I like to also add “strong letter to follow”…

I’m not wasting any more time on your nonsense, Carlo. You aren’t listening or learning. I’m no longer going to repeat myself. I’m done with that. I can’t help you. You have to help yourself and learn. Only that can make any progress and make any conversation with you worth any bother of time at all.

We’ve explained to you in detail why you are engaging in Whataboutism, why your trollish assertions are fallacious and delusional, and how you can come to discover this for yourself if you cared to. There is nothing more to discuss. You have to simply follow the advice you were given and learn. Or not. Those are the only two options left to you.

To understand why your statement is a fallacy (and indeed, another example of Whataboutism), reframe it using the technique of forced perspective, although we’ve already shown you this and you keep ignoring us, but I’ll try one more time before giving up:

“A significant percentage of liberals who attack Christian homophobia don’t call out Hindu homophobia.”

What would be the point of even saying that?

Obviously, no one wastes much time on that here, because it isn’t Hindu homophobia that affects them. They don’t have neighbors who are Hindu homophobes, Hindu homophobes aren’t writing and passing and adjudicating their laws, they aren’t getting fired or beaten up by Hindu homophobes. It would be different if they lived in India or a heavily Hindu neighborhood. But most people don’t. And that is why you don’t hear much wingeing about it.

But you would fallaciously conclude, instead, that you don’t hear much wingeing about it because (as you explicitly said) you falsely think they are okay with Hindu homophobia, or that they don’t want to criticize it for some reason. The premise does not lead to your conclusion. It’s a non sequitur. Which is a fallacy.

So to go on about “what about Hindu homophobia” would be Whataboutism. It’s a bullshit way to try and change the subject to discussing irrelevancies, and thus avoid or distract from whatever it was we were actually talking about (like, say, actual laws being passed in the United States literally right now). All in aid of pushing your delusional false belief about liberals, and trying to make that into something more important than the actual issues we are trying to fight here in the U.S.

Your desire to not talk about things that actually matter here—and to try and get other people to stop talking about them as well—is not admirable. That your desire is based on a false belief that results from ignoring the actual advice tendered in the article you are commenting on is even less admirable. It means you don’t listen, you don’t learn, and you say being a delusional, shitty person instead of a useful, productive one.

If instead you tested directly (not sideways, but directly) your false belief—that liberals are “avoiding” talking about Muslim homophobia—you would easily refute that hypothesis as soon as you did what this very article explained you were supposed to do if you are rational evidence-based reasoner: look for evidence against the hypothesis. Then you would find (a) tons of liberals talking about Muslim homophobia and (b) no significant percentage of liberals complaining about people doing that, or telling people not to do that, or defending or denying Muslim homophobia, or anything else your hypothesis predicts we should observe.

Of course, someone not set on being an unreliable, deluded thinker would have done this before blurting out this bullshit you just did about liberals, and thus wouldn’t have.

That’s how we know you are committing all the sins we just warned you about, trapping you in delusional false beliefs with no real commitment to evidence-based reasoning.

There is only one solution to that, Carlo.

Stop being that.

Commit to being a rational evidence-based reasoner, who follows the epistemic standards I’m talking about, in this very article and others; and thus be the sort of person follows them before commenting, and thus who posts comments reflective of being that sort of person instead of the opposite. The whole world will then be a better place.

Even better still if you would spread this gospel to others, and actually help cleanse the world of irrational bullshitting trolls, cranks, and liars. Rather than doing nothing about it. Or worse, like you have been, contributing to the problem.

Another thing occurred to me as I was reading through Hegemony or Survival again that I think is illustrative.

Carlo, you think that the left is hypocritical on Islam.

What about the right? Are they consistent?

No!

They’ll demonize Iran until it’s useful to sell them weapons to terrorize Nicaraguans. They’ll demonize Syria until ISIS is scarier.

The country that unquestionably drives the most radicalization in the world, Saudi Arabia? Staunch US ally. Conservatives love selling them weapons. WWE loves doing propaganda for them to rehabilitate their image.

They will eagerly back Muslim dictators like Suharto and Islam Karimov. And, hell, Saddam Hussein.

