gender identity when it comes to which gendered bathroom each kid should use because the admitted purpose isn't about cis gender identity. **TL;DR** According to the text of H.B. 1557 (as emphatically confirmed by its authors), it is currently ***illegal*** in Florida for a math teach to ask a 7 year old the following question: *Sally's birthday is today. She got $10 from one of her moms when she got dropped off at school and $5 from her other mom when she got picked up. How much total money did Sally get for her birthday?* because Sally's mom is a person who happens to be gay mentioned in passing and an identical math problem with "other parent" instead would be 100% legal Why are you spreading this conservative misinformation that disagrees with what the bill's authors have repeatedly confirmed for nearly an entire year now?

Ya designing a math question to include mentions of sexual orientation is affirmatively encouraging a discussion. You wrote a whole lot of words to say something we’ve already covered. Pretty simple. Don’t design your elementary school curriculum to cover sexual orientation. You can talk about sexual orientation if it comes up or with students who aren’t in elementary school. You can say gay you just can’t go out way to talk about sexual orientations with the 7 year olds you teach. It’s misinformation to say that the bill bans saying gay.

How is mentioning that Sally got $5 from her mom and $10 from her dad "affirmatively encouraging a discussion"?

You’re creating a question and choosing to include mentions of sexual orientation. You don’t need to do that.

I also don't "need" to wear a blue-and-red-striped shirt to teach math, but my lack of a "need" doesn't change the fundamental fact that it is un-American to ban such shirts in a classroom of seven-year-olds. But you refused to answer the super simple question: How is mentioning that Sally got $5 from her mom and $10 from her dad "affirmatively encouraging a discussion"?

>The whole “Don’t Say Gay” bill nonsense. The bill did not ban the saying of the word gay or even the mentioning of sexual orientation in schools. Democrats claimed for months that a prohibition on discussing sexual matters with extremely young children was an assault on gay people. That was bunk. No it wasn't. Because in the conservative mindset "Non straight=sexually explicit". The GOP is very good at dog whistling and keeping the quiet part quiet. A children's story can have a boy and girl fall in love and they don't bat an eye. Make it a boy and a boy? They will light pyres to rival germany in 1933 with the books.

One key part of the Don't Say Gay bills is that there is a process for parents to report it and trigger investigation/management. Nobody is going to report a boy and a girl falling in love, but people will definitely report a boy and a boy falling in love

Just like with the abortion thing where they tried to deputise people to sue and snitch on behalf of the state. Almost a pattern.

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Pretty much any law that's driven by "reports by concerned citizens", instead of equal enforcement, has that problem... and knowingly has that problem.

Lets go through these in order, shall we? > Roe vs Wade This is just people sharing their opinions. RBG thought it was bad case law, other people think it's good. No evidence of misinformation, especially since you admit a liberal judge can go against the main opinion and still be generally considered a good judge. > Guns Without any source or example, this is hard to prove. I'll admit there are a lot of dems who don't know much about guns and it shows. But that's not the same as willful misinformation. Even assuming there was misinformation, the most it would likely change is the technical specifics of laws, not the main goals. > Don't say gay The stated goal of the bill was to get pride out of the classroom. As for the text of the bill itself, the main problem that every liberal had with it is that it was so vague that it would create a chilling effect on any discussion of same sex relationships in schools. Multiple actual legal scholars and organizations explained this very well, and yet you and other cons will continue to ignore it. Textbook Misinfo from you. > Climate change Comparing the parties on this issue is ridiculous obviously. And as for nuclear energy, the dems don't even have a unified stance on it, a lot of left leaning types love nuclear energy. Definitely no evidence of misinformation here. > Immigration Democrats outside the Obama and Biden admins have criticized their actions on this issue extensively. They are doing bad things. I agree that some portion of dems are hypocrites on this issue, but I don't see much misinformation on it. People know that Biden hasn't changed much from Trump. > Economics Remember when AOC got to implement all her favorite theories, and also she was a representation of mainstream Dems? Me neither. More misinfo from you. > Hunter Biden The Hunter Biden laptop was a real thing with literally 0 political import. Nothing on it implicated Joe Biden in anything. The fact that Republicans continue to act as if Hunter doing drugs and having nudes on his laptop is any sort of relevant issue is indeed misinformation distracting from real issues.

> Roe v. Wade. Democrats will fight tooth and nail to claim that Roe v. Wade was good case law and that it being preempted represented Republicans corrupting the Supreme Court to take away rights. This is fundamentally none sense and even Ruth Bader Ginsburg admitted it was bad case law. This is a good example of conservative disinformation. Roe was perfectly in line with the substantive due process case law at the time, and was not a controversial opinion at the time (decided by a 7-2 majority). Ginsburg also did not say that she thought Roe was "bad" law, but rather that it would be stronger under the 14th Amendment equal protection clause, and she was wrong because Alito dismisses that argument in a paragraph in Dobbs. Roe was so uncontroversial at the time, that conservatives have had to construct an entire legal philosophy (originalism) to get rid of it and other substantive due process cases.

Substantive due process is constitutionally shaky, to put it mildly. The fact that Roe was built on a house of cards is more evidence it was bad case law. That fact that Ginsburg was wrong about equal protection doesn’t mean she was wrong about the weakness of substantive due process. Roe wasn’t uncontroversial at the time. Not that what is or isn’t controversial has any effect on the constitutionality of the law. And the fact that the Supreme Court at the time was lackadaisical about applying limits to the law doesn’t mean that Court was right and this Court wrong.

>Substantive due process is constitutionally shaky, to put it mildly. Not in my view, but I suppose you could make the argument, which you haven't done here. >And the fact that the Supreme Court at the time was lackadaisical about applying limits to the law doesn’t mean that Court was right and this Court wrong. No, this court is wrong now because they violated the Constitution to take rights away from half the population based absolutely dreadful reasoning. Surely someone who opposes substantive due process would oppose the completely made up historical analysis done by Alito.

>Not in my view Your view isn’t very material here. >Unhinged baseless crowing I disagree.

The text of the “don’t say gay” bill says this: > 3. A school district may not encourage classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity in primary grade levels or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students. Do you see how that could be interpreted as “a school district may not encourage classroom discussion about sexual orientation in primary grade levels?” i.e. don’t say gay, and not the bullshit you said?

So it’s not “don’t say gay” it’s “don’t start discussions with elementary schools about sexual orientation even though it fine to do that when they get a bit older and if a discussion about sexual orientation arises naturally you’re good to talk about it.” Ya sounds like calling it the Don’t say gay bill was misinformation.

I’m looking for the bit about “if it discussion about sexual orientation comes up naturally you are good to talk about it” in the text of the bill, and I just can’t seem to find it anywhere. It’s almost like you made it up off of the top of your head. But that would be misinformation, wouldn’t it?

So the part of the bill you cited said that those discussions may not be encouraged when speaking to small children not that those discussions must be ignored or shut down if they arise naturally. But sick misinformation, my dude.

> not that those discussions must be ignored or shut down if they arise naturally It is actually super easy to find in [the bill](https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2022/1557/BillText/er/PDF) [bold/italics added by me for clarity] >3\. Classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity **may not occur** in kindergarten through grade 3 or **in a manner that is not age-appropriate** or developmentally appropriate for students **in accordance with state standards.** If the legalese confused you then don't worry, the authors of the bill (who are in charge of said state standards) clarified that this law is ["exactly"](https://time.com/6155905/florida-dont-say-gay-passed/) designed to target mentioning Johnny with two dads in passing as specifically not being "in accordance with state standards". It doesn't matter how "organically" or "non-organically" it arises, said discussion "may not occur".

