Monte wrote:
See, there you go again. Your response was you believed I thought everything someone said in anger about the president was racism. That is clearly not what I said. I was speaking about a specific incident (Joe Wilson's outburst) and a specific person (Joe Wilson). You illogically applied that argument to *all* anger against the president, which I did not say, imply, or intend to imply.
No, I didn't. There was nothing about Wilson that would make me think he was any different from anyone else. The only thing that called attention to him was
his statement and the fact that he shouted it at the President. Therefore, the logical inference is that it's the fact that he was cricticising the President that's racist (since the statement itself isn't explicitly racial), not the fact that it was Wilson saying it. You failed to provide that information in your initial post; therefore what I said was not a strawman. Strawman is based on what you said, not on what you didn't say.
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Once again, no one constructed any argument for you. All of this information could have been in your original post. You chose not to include it, and what I said was not a strawman of what I did say. It's my job to ask for clarification if what you say is unclear to me, not to make sure you haven't withheld part of what you're trying to say.
Let me get this straight.
Because I didn't go into a lengthy argument as to why your characterization of my statement was inaccurate when I made the statement (before you constructed an argument I didn't make), your argument was not a straw man?
Are you trying to say that I witheld something intentionally? Because I didn't. I said what I said, meant what I said, and you understood it in a way that was inaccurate, and then formulated a position based on that fabricated argument.
I did not argue what you claimed I argued. You either made a mistake (which is fine), or you deliberately constructed an argument I didn't make in order to have an easier line of attack (which is a straw man).
You didn't get it stright. It's not because you didn't anticipate my argument, it's because your intial, one-line post does not indicate that there's anything special about Wilson to make anyone think it was him, as opposed to cricticism of the President, that was racist. No one said anything about intentional or not, nor about a lengthy argument. If all you wanted to do was say "no, I meant it was racist because of Wilson's history" you could have done that WITHOUT the spurious strawman claims. I didn't make a mistake, either. I went based on what you said. You made a mistake in failing to point out that it was Wilson, not the nature of his statement, that made you think it was racist. Even that wouldn't have been an issue if you'd just said "No, see Wilson is involved with blah blah blah" and we could have moved on, but instead you wanted to lecture me about how I'm strawmanning a statement that doesn't clearly make your point in the first place.
I don't have any problem with you claiming it's because of Wilson's history that you think it was a racial statement, but don't start hollaring "strawman!" when the one-line post you made gives me no reason to think that.
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In any case, Wilson's association with a group you find racist doesn't in any way establish how "You lie!" is racist or how there was a "boy!" missing from the end of it.
I agree. Again, just because someone doesn't let themselves shout "nigger" or "boy" doesn't mean they aren't motivated by race. It simply means that they're careful.
Or it means they aren't motivated by race.