Windy wrote:I'm politically neutral, I hate everyone, any bias I might have comes from my extreme misanthropy, not my political loyalties. I'm more open to the possibility of conspiracy theories being true than most people, and there's nothing more annoying than that one guy who likes to act coy, posting wild conjecture, and making vague claims. They intentionally lead the audience to a specific conclusion but avoid actually making any real claims so they can pretend that it's the audience's fault for reaching that conclusion when it turns out to be literally nothing.
Or, alternately, so later on they can argue they were right about everything all along regardless of what happens. Yes, I can imagine that would be annoying.
How does your logic reconcile itself with the fact that your entire argument is an appeal to authority?
When appeals to authority are fallacious, what makes them fallacious is that the authority is not relevant to the claim in question. For instance, if I claim Colgate must be the best toothpaste because LeBron James told me so in a TV ad, that's fallacious because although King James is certainly a bona fide expert on playing basketball, as far as I know he doesn't know any more than you or I do about dentistry. So citing him as an expert on basketball tactics would be reasonable, but citing him as an expert on toothpaste would be fallacious.
In this case, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the foremost authority on the planet on the question of "what is Donald Trump's current defense against the Russia investigation?" is Donald Trump's defense team and Trump himself. What they say isn't necessarily 100% likely to be the right answer to that question (in theory they could be lying, though I don't know why you'd give your own defenders a fake defense to use), but it's far more likely to be right than my own opinion or anyone else's opinion. Fair?
On the question of whether Trump's defenders are right on the law, this is a more complex question that's easier to get wrong, but I think the best people to consult are lawyers experienced in this area of law, both those supportive of Trump and those who are not. If several of the lawyers who support him contradict what the Trump team says, that tells me the Trump team is probably wrong on the law. If several opponents agree with what they say, that tells me they're probably right. Again, I can't be 100% certain, but that approach is much more likely to lead me to the correct answer than just going with whatever I personally think. Fair?
An authority that may or may not even agree with you, I'm not really sure because I thought we were accusing Trump of colluding with Russia but apparently even if Trump didn't break any laws you're still somehow correct?
I'm not saying that the left as a whole has been right on this. The endless insistence that Trump is a traitor doesn't seem to be justified by actual evidence, just the sort of speculation Brennan has been feeding and a need to rationally explain his warmth toward Putin. If Trump were successfully quashing all investigations into his activity that would be one thing--if no more evidence is forthcoming, you gotta do your best with what you have. But as long as Mueller's investigation continues and remains independent, I'm for waiting to see what he turns up, not tainting the investigation by jumping to conclusions.
I'm not saying Brennan has been right about everything either. He had to publicly backtrack his assertions in March after implying that he knew the Russians have something on Trump (feeding speculation that he had secret info on the Russia investigation). The NYT
asked him directly if he knew anything he wasn't sharing and he backpedaled immediately. So I'm not arguing that the man is a beacon of honesty and forthrightness.
What I claim is simply that in the one statement that Absentia quoted, Brennan is correct on the basic facts. There are indeed many unanswered questions about what went on between Trumpworld and Russia during the election. According to Trump and his defense team themselves, there was collusion, in that the campaign tried to get info on Hillary from the Russians (but they argue that collusion is not a crime and happens all the time in politics, so he shouldn't be removed over it). The evidence that financial crimes were also committed in Trumpworld is in Manafort's indictment. I pointed this out not because I'm interested in defending the left's narrative of the election, but to demonstrate my point that Brennan's not secretly slipping info about the investigation to the public, just packaging already-public information in a leading way.
This kind of thinking is a trap. One of the reasons why conspiracy theories get anywhere is because they're logically sound and you technically can't prove that it didn't happen.
They're logically sound if you accept certain premises, chief among them being that there
is a reasonably successful conspiracy to suppress the truth and your primary critics are all part of it. Once you question that core premise, the whole edifice falls apart.
But if your point is that I should distrust logically sound arguments, not
despite the fact that they're sound but
because of it, what do you propose then? Remember, if your proposal makes any sense I'll be obligated to dismiss it.
Without concrete evidence of anything, every claim is just wild guessing. Even your claims aren't concrete, which makes it easier to backpedal later when it turns out to be a nothingburger. Everyone's been tiptoeing around actually making a concrete accusation on exactly what Trump actually did that's illegal while coyly trying to invoke imagery of Russian hackers. I've seen this a thousand times, if there was anything of substance in this shitshow, they would be direct instead of playing these childish games. You accuse Trump supporters of backpedaling, yet we've gone from "Trump colluded with Putin to overthrow to democracy" to "Trump may have not even done anything illegal".
Didn't I mention that the whole reason Trumpworld can get away with this is because they have a point? Haven't I been criticizing people for assuming Trump must be guilty of a serious crime before the investigation has concluded? You seem to be assuming that I'm on board with everything the Democratic base claims or believes, and I'm not sure why.
Have you considered that maybe your past as a 9/11 truther is an indication that you're predisposed towards being a conspiracy theorist? It's quite common for people who change their opinions on things still end up retaining the same behavior and thinking patterns that led to those opinions in the first place.
If I'm not familiar with conspiracy theory forums then I don't know what conspiracy theorists are like, so I must be a conspiracy theorist. If I'm very familiar with conspiracy theory forums then I know too well what conspiracy theorists are like, so I must be a conspiracy theorist. Heads I'm right, tails you're wrong. Very clever.
If I can't win no matter what, though, what's my incentive to play the game?
Actually the new hotness is to archive everything to use as evidence later.
That's not new at all. I'm suing you for false advertising.
The glorious thing is I was right about everything.
Yeah, you're the best.
"If it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them; but the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn