Debating President Sunday on Self-Determination

Debating ‪@PresidentSunday‬ on Professor Flowers, Self-Determination, and G3nocide.
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[@jeranmiller]

“I don’t understand why you’re angry, honey. You asked if I WOULD take out the trash, as a sort of open hypothetical. I answered ‘yes’ because there are circumstances under which I WOULD. That’s different from asking if I was GOING TO take out the trash. So, this is basically your fault, you know?”

[@NexusAkayuki]

FOR REALLLLLL Sunday sounds like the asshole teacher that sarcastically asks you "I don't know, CAN you?" when you ask "Can I use the restroom" instead of "May I use the restroom"

[@justin-md4xm]

@@NexusAkayuki German teacher did that to me in high school and I sat down and said never mind. I'll match your pettiness with mine.

[@samvsmedia8680]

@@NexusAkayuki I think the can you joke is kinda funny, but I'm a bit of a grammar nerd

[@JasminUwU]

@@justin-md4xm You could answer that by saying that you weren't requesting permission, but asking if you already had permission or not.

[@isaac_marcus]

@@JasminUwU yeah my "imagining conversations in the shower" response has always just been "not without your permission". Or just walk out, because you CAN go to the bathroom, right? Just testing the hypothesis whether or not you can actually go to the bathroom

[@synthsynthsynth5651]

What both of them aren't getting is that the prof. Flowers debate was actually about ethics in gaming journalism

[@utubepunk]

Well done.

[@zennaphobia]

thank you for the laugh in these dark times.

[@pivotguydc1149]

"Yes but do you have the moral right to have the right to have the right to have the autonomy to put a rainbow flag in Last of Us?"

[@timetaker7816]

That is both funny and insightful because the anti sjws would use the exact same dishonesty as her

[@papervictories]

Ah, now I understand. Professor Flowers talked with Vaush for 3 hours to convince him that people can do things that people are physically capable of doing. Enlightening.

[@firestormingfox4169]

Very learn Much Autonomy

[@gabriellegoodwin4422]

I really like your profile picture! Are you an artist, or did you commission it? I want to know where I can see more art like this :D

[@papervictories]

@@gabriellegoodwin4422 Wow, that's super flattering! Yeah, I do art stuff. I'm most active on Instagram as papervictories, but I'm a bunch of places under the same name. Thanks for taking an interest!

[@inafridge8573]

Exactly. If Professor Sunday is right here, then the debate was entirely meaningless. Why would you spend three hours defending that the sky is blue.

[@premiersportingkc3443]

Honestly, President Sunday engaged in a lot of sophistry here. This was like a defense lawyer arguing the defendant didn't know what the concept of a gun was, even though there's video evidence of the defendant shooting someone.

[@paulthepotato9311]

Aptly put😅

[@jonathanmcgreevy6806]

There was something that didn't sit right with me about Prof's responses to this whole debacle, and I couldn't put my finger on it but I think this is pretty apt

[@thesnorg1442]

@Imaginary BS i'm getting strong ayn rand vibes from this

[@thesnorg1442]

@Imaginary BS don't do yourself like this

[@thesnorg1442]

@Imaginary BS no, i just find your grandstanding on guilt a bit embarassing. but your point makes little sense, frankly. please tell me how you reconcile these two statements: "And black people also engage in Western supremacist structures as well, and benefit greatly from it. Far greater and more consequential than any white privilege" "Western privilege is, in fact, more consequential than white privilege in any Western country" i genuinely don't understand what you are trying to say

[@seththeawesome3366]

The triumphant return of Mount Vaushmore

[@WarningBFG-isHiring]

@@TurtleChad1 I’m so confused on your stance on Vaush?

[@wiggledixbubsy98]

@@TurtleChad1 turtle approve

[@wiggledixbubsy98]

@@WarningBFG-isHiring no stances; just vibes

[@codymac4958]

I missed vaushmore!

[@frick6480]

I LOVE MT VOWSHMORE

[@ZeAshTonz]

President Sunday's autonomy defense is too detached from how everyday people think. Imagine if we asked one million people, "Did the nazis have the right to commit the Holocaust?" How many of them would actually opt for the autonomy interpretation and not the moral one?

[@silencer1286]

I agree with what you are getting at but the Holocaust happened during the war 41-45. No one would make an autonomy argument for a country actively invading other countries. The analogy would be more accurate when talking about Nazi Germany before the war. Which yes, it would be ridiculous to say that Nazis had the moral right to treat Jews like they did before the war, because they are an autonomous nation.

[@tankiebot704]

but that's a false comparison. the holocaust wasn't a question of autonomy. You can't compare jews to white colonisers.

[@thomasdendtler4077]

@@tankiebot704 the colonizers are dead. Average white people alive today didn't colonize anyone. This is sins of the father crap

[@haqoe9857]

You're comparing victims of racial violence to people living in lands that don't belong to them

[@silencer1286]

@@tankiebot704 this doesn’t refute the point of the original comment. When asked “did the Nazis have the right to commit the Holocaust?” No one would argue “well they are simply an autonomous nation state that needs to make its own decisions.” Most people would understand that question as do they have a “moral right” not do they have a “legal right”

[@mordojack2912]

I can’t believe he still has to talk about this debate. He sounds so tired of it.

