Biden's Press Conference!

[Dill]

(08-31-2020, 04:46 PM)bfine32 Wrote: nah, still gotta but this one in whataboutisim. The OP did no comparison, he simply commented on Joe Biden's press conference. Folks around here start numerous threads daily about the bad stuff Trump does and as soon as someone tries to provide an example of something similar happening in the past it's called whatabourisim. Sometimes by the very folks trying to dismiss the OP.

(08-31-2020, 02:59 PM)BFritz21 Wrote: I didn't even know this was going on but I just tuned in on Facebook and this is HILARIOUS!
It's sad that people might actually vote this guy in as President!
"Covid has taken, just since the outbreak, more than 100 year........  look........  here's.....  the lives.....  it's just.........."

 
This is a dumpster fire!  
The sad part is that it looks like he's reading form a teleprompter and still can't get it right!  
I think he's just trying to freelance sometimes and it's going down in flames!

Looks like Bfritz is implicitly comparing Biden to Trump when he asserts it is sad people might vote him president. Who is the other choice? The "simple comment" was to question Biden's fitness as president. Opposed to whom? He makes that clear in post # 5 when he writes "The difference is that Trump had a plan and was and is mentally stable and competent."  Without Trump, the whole thread loses its point--which is contrast.

The people responding to show that Trump provides much worse examples of misreading are making a case that, on the criterion used here, Biden is still the best choice. The point is not to say that Trump is as bad as Biden.

The replies might be whataboutism if they were intended to do "nothing more than to deflect/mitigate Biden's comments."  But they are not. They are intended to dispute any claim that Biden is on the same level as Trump, or lower, in matters of knowledge and coherence of thought. Quite the opposite.

(08-31-2020, 08:21 PM)bfine32 Wrote: Still going to go with it's "whataboutisim" when folks bring up Trump's quotes (funny it's called gaffs by many around here when Biden does it) in a thread not started to compare Biden's comments to Trump's. OP simply made reference to Biden.

Now if the OP would have said "Look how much more feeble Biden is than Trump" you and others would have a point, Short of that the replies are nothing more than to deflect/mitigate Biden's comments.

For instance if folks said Trump tramples over the Constitution with his Executive over reach and I were to bring up past POTUS have done the same, would you consider that whataboutisim?

I think our view on what is and is not whataboutisim is vastly swayed by how we feel about the point.     

Just another reminder: "Whataboutism" is not any ol' reference to past precedent or any ol' comparison to another politician. It is not influenced by "how we feel about the point"; it is an attempt to substitute "feeling" for evidence based argument.

Most importantly, it is an attempt to undermine an argument without disproving it. Hence the loose and highly general comparisons which assert an equivalence that won't bear close scrutiny, and which lead to digressions away from close reading and proof. In American versions, the end goal is to reduce all judgments to "bias" or the claim "both sides do it."  You lose but you claim you have dragged down the other side with you, made it equivalent. "The Japanese military killed civilians in WWII, but so did the US!"  Or to borrow and example from Trump defending Putin's killing of Journalists--"We kill people too."

No one really trying to determine the truth of a claim goes there.