this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2026
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Two things can be true?
No. We are hitting people with a "this is a ridiculous thought-terminating fallacy" which includes a soyjak. No Chad to be found, at least not before I showed up.
You guys always, and I mean always do this: you pretend we unthinking deify XYZ Designated Enemy country with no consideration to anything, purely out of...i guess a sense of contrarianism? Because the thought that our support for a country you've been taught to hate might actually be the result of an informed internal calculus might cast doubt on the stability of your own worldview. So you have to spin the communist as a religious zealot, and Enemy Country as his religion, because that's some of the only terrain on which liberal ideology knows how to fight, nevermind that it's a fight against an opponent made of straw. It reeks of ideological insecurity, the inability or refusal to understand what the other person actually thinks, for fear that what they think might actually make sense.
Yes, the exchange you wrote in your head and then decided was true is a very dumb one.
So, hopefully I can communicate my sincerity well enough for my response to result in earnest conversation, thats usually what I'm hoping for when I chat with .ml folks (though most of the time its to ask questions as theres a lot of language/vocabulary thats more common in those circles than elsewhere on the threadiverse. Its easier to convey your sincerity with questions I guess)
Also sorry in advance, I'm tired and today has sucked and I'm pretty shit at being efficient with words even when my brain is working. You don't have to read all this, at this point I'm typing it at least as much for me as for you. I'm aware this is too much text I'm just not capable of editing.
Having looked up the definition just to make sure I'm not mistaken, I don't believe "two things can be true" is actually a thought terminating cliche? Its a pithy reply, but Wikipedia defines a thought terminating cliche as such:
"Two things can be true" explicitly has a point. The point is that they see both the US and China as having dystopian features. Which you may disagree with, but a pithy retort isnt a logical fallacy, theres still an actual position theyre taking. Is there something about the term "thought terminating cliche" that I'm misunderstanding? To be honest I almost never hear the term outside of debate on the threadiverse.
To be clear, I think there is much about the US that I find more dystopian than China. I also know that any time I talk to people I consider to have historical expertise or who have actual geographical and demographic proximity to China, they have pretty clear criticisms of the Chinese government. I do not have meaningful perspective by which to gauge the accuracy of their perceptions, and I do expect that an enormous amount of what I grew up learning about China is manufactured, or exaggerated for political gain.
Honestly the thing I feel most confident personally in finding dystopian about China is the surveillance. Depending on your perspective, that may be less of a big deal to you, and thats okay. But even if its significantly less than the almost 1 camera for every two people in Beijing figure, thats pretty dystopian to me. I do not wish to live in that world. And I do think that's an understandable position for me to have. London also has a frankly dystopian amount of surveillance, I wouldn't want to live there either, and theyre estimated at being a much much lower ratio of cameras to people.
Other issues people debate regarding China like human rights issues are more important, but I'm not a scholar, and I have no ability to read or pass judgment on primary sources, so I don't feel I have much meaningful perspective on other issues. And quite frankly, I think very few people on lemmy have that actual expertise to read multiple languages fluently and the academic background to pass judgment on sources either, so what random people online tell me is true about some of the most hotly debated segments of Chinese history doesnt mean a lot to me. For the most part, we all just live in this world of secondary and tertiary sources where all of the information we have is filtered through entities shaped by the powerful governments that theyre in some way beholden to.
I very explicitly don't see China as an enemy nation. I just also don't see them as beyond reproach and without any skeletons in their closet. Not so much because I believe fervently they committed xyz atrocities and despite no expertise or proximity, I just know thats true chase someone told me. I just don't think power really ever exists at the scale of a world super power of more than a billion people without abuses happening. I don't think really any country thats relevant on the world stage is without issues, and if a new country became a major geopolitical player I would fully expect that they would then also have issues, and likely already have those issues from along the way to becoming a major geopolitical player.
I get that you feel I have made assumptions about who y'all are and how you see things but to be honest your reply literally just described me in like 6 different ways that aren't even remotely accurate while asserting that thats what I'm doing. And I get why, y'all are undoubtedly exhausted from dealing with people who engage in a pretty hostile way all the time. But like, I literally like last week had an argument with someone who was mad at me for being too far left here on the threadiverse. I may not be the most knowledgeable or most deeply steeped in praxis but I do think I'm entitled to saying I'm not a liberal, and that not sharing your exact perspective doesnt make me into one. I don't see China as an enemy, nor do I hate china, even a little bit. I have zero hatred for China. I really like learning about how China has addressed certain problems- just a bit ago folks on .ml were explaining to me the program or policy that helps keep folks in China fed, I wish I could remember what its called off the top or my head, I think it had 5 in the name like 5 guarantees or assurances or something
I'm not frustrated with y'all for having a pro China perspective, I'm frustrated with y'all because any time folks don't tiptoe around the disagreement on whether China good or china bad, the pent up defensiveness y'all clearly live in as a product of what this site is like, turns into bitterness in an instant, and as an outsider to your perspective, even a curious one, it all just reads as trying to argue China good actually. And I get why, I do. But maybe its just because as I learn more about political theory I tend to lean more anarchist, but I'm pretty much never gonna be huge on "simping" for wildly powerful nation states (sorry, I'm tired and I don't have better vocabulary for what I mean)
And I get where it comes from but it still sucks shit to be around. Folks can't really look at anything differently from y'all without it being taken as an attack. And to be fair I'm sure it often is, and I have no doubt thats where it comes from. And yet I come back to: it still sucks shit to be around. And to be pragmatic, it doesnt even seem like a good way of deprogramming people from western propaganda, so much as just being a collective coping exercise where you can vent the resentment for folks too far outside your bubble for subjecting y'all to constant bullshit. That's really all I was trying to express; I'm venting just like y'all are. It's one of the most overtly miserable aspects of the social dynamics on this site. And y'all aren't the only player in that shitty toxic dynamic, but y'all are one of them. And I wish it didnt have to be that way.
