Why does he refuse to condemn them?

[*bfine32*]

(10-12-2020, 06:40 PM)fredtoast Wrote: Only problem with that theory is that you have to pretend that there is a "Minnesota gene" that people of all races from MInnesota have and no one inb other states have.

You have to play make believe to defend Trump.

Why not face reality and look at the crowd he was talking to.  At least 99% white.

Too bad Trump can't govern in the make believe world where his fans live.

REALITY IS A *****.

Why not face the reality of what he said?

I get you misquoted him in a failed attempt to prove a point and will fight tooth and nail to defend your assertion of what he said was racist. But I'm going to recognize the source and move on. 

[*bfine32*]

(10-12-2020, 06:43 PM)fredtoast Wrote: 100% BULLSHIT.

I never used the term "exactly the same".  You were the one who made that up.  All I ever said was that Trump was including himself in the "good gene" pool by saying he was the same (never "exactly the same") as the white crowd he was talking to.

O
M
G

[fredtoast]

(10-12-2020, 07:04 PM)bfine32 Wrote: Why not face the reality of what he said?

I get you misquoted him in a failed attempt to prove a point and will fight tooth and nail to defend your assertion of what he said was racist. But I'm going to recognize the source and move on. 

I never misquoted him.  He included himself in the "good gene pool".  He said he was the same as the people he was talking to.

Then he specifically mentioned the "Racehorse theory" which 100% proves that he does not believe that everyone in Minnesota has the same genes.  He 100% knows that genes are not determined by where you live.

He told a 99% white crowd that they had good genes.  And he was like them (even though he does not live in Minnesota).  That is reality.  When you start trying to defend his statements you have to drift off into make-believe land and claim he believes things that do not exist and he knows do not exist.  

[fredtoast]

(10-12-2020, 07:05 PM)bfine32 Wrote: O
M
G

If I ever used the term "exactly the same" post a link.

Otherwise stop wasting our time with silly responses like this.

Or are you going to back Phil's claim that "so different" means "same"?

[hollodero]

(10-09-2020, 10:39 PM)Dill Wrote: Thanks for your views on this Hollo.

I did not see either of these posts. No idea whom they came from (no need to know). I drop in and out of these threads. There are few I follow from beginning to end. So I have missed this history, and how it might color what happened above.

I'm sure I don't have blind spots, but I get what you're saying about others 

I do want to go record, though, as someone who wants to raise, not lower, the level of our dialogue. That's not a matter of sides. 

I believe I have sided with "the other side" a couple of times when either I agreed with Bfine or thought he was unfairly ganged.
And I do befriend and include "the other side" as fellow forum colleagues, when they'll have me. I want to see people contributing, posting links and views I otherwise wouldn't see, and working more deeply into issues, not attacking them for their views or pushing them out of threads.

I'll work with anyone to make the environment here more welcoming.

I think you are not a big culprit. I also think that everyone (also you, also me) gets entrenched. I also think both sides project quite a bit, seeing fallacies and so on in "other side arguments" they let pass when made on the own side. I noticed it with myself numerous times when people made me aware of it. It is all about sides and it is tough to try to escape that. If you're not willingly in the pot, people will still try to throw you into it.

In a sense, and in very varying degrees, everyone is entrapped in an unwinnable game. Of constantly trying to poke holes, to win a point, to score, to "own" someone from the other side, it seems to matter more than facts or truth. Or respect and decency, in many instances. Many debates are particularly bad and fruitless, and needlessly aggressive, from the beginning because of that. Courtesy of a decade old two party system. Defend your own, attack the others. Rinse and repeat.

Of course, to keep engaged as a player in that game one side now has to be, again in very varying degrees, defensive when it comes to Trump, which is particularly enraging for others. Also to me, Trump is the most glaring example of what this all might lead to. No matter what awful things he says or does, there's always a liberal to be found that exaggerates and thereby opens the door for discussing that and keep playing and scoring and owning and winning an unwinnable game. But these thoughts would all lead too far and can really quite easily be seen as said as someone from "my side". Also, topic. So I leave it at that.

[*bfine32*]

(10-12-2020, 07:31 PM)fredtoast Wrote: If I ever used the term "exactly the same" post a link.

Otherwise stop wasting our time with silly responses like this.

Or are you going to back Phil's claim that "so different" means "same"?

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/same

Quote:exactly like another or each other:

So your "defense" is you never said "exactly" [/quote]exactly like another or each other:[/quote]

I'm going with not so different doesn't mean same and bastardizing that into "We have good gene" which everyone that can read knows you misquoted, but refuse to own it was incorrect. 

i will stop my silly responses because they pale in comparison to "I said same, not exactly the same" 

[Dill]

(10-12-2020, 04:21 PM)bfine32 Wrote: He told a state that is 20% other that White non-Hispanic that they has good genes. He did that to garner votes from EVERY citizen in the state, not just the white ones. Any further analysis is just tin foil hat territory

I heard Trump spend a great deal of time mocking refugees from Africa in his speech, and promising Minnesotans he wouldn't let any more in, especially ones like Omar, who should go back to "her" country, obviously not Minnesota. 