[@JPEGBLACK]

he should be tired of it. people need to stop doing these crazy mental gymnastics trying to defend PF's shitty ideas. like holy fuck. just say she has bad ideas and move on. as a black lefty it angers me to an indescribable degree when lefties feel like they have to walk on eggshells around POC lefties that have abhorrent ideas. just call it out, it doesn't make you racist.

[@JPEGBLACK]

@Rohan Orton if you have a hard time figuring out if you wanna genocide da yt man, then you ain't black, jack *joe biden voice* /s

[@haqoe9857]

Maybe he should stop being so stupid.

[@KilimnikGenya]

@@haqoe9857 : Because he keeps engaging the conversation or because you feel he is wrong?

[@JRexRegis]

@@jatsko3113 "If you stopped defending yourself, maybe the attacks would stop" Genius.

[@thefirefridge5187]

Here's my contention. Even if I am to believe in PS's incredibly charitable and somewhat complicated interpretation of PF's original argument, what is the utility in defending it when we know now from subsequent conversations she's had that she almost certainly does engage in racial essentialization? Imagine somebody decided to defend a Tucker Carlson segment by saying "in this particular clip he hasn't said anything explicitly racist, therefore the interpretation that he is racist is wrong". Even if that is true, what's the point when we already have plenty of other cases of him acting explicitly racist. Why die on this hill?

[@andresmorera6426]

I am ultimately sympathetic to your contention, but, let's say we all believe PS. I can understand the value of discussing this and dying on this hill **if** Professor Flowers didn't express racial essentialist takes before, AND the way Vaush discussed things with Professor Flowers somehow pushed her into bad racial-essentialist positions that she expressed in future conversations (or it prevented an opportunity to convince her of a non-racial-essentialist position). That said, I don't think PS accomplished this if that was his intention (which I think it partially was).

[@andresmorera6426]

Never mind. Sound Judgement expressed what I wanted to say much better in another post...

[@Ragnaraq1]

Same thing I was thinking when dude was like "I'm not talking about her second video or anything after" I was like wut lol

[@ziontea7045]

@@andresmorera6426 I must search nearly 1000 comments but I will find it

[@DSPHistoricalSociety]

Exactly

[@jachariah4694]

Watching this live was so wild. I remember as he said “that’s a psychological question” it just sunk in how wild the gymnastics are here. Mans is allergic to the colloquial understanding of phrases and assumes everyone speaks with the exact same perfectly measured technical speech that he does. He’s a smart guy but the type of increasingly granular excuses he makes for her language would make it functionally impossible to criticize the racism of say Tucker Carlson or Ben Shapiro were we to accept it broadly. Inference and trying to understand what someone means implicitly is extremely important to the left and if we treated everyone with this level of over-charitability he affords to PF’s language in her Vowsh debate we wouldn’t be able to criticize any implicit bigotry from anyone ever.

[@rainbowkrampus]

Which is super bizarre because he even defends the need to "armchair analyze" people to an extent as well. Man's brain has gone beyond pretzel and into celtic knot territory. He needs to be careful. Keep this up and he'll fall into doom metal band font levels of mind twisting.

[@burgermind802]

Is this a debate channel, or a political advocacy channel. If it's a debate channel PS is arguably not out of line with his analysis.

[@Gloomdrake]

@@burgermind802 ¿Por que no los dos?

[@beforethegate8461]

While I can agree with that, vaush conceded in the argument that professor flowers isn't the same as a nick fuentes which is all Sunday wanted vaush to acknowledge. He's not necessarily defending PF

[@Hreodrich]

Oh he already covered that, explicitly stated that one does not grant that level of charitability to people on the right because…they are on the right… So we only grant charitability to those on the left…even when they sound like…people on the right….you know…the ones we do not grant charity. See? Makes total sense.

[@casscody3488]

43 minutes in and this hurts very much. If you ask someone, "Do you have the right to run over someone", they'd say no. That's because it's clear we're talking about the morality of the action, not the physical capability to do the action. How does President Sunday keep doubling down on his bad points?

[@ThisIsANameBruh]

There's a crucial difference though. In the example you gave noone is arguing against the ability of a person to do something. Only the morality of the action. However, in the case of colonized people, what's at stake isn't just the morality of the actions they engage in when they rebel but also whether they should have the ability to engage in those actions. Ie, whether they should have the right for self determination and autonomy. Some people argue that no, colonized people shouldn't have the ability to self determine because of xzy reasons. Vaush isn't one of them. But PF thought he was since in her head she kept hearing vaush's arguments as a slippery slope to derail the true conversation of whether they should have autonomy. So context matters. What Sunday is saying is that in the particular case of colonized people when you ask "is it moral to do an ethnic cleansing" you're by default dragging in the conversation the side of the argument concerned with autonomy because any action they take has to be first be asserted through anticolonial autonomy. tl;dr: you're presenting a false equivalence. There *is* reason to think you're talking of autonomy in this context, albeit PF fucked up.