As if homophobic insults are okay.
Very sincerely, what did I say that could even be construed as homophobic...? Of my last 5 relationships all of them have been queer lmao 😅
Fellating.
Huh. I would have never guessed that useage of the term would be labeled homophobic 😅
I'll keep that in mind next time I give someone a blowjob :P
its kind of a thin argument on which to delete my comment and then leave a reply implying I'm a bigot, now that no one can see what I actually said and decide if they think thats true lol
The comment is in the modlog https://lemmy.ml/modlog?commentId=26319955 that's how I saw what you wrote.
Yes, I imagine you can see what it says and make a decision on it, and thats all fair and well, but deleting it and then also leaving a public comment calling me a bigot feels pretty transparently like a bad faith way to act
They could have just as easily dm'ed me the reason for the removal, but they chose to delete the message so no one can see it and then also casually assert it was homophobia so blatant it would obviously never be okay. Which is a pretty drastic response that just happens to be when I voiced frustration about ml. Its awfully convenient for my perspective to be dismissed as the voice of a bigot
I guess you can argue homophobia if you wanna, but the combination of deleting and then publicly accusing me of bigotry for using oral sex as a metaphor for appeasement kinda just reads as the moderator equivalent of editing your comment after someone replies to make them look like they said something indefensible 🤷🏻♂️
Regardless, hope you have a nice day.
Have a nice day
Thanks, gonna do my best ☺️
This sounds like the exact same argument my ex high school friends used to use when overusing the word "r*ped" when playing video games because it's apparently "just a metaphor for a power dynamic".
(Not the person who down voted you) There is a small difference between those things 😅. Rape is not the same thing as fellatio, using fellatio in a metaphor is not making light of a trauma caused by sexual abuse. I'm not even sure how its homophobic given it doesnt specifiy the gender of the person sucking someone's dick. Its not a specifically gay sex act, people give straight blowjobs all the time (I, as a masc identifing person have given straight blowjobs)
If someone prefers folks don't use "fellate" as a euphemism for indulgent gratification of another person in a metaphorical sense, similar to "sucking up to someone", "patting eachother on the back", or licking boots (though thats specifically about doing so to authority, so not really applicable) thats valid, I can respect that.
It didn't occur to me someone might not appreciate that usage of the term, and if thats not within reasonable behavior for this space in the eyes of moderation thats okay- deleting the comment and then leaving a reply implying I said something horrific, however, is less cool. Thats a dick move, and pretty transparently a bad faith behavior that feels intended to punish me for voicing frustration with .ml
Which again, I've had many positive interactions with folks from the instance. But it is certainly not without its frustrations and outright unpleasantness at times.
Yeah sorry, I wasn't trying to equate the two words, just the arguments to defend using them. I can agree that the words hold very different weights.
There's an argument to be made, even though "fellate" might be something that is done by a wide variety of sexualities, it has history and that history is as a homophobic insult. Sure, words can be reclaimed by the gay community, but the metaphor of sucking dick as a subservient action is so fucking pervasive (especially in discussions about politics for some reason) and it points towards unexamined patterns of language that are very harmful. Add on the borderline ableism at the end and it comes across as bad faith at the start, so it's no wonder a mod responds like this.
I think you and I may have different definitions of "bad faith" 😅 I'm not sure what part of what I said was in some way disingenuous, or misrepresented my sentiment. My positive comments were direct and sincere, and my negative comments were also direct and sincere. I'm not really sure what the deception or misrepresentation would be. It doesnt just mean disagreeable, it means that someone is engaging insincerely or in a way that is disingenuous. That they're misrepresenting their motives.
The argument that I called "dumb and vapid" argument was essentially: "here, I drew a straw man of you where you're obviously wrong and don't know what you're taking about". In that image intended to portray the person they're disagreeing with as stupid they gave them buck teeth. Which is very explicitly an actual ableist stereotype associated with the dental deformities that often come with severe developmental disabilities, that the artist is using as visual shorthand. Using a drawing to straw man people you disagree with is a hollow, ill substantiated way to argue your point. And it is intentionally so. It does not try to be a serious argument. It is a intentionally, choicefully-without-merit argumentative strategy.
Personally, as a disabled person presently struggling to navigate the world due to my disability, the idea that calling someone's intentionally meritless argument in a given exchange "dumb and vapid" constitutes ableism feels like it stretches the term well past the point at which it becomes entirely meaningless. Arguments and behavior can be dumb. I don't think its a compelling argument to say it's bigotry to call someone's crappy and ill-conceived behavior/argument "dumb", and I don't think it justifies them deleting my comment and then going out of their way to publicly insinuate what I'm clearly just a shitty person.
We all have things to unpack, and if you wanna tell me as a queer disabled person that I should unpack how I use the word fellate or dumb, you can do so, I have no doubt that I will be unpacking things for the rest of my life (Hopefully we all will). But I'm still gonna tell you its crappy bad faith behavior to delete the comment because homophobia can be read into it and then try to immediately assassinate my character so no one questions whether the comment was deleted because it was critical of their instance. Since that would be a disingenuous and insincere way to use their power as a moderator.
Sorry for the ridiculous wall of text, maybe someday I'll learn how to be concise about conveying what I mean. Clearly that day isnt today 😅
Liberals’ thought-terminating cliché for everything.
Yes, two things can be true, but so can one or the other thing or no things, so you haven’t actually said anything.
Say the line Bart
the goal is not to make lies look true, but to make truth unrecognizable. not to have propaganda prevail over truth, but to render the two indistinguishable.