They created the mujahadeen. And Brzezinski even may have bragged about dragging the Russians into the Afghan trap (there’s an article that claims that the source for this, an interview, is poorly sourced with many ellipses, but even that article has to admit that Brzezinski and Carter were quite happy to see the Russians stymied; and Reagan certainly deserves the blame for blowback).

The best you can accuse liberals and leftists of is being mealy-mouthed on Islam to avoid offending.

The least you can accuse conservatives of is fucking arming dangerous Islamists to the teeth.

And conservatives help radical Islam by creating an easily-demonizable version of the United States for propaganda, and destabilizing regimes.

Cheney happily made money with Iran.

So… if we were to be serious… we’d say conservatives are far, far more dangerous even in terms of Islamism and jihadism than liberals and leftists.

But conservatives always manage to find a way of burying their failures.

“No, you did not. You skipped several points here and here. Simply quoting me does not constitute addressing what I said. You seem now to be conflating your own non sequiturs as somehow constituting “responses.” I can’t help you if you can’t tell the difference. You seem irretrievably delusional here.”

The 2 examples you provided that I allegedly didn’t respond to link to the same point.

Is the point you are claiming I missed?

“Yes. It is.

That the DNC has raised the debt has no bearng whatever on whether the GOP has done so. So you can’t refute “the GOP keeps raising the debt” with “but the DNC has too.” That’s a fallacy. Phrasing it as a question is a rhetorical tactic designed to avoid being accused of the very fallacy you are actually trying to get away with.”

If this is what you are referring to, I did respond to it. Here’s my exact response:

I concur. But that’s not what I said that I do (I’m not trying to refute that the GOP is responsible for the raise). Rather, I would typically state the following: “I agree that the GOP has raised the national debt and should be held accountable”. And then follow up with “What about the DNC?”, just to see if the potential hypocrite will admit that their political cult is also guilty of the exact same thing.

“No there aren’t. That’s a delusion, Carlo. You are delusional. No one except fellow homophobes defends Muslim homophobia. And everyone who addresses homophobia as a problem has addressed or included Muslim homophobia at one point or another; often explicitly. There is simply no evidence whatever for what you are talking about. You have fabricated a false reality in your mind.”

I admit that all I have to show here is anecdotal evidence to support my claim. This is not the topic of our discussion and I shouldn’t have brought it up. However, I’m 100% sure that the double standard that I’m suggesting exists is real. But I wouldn’t make the absolute claim that no liberal addresses Muslim homophobia (I’m not saying that every liberal is hypocrite). The articles you provided are good examples of liberal outlets calling out Muslim homophobia. But I do believe that if those were examples of Christian homophobia the outrage would have been 10 times louder, because a lot more liberals would have called it out.

“No there aren’t. That’s a delusion, Carlo. You are delusional. No one except fellow homophobes defends Muslim homophobia. And everyone who addresses homophobia as a problem has addressed or included Muslim homophobia at one point or another; often explicitly. There is simply no evidence whatever for what you are talking about.”

I didn’t say they defend Muslim homophobia, I said they don’t call it out. I also don’t believe that everyone who addresses homophobia as a problem has addressed or included Muslim homophobia at least once. Keep in mind I’m also referring to liberal activists, when I refer to “liberals”.

Just to be clear, I’m not suggesting that the liberals who don’t call out homophobia are homophobes, I just think they don’t care enough about it or at all.

“And you have done this by standard fallacious reasoning (pro tip: “people who face Christian homophobia complain about it a lot; therefore they are okay with Muslim homophobia” is a non sequitur). It is not necessary for every LGBTQ advocate to repeat every single thing every other LGBTQ advocate has said. They rely on their collective voice. There are ample liberal articles against Muslim homophobia. Liberals do not have to rewrite them endlessly. They just refer to them when it becomes relevant (like, if you ask them what they think about Islamic homophobia). Which you would know if you weren’t busy disingenuously trolling liberal online threads rather than honestly engaging with them.”

My claim was that many liberals out there call out Christian homophobia but ignore Muslim homophobia (this is a pattern). I think it would be a fair inference that those liberals don’t really care about homophobia.

