Sunday, July 18, 2021

Political Intersections: Trump honors Antifa member who was shot dead by police

 1) Trump and other reps have said the following about the Jan 6 event at various times:

a) The Jan 6 event was freedom fighters who were fighting the noble fight to overturn a fraudulent election. Rah Rah!

b) The Jan 6 event was a peaceful protest to overturn a fraudulent election. 

c) The Jan 6 event was democrats trying to make republicans look bad.

d) The Jan 6 event was Antifa. (See here)

e) Ashli Babbitt (a protestor who was shot by police at the Jan 6 event) should have been honored by flying the flag at half-mast (see here

If we take the intersection of d and e we find that Trump wants to honor a member of Antifa who was shot by police. 

To be fair, Trump is entitled to change his mind. But I wonder- did he ever really think it was Antifa or was that a talking point? If he really thought so then  when did he change his mind? I ask non rhetorically---  NOT a `gotcha question'

(NOTE: I wrote this post a while back. Since then Trump and some other republicans are tending towards the Freedom Fighters narrative.) 

2) Vaccines:

a) Some people think that the vaccines are bad to take. I suspect they would give some (incorrect) health reasons, while the real reason may be political. (One reason is that the vaccine make you magnetic. That sounds awesome! Others think that there is a microchip in the vaccine so that Bill Gates can track our movements. Gee, Mark Zuckerberg can already do that. Some thing it will rewrite our DNA. A bio major I know  tells me that such people are confusing messenger RNA with DNA. Great- we can now have a nice conversation and point out where they are wrong.) 

b) Some people think we should NOT give vaccines to poor countries that need them, or to people in prison,  since Americans should have priority. (NOTE- from a purely health-viewpoint this is not correct since a pandemic does not respect boundaries- if there is an outbreak in a diff country or in a prison it will affect people not in those countries and not in prison.) 

Are there people who believe a and b? I ask non-rhetorically. 


I am not surprised when people hold contradictory thoughts in their heads, but these two cases just struck me as particularly strange. Not sure why.

 


14 comments:

  1. Consider yourself fortunate that you are "...not surprised when people hold contradictory thoughts...". I'm aware that I SHOULDN'T be surprised but I almost always am and it lands like a solid punch.

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  2. What does any of this have to do with this blog?

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    1. How people use logic and set theory in real life vs how they use it in mathematics is a connection to this blog, though thanks for pointing out that I did not make this more expliciy.

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    2. I'm unsubscribing.

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    3. There will be no more comments from Anonymous ;)

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  3. Why are all these examples from the Republican side? Are you going to claim that Democrats are always logically consistent?

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    1. Yes, and "if you like your health care plan, you'll be able to keep your health care plan."

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    2. Of course, Bill didn't claim that.

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  4. To Anon from 7:56. Please post examples of when a democrat
    says A and seems to believe it (like Trump saying it was Antifa)
    says B and seems to believe it (like Trump saying they were freedom fighers)
    but clearly does not believe A AND B.

    Obama saying you will like your health care plan and be able to keep it was a standard lie by a politician, and not what I am talking about. I am talking about A intersect B.

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    1. like these contradictory statements?

      "You’re OK. You’re not going to — you’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations"


      "this virus is only killing ***primarily*** those people who had not been vaccinated"



      or things like saying the filibuster must be kept and then saying that the filibuster is a relic that should be eliminated?

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    2. In January he may have made some comment in private conversation blaming antifa.

      In July he made the public comment about Babbitt.

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    3. I seem to recall that when Trump was campaigning Democrats argued that he might approve Covid vaccines without sufficient evidence. They were approved after the election (based on the same evidence), and now Democrats claim that anyone who doesn't take the vaccines is "anti-science."

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  5. > I am not surprised when people hold contradictory thoughts in their heads, but these two cases just struck me as particularly strange. Not sure why.

    Maybe because the way they were presented was designed to make it seem that way or maybe your own feelings about Trump make you more prone to ignore the sources or the contexts or the timeline.

    I heard someone say that if Trump greeted a group of reporters with "good morning" and then a mere 8 hours later greeted a different group of reporters with "good evening" certain people would accuse him of being inconsistent and unreliable.

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  6. FWIW, I don't read either of these as logically inconsistent. For the first, isn't it possible that one believes that Antifa instigated the riot but that not every single person involved is a member of Antifa? Or that even if someone is, they should not have been killed?

    For the second, perhaps one is unsure whether vaccines are effective or not, and wants to hedge their bet by waiting for more evidence to come in while not (yet) giving vaccines away to other countries.

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