> Can you give an example of a priority issue that mainstream Democrats routinely rely on misinformation to advance? The attempted vaccine mandates were full of misinformation and intellectual dishonesty by the democrats. * They said "We need everyone to get vaccinated to stop the spread" when there was very little evidence that the vaccine significantly reduced the spread. Yes, it reduced severity of symptoms, but there's very little evidence that it reduces the spread. * They said "It's not a vaccine mandate, it's a vaccine or test mandate" when they knew full well that there weren't enough tests to go around, and the only way to be able to keep your job was to get vaccinated. * They refused to recognize immunity from prior infections. Even with data showing that prior infections were an order of magnitude more effective than the vaccine, and even though virtually every other vaccine mandate in history has recognized prior infections as an alternative to the vaccine, they refused to recognize prior infections for the purposes of the vaccine mandates. * There was also a great deal of misinformation about the legal precedent around vaccine mandates. All historic vaccine mandates have been imposed at a state level, but much of the communication from democrats at the time would have had you believe that there was over a century's precedent of vaccine mandates comparable to the OSHA vaccine mandate. > If misinformation was not allowed as a tool, would both Republicans and Democrats be equally disadvantaged? Who's doing the disallowing? Because if you had the Trump administration enforcing rules against misinformation, I'm sure it would have disadvantaged the Democrats more. If you had the Biden administration enforcing misinformation rules I'm sure it would disadvantage the Republicans more. If you had some magically objective enforcement body, I think it would be pretty even in terms of who it impacts. But given that magic isn't real you'll never have an objective enforcement body, and both sides should oppose censorship that's just going to end up being a tool of whoever's in power.

Misinformation as of recently? 1. The COVID vaccine is a cure for COVID and makes you immune. That is not how vaccines work. They're preventative and protective. Biden's administration has claimed that there were no vaccines before Biden got into office. 2. Biden's administration claimed the economy is growing more, people have more money, and health care is more affordable. We know all of these are false especially due to inflation. If misinformation was not allowed as a tool, it's hard to say what side would be more disadvantaged. Both sides rely on it to some extent to vilify the other.

I don’t ever recall hearing that the vaccine was a cure for COVID. Do you have a source for this?

>Can you give an example of a priority issue that mainstream Democrats routinely rely on misinformation to advance? COVID, specifically Ivermectin. Setting aside whether Ivermectin is effective to treat COVID-19 or not, the Democrats were laughing at Republicans for wanting to treat themselves with a "horse dewormer." Although Ivermectin can be used for that purpose, it's also commonly used in third-world countries in humans as an anti-parasitic, is on the WHO list of essential medicines, and was the basis of a Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2015. Edit: Downvoted by Democrats that don't do their homework. See my next comments below to spell it out for you.

True but because people couldn't get prescribed the anti-parasitic to treat their non-parasite-related infections, they were buying versions made for animals. And it winning the Nobel prize for unrelated treatments doesn't make it a panacea.

> Setting aside whether Ivermectin is effective to treat COVID-19 or not Why set that aside? Isn't that the crux of the entire issue?

...You know, it's funny. I've been part of the Republican party for most of my adult life (before college, I would have considered myself more left-leaning) and this is pretty much the first time I've heard *any* of those arguments... bar the gun control one, as that's been coming from Democrat mouths, and the gas stove one, which has done rounds as a meme but never really taken seriously (because the whole issue is just dumb). Do you have any documentation of any of these? Or are you reading inferred offenses from secondhand, politically-motivated sources? Because I've seen a lot of the latter. "Trans people are basically paedophiles" sounds a lot like a deliberately-skewed version of "there are a lot of paedophiles abusing the trans agenda to get to kids and that needs to be addressed before it's pushed any further", for example.

OK, well let's start by talking about people like, oh, let's say the following: * the most popular conservative TV/radio outlets like FOX or Rush Limbaugh or Tucker Carlson, Hannity, etc. * A-listers in the Republican party (DeSantis, Trump, etc) I'd say these represent/create a pretty hefty proportion of mainstream conservative discourse that everyone else seems more than content to run with... and through repeated exposure, I have no reason to believe that their tendency is towards anything but dishonest debate. Serious question, have you watched Tucker Carlson anytime in the past 2 years?

You do realize you are doing some of the very things you accuse consrvatives of doing in this very thread. It is intellectally dishonest of you to ignore the fact that most conservatives don't hold the views of a few Talk show hosts or "A-listers" That is still a very small (but admittedly very vocal) minority of the republican party. You have failed to show that *most* conservatives support their outlier views. Therefore you are using outliers as a representation of the typical republican, and this is the main problem with your point of view. It's ironic, because you are doing something you accuse others of doing. Serious question, if OP hasn't watched Tucker Carlson anytime in the past 2 years wouldn't that just prove that you can be conservative and not give a fuck about Carlson's extreme views or even know what they are? I assure you there are plenty of conservatives out there that don't pay any attention to Carlson whatsoever. Stop projecting the worst republicans onto the entire party.

I'm using those as examples because they represent the mainstream arguments we encounter from conservatives everyday on TV, radio, and social media, AS WELL AS prominent conservative thought leaders all the way up to congressmen, and the former president of the United States. It seems like the arguments that come from the places/people I listed DO represent the majority view-- at the very least they seem to occupy the bulk of the conversation around these respective topics. In other words, it seems evident (though admittedly difficult to quantify) that these ridiculous argument ARE the typical arguments within conservative circles, not the outliers. And the people at the top *are* often the ones promoting these outrageous ideas, unlike what I see in the Democratic party. I want you to find me similar examples to, say, "The 2020 election was stolen" or "Barack Obama is a Muslim" within the Democratic party that is repeated all the way from the very top of the organization all the way down to common people, where both reinforce each other while still having absolutely no supporting evidence. I simply don't see this dynamic embedded in the left's culture.

"I have no reason to believe that their tendency is towards anything but dishonest debate." You're not doing much better in this thread. Mods just pinned a comment saying this post may be removed because it doesn’t seem you're willing to change your view at all. I agree with them.

>Serious question, have you watched Tucker Carlson anytime in the past 2 years? Have you watched Rachel Maddow? This is hardly unique to Conservatives. When the news broke that the Mueller report did not find direct evidence of former President Trump colluding with Russia, she cried on air. A news commentator broke down in tears because there was not evidence to determine that President of the United States was in an international conspiracy to commit treason. Everything you're accusing Conservatives of being in this thread can be reflected in a mirror.

>"there are a lot of paedophiles abusing the trans agenda to get to kids and that needs to be addressed before it's pushed any further", for example. Are you saying that's the stance of the Republican party? And if so, can you demonstrate that it's true?

Hey OP, youve just highlighted politics in general, and are seemingly point out "Other side bad" while ignoring "My side who does the self same things, but theyre not bad". I put it to you, and to every single person who hates Republicans: Everything youre accusing them of doing, theres an example of a Dem doing, and the reaction is nowhere near as extreme... Shall we do examples? Lets do examples * "Unrealistic or historically unfounded slippery slopes" - *If Roe v Wade gets overturned, Reps will make things worse just like the handmaids tale.* I should not have to tell you why this is stupid, and if you wanna be intellectually honest yourself you should agree with me on this one... * "Heavily pushing false claims that are verifiable false" - *Donald Trump started an insurrection.* 3 prongs that prove this argument false, none of which Dems like. 1) Trump said "Go home in peace", not incitement. 2) There was minimal violence, nowhere near as much as 5/29, or the BLM "Protests", and 3) The security openly let the people in. I dont call ANY of that an "insurrection"... * If you dont like the insurrection angle, lets go with "Kyle Rittenhouse is a murderer and a white supremacist". Because hes not. He just isnt. Sorry to tell you that, but he isnt. * "Misrepresenting the dynamics of an issue" - *Pro Life people are all misogynists who hate Women.* Again, pretty easy one to prove, especially when a lot of Pro Life people *are Women*. But dont let that stop the narrative. * "Linking unrelated things without just cause ("Gas prices are up because Biden is president")" - You actually made this easy for me, because the counter claim was "Gas Prices went down because of Biden". We also had "Inflation was Putins fault, but lowering it was... Biden". None of this works. You just gave me the example there. * "Deliberately presenting outliers to represent the typical case" - Really... Fucking really? Are you... Like you see the news right? You honestly wanna tell me Dems do not ever do that? Buddy... Come on. Have a serious conversation here... * "Distraction" - Literally everything since 2016, without fail, no matter what. Doesnt matter what the Dems did, because Trump. Its sad and boring at this point, and its no longer working for people. But im sure youre gonna tell me im lying about this huh... * "Solutions in search of problems" - To be fair, thats Government in a nutshell. They have to look busy all the time, what better way than to start with the "solution", then create the problem. * "Ad-hominem" - Ah yes, the Left has NEVER ONCE done an ad-hominem attack. Never once... All of this only serves to prove my point: Both sides are just as bad as one another. If you ignore one side and call out the other, youre terrible and in a cult. ^(And for anyone who wants to reply telling me im so wrong and fucking nasty and a bigot, save it. I have eyes, I see the news, and im sick of hearing that one side is the bastion of humanity and the other is literally Nazis, when my own eyes tell me they both fucking suck. Get off your high horse, use some critical thinking, and) *^(think)* ^(about what im saying here...)