Again, this isn’t the topic of our discussion and I never should have brought it up

I still don’t think I’m guilty of Whataboutism or JAQing off

I don’t think that merely because something can’t be disproved, it makes it a fallacy. I think fallaciousness is about validity, not soundness. But I would like to hear Richard’s take on this as he is the expert.

I do admit that I didn’t specify what % qualifies as “significant”, and to be honest, I can’t give you a number. All I can say is that most liberals who call out homophobia in the Christian community, don’t call out homophobia in Muslim populations, whether it’s happening in the Middle East or else where.

And n.b. here is all the “liberal silence” you falsely believe in:

• At The Atlantic. A prominent liberal periodical.
• At The New Republic. A prominent liberal periodical.
• At The New Statesman. A prominent liberal periodical.
• At Religion Dispatches. A prominent liberal website.
• At The Conversation. A prominent liberal website.
• And even The Huffington Post, in multiple articles going all the way back to at least 2012.

I found articles and treatment of the subject going way back at NPR, at The Guardian, at Der Spiegel, at Dissent Magazine, at The Feminist Sexual Ethics Project, and so on. We’ve all been calling out Muslim homophobia for decades.

Carlo:

You say, “Asking if the DNC is also responsible is asking if there’s another cause of the issue (yes, a specific cause). No, I’ve never worded the question like that (“is there another cause?”), and I never said I did.”

You used the term “reckless”, Carlo. That slips in your argument, the exact thing that needs to be established, into the question. Now you’re talking about “another cause” broadly. I hope we can agree that the DNC running a deficit for good reasons is not a reason the RNC should run one for bad reasons.

You say, “This is at the heart of our miscommunication. Please read what I’m going to say very carefully. I wouldn’t ask “what about the Dems” as a counter, refutation, deflection, or anything of that nature. The fact that I’m accepting the claim (that the GOP caused the debt, for example) indicates that I’m not countering, avoiding or deflecting. Asking a follow up question is not indicative that I’m guilty of any of those things”.

So… you chose a super-shitty example. Because “The Dems caused a little bit of the problem, thanks mostly to the Republicans, in order to adopt good policies that actually justify going into debt” can’t be compared to “The Republicans tried to starve the state through waste, graft and fraud, and play partisan politics with the debt”. Your follow-up question is just stupid. We could also ask what share of the debt can be blamed on macro-economic downturns, or local graft and pork-barrel spending, or whatever else. There’s tons of causes. But bringing them up is a blatant topic change. And since you can’t once actually condemn the GOP and the right, I just dont believe you, Carlo, that when you do these things, you are not countering, avoiding or deflecting. Even if you don’t intend to, it comes off that way, because you come off like a partisan. So… communicate better. Stop changing subjects and stop asking questions related to unrelated topics.

“And I agree with your last statement that one should be more concerned that someone is incorrect, but woke liberals have taken hypocrisy to Olympic levels, and I don’t have the stomach for it. I need to apply a filter to filter out all the trash”.

As opposed to conservatives, who…

*Include countless fundy virtue signalers who voted for an open libertine in Trump
*Are both pro-free market and anti-immigration, even though the latter obviously contradicts the former
*Dragged their feet on insurrection issues while immediately moving to try to control left-wing protest
*Are super concerned with free speech while also trying to restrict CRT teaching, etc. and being in favor of Trump threatening to open up libel laws (in effect demanding seditious libel)

I can go on and on. Conservative hypocrisy is fractal. But you don’t mention it. Why?

Seriously, dude. You scream your partisanship, whether literal political party affiliation or political bias, with every comment you make.

You say, “Like I said, I don’t have the stomach for all this hypocrisy. I have to apply a filter. It’s not an intellectual response, It’s just a filter”.

Putting aside that I simply don’t believe that you actually detect hypocrisy very well, given that we’re having a conversation where even you have to admit that there isn’t any (supporting the Dems is not like supporting the GOP on the topic of the debt) and given how you never address conservative hypocrisy, I do get this to some extent. We all have to protect our emotional energy.

The problem is that you could just… leave the conversation. But you choose to talk. And you choose a method that will simply get you bad data. And will let bad actors hide. Try something else?