Pointing out that Minnesota is only 83% white in order to claim Trump therefore MUST have meant non-whites when he referred to "people of Minnesota" doesn't fix this.

That's why I didn't hear the subtext you did: "You ALL have good genes people of Minnesota, including you African Minnesotans who didn't belong here 20 minutes ago; but at this one moment in my speech I want YOUR vote so I mean your genes too!" 

But instead of addressing my objection, you treat Trump's words praising Minnesotan genes as totally separable from his previous comments in that speech, not to mention his previous evaluations about African immigrants. So his words only mean what you think they would mean, were they spoken by someone who had not just gone off on anti-African rants.

Once you've fastened on that, examining his statement in context is "just tin foil hat territory." 

You've recently become interested in logical fallacies.  Do you see one here at all? 

[fredtoast]

(10-12-2020, 07:55 PM)bfine32 Wrote: I'm going with not so different doesn't mean same and bastardizing that into "We have good gene" which everyone that can read knows you misquoted, but refuse to own it was incorrect. 

Everyone who reads his comments can tell he is including himself in the "good gene" pool when he says "We are not that different".

It is that simple.

[*PhilHos*]

(10-12-2020, 07:29 PM)fredtoast Wrote: I never misquoted him. 

You claimed he said "we have superior genes". That is LITERALLY misquoting him.

[fredtoast]

(10-13-2020, 02:33 PM)PhilHos Wrote: You claimed he said "we have superior genes". That is LITERALLY misquoting him.

That is what he said.  It may not be a direct word-for-word quote (and I don't think I ever used quotation marks to indicate that), but that is clearly what he meant.

If he was talking about the Somalian immigrants in Minnesota having "good genes" he would not have talked shit about them, and the white crowd he was addressing would not have booed when he mentioned them.

Trump NEVER intended to suggest that he was "not so different" from the people living in Minnesota who immigrated there from Somalia.  Anyone who denies that deserves a gold metal in "mental gymnastics".

[*PhilHos*]

(10-13-2020, 03:09 PM)fredtoast Wrote: That is what he said. 

No, it's not. Not without an insane amount of word twisting. 

(10-13-2020, 03:09 PM)fredtoast Wrote: It may not be a direct word-for-word quote (and I don't think I ever used quotation marks to indicate that

Then you think wrong:

(10-05-2020, 06:33 PM)fredtoast Wrote: For example last week he told a group of his supporters that "We have superior genes".

(10-13-2020, 03:09 PM)fredtoast Wrote: If he was talking about the Somalian immigrants in Minnesota having "good genes" he would not have talked shit about them, and the white crowd he was addressing would not have booed when he mentioned them. Trump NEVER intended to suggest that he was "not so different" from the people living in Minnesota who immigrated there from Somalia.  Anyone who denies that deserves a gold metal in "mental gymnastics".

The only mental gymnastics is someone taking a comment where Trump is telling a crowd they look good and taking that to mean that white people have superior genes.

[fredtoast]

(10-13-2020, 03:31 PM)PhilHos Wrote: The only mental gymnastics is someone taking a comment where Trump is telling a crowd they look good and taking that to mean that white people have superior genes.

First of all he did not tell them they looked good.  he told them they had superior genes.  he even talked about the "racehorse theory" to hammer the point home.

So at that point the only question is who he thinks has superior genes.

Your claim that he is talking about all people from Minnesota is ridiculous for multiple reasons.

1.  There is no such thing as a "Minnesota gene" that all people from Minnesota have that people in other states don't have.
2.  In the very same speech he had been talking shit about the black immigrants from Somalia and how bad they are.  So even though they live in Minnesota he obviously does not think they have superior genes.

My claim that he is talking about white people makes perfect sense because.

1.  The crowd he is talking to appears to be at least 99% white.
2.  Trump includes himself in the good gene pool and he is not from Minnesota.
3.  The "racehorse theory" is a known dog whistle term used by white supremacists.
4.  The crowd booed when he talked about the black immigrants who live in Minnesota.

Basically to accept your position you have to play "make believe" that there is  gene that does not exist and ignore everything else Trump said in the same exact speech to the same exact crowd.  And those actions are perfect examples of what I call "mental gymnastics"

[hollodero]

(10-13-2020, 03:31 PM)PhilHos Wrote: The only mental gymnastics is someone taking a comment where Trump is telling a crowd they look good

In all fairness, in a sense this is also "misquoting" him. It is not what he said, but your interpretation of what he said.

[*PhilHos*]

(10-13-2020, 05:50 PM)fredtoast Wrote: First of all he did not tell them they looked good.  he told them they had superior genes.  he even talked about the "racehorse theory" to hammer the point home.

So at that point the only question is who he thinks has superior genes.

Your claim that he is talking about all people from Minnesota is ridiculous for multiple reasons.

