General Discussion

Your reply was to directed towards the rationality of the people complaining rather than the rationale of the complaint. The situational backtracking you point out is relevant only as far as to the one adopting the apparently contradictory positions and as far as you are not engaging in them yourself. I have a hard time believing you don’t know what I’m talking about as you seem to be involved in most of the “Dem bashing” debates and should know the points the sides are most likely to rely upon. I was also speaking in general about the attempts to shut down criticism of our leadership by characterizing any criticism as “nonsense” or “silly” or by pointing out possible hypocrisies. The whole idea seems to be if you can discredit the person’s rational abilities or manufacture a secret agenda, then you have successfully rebutted their claims. These are effective strategies of argumentation if you are arguing against a person rather than the idea. I think argumentation best serves us when it either guides us closer to the truth or to a solution.
But I guess why engage the marketplace of ideas when one it’s easier to dismiss recalcitrant ideas as being the product of infantile, malicious, disillusioned, or, in my case, unintelligible thinkers.