The Unvaxinated = the Taliban

[Dill]

(10-15-2021, 02:45 AM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: Really quick, first off, are you asserting that scapegoating is fine as long as the targets are not "minorities?"  Because you're poorly worded post certainly seems to intimate that. 

Scapegoating is never fine. What I said was--

"I am all for defining threats to democracy, provided there is some means of defining the threats and assessing risk systematically and rationally based on the kind of evidence which can pass muster in social science and legal venues. Just as I am against scapegoating minorities--which is NOT what the post OpEd was doing."

Asserting that scapegoating minorities is wrong neither asserts nor "intimates" that scapegoating is fine "as long as the targets are not 'minorities," any more than saying that it is wrong to steal from banks asserts that it is "fine," then, to steal from grocery stores.

(10-15-2021, 02:45 AM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: Resuming, ISIS and the Taliban are "a few"?  They're easily tens of millions of people.  Are you really asserting that there are far more GOP "radicals" then there are Muslim "extremists"?  The answer, I'm sure, will be as entertaining as it is evasive.

Now you've added "Taliban" to ISIS. But it is certainly not clear there are millions of Taliban. Last estimate I saw was between 70-80 thousand in their core force. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/taliban-s-afghanistan-takeover-raises-big-questions-u-s-security-n1276911.
You could add to that, tops, 150,000 in support elements. There will eventually be more now that they have control of the country, as there will also be more opposition to them. The top estimate for ISIS at its height was 100,000. Even if you add in Al Qaeda, still not "easily tens of millions," or even a half million, unless you are conflating the total population of A-stan or Syria with these groups. Pew research now estimates there are 1.8 billion Muslims in the world. So in respect to the total population, the groups you cite are indeed a few. Are they even .1% of the total? 

Another unwarranted leap leads you to assume I made some point that stands on comparing total numbers of radicals to radicals. 

That's just a red herring, and confuses and conflates different issues. Even if there were more total numbers of radicals out of 1.8 billion Muslims than out 74 million Republicans, we'd still be left with a GOP push to control elections via state legislatures is a real problem, a real threat to democracy right now, whatever the proportion of GOP to Muslim radicals. 

Also Muslim 'radicals," in the context of ISIS and Taliban, implies a minority inclined to violence. There is such a minority in the GOP, and maybe its numbers are less than .01 of the total membership. But those 'radicals' are not the ones driving legislation which will take election results away from the voters. They could not be doing that without the support of tens of millions who would otherwise vote their representatives out of office.

So opposing the legislative actions of a major political party, in part by measuring their action against democratic ideals and theory to block their legislation and vote them out of office, is not "scapegoating." But you cast normal democratic opposition as exactly that, setting up "preemptive" strikes and such, as has already happened to Jews and Muslims over the last few years by Americans who fear "replacement." If you were correct, it would mean (as Hollo pointed out) that virtually any challenge to a party program could be called "scapegoating." Democratic politics would be impossible. 

Scapegoating involves displacing or projecting one's problems onto another group of people deemed the real cause and threat. There can be real threats, for example, to democracy, which if not addressed will end it, as has happened recently in Russia and Hungary. The question is how to determine and assess real threats. ISIS was/is a threat to American democracy. But groups like ISIS and the Taliban do not make ISLAM a threat to American democracy.  Nor does treating "women and LBQT like garbarge" in Muslim majority countries, as happens in virtually all developing countries, Muslim or not. There is no evidence of a stealth Sharia take over, as there is evidence that GOP legislation in swing states will negate the integrity of elections. 

(10-15-2021, 02:45 AM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: Feel free to take four or five stabs at it before finally leaving a post up, btw.  

????