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> the left is also known for lying,

Democrats are known for lying for sure. Establishment democrats like Pelosi, definitely. If that's what "left" references OK, I don't really disagree. AOC and Bernie, Stewart, and other progressives are not generally known for lying.

> which is why both sides are constantly bitching at each other.

No. This is some weird false equivalency thing that is popular with "enlightened" people. Some of Americas top brass (Mattis and Milley) have nearly explicitly said that republican dogma is to divide and conquer.

  Mattis accused the president of pursuing a divisive strategy. 
  "[he] is the first president in my lifetime who does not
  try to unite the American people— does not even pretend to try.

  "Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences 
  of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the 
  consequences of three years without mature leadership," he said.
If one party explicitly tries to drive division, you are going to get it. It's no different than Ukraine's lack of unity with Russia. Of course there cannot be unity. Of course they are "bitching at each other." One is attempting to dictate to the other how it is going to be.

> reputation destruction

This is a load and a bad faith argument.

For one, it conflates reputation harm with reputation destruction in order to justify actions that should cause reputational harm. Second, when there is "destruction", it usually follows doubling down on the anti-social behavior that caused the reputational harm in the first place.

A world where reputations can be harmed is absolutely a better world. You can argue that sometimes there is non-proportional harm, ok, but that's not the usual argument. "I am against cancelling" is too often equivalent to "I am against consequences."

The very same people against "canceling" will turn around and claim that a store theft or car window smashing should be punished progressively disproportionately until it is a real deterrent to crime including death. Reputational harm until it is a deterrent to the thing that caused the reputational harm is the very same principle.



this is about as perfect an example of the problem as you can have.




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