You say, “In your second, third, and fourth points you are basically explaining why the GOP is responsible and not the DNC, which is irrelevant because even if I were wrong in a non-hypothetical scenario, that still wouldn’t necessarily mean that I’m committing whataboutism, it could be that I’m just wrong”

Uhhh…

Dude, the whole point was to show that whataboutism can be distracting because the people who are asking about it can be wrong about the facts. That’s… already a big part of the problem. An argument from hypocrisy can be deployed fallaciously, but it’s always bad when ti has bad premises.

And this shows that the woke left is actually on the right side of a major issue, while the conservatives are fractally hypocritical. Why did you not perceive that?

Seriously, this is super telling. I know this is a hypothetical, but it’s illustrative.

Let’s say that you had asked someone who wasn’t me or Richard this question. They didn’t answer you as directly, as forthrightly, explaining the difference. They just got mad at you, or just got the issue wrong, or made some errors.

You still didn’t properly detect hypocrisy. And you would almost certainly arrived at the conclusion that liberals in general, and not that one person who may not have been able to defend themselves but was still actually right to support the DNC even when it comes to the issue of the debt, are hypocrites, but you would be wrong. And frankly, given our previous interactions, I would doubt you would listen to them making the point very well even if they did.

You are describing a case where your whataboutism was actually irrational deflection because, in the real world, your question had nothing to back it. And that will happen a lot, Carlo. You will ask questions that seem like “gotchas!” but aren’t. Because you happen to have bad information. That’s fine! We’re all flawed. But this is why this method sucks. You should stop using it.

“Not at all. Like you said, conservatives are riven with hypocrisy, and they have been for a much longer time. But right now, liberals have become the champions of hypocrisy. Conservatives should sit back and take notes.”

Christ, dude.

I just showed you, with that alone (let alone what I’ve added in this post), that conservatives have hypocrisy on every major public policy issue they discuss. It’s down the line. Cops? They’re super in favor of cops, until the cops are on the other side of January 6th, or until the cops are against Cliven Bundy, or against a Republican!

I would love to see you actually defend the idea that liberals and the left are greater hypocrites than that. You jsut exposed your bias here, Carlo. You could have just checked out and said they’re all bad. But you clearly think that conservatives are so much less likely to be hypocrites that you can justify an unequal focus. Bullshit, Carlo. Just… crap.

You say, “More proof that you misunderstood what I do. I’ve mentioned a billion times in this very thread that I concede the point and then ask the follow up question.”

What follow-up question? And notice how I asked you for an example and you didn’t give one?

Seriously. What follow-up question is there? “The GOP drive the debt”. “What about the Dems?” “The Dems just… don’t, not really”. What’s the next question? How many questions do you have to ask, how many derailing questions do you need to put out there that aren’t on the topic but by your own admission are only intended to detect hypocrisy, before you admit your opponent is correct?

I understand, Carlo. I understand that it’s chickenshit. You have found yourself a way of having an opinion without needing to subject your ideas to scrutiny or take a position.

You say, “If we agree that the topic is exclusively about whether the GOP is responsible, and I ask “what about the DNC”?, that would be derailing.”

As, for example, when there’s an article that makes exactly that point. You said the “reckless spending” of the DNC, dude. You did ask the question I am accusing you of.

You say, “When was the last time a nuke was fired because of homophobia? When was the last time a nuke was fired at all?”

Doesn’t seem to make Harris that concerned about Muslims getting nukes, does it?

But, yes, literal nukes haven’t been fired because of homophobia. (Well, aside from the role of homophobia in helping aggravate World War II). But, uhh, have dominionists in the US goverment acted awfully with their military power? Yes. And have they aimed to use the government, backed up by that power, to oppress gays? Yes.

This isn’t a rational response, Carlo. We didn’t have a pandemic for a very long time until 2020, and then we did. It’s reasonable to more concerned about homophobes who will getting far more power. And

You say, “Then perhaps your major concern is not homophobia.”

The fuck? How does that fucking follow, Carlo?

This exposes your utter failure of ability to comprehend how others operate, Carlo.

