this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2023
290 points (100.0% liked)
Asklemmy
43803 readers
912 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
"Whataboutism", or if you are unfamiliar with the term:
People that use this mechanism are "poorly educated" and unable to hold a conversation and they should just be mocked by whatabouting even harder, so they can maybe understand that they're dumb and that's not how you should debate.
Example of the last argument I had recently with my dumb c*nt father:
Honestly, in your example, you sound like, as you put it, a dumb cunt. The purpose of "whataboutism" is to point out hypocrisy in your debate opponent's position. Your dad pointed out that a politician on your side did something equally deplorable to the one you'd called out on his side. Rather than respond to that and have a reasonable conversation about the nuance and differences between your chosen politicians, perhaps coming to better understand each other, you chose to devolve to nonsense, intentionally killing the conversation. That screams poorly educated (but possibly with an expensive education that makes you feel superior enough that you don't bother to question yourself and your ideals).
Well. No.
Whataboutism as an argument is about chasing the lowest possible ethical standard. You'll always find someone worse. That doesn't mean it's ok.
Even worse, they're always exaggerated comparisons, such as "zomg, hunter Biden was using drugs". Well, did you vote for hunter? And almost consistently, the sources being used aren't reliable sources. And once those claims are fully rebuked, they move on to the latest nonsense (there are a lot of scared whistleblowers out there who the allegedly mentally weak "sleepy Joe" Biden is apparently threatening lol).
And this seems to be mostly a Right wing attitude
Let's not make this political. Right wing and left wing are still part of the same bird. They used to move in harmony, balancing each other, but for the past few years, those wings have been either attacking or ignoring each other. The eagle is in free-fall, and it's mindsets like this that keep it from course-correcting.
But what about the children? Won't somebody please think of the children?!