We all know (probably including you, but I will give you the benefit of the doubt) that the "cold civil war" comment wasn't about gerrymandering in a general sense, which has been around for a century, but about a specific recent redistricting (and gerrymandering) bill in Texas. The sentence doesn't really make sense if you interpret "gerrymandering and redistricting" in an abstract sense because (1) it's not a new thing and (2) everyone does it. That is why they didn't need to state it to make the reference to the Texas news clear. If you were aware of the Texas news, you would also have drawn the obvious inference. However, equivocating this Texas idiocy with actual political violence (which is what the "cold civil war" comment does) is disturbing at best.

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wewtyflakes 5 days ago | parent [-]

This is not what I was calling out. You made a bad-faith strawman argument, stating something of which I think you knew would be _not_ what the other poster intended (i.e. "I'm glad you agree with me..."). Your point would have been better made if it was posed like "What do you think of redistricting in Illinois and Massachusetts?" That would have stood on its own.

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pclmulqdq 5 days ago | parent [-]

The poster made a comment using imprecise generalities that was intended to imply specifics. When taken as a set of generalities, it seems a lot softer and less politically pointed than it is. I treated what they said as what they wanted to say in order to expose what they meant.

A strawman in the common usage of the term involves changing the argument to a weaker version that is not within the text you are arguing with. If you want to suggest that this is fallacious, you could call it a tu quoque fallacy, which was the point of the post.

However, when you want to claim the moral high ground to forgive/soften a political assassination, it does matter that you are being a hypocrite about it.

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wewtyflakes 4 days ago | parent [-]

That is a lot of word salad to dance around bad faith arguments.

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pclmulqdq 4 days ago | parent [-]

Responding to a bad-faith argument by pointing out it is bad-faith is generally acceptable.

	▲	wewtyflakes 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		Well, your post was the one that was flagged (and it wasn't me).