POTUS UN Speech

[Dill]

(09-26-2017, 11:56 AM)bfine32 Wrote: bfine's "wholly unsupported claim" was in response to someone's "wholly unsupported claim" that the rest of the world was laughing at President Trump. I had recently read where Japan was happy that Trump mentioned a 1977 kidnapping of a Japanese citizen.

So somehow the onus fell to me to support a claim to refute a "wholly unsupported claim" (your attempts to "help" by posting a list of articles that occurred even before he was President did absolutely nothing, but show you could not find anything current to support the claim). Yep, that's how it works around here. 

I have no problem with you making your initial claim. There is no rule which requires everyone to support every opinion he offers with links every time he offers one. Not much would get done if that were the case.

However, when a claim is challenged, then there is a choice--support it or not. So yes, the onus "somehow" fell upon you to support your own claim. Citing your memory of an article by a non-Japanese who opined Japanese were happy about the mention of a kidnap victim--and offered no evidence to support the view-- in no way establishes that some sea change in Japanese opinion has occurred.  If it offers no such evidence, then it is not "relevant" to establishing your claim even if it is relevant to other topics, like what Canadians think Japanese think.

But again, it's a free country, and people do not have to support claims if they do not want to.  You're not a bad person if you don't back a claim. It is just an unsupported opinion.  Not illegal.  If one considers such inquiries open ended, then you can jump back in another time if you happen on something you think supports your claim.

The articles I posted at least have the virtue of showing what Japanese think of Trump from Jan 2016 through August of 2017, and their views were based upon Trump's erratic behavior. Has Trump's behavior changed? This is not like citing last year's stock market to make a claim about stock prices today. If one wants to dismiss all that as "not current," one ought to offer at least something which indicates reason for change. If no one can, then there is little reason to suppose there is a change. In the coming week more material will turn up. There will be another Pew poll in a few months.  Neither your posts nor mine have to be regarded as definitive at this point.