Revisiting Topic: It's Intellectually Dishonest to 'Like' a Philosophical Stance Just for its Immediate Fallout

Great Debates
21

I seem to be making parallel comments in two different threads. I see your point. But as I said in another thread, what you are talking about is getting down into the mud and fighting with the pig. And we all know what happens then.

22

But what happens when you don’t get in the mud to fight the pig? Sure, you stay clean; but whatever you could’ve stopped through the fight–whatever the pig was trying to accomplish–happens.

23

I don’t have any answers. However, I don’t think the usual result of getting into the mud is that anything gets stopped through the fight. What happens is that the everyone gets covered in mud, bystanders can’t tell which was originally the pig, and the pig wins the fight through experience.

24

And to add to my response, maybe what the pig is trying to accomplish is getting you into the mud?

As it stands MAGA’s actually are pigs, and they love to justify that by convincing themselves that Dems are also pigs.

I suspect (hope?) there are good center right-ish people who are uncomfortable with voting for actual pigs and don’t think the Dems really are pigs. If the Dems start actually behaving like pigs, they may only lose the principled and gain little.

The only hope for the US is that the center can hold (to put it as Yeats did). I doubt it will but I suspect the Dems getting into the mud would ensure that it won’t.

25

If we don’t look any different from them, it’s not just in the moral-ethical sense that we’ve surrendered the high ground, it’s the tactical as well. High ground is good. Looking like you stand for something besides “we want our side to win” is good.

Being intellectually honest doesn’t keep you from engaging and arguing. There are real reasons for one’s stance. Explain them.

26

That’s not what the pig is trying to accomplish. The pig is trying to roll back abortion rights and weaken public education and maintain racist institutions and enrich the wealthy. The pig is fine being muddy if the mud helps it accomplish its aims, and is delighted that Democrats refuse to get muddy if that keeps them from interfering.