Quote:
Originally Posted by JohnnyB
I mean, I see what you're saying, but it's crazy to me that we should just remove the phrase 'both sides' from our dialogue regardless of context. What are the limits of this? What about 'both sides of a piece of paper' or 'both sides of the street' or 'both sides of Mitch McConnell's face deserved to be slapped by every person in America who values democracy'?
This is part of the point I was making in the RBG thread yesterday too. People are so emotionally reactive right now that it's preventing them from exercising simple reading comprehension.
If Democrats were saying the same things about a communist takeover as the Republicans, I wouldn't see an issue with using the phrase both sides. Is that wrong?
I guess based on the reaction in this thread maybe you're right, that people are so wound up right now that the mere innocuous use of the phrase 'both sides' is enough to destroy intelligent conversation regardless of how it's used. Letting the Republicans own this phrase doesn't sit well with me either though.
Edit: Wait a minute, I didn't even use the phrase 'both sides' in my initial post that you replied to. I said 'both parties'. So is this about just banning the word 'both' in relation to US politics? Trump doesn't get to own the word 'both'.
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LOL, In part I was also replying to a couple posts earlier too, where people were making similar arguments.
It's not really about the phrase, but specifically the context where the Republicans are bad actors within the system and blatantly trying to cover it up by pretending the other side is doing the same thing with no evidence. It tacks 10x as much energy to refute bull#### as it does to create it, so accepting the premise and saying both parties are doing the same thing does nothing but hurt the cause of truth.
I think we should say there are legitimate concerns that the republicans are attempting to undermine a free and fair election while lying about the other sides actions creating false equivalencies and may cause their followers not to accept the results.
I think that is as accurate as you can be in trying to express the point you were making.