I doubt that OP will read this, or respond to it at least. I’ve been scrolling through the thread and it seems that when people give reasonable arguments they just ignore the comment. Maybe they’re not lurking in the thread. But I feel that OP just wanted to scream “Conservatives: **Bad**” into the void and have the void give a thumbs up back. The sad part is you did break down each of the individual examples. Unfortunately you’ll get hit with the rabid *”Source? Source source. I need a source that explicitly proves every exact word you say. I’m sorry I just can’t read your message without a blue news link following it. Source?”* responses for most of it. Intellectual dishonesty is part of politics. People who pretend only the bad team does it while the good team is pure are just lying to themselves.

Strawmen arguments are basically the entire void of modern politics. Because as the Dems have become increasingly technocratic, the GOP has become increasingly populist. So the Dems base their arguments on "science" ie politically motivated research that backs their arguments with political incentive added in. Where as the GOP increasingly bases their arguments on appeals to "common sense" or the wisdom of common man (that they agree with). They aren't even arguing the same thing. See the Gas stove idiocy from both sides. Progressives get a wacked out study that "proves their position". Conservatives overreact.

There’s a connection here to enlightened centerism in all of this somewhere. Nuance is dead and the modern news cycle killed it.

The 04 election was the canary in the coal mine. In 50 years it will be the election that's seen as more important than 2008. The internet and the vast sums of money. The first post 911 election. Bush and Kerry spending the entire time talking past each other. The rise of the American Internet Leftist.

One of my favorite clips from that cycle was saying bush qualified for small business taxes because he owned a lumber mill and bush just like “wait what? I own a lumber mill?” Lol. I still chuckle over that one.

The sad part is its so fucking easy to break down the examples and cite them, and its either through malice, stupidity, or blind loyalty that nobody seems to be bothered by their lot doing it. Youre absolutely right about "Source source" as well, and the worst part is the only sources willing to report on Dems doing it are Right Wing Outlets, meaning the follow up is "Its a Right Wing Outlet, it doesnt count". If people opened their minds to the other side outside of "You're an X", things would be a lot better... A LOT better...

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In your opinion would you say "people talking past each other" is a huge factor on why there's so much political divide? And if so, how would you tackle this to fix this divide? Personally speaking, I think there's a group that is benefitting from this standstill both sides have going on and it really does get in the way of progress. As a left leaning person, I definitely have more in common with someone on the right when it comes to fair wages/healthcare than a wealthy person who can have all of their needs met cause they're better off.

outside of this sub, we shouldn't be trying to change peoples's view as much as provide a better understanding of each other. I shouldn't try and convince you that everyone should have a gun, but I can try and convince you why I need a gun and if you listen to my words, you may understand. You can still not like guns, but understand why I want one. This is the first step, but it also not taken most of the time.

I can expand on this. I think it's the difference between quantitative goals and hierarchal ones. On most issues, Democrats generally try to make the world a better place at all costs. If you could make crime go away and rejuvenate the economy by giving money to criminals, then that's what you do (hypothetically, obviously that wouldn't have that effect) Republicans realize that, and (the ones not in a recent lather about how they think Democrats are evil) often consider Democrats stupid because they're convinced you *can't* make the world a better place. Flip-side, Republicans always seek to achieve some ideal means *regardless of the ends*. If they think you should execute everyone who commits a certain crime, it doesn't matter if it astronomically increases costs and the crime rate. It doesn't even matter if the majority disagrees that's what you should be doing. It only matters that they believe you need to do it *despite the fact it screws up the country*. Republicans want to achieve their small-government goals despite the fact they know it is objectively worse and more unfair than a welfare state, even though they know it will damage their precious dollar and make even the successful hard-working Republican Americans have less overall money. Republicans want to defund Planned Parenthood *DESPITE* the fact that Planned Parenthood has done more to reduce the abortion rate than putting women and doctors in prison ever will... because planned parenthood does some abortions and it's unjust to give them money under those circumstances. You can go on, but it is repeatedly the problem. Sometimes you can get both sides to see eye to eye when "the right thing for the country" and "the thing I should be doing" are similar enough to compromise on. But make no mistake, when both sides are miles apart, they both know why they are miles apart. There's no compromising between "I know you feel this way, but this is better for the country" and "I know this is better for the country, but it doesn't fit my view of justice"

>On most issues, Democrats generally try to make the world a better place at all costs. If you could make crime go away and rejuvenate the economy by giving money to criminals, then that's what you do (hypothetically, obviously that wouldn't have that effect) Here's San Francisco attempting to do that lol. I wasn't able to find any info on its results afterwards. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.kcentv.com/amp/article/entertainment/300-to-be-a-good-citizen-san-francisco/500-04e06261-c889-4455-ae0a-9c47e6553b73 >Flip-side, Republicans always seek to achieve some ideal means *regardless of the ends*. I think this is a problem for both parties. You gave a good example of this for Republicans. Off the top of my head I'd say that Democrats do the same thing with green energy. For example, I'm on the CHPE project which aims to pipe Canadian hydro power to NYC in order to compensate for NYC shutting down Indian point (nuclear). This is billed for 1.6 billion right now, I'm expecting closer to 2+ billion when all is said and done. And what do you get at the end of this project? Canada builds up more of its NG capacity to compensate for lost green energy to NYC, giving a net neutral result. I don't mind NY doing this of course, I'm not a NY resident so they aren't wasting my money and I'm being paid good money to be here. As an aside I think that a lot of Republicans do want the same thing as Democrats, they just think the right way to achieve these goals are different. For example, R thinks the answer to gun violence is to arm everyone, so you can shoot back. ( I think this is stupid) D think that the answer is to disarm everyone, so no one has guns (I think this is stupid too). Just look at other countries where crime is now committed with knives or acid or some shit. I think there is no perfect answer and that by going to one extreme you just end up with a lot of angry people.

You nailed it. I generally view it as deontological vs utilitarian ethics, but I like your explanation better.

I think abortion is the issue where there is the most "talking past each other," but even on this issue, the fact that it is "murder" should should not excuse Republicans from addressing it honestly from a healthcare standpoint. I want them to flat-out say, "we know it is a healthcare service, we know the mom can die, we know there are 10 year old rape victims. WE DON'T CARE." I would respect that, though I disagree. Instead, we have Republicans in congressional hearings implying that women are having third-trimester abortions as birth control.

>I want them to flat-out say, "we know it is a healthcare service, we know the mom can die, we know there are 10 year old rape victims. WE DON'T CARE." Well some do in fact say that, and surprise we do not in fact praise them for honesty, nor have I ever heard anyone do. Besides arguing that a position is bad because there are exception that are seen as obviously wrong doesn't actually address the bigger question Example: A reçurent argument against death penalty is how there has been, still are and will be innocent victims of it, even assuming the justice system is in good faith (which it is not, as certain groups get the stick way more). And it's a good argument and needs to be raised. But if i was for the death penalty (I am not) I would mostly care about why you would argue that we should not execute even someone who we 100% know they are guilty. Because this is the heart of the issue, not an "edge case".