I don’t live in the Middle East. I don’t have as much accoutability to governments or peoples there. My tax money doesn’t go to their governents. It’s not my friends who will be screwed over by their homophobia and transphobia. It’s not my communities.

This proximity issue gives practical and moral reasons to focus on what is near to me. I can do more about my country than other countries. I know more about my country and have more access to information about my country than other countries. My silence matters more in my country because it implies my silent consent in a way it does not in other countries.

Brushing over this in this blase fashion says you know nothing about activism. And then talk to activists and deliberately misunderstand them.

You say, “Again, perhaps your major concern is not homophobia.”

Non. Fucking. Sequitur. Not evn as a “perhaps”.

People can think that something (e.g. homophobia) is universally bad but think that I can more effectively target my actions against it in specific ways.

Like you said about the DNC, where you wanted you being wrong to be an excuse: Activists can do all these things, and care deeply about homophobia, and even if their tactical considerations are wrong, that doesn’t mean they didn’t make them. And tactical considerations about where to spend one’s energy do not make one a hypocrite. Period.

You say, “If homophobia was your major concern, you would call out its most toxic form and that takes place Islamic countries.”

Absolute bullshit.

First of all, Christian countries actually have incredibly bad homophobia. Including killing of gays. Yes, I’m talking about Africa, but that’s irrelevant. You’re just fucking wrong, and Islamophobically so. What a surprise.

Second, and more important, what an incredible armchair quarterback thing to say.

What does me calling out Muslims for homophobia do, Carlo?

I don’t speak Arabic. Or Pharsi. Or countless other languages of Muslim-majority countries. I don’t have access to their media, not the same way as I do here. My criticisms are not going to be taken in good faith, thanks to little things like “Islamophobia” and “colonialism”.

But doing so will create the false impression that it’s right to focus on Muslims, and not on Christians.

In contrast, exposing homophobia here lets me be more informed about the cases, more likely to get media access, etc. With much less risk of splash damage. Because, well, in the United States, Carlo, despite your delusional beliefs, there is no massive anti-Christian agenda.

You seem to care so much about hypocrisy, Carlo, until it’s homophobes in the West. Then fuck it!

What a double standard. If you can detect a mote in my eye, that’s a problem. If you have a beam, well, wrong is wrong, right? Who cares what Carlo’s focus is?

Let me be clear. If someone says that homophobia in Muslim countries isn’t a problem, as their abstract position, they are a hypocrite. And it’s even reasonable to ask that people here act in solidarity with activists abroad, and signal-boost them, and not be myopic in their analysis.

But focusing on what a person is personally accountable to, can practically change and which will reduce, does not make one a hypocrite. And if you believed that, and honestly held that tack, well, you’d be condeming the right all over the place. But you don’t.

You say, “I understand that we are generally more concerned about issues and people that are within close proximity to us, but when homophobia is so much worse in Islamic states, and this is such well known and publicized fact, and you stay silent on it or hardly ever call it out, then perhaps homophobia is not your major concern. Or you are afraid to call out it because you’ll be labeled a racist (even though Islam is not race) by the race-baiting, authoritarian, woke clowns (can’t wait to see their tears in the midterms).”

Or maybe I want to maximize my efficacy.

You can’t tell unless you actually examine it. But good to know you just clearly assume that it has to do with politically correct fear. In a way you will never will with conservatives, who routinely act like craven chickenshits when it crosses their tribe.

Carlo: Muslim homophobia is fucked up. I don’t give a fuck about being called a bigot for saying that.

There. Ready to fucking admit the point?

You just brush proximity under the rug to automatically lock onto an objective concern. Fine! Why fucking talk about homophobia? Climate change is the global concern we should focus on. What hypocrisy to focus on Muslims with their homophobia while it is America that fails to deal with climate change so badly and leads the problem in getting worse!

If you find that to be a myopic, chickenshit stance, you know why.

You say, “Not necessarily. Sometimes behavior is more indicative of one’s true beliefs and values than rhetoric. ”

Which means someitmes it isn’t. Have a good way of telling the difference? Nope! You clearly don’t.