[@Cruizinelli12]

It’s really irritating that these PF defenders always pivot away from the question: should a country be able to kill all its gay/trans citizens? If they’re consistent in defending the shit PF said, they’d just admit they think they do.

[@claymusicoff5663]

@@Cruizinelli12 it would depend. Normally, no. But In a hypothetical world in which gay and trans colonizers all came in ships to a country, enslaved, killed and raped through it. Would in that case it be cool to deport them all once u took down their leadership?? You are all forgetting the “oppressed” people part. Do I think they have the right?? No. But do I think they would be as morally fuked up as a group who just wanted to kill gays for the fuk of it… no. Not in the slightest

[@casscody3488]

@@ThisIsANameBruh You're saying because the conversation is about colonization, any question of "Do they have the right" somehow shifts into the context of self determination by default? Just...why? If the vast majority of colloquial use of "Do they have the right" is framed as a question of morality unless specified otherwise, then why would you or anyone else make this special exception for colonization? Just specify your meaning instead of trying to pull the vast majority of people into your default of self determination

[@Doccit]

Per Sunday, Vaush had an "incorrect reading" of what Professor Flowers said in that initial debate. This is to claim that Vaush misunderstood what Professor Flowers meant. But Sunday makes clear that he isn't actually interested in what was in Professor Flower's head - he won't admit evidence about what Professor Flowers said after the debate to clarify her position. So Sunday isn't really arguing that Vaush had an incorrect reading - he's just arguing that it was reasonable to misinterpret PF as saying something more benign than what she said in the actual debate. Maybe so - but so what? Vaush was subsequently vindicated when PF clarified and doubled-down on many of the things Vaush attributed to her. Who cares whether or not there was an alternate reading of what PF said initially? What are the stakes here?

[@alesalazar1175]

Exactly! Later in this debate PS even admits this! I watched it live :P He states at some point that he is only contending that there is a 'possible reading' of what PF said that does not come to the conclusion of her supporting ethnic cleansing. And that he is affording that charitability to her because she is on the left. He says he wouldn't afford that charitability to someone on the right, admitting it is an extremely charitable reading just because of what PF claims to be. But you're absolutely right. What is the point in the extremely charitable reading of that/those particular sentences in the debate. If you have to ignore the context of the rest of the debate/ everything that happened after the debate. It makes no sense, what is the use? To defend PF simply because she claims to be a leftist.. ? By that logic he should go defend Tim Pools worse takes by isolating them from context and providing the most charitable reading possible. You know, because Tim still says he is center left 😂 It's ridiculous

[@haph2087]

I suspect that this is Vaush's interpretation when he says that Sunday is making a meaningless semantic argument. Sunday's response is to argue that his position is what PF meant "during the debate, but she changed her mind to what vaush believed later". Sunday's argument is that of two possible interpretations, one a straightforward possibility and the other a more generous one constructed by abusing ambiguities and ignoring all implications and their falsity, that the latter is correct despite being contradicted by later evidence.

[@HalfBackCrack]

People out here ripping their own arms off reaching for "Professor" Flowers.

[@KilimnikGenya]

White savior complex.

[@misirtere9836]

NFT-19! WE GOT AN NFT-19!

[@njester025]

This is the worst case of lack of grass touching I’ve seen in a long time from PS. So much pedantry and using philosophy to abstract the conversation to an absurd degree that no one who has touched a single blade of grass in the last 3 months would ever interpret the conversation that way

[@josejaquez4100]

Aren't these the exact same arguments made by everyone who criticized vaush in his conversation with professor flowers? Is it hard to believe that she was speaking about self determination based upon it's definition? Is it possible that maybe she feels that her community lacks autonomy because the only root she is connected to is the history of slavery, and because of that she frames this conversation around autonomy and self determination because that is what was stolen from colonized people? I think the abstraction here is the framing of a question of morality, because he used a hypothetical that has no basis in reality.

[@OrElseEllipsis1945]

@@TurtleChad1 A Soshellist turtle approves of touching diiiiiiirrrt

[@OrElseEllipsis1945]

@@josejaquez4100 Right? The comments on here are wild.

[@verager2493]

Vaush was showing him grass clippings the whole time. President Sunday is just a grass denialist

[@uneterostardust8233]

​​@@josejaquez4100 "She's allowed her genocidal rethoric because she's black." Just say these words and you magically won't be a Weasely snake anymore.

[@joshuachen5476]

The issue is that President Sunday is conflating "the right to ability" with "the right to do." There's a huge difference. We all have the right to be able to murder (because the alternative is extremely authoritarian), but we don't have the right to murder. By extension, a nation-state may have the right to be able to commit ethnic cleansing, but no one should have the right to commit ethnic cleansing. He also really fucks with the definition of "right" by explicitly defining it as the power to act. If that were accurate, then a Mafia don would have the right to commit crime as long as his syndicate is in power. That's demonstrably not how the word works in political science or otherwise, despite President Sunday's background. Rights are an inherently prescriptive concept, not a description of ability. "Right" is better defined as the authority to act (authority is an inherently moral concept). A sovereign state may deem it has the authority to commit war crimes-but that is *according to itself and its own moral system.* As outsiders we are not obligated to adopt its own perspective on itself. For example, from the perspective of international law, despite its questionable de facto enforcement, no country has the right to commit war crimes. The term is not descriptive. It's fluid, subjective, and inherently prescriptive.

[@jakuth99]

Yeah, I’ve seen the conflation of “right” and “ability” a lot with regards to conversations about this. And even ignoring the fact that rights are inherently prescriptive (e.g., even though I have the right to bear arms, I can’t obtain a gun immediately) conflating right and ability is wrong because there are circumstances where you can have the right to do something, but not the ability (see above) or conversely, the ability but explicitly not the right (If I had the opportunity to murder someone, and went through with it, I wouldn’t be able to say I had the right to murder that person)

[@euunul]

Lol. You definitely skipped logic classes in school. There is no right to be able to do separate from the right to do, is a meaningless distinction. Having a right that you can't exercise means you not having that right.

[@mars7304]

@@euunul there are thousands of examples of rights that we have that we cannot exercise for any plethora of reasons. I have the right to say slurs, for example, but social ostracization prevents me from exercising that right. I have the right to bear arms, but my financial situation prevents me from being able to exercise that right. South Africans could have the "right" to commit an ethnic cleansing without actually having the means or wanting to face the consequences of such an action (international condemnation, sanctions, political pressure, etc etc). The avoiding consequences bit is probably the most influential factor, South Africa doesn't want to tank their own economy by doing something that EVEN IF they were okay with (they aren't), would earn them warranted hostility from their allies.

[@euunul]

@@mars7304 having the right to do X means that doing X won't get you punished. In terms of legal rights having a right means that the state won't punish you if you do X or create the institutions and the framework necessary for you to do X. Like having the right to vote is meaningless if the government doesn't organize elections, having the right to bear arms would be meaningless if government bans the sales of weapons. If South Africans cleanse Boers they'll be punished for that, meaning that they don't have te rights to commit ethnic cleansing. Moral rights work the same, in a polite society you don't have the right to use slurs. That does not mean you are prevented from using slurs but you'll be punished for that.

[@JebeckyGranjola]

@Imaginary BS Yes, that is the point here. I think the confusion in this debate was between natural and civil rights. Anything that you are capable of doing is a natural right. A civil right is whatever a state decides to do, and it is self evident that it's a right because the state decided it. To say the state doesn't have the right to decide something is a contradiction in terms.

[@WhiskeyTangoFoxtrot_YT]

Unironically, if Vaush asked lefties, "whether or not the nazi's had the right to commit the Holocaust" those lefties would probably call Vaush a nazi because Twitter told them he was 😂 This is because they would default to a moral argument and would be questioning why anyone would ask such a dumb question. And yet Sunday seems to think that people would simply default to an autonomy one.

[@DevinMacGregor]

I think the question should be did Nazi Germany have the right to self determination. Did they have sovereignty? Because we are talking of a nation state. They may still say the same thing about Vaush but it puts them more in a pickle because you did not mention the holocaust. They would then have to come to grips to say why Nazi Germany did not have sovereignty and self determination. They may not but the question is there and is addressing the limits to both terms. The Nazis also rounded up people, IE ethnic cleansed, as well as had forced labor camps which were the bulk of the camps. Your work will set you free. Now you brought labor into it. Or they can mutter NonCompletes misuse of false consciousness: "According to Marxism, workers with class consciousness understand that they are being exploited, while people with false consciousness hold values and beliefs that benefit the ruling class, and do not understand that they are being exploited."

[@Nerobyrne]

@@DevinMacGregor But if they say that Nazi Germany didn't have the sovreignty to do what they did, they'd be wrong. They passed the Nuremberg laws. The holocaust was a legal action. It really annoys me when people say "you don't have the right to do that" but they mean "you SHOULDN'T have the right to do that". They make claims about reality but the claims are actually normative statements. The reason it bothers me so much is that it causes people to believe that everyone just understands that these things are wrong, but they pretend not to. Either that, or they believe that there are some abstract "rights" out there in the universe which somehow agree with them personally, and everyone has to adhere to, yet we can't find them and they have no power whatsoever.

[@beancheesedip8337]

I know this comment is kinda old, but after his debate with Non-Compete, you look like fucking Nosferatu

[@asherroodcreel640]

This kinda ended up happening

[@thehulk525]

Vaush: Sigh.. Oh no where is this going? Vaush: So professor flowers... Oh no, oh shit, nooooooooo

[@jaybee27D]

At 1:44:25 Sunday says that Vaush is “within his right to respond” the way he did. He thinks the optimal behavior wasn’t what Vaush did, but still thinks it was *morally* his right to do so. Within the context of that line, it would make no sense for him to have been referring to Vaush’s autonomy to respond as he did. That was directly an instance of him casually using the word “right” beyond the frame of autonomy.

[@audrey6821]

Yes! I’m way too tired to have been able to type it out like you have but that bothered me too!

[@towablewarrior2426]

Great catch honestly. It's on par with Noncompete asking a hypothetical to Vaush in a debate which would be so anti-hypotheticals

[@beancheesedip8337]

This debate was the equivalent of a teacher saying "I don't know, *can* you use the bathroom?"

[@nobleradical2158]

"Yes." _leaves room_

[@FluffySlothbombz]

Yeah the conversation was pretty clearly about the “moral right” to move people in my view. You ask anyone do you have the right to do something 9/10 it’s gonna be about morality not if they literally physically can do it. I’m happy no bridges were burned but Jesus Christ, Sunday’s interpretation was so ridiculously semantic and more charitable than any average person would take from it. Sunday kept referring to purely the conversation they had the first time but all PF’s statements afterward really point to her talking in a moral sense. Don’t hate the guy at all but jeeeez cmon

[@krobblox6421]

Based

[@sypherthe297th2]

Someone referred me to Sunday after the Flowers fiasco. He was basically pulling a Noah. She said s thing but she didn't mean the thing. I couldn't take him seriously at that point. I am seeing a new and more insidious racism on the left. It isn't any kind of anti-white thing although there are elements of that. Its more the idea that we have to support whatever minorities say no matter how horrifying and it is rather infantilizing. All people are subject to critique.

[@jwomackandcheese73]

I don't understand why people are trying to give her so much leeway on this. Either she actually believes and stands by what she said or she wasn't careful enough when she was speaking. In either case she shouldn't be gutting this myscu grace, especially after she doubled down on it multiple times.

[@jwomackandcheese73]

@@sypherthe297th2 I'm black and I agree with what you are saying. Anyone of any group or identity can have bad takes and say idiotic things. Which is great, because bad takes aren't due to someone's identity. Defending a bad take due to someone's identity is significantly worse, in my view. Just because somone is a minority doesn't mean their postions should be free from criticism and if a white person is doing the criticism doesn't make it invalid. This honestly just gives ammunition to the right.

[@beancheesedip8337]

To be fair, at the beginning of the discussion, they both agreed to leave outside context to the debate aside. He acknowledges that PF has done herself no favors following the debate, but they both agreed not to discuss that part. But I also agree that PS was actually unironically engaging in sophistry to the point of bad faith. He assigned so much charitability to PF that it looped around to bad faith.

[@hornet1065]

I feel like a lot of people seems to forgotten that Flowers started the conversation by offering Vaush "brownie points" by asking if he wanted to taste brownies she had made. She set the tone for the conversation there and then continued to talk condescending towards Vaush. I don't understand why people are trying to be so extremely charitable towards Flower and at the same time have pretty much zero charitably towards Vaush...

[@violetsonja5938]

Agreed, I rolled my eyes at that. People are defending her because they are either unwilling to follow her position to its conclusion or don't understand it. State autonomy or no, you can't move 100% of any population without violence. My ancestors were brought here against their will, but if Native Americans tried to force me out of the country I am not going willingly. Removing "colonizer descendants" will be as peaceful as placing an ethnic group in slavery under the guise of a nation's right to seek labor. Also, I have yet to see someone acknowledge separatist movements in Africa where some Africans consider other Africans to be the colonizers/conquerors. To support Prof. Flowers you have to accept the mantle of supporting killing people of color for their differing claims to land.

[@sargonsblackgrandfather2072]

Jesus. Wokescolds when asked if you should be racist? “No!” Wokescolds when asked if you can ethnically cleanse white people, “hold up I’m going to need to meditate for the next five days so I can travel to the twenty third dimension...”

[@mars7304]

oh man the mental gymnastics here are olympic level. This isn't even a hostile or unproductive conversation. It's just very telling how you can lead a horse to water but can't make it drink. You can convince people that a take would be bad, but you can't make people admit when someone they're fond of has made that take.

[@nackskott12]

V: I said “moral” hundreds of times in that debate and she made moral defenses for ethnic cleansing. PS: I don't think you said it twice, if even once, you're misremembering or misreading the debate. V: *shows an instance where he says moral and PF makes a moral argument back at him* V: I'm telling you there's no way she thought this was just about the sovereign power to decide to do ethnic cleansing when she makes a moral defense. PS: You said it in one instance, but the rest of the time it was just about sovereignty and self-determination. Anyway she was just making a hypothetical defense for what SOMEONE could believe, not what she thinks. This is what I think of when I think about the phrase mental gymnastics - stretching to reach any technical or semantic point that you can use to make a defense when it doesn't change anything. He should know that when Vaush proved there was at least a portion that directly talks about ethics and she still took the same position, that the argument is effectively over. She was asked a moral question, and gave a moral answer. Even if the rest of the conversation WERE about sovereignty, the moral argument ship has sailed and there's no longer any room to say she had no ethical position on ethnic cleansing. It's so frustrating seeing leftists making huge leaps to cape for a racist idiot with (incorrect) semantic arguments. I can't stand seeing this.

[@Wiffernubbin]

54:03 for future reference

[@NeoRipshaft]

Oh my god I'm dying and I'm only like 1/4 through lol - I have to admire President Sunday for his sheer pigheadedness. Having the benefit of being outside the conversation, I can think up points Vaush can't in the moment - I'm really hoping Vaush points out the absolute absurdity of someone continuing the maintain this connotative mixup that President Sunday is proposing after the consequences of that mixup have been exposed... and continue to repeat the same mistake for like an hour or two of debate... like it's incomprehensible to propose that Professor Flowers was incapable of clarifying this point, when Vaush not only made explicit attempts to allow her, but also also repeatedly invoked the consequences of that mixup... like if Prof Flowers seriously thought it was a distinction purely of autonomy and not morality - or, if you prefer, the morality of autonomy rather than the morality of the explicitly invoked expression of autonomy - THERE IS NO WAY she would fail to object to Vaush invoking the prospect of genocide as a possibility - her answer would have to be "well I've not said anything about if that would be acceptable" or "wait I've not taken any position on this expression of autonomy" but she never did, she repeatedly and reliably did exactly what any alt-righter would do, she denied that the outcome was likely or desirable - she refused to address the outcome, instead gesturing at it being unfortunate or undesirable... AND THEN also reaffirming that it might be a reasonable conclusion. Long story short - President Sunday needs to listen to a few hundred hours of Nazis debating Destiny or Vaush, and get some perspective on how people couch genocidal tendencies, then get back to Vaush and laugh about how naive he was.

[@rainbowkrampus]

Truuuuuu People in general should be well versed on nazi rhetoric. It's a crash course in fallacious reasoning and we're all better for developing the ability to sort through it. Lest we fall into it ourselves.

[@jellewijckmans4836]

OW you say you're an anti-fascist recount every vaush debate.

[@CrushedFemur]

So I'm not disagreeing with any of your conclusions, but PS is a regular viewer and has definitely seen a couple hundred hours of nazi debates. PS was just so insanely charitable to PF that it was mind numbing

[@PackRunner3]

I specifically remember at one point V saying "I support self determination, unless it includes a genocide" or something to that effect. Then she said something along the lines of self determination with limits isn't self determination. A direct contrast to V's statement that all bets are off with ethnic cleansing

[@JBlazingit]

1:14:30 “She a idiot” - President Sunday Finally agree with President Sunday on something

[@LDIndustries]

Sunday’s really coping hard here. Flowers has literally come out and confirmed literally every preconception Vaush and others have of her. Not to mention that the “self determination” argument doesn’t work if it is used to disenfranchise people, whether or not they were the dominant power group.

[@Sound_Judgement]

Since I was in the chat during this debate, and really frustrated with President Sunday's arguments, I wanted to take some time to write out what I think is the charitable interpretation of the point he was trying to make here. If I take everything President Sunday said about his own intentions here completely at face value, and don't try to psychoanalyze any of it, then I think he was making a point in this debate that was completely unrelated to whether or not Professor Flowers does believe in the things Vaush and others have said she believes in. Rather, it is a point about if it is reasonable to draw that conclusion from the debate itself, alone, based on what was said and done in that debate. I can actually understand the importance of this, as it is an issue not just of charity but presumptiveness. If President Sunday was right, then you could imagine that Vaush and others are assuming positions based more on communication errors than the beliefs actually being held. It is not good enough to see that Professor Flowers has confirmed our fears about her positions; that is just potentially us post-hoc justifying our assumptions and behavior, when we actually didn't have sufficient reason to come to that conclusion at the time. And if Vaush and others get into a habit of doing that on the public debate stage without that sufficient reasoning, a lot of harm could come from that: people antagonized and bridges needlessly burned. The problem is that I think President Sunday, in that interpretation, might be right about the larger issues, but is wrong about the specific case he thinks illustrates that point. Professor Flowers DID demonstrate the beliefs Vaush suspected her of holding IN the debate, and the inferences he made were completely reasonable based on her answers. And at some point, any charitability about her communication has to just give way to the fact that she is saying the things she is saying, and not stopping from saying them despite how clearly the question is being posed to her. Additionally, President Sunday, at times here, appeared to engage in a bit of cognitive dissonance, as he would be presented with direct evidence to the contrary of what he was saying, and then would find some small gap with which to challenge Vaush on, often appealing back to the language used commonly by the public and decolonialization figures (which, to my knowledge, he was wrong about on both counts) to appeal to the idea of this simply being communication issues. This, ironically, gave an impression that President Sunday was being charitable to the point of self-deception, in my mind, and was then was trying to justify his own bias, which came across as gaslighting even if he truly believes his case was made well here. While I don't know if its fair to accuse President Sunday of carrying water for Professor Flowers intentionally, he did often come across as unwilling to acknowledge that what she was saying can be very reasonably interpreted in the way most everyone else that has watched that debate has interpreted it. It is one thing to not jump to conclusions, but Flowers built us a bridge all the way there. All Vaush did was acknowledge that fact, and it doesn't exactly help Sunday's case that Flowers has acknowledged every part of that bridge as well.

[@Saurawr]

I think this is the perfect comment for this situation. I definitely agree that Vaush has a tendency to, intentionally or not, interpret what he hears negatively and reframe it in a way that gets the person he is speaking to confused and mixed up. I would like if he did less of that, because that actually IS a sneaky debate tactic. People are scared of it - its why when he asks a simple yes/no question people get really freaked out, because they dont want the conversation to turn into that. But everyone can also see this debate had Vaush make extremely fair inferences that anyone should have made in his shoes. I mean what did Sunday thing Vaush should actually have done in the moment? Ask a question sixteen times in various degrees of wording to ensure accurate answers?

[@TheLilLeo]

Honestly, 46 min in n i could careless what flower n president have to say. Everyone recognized what flowers was trying to say. she was just too dumb at hiding her real beliefs. This guy is just better at weaseling out from saying the quite part out loud. They're both just pro ethnostates at whatever cost.

[@isaac_marcus]

To the part about analyzing the content of something specific to make sure you're not post-hoc justifying, I agree that's important and want to point out that was crucial in Vaush's talk with RGR over the Doe incident, where he kept asking her "what **in this tweet** led you to say that"

[@josejaquez4100]

The best interpretation for both professor flowers and vaush is that this is miscommunication. And I think it's an acceptable explanation. Any other understanding would make both professor flowers and vaush horrible human beings.

[@JebeckyGranjola]

@Jose Jaquez I don't get you? Sure, that would be the *best* version, but where do you get "they are both horrible" to result from *any* other understanding? That would be the *worst* version. There could be other versions besides that which would be better. A version where one perfectly understood the other, but the other didn't understand thier own argument would't be the worst. Neither would the version where one really was a horrible person and not the other.

[@pen-zl5mt]

People on the Left like PresidentSunday playing mental gymnastics to justify and rationalize PF is one of the most depressing things I've seen on the online Left. Not to be repetitive but Vaush is right: There's no way in hell that Sunday would do any of this if a cishet white man on the Right were saying similar things.

[@jansettler4828]

The 2 most depressing things about this are: 1. Even after all the things said and done there are still people demanding Vaush to be more lenient with such creatures. When in reality, he was 100x more charitable than he should have ever been. 2. This shit is driving people from leftism. I can attest to that from experience.

[@tankiebot704]

because the context wouldn't be the same, you clown.

[@Ringoshiiro]

@@tankiebot704 what's the main contextual difference?

[@JebeckyGranjola]

Is president Sunday a Leftist? The only video I saw of his was where he said an tifa was as bad as fascists bc they both do violence, and there is no way to determine whether someone is a fascist or not, bc just like Flowers you must take everthing entirely literally and trust everyone is telling the truth about thier beliefs. Good thing that logic doesn't allow me to draw any inference about a guy whos stance leads him to always be defending g3n0cide supporters.

[@SS-xr7jf]

@@Ringoshiiro from what I understand it’s that she’s on the “left” and therefore we are obligated to dogmatically rationalize any bad take she may have.

[@ASolidSnack]

This is like a classic "debate team" type of debate, Sunday is trying to use rhetoric and sophistry to defend an indefensible point. Admittedly, he's very good at it.

[@Spencerwalker21]

He wasn't good at it my dumbass poked more holes in his arguments than holes in swiss chess. Sunday literally admitted he's only being charitable because she's not right wing. Just my opinion on it I get where you're coming from though.

[@ASolidSnack]

@@Spencerwalker21 I made this comment a little less than halfway through the vid, so actually watching how his argument completely evaportares once Vaush starts showing clips, I agree with you. His semantic argument only worked as long as he could claim Vaush didn't use the word "moral", which the video itself proves is false.

[@Spencerwalker21]

@@ASolidSnack agreed.

[@alexwynters600]

Even if PF was only referring to autonomy in her arguments, she failed so spectacularly in the delivery of that argument that the most reasonable deduction most people had is that she was pro genocide. At that point the onus is still on her to correct the record, however as we all know she never did.

[@jloiben12]

This video confirms for me that PF is, at a minimum, permissive of ethnic cleansing. PS is smart, articulate, and incredibly good faith yet even he is unable to sufficiently defend PF on this point here. If PS can’t do it then I feel like I am on firm ground

[@BunchyPanther42]

I have no idea why PF is the hill that everyone is willing to die on

[@yewwowduck]

He isn't defending PF, he came down on her _hard_ whenever prompted, his position and intent were extremely well clarified and narrow.

[@rainbowkrampus]

​@@yewwowduck It is not a total defense but it is a defense. He thinks people are misinterpreting one aspect of her arguments and is putting out arguments in favor of his interpretation of her words. Problem being that he seems to have a weirdly overly charitable interpretation of her words. Though it seems a lot of lefties do that. Not sure what seductive power PF holds over so much of the online left but it's pretty goddamn weird.