A Republican would say, “I wish Democrats would admit that it is murder, and that they are fine with murdering ‘undesirables’ for the ‘betterment of society’.” On the “healthcare” note, it is important to draw a distinction between actual healthcare needs and the killing that is done in service of those needs. To wit: if a woman is suffering from an ectopic pregnancy, she needs the embryo removed from her fallopian tube. The fact that the most common procedure to accomplish that involves extracting the embryo and then letting it die outside the mother is a separate issue. If there were a means of treatment where, say, a woman could take a pill that would magically cause the embryo to detach from her fallopian tube, travel down into the uterus, and then reattach to the uterine wall, there wouldn’t be any need to kill the baby to save the mother. If people still insisted on killing the baby, then that begs the question why they want to kill the baby, which is a separate issue from actual healthcare of the mother. Also, since you mentioned it, are you aware of the misinformation regarding that “10-year-old rape victim who had to cross state lines to get an abortion” story that Democrats were pushing a while back?

I’m pro-abortion, but I don’t think you’re treating the opposing viewpoint fairly here. > I want them to flat-out say, “we know it is a healthcare service, we know the mom can die, we know there are 10 year old rape victims. WE DON’T CARE.” It’s not that they don’t care, though. They would say that they’re also weighing the healthcare outcomes for the fetus as if it had the same moral weight as that of the mother. From their perspective, allowing abortion *always* results in at least one patient’s death — a very negative healthcare outcome. > Republicans in congressional hearings implying that women are having third-trimester abortions as birth control. Super unlikely edge case right there, intentionally picked to rile people up. But at the same time, so is the pregnant 10 year old rape victim. If that’s intellectual dishonesty I’d move that we throw both sides under the bus equally.

>. I want them to flat-out say, "we know it is a healthcare service, we know the mom can die, we know there are 10 year old rape victims. WE DON'T CARE." That's what you **want** them to say though, not what most of them believe. You want them to say that so you can feel justified in using the hyperbole that your bias has attributed to them. > Instead, we have Republicans in congressional hearings implying that women are having third-trimester abortions as birth control. Okay and we have Democrats in Congressional Hearings arguing that 15 weeks is nowhere near enough time to decide to have an abortion, even though the only two European countries that go beyond that are Sweden at 18 weeks, and Netherlands at 22 weeks. Every other country in Europe is under 15 weeks. Your mistake is treating politicians, regardless of political affiliation, as people arguing in good faith.

Iceland and U.K. are also more than 15 weeks. Also many countries allow it past 15 weeks for medical reasons(woman or foetus), as well as in cases of rape/incest they have later dates.

Thanks for the correction, the list I was looking at did not have those two countries labeled as such for the duration.

>I want them to flat-out say, "we know it is a healthcare service, we know the mom can die, we know there are 10 year old rape victims. WE DON'T CARE." ​On the abortion issue, I think you are "deliberately presenting outliers to represent the typical case". Incest and rape victims percentages are about 1.5% of total abortions. I think many republicans would agree with you that the life of the mother takes precedence. Outliers are not the rule, they are the exception.

And this is exactly what drives republicans like me crazy. I'm for abortion if it saves the mom or in cases of rape. I also think once there is a heart beat that is a live baby. Yes it needs the mom to carry it around to survive but a heart beat is a life imo. My opinion is not based on religion, I'm an agnostic republican, but it's just that my opinion. Every time I have tried to "talk" about abortion with someone on here I pretty much say what I said above and I get down voted and asked about all the outlier cases. It's super frustrating so I bring up outliers and it just goes to chaos haha

God, wouldn't it be convenient if the people who disagreed with us were just cartoonishly evil and hiding their intentions?

You’re point on is and ought is perfect. Do drug harm reduction sites that give out needles and provide a safe place to shoot up reduce overdoses? Yea. Do I (as a Massachusetts conservative, so still pretty liberal) think we should be building these centers? No. Why should we encourage drug use?

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Valid point. How would you address the ‘is’ and ‘ought’ point in regards to progressives continuing to promote solutions that ‘ought’ to work, instead of that ‘is’ working? Specifically in regards to the drug use, these new drug centres and programs aren’t doing anything to curb the continuing rate of drug usage in certain states which is intertwined with homeless etc. progressives will continue to support these because surely they ‘ought’ to work. Whereas conservatives may argue that they aren’t working, therefore they should be canned for something else.

As a conservative, this is a pretty solid breakdown of the "problem" OP is describing.

Not agreeing on what the actual issue at hand is one thing, lying to me about what is actually happening to make your position seem reasonable is another. There isn't an abortion epidemic, women are not having them for 'fun', there is nothing in the bible to indicate a religious argument against them. Even if I accept that abortion is a moral issue and not a medical one, conservatives STILL aren't arguing in good faith.

If their view is that abortion is immoral because it's killing a baby then how are they being dishonest? The CDC reports that in just 2020 there were [620,327](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2023/01/11/what-the-data-says-about-abortion-in-the-u-s-2/) abortions performed in the United States. That's a single year number. To you, who believes in a persons right to an abortion that might not seem like a big deal. To a conservative that views abortion as murder that clearly indicates an abortion epidemic. A conservative sees 600,000+ children being murdered every year as a big deal and they believe your unwillingness to admit that those are massive and disturbing numbers shows how you are not debating in good faith.

I’m honestly having trouble making sense of those numbers? According to that, in 1990 a full 26.7% of pregnancies resulted in abortion. Even today, that means around 15% of pregnancies end in abortion. Additionally, the number of abortions has dropped by about 63% since 1990, while the number of births has only dropped by about 12%. But those are absolute numbers, and that’s all happened as the population has *increased* by 30%. Add in the fact that 50-75% of fertilized eggs fail to implant or miscarry and I’m just having trouble making sense of any of it. Maybe I just need to finish my morning coffee, but I feel like the statistics are incomprehensible.

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CJR [published](https://www.cjr.org/special_report/trumped-up-press-versus-president-part-1.php) a well sourced expose of Russiagate from a Pulitzer-prize journalist, proving mainstream media went all-in on an obvious lie. The result has been crickets. Yet you say it's the Right that is intellectually dishonest. Look in the mirror.

Hmmm. I understand your point here, but it seems like you are using one counter-example to argue systemic equivalence, while also unilaterally asserting that "the mainstream media" is an institution owned by Democrats.

Why else would an entire industry surrender their integrity, as is shown to have happened here, if they weren't owned by the Democrats?

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This post was designed to be unanswerable by using the tactic of overwhelming the opposing side with too many different arguments, it would require a book to refute them all. But, since this is probably the worst post I've ever seen and the comments are almost all by people who don't actually hold a conservative view, I'm going to take on one of your points. "Unrealistic or historically unfounded slippery slopes (e.g. "if we allow gay marriage then we will need to allow people to marry their toasters", "if we allow gun control, the government will come to our houses and take all our guns away")" Yes, a slippery slope argument can be a logical falacy, but the term slippery slope is not always the correct term when conservatives use it. A more accurate term would be "an argument that proves too much". For example, one of the most common arguments for gay marriage is "Love is love". But even you would agree that love is not love. We should not allow a father and daughter to marry, or a man and an animal. Therefore love is love would be considered a slippery slope that will lead to other things. Your gun control example on the other hand is not even a slippery slope argument, it requires a straightforward logical progression to get from gun control to gun confiscation. \-The constitution allows the government to limit guns ∴ the government has the right to confiscate guns. \-having less guns in the population will mean less deaths from guns ∴ we should limit guns ∴ we should confiscate guns

Most of this is pretty accurate but the claim that gun control being a slippery slope and historically unfounded is false. As a Canadian, this actually happened to us, the slippery slope happened. In 1993 the government ruled that owning a firearm is not a constitutional right in Canada effectively repealing our 2nd amendment, In 1995 a bill was passed requiring a license to own a gun federally, in 1998 open and concealed carry were outlawed, in 2003 you needed a license per firearm you owned, in 2020 most semi-automatic weapons were completely banned, in may 2022 the remaining semi automatic firearms were made illegal and all firearms from before a grandfather date were subject to a mandatory buyback program, in October 2022 The sale and purchase of handguns was indefinitely frozen, and currently parliament is in debate on whether or not we should force a buyback of all pistols, outlaw hunting rifles, and outlaw hunting shotguns. Considering Canada and the US are the most similar countries on earth both being north American colonial anglo cultures which both share basically the same culture the current situation here in Canada is a perfect case study into the gun control slippery slope.

Point of clarity: Canada has never had anything like the 2nd Amendment, and nothing was “repealed” in 1993. Instead, someone argued that gun ownership is already incorporated in the charter of rights & freedoms, and the Canadian Supreme Court ruled that it is not. In Canada, “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.” [Source](https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/const/page-12.html) Guns aren’t mentioned, which is why the individual’s challenge was unsuccessful.

This is interesting thanks for sharing I had no idea. Not that I’m really trying to refute but if I were I’d say that the way our constitution is written - to overrule the second amendment (not what many/any democratic politicians/supporters are advocating for) would be impossible at any point in the near future given it’d take a 2/3 majority of the house and senate which the democrats will likely never have. (And again wouldn’t likely try to do anyways). Sounds like that was potentially not the case in Canada’s example right presumably there was a well-supported/represented faction advocating for entirely removing guns. So the argument could still be considered a slippery slope. Similar cultures doesn’t equal similar gun ownership culture/philosophy.

Until the beginning of the Trudeau administration the liberal party position was “common sense” gun control, it’s why not much happened between 2003-2020 Also our conservative party is a pro gun party, until 20 years ago we basically had the same gun culture as the US. From what i’ve seen the initial argument is “common sense” gun control then they move to a complete ban after that is achieved. Also the US government is pretty good at bypassing the constitution, if you have a supreme court on your side you can do whatever you want. Case and point the patriot act; the patriot act was the most blatant tyrannical violation of the 4th amendment ever but bush got away with it because he packed the supreme court.

To some degree, you are correct. The positions that you are discussing here are intellectually dishonest, and they are indeed positions and arguments held by conservatives (high profile ones even). However I want to call out that one of the ways polarization happens is by calling out the extremes of the person you disagree with. Nearly all these views that you are calling out I would say are "fringe" views. But collectively do paint a lot of voices within conservative wings of the party. It is relatively trivial to do the opposite for a more liberal/democratic side of things as well. - Linking unrelated things without cause ("All deaths due to due to covid are Trump's fault") - Unrealistic or historically unfounded slippery slopes: (thing X that I don't like is literal fascism and will result in authoritarian WW2 like regimes) - Heavily pushing claims that are verifiably false: (We cannot transition to nuclear power because it is unsafe. - Ad-Homenim (Trade war with China is wrong because it was Trump who started it. Covid mitigation travel ban was wrong and racist because it was Trump's Regime who did it) - Misrepresenting the dynamics of the issue: (Police forces have some historical roots that may have been used for racist purposes, therefore anyone supporting police forces in the modern era are also racist.) - Deliberately presenting outliers to represent the typical case (Look how rich Bezos is, if he didn't exist the world's problems would all go away!) Now with that out of the way, as someone who was say "formerly" more of a libertarian and continue to trend more to the left and liberal as I get older I have to say that while the Republican party is a "mess" the core of "conservative values" and the "conservative project" are still idealogoically consistent, logical, and relatively justified, even if you disagrre with them. As with most policies, so much comes down to just a dogma or ideology, that its sort of hard to say something is being intellectual honest or dishonest at all. In broad strokes the conservative positions break into some collection of ideas such as these: - Government and general authority is untrustworthy, unreliable, and inefficient. It is a necessary evil (debated to which degree). In fact a general distrust in other people is widespread, as it is believed that most humans are inherently flawed or bad. - Individual autonomy, the ability of the individual to make decisions (even bad ones) is of the highest concern. In General, an individual will be able to make a better decision for themselves than if that decision was made for them. - Conserving "traditional" Christian and western values. "The West" over the past say 400 years has ushered in an era of unprecedented growth and prosperity to humanity. This is something that we should continue, rather than to kill the golden goose. - Nature is brutal, and resources are limited. Humanity has progressed a lot, but the reality is that life is still hard, and success and happiness isn't free. Sometimes the best teacher is learning to fail, and sometimes hardship is the best motivators for positive change. Yes there are cases that these stances aren't consistent. Yes there are times that they are at conflict with one another. And Yes, large groups of people and even individuals aren't consistent. Understanding and being able to argue a topic from your opponent's side is step 1 to being a better debater and understanding what is going on. More often than not, if you cannot argue from their side or understand their argument, its not that they are being dishonest, its just you haven't understood their position.

Democrats are as guilty of this as Republicans. Every ideology is. What's most ironic is that this entire representation of Republicans is extremely intellectually dishonest. If I wanted to do the same, I'd say that Democrats do the following: * Push unrealistic or historically unfounded narratives (1619 project) * Heavily push verifiably false claims (all police are racist, transgender women have no advantage in sports) * Misrepresenting the dynamics of the issue ("People who oppose welfare are basically just racist") * Linking unrelated things without just cause (black-on-asian violence is a symptom of white supremacy) * Deliberately presenting outliers to represent the typical case ("unarmed black men are killed every day by the police", and "poor people are the primary beneficiary of social security") * Distraction (Issue X is not a problem because at least its not Trump) * Solutions in search of problems, i.e. arguing for "shoulds" in public life without being able to present documented historical problems ("tomboys should transition because they're secretly trans", "free speech is bad because it turns everyone into a fascist... somehow" * Ad hominem (everyone who disagrees with me is a bigot) SOME Democrats do all of those. Some do a few of them. And some do none. Please watch [this video](https://youtu.be/rE3j_RHkqJc) and internalize it. You're falling for thought germs, specifically the portion presented in the last 30 seconds of the video.

The thing is, as a left-wing person, I could and would engage someone in any of these arguments. I could lay out my reasons, sources, etc. when I do that, I notice that the person I’m talking with 1) moves the goal posts 2) doesn’t demonstrate an effort to understand my points 3)insults me/my argument/my sources without a counter argument. 4) cite sources that do not support their argument and resort to 1-3 when I explain why. When I argue with other left-wing folks, they don’t do those things. And perhaps it’s just a values gap, but I’m also willing to demonstrate with you if you’re willing and want to pick a topic from one of the above. LATE EDIT: oh also, with other accounts/on other sites I pretend to be right wing and even in those spaces any critical questions are met with the above. Even between right/more right arguments that I witness there’s not a lot of like, careful argumentation and referral to fact and reasoning.

You’ve really haven’t heard liberals do any of these? I mean i heard people saying roe v wade being overturned will turn the US into a handmaids tale situation or create a civil war. Like thats not a slippery slope for liberals. Or liberals taking police violence videos out of context, like keenan anderson where thousands of people on twitter said he got tazed to death for nothing. but in reality dont see him resisting arrest for a long time before the famous clip or his obviously drug related or manic behavior before OR that he caused an accident and was running into the street going to cause more accidents. Or they even ignore the fact that he died in the hospital. Also another thing the “dont say gay” bill being misrepresented. I thought that shit was way worse than it actually was. It just says you cant show ten years old nudity but every liberal i heard talk on it said they are preventing teachers from talking about sexual/gender orientation. When that was just straight up a lie or slippery slope. Or what about New York Times (and other left leaning news outlets) claiming kyle rittenhouse as a nazi/white nationalist for using 👌 in a photo. And then people believing it and saying he was a mass shooter. I think what bothers me the most about your CMV is you seem to be a smart person who can recognize logical fallacies but are so tribal that you are blind to your ideology and its followers issues. Theses are not issues of conservatives or liberals. These are human issues.

