Sorry for rambling
That's cool; I'll just ramble at you awhile. : ) I really want to say some things that I didn't say in the thread.
To anyone reading this, there was a comment more or less assigning negative things to "all mental illness and bigots". The author edited the comment after push back, but I didn't think that was really sufficient. In this essay.... (not memeing, gere we go)
What I wanted:
I don't have a copy of what was said. It's gone and I should be happy. BUT, I'm not. I want some acknowledgement that it is understood why that wording was awful and some assurance that attention will paid in the future. I'm basically describing an apology. It's not, apologies have an acceptance stage that I'm willing to skip. I do not think it's reasonable to hope all those with a mental illness accept the apology.
I did not explicitly ask for what I wanted. Honestly saying my piece and getting silence was expected.
What I got:
Despite editing my comment to reflect fair points, I do believe mental illness absolutely needs to be discussed more.
Ok, but you did not discuss it. You made a sweeping statement. It was worthless at best. Not a discussion. Why even say this to me.
The post continues by adding extraneous groups to the discussion. So now we have bigots, trumpers, the mentally ill, people exposed to lead, drug addicts, people with genetic conditions.
Now, I have no idea what to expect. I made a fuss about making sweeping statements about general groups, and now we have more people to vilify. I genuinely cannot tell if they simply not reading what I said, or are they listing people to line up against a wall? Only the author knows. I strongly suspected it's the former. I still do, but less so.
But I did get confirmation, that no, they do not see my point. They do not realize how easily they are vilifying those with mental illness. Here's what was said:
the fact remains that there is a deeper issue of mental illness that resides within the Republican ranks.
Is it wrong for a group to have a high concentration of people with mental disorders? I don't think so. In fact, do you know what group has quite a high percentage? Therapy groups. Are they evil? What is that quote saying about Republicans that can't logically similarly apply to therapy groups?
My Goal:
The real issue here that I did not realize how subtly I was referring to a rhetorical trick that was at the root of my complaint. It's very similar to the motte-and-bailey fallacy. Say a hate preacher wants to convince their flock that gays are evil. (I'm going to switch to saying "homosexuals" because that's how you are likely to hear this in the wild.) So instead, he just decries horrible acts of molesters. But the preacher never simply says "child molesters"; they sub in the phrase "homosexuals and child molesters". That way, the audience will connect them. They won't realize it, but their brain will wire a connection anyway.
This is the language I was fighting. My goal was to get this person to see that they were (unwittingly?) committing this rhetorical trick. I heard complaints that should be made of bigots instead made of "mental illness and bigots". Don't lump innocent motte in with a horrible bailey.
It is pretty likely that the author didn't read my post. It seems they picked words to respond to instead of any ideas. Like I wasn't really talking about guns or gay rights, but those words are kicked off the typing. The gun tangent was understandable, but I said nothing about homosexuality per se, and they say
There is nothing explicitly wrong with being homoexual.
Which again, true and ick. I tried to stick an implied parenthetical "or implicitly either" in there to kinda fix the ick, but what does it mean for something to be implicitly wrong? But I knew better than to bring this up. Not the fight to have.
The Conclusion:
I simply wanted them to avow or disavow the paraphased comment: "It is nice that I can now identify all mental illness and bigots". I expected them to see vilification now. And I think they did. In fact, they added some more calling them "people who proudly broadcast their own ignorance and lack of appeal to reason and moral standards".
So I guess that is where they are comfortable leaving it. I really think there is something about the mental illness label that makes them afraid of people. It's sad.
But who knows. They claim they "wrote very, very clearly: Trump supporters" when I asked what group they were talking about. Obviously, they didn't mean people with mental illness, but again, they did bring up bigots, trumpers, the mentally ill, people exposed to lead, drug addicts, people with genetic conditions. So writing isn't their strong suit. You did not "write" that. It was not clear. It was not very clear. And it surely wasn't very, very clear. But keep writing "very" in there. I might be fooled that it was clear eventually. Maybe they genuinely don't see my point. But I doubt it. There is clear resentment of the mentally ill.
