wackatimesthree

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I have questions.

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I'll bet they'll be answered at the trial.

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I’m denying that “CT people” are a monolith.

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Sure looked like you were trying to argue that they were creative and flexible. As a monolith.

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This describes the bulk of posters and threads here.

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Yeah. I say that daily here.

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We all fall into this trap.

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That sounds like a monolith to me. And the syllogism would look like this:

1. People are generally not flexible thinkers

2. CT people are people

3. Therefore, CT people are not generally flexible thinkers

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The willingness to entertain a CT shows out-of-the-box thinking. Skepticism and the willingness to generate alternative hypotheses are signs of critical, flexible thinking - not naïveté.

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The willingness to entertain a CT shows out-of-the-box thinking.

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Completely disagree, because that's not what CT people do.

"Skepticism" is noticing flaws in a narrative and challenging those flaws. That ain't what happens with CT people.

With CTs people start with the a priori premise that whatever it turns out to be, the mainstream narrative can't be trusted, and then spend their time and bandwidth looking for any ways they can to support that premise.

They are completely "in the box" with their thinking. They just aren't in the box that conforms to mainstream ideology.

It's not creative or flexible at all. Charlie Kirk is the best example possible. There is NO reasonable reason AT ALL to doubt that the messed up kid they arrested is the one who pulled the trigger. Just with what we have now (which is maybe 1/5 of what will be released at trial), we know they have DNA and video evidence of the guy walking to and running away fro the scene of the crime.

But try to get one of the CT subscribers to even consider that maybe that guy actually did it and see how flexible their thinking is.

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"Prove" is entirely subjective. There's a lot of evidence that ballot stuffing occurred at a minimum. Whether or not that evidence is enough to give a person an opinion one way or another is entirely up to them. I don't know if you're saying this or not, but I do think the evidence is broad and substantial enough that "if you can't prove it that means it didn't happen" isn't an intellectually valid position.

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First of all, "prove" is not entirely subjective. It may have an element of subjectivity, but if it was entirely subjective then it would be a meaningless statement, just like relativistic morality claims are. Basically that's what that statement does: it makes the post-modern claim that truth (proof) is entirely up to the individual.

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I don't know if you're saying this or not, but I do think the evidence is broad and substantial enough that "if you can't prove it that means it didn't happen" isn't an intellectually valid position.

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Well that depends, doesn't it? It depends on why you can't prove any given claim, doesn't it? Especially if you're operating on the first statement you made above, the premise that proof is entirely subjective. Under that premise you could just be Matt Dillahunty and say, "I remain unconvinced" no mater what evidence is presented, and no one would be able to tell you that you were being unreasonable for holding that position.

But no, I'm not saying that. The guy I was responding to said every conspiracy theory floated has been proven to be true. That's not remotely the case. Chemtrials, the government wants to chip everyone, Biden is allowing illegals in so that he can arm them against American citizens and subdue the population, and on, and on, and on...

I picked that example because so many people say things like, "81 Million votes, that right there proves right there that it was stolen." No, it doesn't prove anything of the kind.

My position is that the Democrats cheated, and that's a fact. They cheated by having the Green Party removed from the swing states that Trump "flipped" in 2016 (He didn't really flip them. What happened is that about twice the percentage of voters who normally would voted for Jill Stein on the Democratic side b/c Hillary is such a nasty hag. And that was the margin of victory. Trump won in 2016 b/c of the number of votes Jill Stein got in 3-4 states...let that sink in. Democrats noticed this, of course, and cheated accordingly), and by way of the Hunter Biden laptop story burial and denial, which the media was fully complicit in. We now know due to polling that 1 in 4 voters in swing states from 2016 say they would have changed their votes had they known.

That's enough for me to know for a fact that they cheated.

But that's not what the average TD poster means when that is said. The average poster here doesn't even know about the Jill Stein stuff.

I know there's the 2000 Mules movie and various other video that shows ballot stuffing, but there's no way to know how many votes we're talking about and whether those votes made the difference in any given state.

Remember, "Democrats cheating," and "Democrats stole the election" are two different claims.

Personally, I'm not convinced that it did make a difference in any state except maybe Georgia. And I base that on having looked up the number of votes cast in those states and comparing them with the number of votes cast in 2016, and adjusting for the fact that Jill Stein was no longer on the ballot in the states that Democrats got her kicked off in. The only state in which the numbers looked significantly off in that comparison was Georgia. Every other one was what you would expect. If there had been massive ballot stuffing and that's it, you would have seen significantly larger total votes cast.