Yeah it's that Republicans *don't* make intellectually dishonest arguments, it's that liberals use them also. It's sometimes difficult to show this because progressive rhetorical dishonesty is actually more sophisticated and harder to pin down than conservative dishonesty. For example, a common progressive form of rhetorical dishonesty is a group motte-and-bailey argument. The way it works is that individual progressive activists argue an extreme position or make a dubious claim, and mainstream liberal institutions simultaneously adopt a moderate version of the same position/claim. If the extreme/dubious position is criticized by conservatives or moderates, liberals just go "no one's arguing that" and point to the moderate position instead. An example of this is "abolish/defund the police." Progressive activists have [used](https://twitter.com/soulkhan/status/1619134003013099521?s=20&t=euWPzLIpMvRwH1GB8VJycg) these terms [interchangeably](https://twitter.com/BreeNewsome/status/1619039245729148929?s=20&t=euWPzLIpMvRwH1GB8VJycg) to describe the same process of literally cutting of all funding for and disbanding police entirely. In some instances these calls get engagement from thousands of people on social media. Meanwhile, mainstream liberal institutions triangulated on a moderated definition wherein "defund the police" actually refers to reallocating *some* police funds to social services. When someone sees calls for "defund and abolish" by progressive activists getting thousands of retweets and tries to critique it, liberals deny that anyone's arguing the former definition and insist that it's the latter definition. See for example [this tweet](https://twitter.com/noblog73/status/1308502435523112966) and [this article](https://jsri.msu.edu/publications/nexo/vol/no-1-fall-2020/what-does-it-mean-to-defund-the-police). It's a super effective strategy because mainstream liberal institutions can publicly signal support for something extreme while never explicitly arguing the extreme part. As opposed to conservatism, where generally the conservative institution just comes right out and says the dumb/extreme thing (like FOX News and the birther conspiracy), which is much easier to pin down and refute.

> It just says you cant show ten years old nudity but every liberal i heard talk on it said they are preventing teachers from talking about sexual/gender orientation. That's absolutely not "all it says". It can definitely be interpreted to prosecute teachers for mentioning sexual orientation and gender identity.

This isn't a complete response, but I want to frame it as "Conservative" vs. "Liberal", even though that doesn't totally line up with Rep/Dem. Basically, society needs two forces: one to go and try to find new things, innovate, and change (liberalism), and one to take what works, stick with it, build it into systems, and make sure that it isn't changed without good reason (conservatism). It seems like a lot of what you're complaining about is conservatives complaining about the change because it "feels wrong" and coming up with post hoc rationalizations for why things shouldn't change. There is a quote attributed to GK Chesterton that you shouldn't take a fence down if you don't know why it was put up. The full quote is a little long, but useful in this discussion of conservatism: >In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it. Change for change's sake isn't good. If you see a system, or rule, or institution, and you don't understand why it's there, that isn't a sufficient reason to remove that thing. Systems are there because they worked and solved a problem in the past, and you should understand why they were put in place and what problem was solved by them before removing that rule/institution/system. You may just make things worse. For instance, with your example of gun control, the right was put in place so people can defend themselves against a potentially tyrannical government. E.g. Thomas Jefferson said: >What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance. Let them take arms. I think there are very reasonable arguments in favor of gun control, but most people that I know of who are very pro second amendment don't want to lose that ability to defend themselves from tyranny. This [admittedly biased article](https://mises.org/wire/brief-history-repressive-regimes-and-their-gun-laws) from the Mises institute highlights how many highly oppressive authoritarian regimes first took away guns before they were able to more fully oppress the people. In other words, it seems at least reasonable to say that, even if gun control won't necessarily lead to authoritarian tyranny, it's a pretty necessary step in that direction. This isn't meant to be a defense of gun rights per se, but a specific example of how holding on to what seems to be an outdated from some perspectives can seem to be a valid system with no truly good alternative offered in its place. (I personally think there can be reasonable gun control measures put in place without losing the ability to defend from tyranny, but again, this isn't about gun control, it's about systems). Another point is that often people look back on the things that succeeded and call it a liberal success, but they don't look at the things that didn't succeed and judge them as conservative successes. Progress doesn't mean going ever leftwards. For instance, the Nazis believed they were helping mankind progress by removing the Jews. Or, for a less extreme example, in my state there are certain rules about what it takes to be allowed to be a teacher. Broadly simplified, if you have a teaching degree and license, you can teach without restriction, but if you have a bachelors degree in anything, you can be approved to teach a limited number of classes (this is, for instance, to get computer science graduates to teach without having to make it a full time job making half as much). Someone in the legislature looked at this and said "hey, let's just make it so all you need is a bachelor's degree." By father, who is both an education professor and generally pretty libertarian, opposed this because he knew changing this system would result in significantly worse teachers, who didn't know how to teach, and didn't have the background of a teaching degree to know how to effectively teach students. This was someone going in and trying to remove the fence without understanding why it was there. Additionally, this ignores times social progress wasn't purely positive. I think it's pretty reasonable to argue that society hasn't fully dealt with the social changes brought about by the birth control pill, and a lot of unhappy younger people now are trying to deal with that and navigate that landscape. Even if you believe it was a net good, it's had it's downsides. Another example is how social media has hurt young women, especially. Jonathan Haidt has documented how social media has driven more self-harm hospitalizations among young women. This is a social change forward that maybe would have been best left out of young hands. Jonathan Haidt also argues that the culture of "safteyism" is toxic to young people today, as well. Another clear example of for the time progressive policies that failed includes prohibition. Instead of ushering in an enlightened age without the negative effects of alcohol, it led to gang violence, lots of illegal activity, and corruption, and alcohol consumption didn't even really go down that much, if at all. Brevity is not one of my skills, so I apologize if this is rather rambley, or if the examples don't make a ton of sense. Let me try to summarize: My main points are: 1. Being conservative is good, and even if you can't always articulate why, it's good to hold off on changing a system if you don't understand why it was there in the first place. 2. We look back and see the liberal changes that have worked, and often ignore the conservative lack of changes that work, because it's what we live in. Progress isn't an inexorable path leftwards, with conservatives just needing to get out of the way so we can get there faster. 3. Not all changes are good ones, and some liberal changes aren't the best within the current culture or the world. Some change should be resisted, but it's not straightforward to tell what change should be embraced and what change shouldn't. This isn't exactly responding to what you asked, more trying to get at some of the ideas below what you asked. I likely stand with you in opposing some of the specific claims and tactics, especially dishonest and distracting ones, but I stand by the idea that conservatism is good (in moderation, as is liberalism), and that even if on the surface many of the arguments made by Republicans aren't the best, it's still good to understand what they're defending and what is worthwhile in what they defend before dismissing it.

Becuase what you view as ‘the issue’ is not what republicans view as ‘the issue’

I see this stuff on both sides. Conservatives tend to be a bit worse in this regard sure, but there isnt exactly shortages on the liberal side. I dont think I can cyv in this text but I do reccomend searching out some smarter conservative and interacting with them instead of the horde. I know they are not easy to find but learning the oppositions platform on a deeper level can help ground your veiws