You say, “I may never say that I’m prejudiced against Christians, but if I generally treat them like shit compared to how I treat other groups, that’s a strong sign that I’m prejudiced against them. I’m sure you’ve heard the super cliché phrase “actions speak louder than words”.”

That’s not the same thing, now is it? We were talking about holding Christians to account for homophobia because of proximity. That’s not treating them like shit (wow, super funny how you took the stance that it’s possible to criticize Muslims without being Islamophobic, and now implicitly take the other tack!). You just changed the fucking subject.

You can be disingenuous about this all you want, Carlo. But you have implicitly admitted that there are reasons one would have the behavior you call out that have nothing to do with bias. It could be that they’re biased, but their actions alone wouldn’t show that, now would it? So you need a better methodology.

Yet again: Broken epistemology.

You say, “The left-wing establishment is 10 times more fascistic that Trump ever was. The fact that you can see this is quite shocking.”

Grow a fucking spine and some honesty.

Seriously.

The left-wing are not demanding kids be separated from their parents. In 2016 we didn’t have a riot to get Trump not to be elected; in 2020 we got one against Biden.

You are engaging in a grotesque equivocation fallacy. You will disingenuously point to bad examples of the left-wing being authoritarian, or whatever else, but that is not fascism. Palingenetic ultranationalism is. And the left is not palingenetic ultranationalism. Not here, not now, not anywhere.

Your blase dismissal of everything the Trump administration did and tried, the dangers posed by Republicans in places like Iraq and Syria and Iran… it’s incredibly telling.

You say, “Of course tribalism is growing everywhere, and I do think that conservatives are very tribalistic as well, but at least they are less authoritarian than the woke assholes.”

There are fucking neo-Nazis, Carlo. Loud ones.

Stop cherry-picking.

You say, “I said I don’t want to converse with tribalists. I don’t have conversations with Petersen, and I don’t even think he’s very tribalistic.”

Then you suck at identifying tribalism. He was on PragerU, dude.

You say, “I made it clear what I like about these right-wing figures (Peterson, Candace Owens, Shapiro, etc.): it’s their anti-wokeness. Otherwise, I disagree fundamentally with them on so many issues, especially on issues related to sex and religion.”

Right. They fight against your enemy tribe. That’s what you like. Their odious opinions on other issues don’t matter. They beat up the bad guys, so you like them.

Yeah, actions do speak louder than words, Carlo. You just told on yourself in an incredible fucking way. Their hypocrisy doesn’t matter. Their cruelty doesn’t matter. Just who they oppose.

If you had integrity, you could disagree with the left and still dislike these assholes. But you like them. Because hitting us is more important than being good, or decent, or right.

You say, “I don’t care if it’s considered bad (alcohol is bad too, but it has its benefits). I need to apply this filter to filter out all the filth and trash.”

And you don’t give a shit if it’s a bad filter.

And you will happily dance in filth and trash. As long as the right wing says it about people you don’t like.

Get a better moral compass.

I literary copy-pasted every point you made and responded to every one.

No, you did not. You skipped several points here and here. Simply quoting me does not constitute addressing what I said. You seem now to be conflating your own non sequiturs as somehow constituting “responses.” I can’t help you if you can’t tell the difference. You seem irretrievably delusional here.

Of course many liberals call out Muslim homophobia. But there’s a significant percentage of the liberal population who don’t.

No there aren’t. That’s a delusion, Carlo. You are delusional. No one except fellow homophobes defends Muslim homophobia. And everyone who addresses homophobia as a problem has addressed or included Muslim homophobia at one point or another; often explicitly. There is simply no evidence whatever for what you are talking about. You have fabricated a false reality in your mind.

And you have done this by standard fallacious reasoning (pro tip: “people who face Christian homophobia complain about it a lot; therefore they are okay with Muslim homophobia” is a non sequitur). It is not necessary for every LGBTQ advocate to repeat every single thing every other LGBTQ advocate has said. They rely on their collective voice. There are ample liberal articles against Muslim homophobia. Liberals do not have to rewrite them endlessly. They just refer to them when it becomes relevant (like, if you ask them what they think about Islamic homophobia). Which you would know if you weren’t busy disingenuously trolling liberal online threads rather than honestly engaging with them.