1.  There is no such thing as a "Minnesota gene" that all people from Minnesota have that people in other states don't have.
2.  In the very same speech he had been talking shit about the black immigrants from Somalia and how bad they are.  So even though they live in Minnesota he obviously does not think they have superior genes.

My claim that he is talking about white people makes perfect sense because.

1.  The crowd he is talking to appears to be at least 99% white.
2.  Trump includes himself in the good gene pool and he is not from Minnesota.
3.  The "racehorse theory" is a known dog whistle term used by white supremacists.
4.  The crowd booed when he talked about the black immigrants who live in Minnesota.

Basically to accept your position you have to play "make believe" that there is  gene that does not exist and ignore everything else Trump said in the same exact speech to the same exact crowd.  And those actions are perfect examples of what I call "mental gymnastics"

Taking his words at face value means Trump is saying Minnesotans have good genes. Taking his words and saying they mean ANYTHING else is twisting his words and using mental gymnastics. Between you and me, only 1 of us is guilty of the latter and it isn't me. 

[*PhilHos*]

(10-13-2020, 05:54 PM)hollodero Wrote: In all fairness, in a sense this is also "misquoting" him. It is not what he said, but your interpretation of what he said.

I'm not misquoting him unless I'm claiming he literally said something he did not. To your 2nd statement, yes, I agree it is my interpretation of what he said, but it's also the most likely because it's the simplest and requires the least amount of "mental gymnastics" to arrive at.

[fredtoast]

(10-14-2020, 11:14 AM)PhilHos Wrote:  it's the simplest and requires the least amount of "mental gymnastics" to arrive at.

Instead of getting caught up in the semantics of defining "mental gymnastics" do you agree that it requires playing make believe and ignoring the context of his remarks?

You have to pretend that Trump believes there is a "Minnesota gene" that does not exist.

You have to pretend that Trump did not include himself in the "good gene" pool even though he is not from Minnesota.

You have to ignore that both he and the crowd were very critical of people who live in Minnesota but are black and came for African countries.

You have to ignore the fact that the crowd he was speaking to was probably at least 99% white.

You have to ignore the fact that he used the popular white supremacist dog whistle phrase "racehorse theory".

How can you say it is the "simplest" when it requires you to do all of the above?

[Big Boss]

https://twitter.com/davenewworld_2/status/1316398093877772288

[hollodero]

(10-14-2020, 11:14 AM)PhilHos Wrote: I'm not misquoting him unless I'm claiming he literally said something he did not. To your 2nd statement, yes, I agree it is my interpretation of what he said, but it's also the most likely because it's the simplest and requires the least amount of "mental gymnastics" to arrive at.

That is a subjective view. I'm not saying you're wrong (because I don't know what Trump thought), and I willingly concede it is not outlandish to hear it the way you hear it. I can't bring myself to claiming you have the only rational take on this. It is not outlandish to hear it like fred heard it either, or like I heard it.
If this were somehow a singular incident, I'd be more inclined to agree with you. But Trump had quite a few of these borderline statements where it takes a friendly listener to see no concern at all.

[*PhilHos*]

(10-14-2020, 11:32 AM)fredtoast Wrote: Instead of getting caught up in the semantics of defining "mental gymnastics" do you agree that it requires playing make believe and ignoring the context of his remarks?

No.

(10-14-2020, 11:32 AM)fredtoast Wrote: You have to pretend that Trump believes there is a "Minnesota gene" that does not exist.

You have to pretend that Trump did not include himself in the "good gene" pool even though he is not from Minnesota.

You have to ignore that both he and the crowd were very critical of people who live in Minnesota but are black and came for African countries.

You have to ignore the fact that the crowd he was speaking to was probably at least 99% white.

You have to ignore the fact that he used the popular white supremacist dog whistle phrase "racehorse theory".

How can you say it is the "simplest" when it requires you to do all of the above?

Point of fact, you don't have to do ANY of that. You can simply recognize Trump is not a nuanced nor deep thinker. And his speaking style demonstrates this. His comments suggests he was complimenting the appearance of the crowd. 

[fredtoast]

(10-14-2020, 03:49 PM)PhilHos Wrote: No.

Point of fact, you don't have to do ANY of that. You can simply recognize Trump is not a nuanced nor deep thinker. And his speaking style demonstrates this. His comments suggests he was complimenting the appearance of the crowd. 

The fact that he used the term "racehorse theory" proves he is very nuanced.  He knew exactly who he was appealing to with that comment.

Basically what you do is decide that it is IMPOSSIBLE for Trump to say anything racist.  So whenever he does you just claim he is too stupid to know what he is saying.  That is a sort of twisted logic, but it basically makes it impossible (in your mind) for you to ever be wrong no matter what he says.

How many times have you dropped an off-the-cuff compliment to someone by telling them they have superior genes?  How many times have you heard anyone else do that? How many times do you bring up the "racehorse theory" to compliment a group?  It just does not happen by accident or in the general course of conversation. There is a specific group in this country that is obsessed with eugenics, and it is not the general population.