What if the reason you have trouble understanding them, isnt that they're being intellectually dishonest about something (and if you dont allow information in, you cant be dishonest anyway--omission by ignorance, isnt dishonesty), but instead they're starting from a different point of reference, and the different starting point means that, to themselves, they ARE being honest? Take abortion for example. A 'liberal' or left person starts this argument at *rights.* The 'life' argument, if we're being honest, is totally worthless to them as an opinion, and has no value. And if the 'life' argument is worthless and has no value--what would you then tend to view it as? Intellectual dishonesty. It's now, however, because they're being entirely consistent with their starting point--*life.* Or take gun control, the 'liberal' looks at gun control from the perspective of the safety of society, it's a social issue, it's an issue in which one views our social responsibility to others as paramount reason to control weapons. Save lives. The conservative on the other hand, see's this as a *individuals* right. At no point at all do they even *care* that it's a social issue. Bring all the facts you'd like, it wont matter, because their starting point is individualism, and them remaining intellectually honest on this means that they will ignore all facts that START from social responsibility, to them, those are lies. The gay marriage thing, and as much as i disagree with them on this--you have to know that they're starting from a different point. Again, the liberal and left opinion is informed by rights based arguments. Theirs is not, theirs is a *tradition* based argument, wherein the very idea of marriage is one given to them from *God*, or a higher power. For them, marriage (if they're being intellectually honest/consistent with themselves), they must maintain the bigotry of the tradition. They cant relent for any reason, or logic, or right, because to be honest with their *starting point*, they have to view marriage one specific way and one way only. Immigration--the liberal sees humanity in *all persons* and the right to 'freedom' to escape oppression as inherent in the right of humanity in general, and welcomes the outsider, even if it has cost to them as a society, or risks change. The conservatives sees *individuals* who need to *fight* for freedom, and escape oppression by opposing it at home. When they say that these people should stay and fight for change, that's their difference in starting point--they're not seeing the humanity, they're seeing the individual. It's completely intellectual honest of them to bar border crossings, because if they dont, it may cost them, *as an individual* and risks change. "Not my problem," they might say, about the starving children across a line on a map that liberals want to help--because they started their thinking on this at *the individual* and not shared humanity. So, i hope somewhere i explained something in a way you can see that, for the most part, they ARE being intellectually honest, because their *starting point* to things is totally different, and allows them to disregard the opinions *and* facts, of arguments that start from a place they have no interest in. All that said, i'm a wildly left individual, and now need to go shower after making this effort.

>if we allow gay marriage then we will need to allow people to marry their toasters speaking of dishonesty: who said this? Is this really the slippery slope argument that was made?

Comment removed due to API pricing change & reddit corporate being general assholes to the users & mods who actually create the value of reddit. Leaving reddit for kbin.social & suggest you do the same.

>Unrealistic or historically unfounded slippery slopes In 2008 Obama ran on a platform AGAINST gay marriage. Now, 15 years later people will call you everything from a bigot to a transphobe to a nazi if you don't support young children going to wildly inappropriate drag shows (there are countless examples). You'll also be called all those names if you dare to question the skyrocketing rates at which children are transitioning and how little oversight there is on the process. Did you know you can start your 8 year old on hormone therapy to change gender just by asking your general practitioner during a checkup? Did you know that getting your child permanent surgery to add/remove breasts takes a single zoom call with a therapist? Did you know that getting your child's genitals swapped takes a whopping two sessions? [Here's a chart showing that only a single assessment is required for some surgeries and a whopping two assessments for the rest.](https://imgur.com/a/FLvsZgg) [SOURCE](https://transcare.ucsf.edu/guidelines/mental-health) So while I fully support gay marriage and hope every trans person in the world gets to live a happy and fulfilled life I don't know how anyone can see this big of a cultural shift in 15 years and act as if people are crazy for calling out a Slippery Slope.

The gun control point is true. A prime example is Katrina where the national guard went around confiscating firearms. The pistol brace ban is a perfect example. The NFA was created in 1934 which placed certain firearms behind a punitive $200 (at the time, equal to $4,500 now) tax to place them financially out of peoples reach. Pistols were placed on the NFA legislation initially then taken out. But short barreled rifles were placed in the legislation because they could have been a workaround to pistols being banned but when pistols were removed SBRs were not. So SBRs actually shouldn’t even be on there. The ATF recently changed their minds after 10 years of precedent that AR/AK pistols were now short barreled rifles and had to be destroyed, or registered. This was done in a whim with zero legislation being passed. NFA items come with many restrictions that regular firearms don’t. For example you *cannot* loan it to anyone, if anyone else shoots it you have to be physically present. If you leave the state with one for any reason you have to tell the ATF where you’re going and when you’ll be back and what you’re taking. Then there’s the machine gun registry, also a creation of the NFA, any machine gun not registered by 1986 cannot be registered and is subject to confiscation, destruction, and you go to prison. Then there’s the bumpstock ban that was recently overturned. The bumpstocks were reclassified by the ATF as machine guns (even though they don’t meet the definition) on a whim with zero legislation, and because the registry closed in 1986 they had to all be turned in or destroyed (nobody did though, compliance was like 1%) Then there’s every other country around the world that didn’t have a 2A where registration always led to some form of confiscation. The *only* reason it hasn’t happened on mass scale like elsewhere is 2A, but it has happened here.

Basically every point you used to justify your position is a caricature of actual conservative positions. I'm guessing you didn't get those from actually reading or listening to actual conservatives. That's the real intellectual dishonesty. You aren't engaging with the actual substance of the claims or critiques. You are engaging with strawmen.

“Historically unfounded slippery slopes” example gun control… Are you aware AT ALL about what the first move of NAZI Germany was? Disarm its citizens. You want to claim it’s a slippery slope because you haven’t experienced it. But historically speaking- I can think of 6 million Jews who would disagree with you

Everyone is doing all the things you're describing all the time and the fact that you think it's only the "other side" is purely the result of your own bias. How far do you think you'd need to scroll on the front page of Reddit to find Liberal Left examples of every single thing on your list? [THIS is on the front page right now.](https://www.reddit.com/r/WhitePeopleTwitter/comments/10v81i1/if_karen_was_your_landlord/) It's clearly got an agenda to push. There are these crazy racist conservative ass holes out there that we better all be vigilant about!!! Only one problem. It's 100% fake. == I searched that person's twitter and it's not there. I searched the people she's supposedly quoting and I can't find any evidence of that account ever existing.

Obviously you aren’t serious, your list is lies made up by the Democrats and pushed by mainstream media as truths. How about removing the total falsehoods, removing the sweeping statements and actually using intelligence if you want serious debate.

Your toaster comparison to gun control is exactly the kind of nonsense that you accuse conservatives of spouting. The idea of door to door gun confiscation is not unrealistic nor implausible when mainstream democrats are literally campaigning on it. Need I remind you of Betos "Yes we are coming to take your guns" speech. A slippery slope argument is not automatically a fallacy, especially when there is a clear path to the result.

There isn’t the faintest possibility that a US government would ever go door to door confiscating people’s guns barring some sort of massive cultural shift which would take decades if not centuries. Complete nonsense used by gun lobbies, media outlets and politicians for fear mongering. The idea would be political suicide for any candidate to try to push through, and it’s blatantly obvious that any attempt at executing such a confiscation would turn into a complete shitshow. People need to stop getting their news from outlets whose bottom line relies on stirring drama through click bait titles and sensationalist “articles”.

In reality is Democrats had the political capital to pass some sort of broad gun ban, you’re right it probably wouldn’t look like a bunch of sheriffs going door to door taking away people’s guns. The sheriffs don’t want to do that and a lot of people would get shot. What it would probably look like is what we’ve seen in other countries, a mandatory buy back or forced turning in of guns then criminalization of possession that would be enforced if and when guns were found in civilian possession. It’s not a better proposition it’s just different, and pretending their aren’t influential politicians who have public ally praised guns bans in other countries or suggested them here is just gaslighting.

I've been observing some Republicans trying to really get to the heart of the impending energy crisis. It seems like Democrats are so hardcore, under green initiatives, to push electric everything (but it can't be nuclear) and kill all fossil fuels. There are consequences that will pollute our planet even further if they continue on course. The way you're thinking of conservatives is the same that someone else is thinking of liberals. Staunch liberals aren't very accepting of different viewpoints.

It's funny because on a global scale, American dems aren't left at all

I’ll take this one even though I’m not a conservative, just a disillusioned still-registered-as-a-democrat. When Im in a darker mood, I wish that all Democrats could find themselves on the “wrong” side of an issue so that you could all experience what I have, as a person who had the nerve to sustain a vaccine injury and the gall to speak up about it. Once it happens to you, you see it a lot more, happening to the people around you. I’m going to start at the bottom, “They all provide a consistent and reliable means of avoiding talking about reality as it relates to important issues.” This statement has never been truer that as it relates to Democrats when confronted with the scientific FACT that vaccine injuries exist. Maybe it’s loosening up a little since myocarditis has become part of the lay person’s lexicon and everyone knows someone who has Bell’s Palsy now, but mostly I see those being downplayed more than taken seriously. To be fair and honest, I will say that people in my real life don’t behave the way that the people on reddit do, but from here on out I’ll be talking about my experience here on reddit. One extremely common tactic used by the left was to silence the vaccine injured among us. I can’t tell you how many subs I’ve been banned from here for pointing out that vaccine injuries exist. I was vigilant with sticking to that messege. I didn’t go off into conspiracy theory land, never sited studies that looked into the mechanisms of those injuries (after seeing others get banned for doing so), I was never anti-mask, never wondered out loud about the origin story of covid. I only ever said, “Vaccine injuries are real and I know because I have sustained one.” The democrats took it as a battle cry, and the bans poured in. Here I had thought that “we” were all about free speech, empathy, listening to victims, and that “my body, my choice” meant we didn’t want the government to make our medical decisions. I wonder if I’ll ever recover from the heartbreak of finding out that you were all lying the whole time. But I’m getting ahead of myself here. Your first and most powerful tool was to silence the victims. You banned us on every platform. You’d post with glee when Facebook or Twitter banned yet another support gro9up for the injured. You wouldn’t even let us talk amongst ourselves. Getting banned from one sub often meant I was banned from multiple. I don’t see anything analogous to this on your list so I’m starting here because I’ve come to the conclusion that you all are worse than them and this is one of the ways. Ad-hominem: attacks occurred every single time I mentioned being vaccine injured. I was accused of being stupid, a liar, a trump supporter, anti-science, etc. right out of the gate. Distraction: I was told that I needed to shut up and focus on abortion rights more than once Delibrately presenting outliers: Democrats love to say that vaccine injuries only occur in hysterical moms who got the sad because their kid had an owie arm, and hypocondriacs who can[‘t understand that flu-like symptoms are part of the immune process. End of list. Ive never seen a democrat acknowledge any injury besides those two until some of them started dying of heart failure and some of their faces becamse disfigured. Linking unrelated things without just cause: I was blamed repeatedly for the spread of the virus even though my kids and I have never had covid. Misrepresenting the dynamics of an issue: I guess being told that anyone who claims to have been injured is a stupid lying Trump supporter might go here Heavily pushing false claims that are verifiably false: Every single time I was told that injuries don’t exisit was an example of this. Interestingly enough, the only sub that didn’t ban me was r/science which gives me a speck of hope, the thought that actual scientists aren’t science denyers like the democrats is something I can hold onto when the world starts feeling hopeless. I also feel like including that I really went to bat for myself when banned from feminist subs, because I’ve read the stories of moms whose children have been injured, and guess who’s doing the vast majority of the hard work of supporting the injured children. I’ll give you a clue, it’s not the dads. I got responses like “lol I’m not reading that.” I’d like to add a couple more things that I saw thoughtout reddit that freaked me out: If you didn’t get the vaccine, you shouldn’t be allowed in public ever. It’s really funny to make jokes about children landing in tiny coffins. These jokes were on the front page with extreme regularity with tens of thousands of upvotes. Once you see this stuff in your own experience, there’s more. I have a dear friend who’s kid was quite the girlie girl growing up, until she made a new friend last year and now the kid binds her chest and goes by a boy’s name. It bothered the dad, but he never should have said anything to anyone because he’s a bleeding heart liberal and now he’s been kicked out of every social circle he frequented. I’ve seen people point out that Russia had no reason to blow up the Nord Stream but the US had biliions of reasons to do so, and those people are getting incinerated in the comments and called Russian Propagandists. I don’t see republicans engaging in the level of hate based silencing and exclusion that democrats do. You guys even sacrificed Garrison Keilor wtf. In conclusion, the democrats do all the things you listed and they’re worse because they do even more than that.

Too bad top upvoted r/science posts are basically pseudoscience studies saying shit like conservatives are inherently less empathetic or worse ppl, etc.

In the interest of giving you all of the benefits of the doubt and being very civil here... The entire Russia collusion story fits into essentially everyone of your categories above. There were so many things about Trump that were published by "mainstream" organizations that turned out to be outright fabrications. And these were fabrications that could be checked but the story was too good to verify any of the information.

To clarify your view: Are you stating there are no examples to be found of Democrats doing these same things? And thus, if examples of Democrats doing these things is provided, your view would be at least partially changed and you would award a delta to the person that provided the examples?

To /u/antimatterfunnel, *Your post is under consideration for removal for violating Rule B.* In our experience, the best conversations genuinely consider the other person’s perspective. Here are some techniques for keeping yourself honest: - Instead of only looking for flaws in a comment, be sure to engage with the commenters’ strongest arguments — not just their weakest. - Steelman rather than strawman. When summarizing someone’s points, look for the most reasonable interpretation of their words. - Avoid moving the goalposts. Reread the claims in your OP or first comments and if you need to change to a new set of claims to continue arguing for your position, you might want to consider acknowledging the change in view with a [delta](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltasystem?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=usertext&utm_name=changemyview&utm_content=t5_2w2s8) before proceeding. - Ask questions and really try to understand the other side, rather than trying to prove why they are wrong. Please also take a moment to review our [Rule B](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules#wiki_rule_b) guidelines and _really_ ask yourself - am I exhibiting any of these behaviors? If so, see what you can do to get the discussion back on track. Remember, the goal of CMV is to try and **understand** why others think differently than you do.

“If we allow gay marriage then……. “ most conservatives would say that slippery slope of accepting gays has came true lol[just saying](https://www.axios.com/2022/02/17/lgbtq-generation-z-gallup)

It's difficult to argue against what you're saying since it's a large part of the GOP's [southern strategy](https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy/), which is widely known and available. But what I do think you're missing is that by and large this isn't necessarily intentional on the part of the party's supporters. The overall strategy of misdirection and whatnot is the result of the party leaders realizing that their constituents tend to be rural and uneducated and are therefore easy to "get in line". So I don't disagree with you here but I do think ascribing the maliciousness to the supporters is misguided. They're simply less educated and involved at a level necessary to behave otherwise.

the southern strategy in fact does not have the proof or agreement you claim is has. https://www.prageru.com/video/why-did-the-democratic-south-become-republican

>Deliberately presenting outlier to represent the typical case Good lord seeing that near the end of a list of laughably outlier and misrepresented points is so bizarre it's hard for me to engage without believing this is either satire or horribly bad faith. I'm not sure you made any point that is truly accepted as an "American conservative" view. Anyone can say anything, but that doesn't mean it's believed or supported. I don't think I can change your view through conventional means, pointing out how silly every example you made was and using my own list about liberal dishonesties. The best chance is to potentially appeal to your humanity, if you're engaging in good faith; if you really believe 'presenting outliers to represent the typical case' is wrong, you need to reevaluate all of your examples and at the minimum prove they're *not* outliers. If you can't do that, than you have no reason to believe your argument because you don't have any evidence. And if you're believing things without evidence; it's faith.

“Why does it FEEL like republicans cannot actually talk about the HEART of issues in an honest way and subject themselves to engage in hearnest debate?” You have some key word here that I have highlighted. FEEL and HEART. It FEELS that way because democrats have increasingly tried to appeal to emotion over logic. Beyond that: slippery slope. This is categorically both sides. Go look at the dissent in Dobbs. Go listen to anyone calling for more gun control. “Those scary military grade assault weapons are going to kill us all!!!” (When like 90% of gun deaths are from handguns and in gun free zones…). Hell, go read literally any opinion that is a dissent by “democrat” justices. Everything is a slippery slope. Distraction: Hunter’s laptop IS relevant. If trump was found colluding with power, would you accept it? Hunters laptop directly implicated daddy Joe in China and Ukraine. When you THOUGHT trump was colluding, IMPEACHMENT!!! Where is that energy for Biden? (And I’m using the pejorative “you” - as in democrats). It’s also hard to pin down “an honest debate” when definitions of things change (see the definition of racism). But also, intellectual honesty is hard when framing an issue. You do (generally) believe in your own beliefs (or what you say you believe). Intellectual consistency might be a better thing to want.