Hunter Biden, the president’s problematic son, has finally been indicted for his years of tax evasion. Only in an egregiously unequal society like ours do the children of the rich and powerful get away with corruption for as long as Hunter Biden has.
It’s going to be a major election issue for Republicans like it or not, do you give them that by pretending it’s not a thing?
No. I choose not to engage, because that’s what they want. They don’t care about acting in good faith, and they aren’t interested in sussing out the facts or nuance.
ETA: I wasn’t directing the “fuck off” at you, OP, but at the author of the article.
They do want you to roll over and not have a response, having a simple reasoned reasoned response that’s actually describing what’s going on without the conspiracy is far better. It shows you understand more and aren’t angry or shy to address it.
Yes, but they don’t care what the answer is. They aren’t interested in being wrong or changing their paradigm. If they have no response, they’ll just wave the argument away like, “You’re just ignoring the gravity of the matter.”
They aren’t interested in engaging honestly. Reality is mundane. Conspiracy theories are exciting, which is why the right is so full of them.
Why should what the right is willing to engage in determine what facts and views you have around an issue? Don’t you agree elites shouldn’t be treated differently, that the right will force this as an election issue as much as they can, and that you’d rather it explained away reasonably so people are immune to the conspiracy disinformation?
They don’t. But choosing to engage with them only helps their credibility, and that implicit credibility can help them sway naive and gullible people.
Yes, but since we’re in the context of this article, Hunter Biden specifically is irrelevant to that conversation. Running his name as a headline for this decades-old issue only gives credence to the efforts to link his personal conduct to his father.
Yes, but that presumes people are predisposed to reason, and that reason would immunize them. I simply don’t see evidence of that being the case for far too many people, and certainly not people on the right. Nobody is immune to propaganda, even skeptics.
Engaging on a personal level is a different matter, but on the public stage, engagement is the goal. I think there are exceptions, like where it puts people in danger (see anti-vaxx bullshit), but in general, the liar is not obligated to engage honestly.