Not to mention the video that was posted here 2-3 weeks ago here claiming that the election was stolen, but not by way of manufacturing more Democratic votes, by way of suppressing Republican votes. First time I had heard that theory, and the election was five years ago now.

So maybe I should have chosen chemtrails or the theory that Biden was actually dead and the guy who bumbled around the WH was a lookalike.

Because my point really wasn't about the election, it was about the claim that all conspiracy theories have been proven true.

And anyway, Trump says the proof is coming any day now.

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It HAS been proven to the satisfaction of the average Trumpist, because Trump said so.

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Ed Zachery.

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you think people who weren’t as lucky as you were should starve to death.

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He didn't say that.

Those people shouldn't starve, they should go back to where they have legal status and buy food there.

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You did nothing to earn your citizenship.

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So? That invalidates it?

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I’m sure you profess to be a Christian, too.

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What exactly is it you think that has to do with this issue?

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Under U.S. law, anyone physically present in the United States can request asylum, even if they crossed the border without permission.
This is written straight into the Immigration and Nationality Act. It’s not a loophole, it’s the actual law.

After they are screened and processed as asylum seekers, they wait 3-7 years for a court date. So we need a way to unclog these immigration courts and speed this process up, as well.

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So why wouldn't we just change the law? It's ridiculous as-is. Why not just change it so that only people entering legally can seek asylum? That's a much faster and easier fix, it doesn't leave anybody out who really needs asylum, and it's reasonable instead of being asinine. I count three wins there.

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There also needs to be a feasible way for people already here illegally to obtain legal status.

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No we don't. What makes you think that's something we need?

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Make E-verify a federal requirement of employment. Many congressional Republicans have repeatedly voted against this to appease their donors.

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You sure Republicans are the only ones? This is what AI says when I Google it:

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Those who vote against mandatory E-Verify requirements often include Democrats, who raise concerns about burdens on businesses, potential discrimination, and centralized government databases; some Republicans, who see it as an overreaching federal mandate or economically harmful; and business lobbies/groups, who fear increased costs, complexity, and errors, while immigration advocates often oppose it for human rights or anti-immigrant reasons, despite the system's intent to enforce laws.

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Seems to me that nobody wants to give up the cheap labor, not just Republicans.

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Is there a line that can be drawn? Or do y’all believe in survival of the fittest? As it concerns nations and the populace.

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It's not a binary, digital answer.

It's a continuum.

When I was younger I leaned toward the hard libertarian end of the spectrum. As I have gotten older I have realized that going that far on the continuum is simply not practical.

I have also realized that while many libertarians/conservatives believe that it is, decentralizing power by taking it away from the federal level and dispersing it among the state/local government is not any kind of panacea. Things are just as corrupt on that level, but there's a lot less transparency. The workings of the Alabama state government are rarely covered in the news and when they are, they are covered by WFSA out of Montgomery, not CNN or Fox. And because of that, if anything, the backroom Bubba meetings and secret deals are even more prevalent than at the federal level.

And frankly, I have serious doubts that a country this big with as many moving parts as we now have could operate without power being centralized at the federal level. This isn't 1776 anymore. Just interstate commerce could easily become bogged down and impractical if some states decide to enact stricter regulations than others. It cold become very polarizing very quickly, and we have enough problems already with assimilation and a national identity.

I also have a much less hardline stance on "democracy" than I used to. I have come to understand the reason that the FFer's concept of this republic didn't include every person over 17 who can fog a mirror voting in federal elections.

Here's the problem with that narrative. The left's conspiracy theories are validated and supported by the people who define what constitutes a "conspiracy theory."

For example, catastrophic climate change is a conspiracy theory (or more accurately a doomsday prediction, the other side of the populist coin).

Yet people are ridiculed for NOT buying it. Not because the evidence is so compelling, but because it's one of the approved theories.

Russia, Russia, Russia is another example. More than likely whoever put that narrative together in the link wouldn't consider either one of those to be conspiracy theories.

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Which conspiracy?

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According to you it's all part of the same "Deep State" conspiracy.

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EphesianArmor

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Yeah, I feel the same way about it.