Why does he refuse to condemn them?

[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.