Well, I could, yes. And, again, I could say that about an unscrupulous merchant who engages in false advertising if, y’know, it’s “not much of a lie”; I of course usually don’t; I usually say prosecute the bastard; but I could sure do otherwise.
And, at that, I could likewise say it about a devious criminal who commits perjury whenever I feel it’s “not much of a lie”; why, I could let all manner of fraudsters and felons off the hook, if I can handwave away each lie as “not much of a lie.”
Then again – what with this being the SDMB – we could guess at the response if a Republican’s lie were excused with a quick and cheery “it’s not much of a lie.”
Wow, you backed away from that “small subset” red herring fast.
See, now that you’re no longer excusing lies based on “small subset” reasoning, I no longer know what you claim would excuse a lie. Puts me in an odd spot!
No, it was a terrible attempt on your part. If I don’t like something, like targeting people for their religion, then if you add targeting people for their religion to another thing, I’m probably not going to like it.
You added targeting people for their religion to the hypothetical because, I assume, you wanted to elicit a response.
So, to recap, I didn’t back away, you constructed an offensive hypothetical.
I hope this has explained the issue to you to the extent that you are able to understand it. <3
You said you’d reply with a “meh” if a lie was true except for a small subset.
I wanted to see if such a lie would elicit a response other than “meh”.
Naturally, a response other than “meh” done got elicited fast.
That’s a non sequitur: you could just as easily say you backed away, and I constructed an offensive hypothetical. Whether you find the hypothetical offensive is irrelevant to whether you backed away. (Spoiler alert: you backed away fast.)
Oh, absolutely: you’ll excuse a lie if you feel like it should be excused, and if pressed will offer a test that sounds plausible – “small subset”, say – and if that leads to a hypothetical you find offensive, you’ll back away from that test as easily as Obama would back away from claiming that If You Like Your Plan You Can Keep It.
And he backed away from that lie as easy as breathing.
A small subset, isn’t the same thing as targeting someone based on their religion. Just like children getting killed in a bombing as collateral damage isn’t the same thing as bombing a pre-school.
No, you just didn’t understand what you were doing. Hopefully that’s changed now.
No, and again, hopefully you’ll be able to grasp what you’ve got wrong now. I appreciate the attention, but, I’d say that you appear to focused on getting a scalp rather than understanding what is being said.
Targeting “a small subset” “based on their religion” is both.
You are, AFAICT, fine with lying about “a small subset” of people – so long as the lie doesn’t target that “small subset” based on their religion.
By contrast, I of course don’t okay lies built around “small subset” reasoning, or around “based on their religion” reasoning. You breezily said you’d okay lies built on “small subset” reasoning – but when pressed, promptly made a “religion” exception.
Possibly you’ll carve out a second exception as soon as a second hypothetical comes your way. Possibly you’ll carve out a third exception and a fourth exception just as fast. Possibly you’d have a much easier time if you just didn’t commit yourself to okaying lies in the first place, but that’s neither here nor there.
I was checking to see if you meant what you said about “small subset” and “meh”. I’ll admit that your viewpoint is more than a little strange – excusing lies with a “meh” based on small-subset-if-not-based-on-religion reasoning is just weird – but I think your now-clarified position is eminently understandable.
What? Obama lied, repeatedly. You say he only lied about a “small subset” of people, to which you say “meh”, because he wasn’t lying about that small subset based on their religion. I find your position understandable. I also find it worthy of, uh, scalping. Again, a position can be both a troubling defense of lies and graspable.
Obama said – repeatedly, and on his own initiative – that if you liked your plan, you could keep it; as far as I can tell, he didn’t actually mean that, because he meant to exclude plans that he found unacceptable.
Do you think (a) he meant what he said; or that (b) he said it, but meant to exclude plans he found unacceptable; or (c) something else? If you can make a big fine case for (a) or (c), why, then I’ll humbly but honestly admit to now seeing the error of my ways; but if it’s (b), then his wretched lie speaks for itself.
And I notice you didn’t reply to the rest of my post! Imagine that!
As for your talk about collateral damage, I didn’t copy it because it seemed obvious: you said you’d reply with a “meh” if it was a lie about a “small subset” – but, when faced with a lie that was both about a “small subset” and religion, you suddenly backed away to carve out an exception for religion.
You want to talk about a bombing that’s both collateral damage and a pre-school? That’s one thing. You want to talk about a bombing that isn’t both? That’s another. I wholeheartedly apologize for not spelling this out before: if you’re describing a bombing that’s one or the other, it’s irrelevant; if both, it’s relevant – but so what?
I’ve already addressed your points. You’re the one who is having trouble understanding.
If a politico says, “I’ll lower your taxes.” And lowers taxes for the large majority of people, I’d give a meh to the fact that he missed the mark.
If a politico says, “I’ll lower your taxes.” And the system he pushes lowers them for everyone but Muslims, I don’t give a meh. Because targeting someone is different than a group of people getting taxed more at more or less random.
I honestly can’t hold your hand any better than that. I appreciate that you want to win, but if you have to ignore what I say to do it, is it really worth it?
The problem with that argument is that when a politician promises to lower your taxes, everyone has a pretty good idea whether their taxes will be lowered or not. If you don’t pay income taxes, no tax cut for you. If you’re over a certain income and he promised tax cuts for everyone making below that income, no tax cut for you.
The promise he made to those with private insurance couldn’t have been more clear. If you like your plan, you can keep it. Full stop.
It really doesn’t matter at this point though, it’s been a couple of years and the cost has already been paid by the administration in lower approval ratings and lower ratings for the ACA.
I have no trouble understanding that. I wouldn’t give him a pass, but understand that you claim that you would.
I understand that you carved out that exception in response to my hypothetical; I’ve previously noted it. I added that, were I to provide you with a second hypothetical, you may well carve out a second exception; and that, were I to provide you with a third and fourth hypothetical, you may well carve out a third and fourth exception; but once you clarified your position, it became eminently understandable.
I’m not ignoring the exception you later carved out; I couldn’t ignore it before you spelled it out, but repeatedly noted it after you spelled it out.
Again, you either can’t understand things said plain, or you’re trying to get a rise.
You’re wrong. Utterly. You attempted a ham-fisted gotcha, and it failed. I’m sorry you don’t get your scalp. Failure hurts, and I never wanted to hurt you.
You keep claiming I don’t understand; I keep noting that your position seems entirely understandable. You claim I ignore what you say; I keep noting what you say.
I gotta ask: is it possible that you’re misunderstanding something, here? Is it possible that you’re somehow ignoring something?
What’s this weird fixation you have with scalps? I don’t give Obama a pass for his lie; you do; that right there already makes me feel bad for you. You add that you’d give other people a pass for lying, and that – makes me feel worse for you.
You think some kind of “scalp” hinges on how you first spell out a small-subset rule and then carve out a religion exception? That’s just silly! What’s key is, you trumpet that you’re okay with lying; dickering over how merely clarifies your position.
To anyone reading this thread, please re-read my posts so you can see how The Other Waldo Pepper has ineptly parsed them.
I don’t see any use in trying to explain it to him any further. Suffice to say, what he wrote above is complete nonsense, and wrong. He doesn’t appear to understand that.
He thinks that being okay with a political promise being almost completely delivered, is the same thing as being okay with making laws to denigrate Muslims. I’d say that something that falls short for some small number of people and hits those people at random, isn’t the same thing as something that hits a specific group on purpose.
He’s certainly gonna declare victory since I’m not going to engage him any further, but hopefully most of you will see how little merit such a declaration has. <3