[@tankiebot704]

he defended her perfectly, prof flowers defended herself perfectly. YOu vaushites seem to suffer from something

[@Kropothead]

@@tankiebot704 Gaslight, gatekeep, genocide, girlboss. Slaaaaaaay entire ethnic groups, kween.

[@rotary7372]

Alright! New Vaush video. Let's go!!! "Professor Flowers..." Oh no. I forgot I have to cut my testicles off with a butter knife. I can't put that off any longer.

[@rotary7372]

@@RiceShouldBeFluffy I would rather painfully saw off my own balls with an edgeless knife than listen to any more meaningless blabber about a KZbinr who really doesn't matter.

[@guillermocortes4415]

1:10:00 This is the same conversation with Noah. Vaush; She uses "white" and "oppressor" interchangeably Sunday: She never said that Vaush: Here are some examples of her saying it Sunday: I mean, yeah, but she doesn't *MEAN* it. Edit: don't get me wrong, this wa's actually a good convo and Sunday actually conceded on some Ls as well as Vaush.

[@rech.5374]

true, he started by saying he wasn't here just to defend flowers but spent the entire time distorting reality to defend her by all means.

[@FireTrainer92]

@@rech.5374 which is weird because he was not defending her in his convo with Noah.

[@lunaMKultra]

Vaush got gaslighted in this debate Sunday Girlbossed by sanatizing the language of genocide and the gatekeeper is left up to your imagination.

[@benvel3392]

Gasident Gatesun Girlday

[@andrewstar21]

Somewhere thoughtslime is screaming "this is sophistry!"

[@bennypapino3670]

"Everyone before me was extremely bad faith" "here's my bad faith interpretation of the conversation"

[@NutellaMosley]

This is easily the most infuriating debate I've even seen

[@righteousrawb7225]

Aww why?

[@jackskellingtonsora]

1:19:00 The way he falls back in frustration when this person denies she's advocating for an ethnostate is hilarious. I felt the exact same. How can you listen to someone speak out of their own mouth justifications for an ethnostate and then come out of it saying that they're not advocating for an ethnostate. It's mind boggling.

[@ImaginaryMdA]

Ok, fine. He didn't burn the bridge. But at least can we light a trashcan?

[@uninstaller2860]

Isn't there a scented candle that smells like farts? Go light that one, it will smell the same.

[@Coach_Ren]

It is always morally permissible to light a trashcan on fire for memes

[@JeepnHeel]

Yes, we have the autonomy to choose whether or not to light a trashcan on fire

[@TRICROTIC1]

But lighting a trashcan on fire is against the law!

[@dr_ill]

If we were talking about autonomy, I'd think we would be using the term "is able to", not "has the right to"...

[@JasminUwU]

Or if he asked if they should be allowed to

[@zothOne]

I think the most charitable interpretation of what PS was doing was the following: - PF is a member of the left, and her actions must be interpreted in the most charitable light because of that. In the discussion, Vaush acted as if what PF was saying would constitute an advocacy, or at least apologism for ethnic cleansing, however there were other possible explanations that Vaush should have made sure weren't the case before he embarked on that road. - PS acknowledges that PF's subsequent video and many Tweets that she has made have proven Vaush's suspicions correct, however as a rule for the future, PS still thinks that charitability is a useful tool, and one Vaush should employ to a larger extent than he did this time. I don't agree with this because: - Vaush is correct, there was only one viable reading, and it was the one Vaush was doing. He had as much good faith as it was required for the situation, and he did his due diligence. - The fact that essentially there was a cheat sheet saying that Vaush was correct the whole time (PF's work since the debate), made this whole exercise almost pointless. I can conceptualize the value of fixing a possible mistake in Vaush's way of dealing with contentious figures, however it seems such a small point and such a bad example to teach this possible lesson.

[@Skelecopter-]

I think the "She's on the left give her charity" is a non-point. You give charity to someone initially (which PF didn't give and came in to fight) but that charitability can and should be revoked when needed. It's a simple question to answer, and if you hesitate and go 'well...' then you should be tough and grill them. It's not Vaush's fault her mask slipped in the debate. Then ripped it off completely later, which just shows Vaush was right to revoke charitability.

[@zothOne]

@@Skelecopter- Well... I did agree with you in the second section.

[@Skelecopter-]

@@zothOne Oh I know, I may have phrased it poorly. I guess I mean, charitability is being used weirdly with this convo and the whole drama. Like, because she's 'Left' we need to keep being charitable even after she sows doubt into her politics during the debate. Anyone can claim political sides, but we shouldn't hamstring the movement to accommodate bad actors with being too charitable. Sargon was always claiming to be a Classical Liberal, or how many reactionary people say to be Centrists?

[@zothOne]

@@Skelecopter- I do think leftists deserve a degree of additional charity. It only goes so far, and I think PF goes WAY beyond that point.

[@zotaninoron3548]

@@zothOne Are there genocide apologists are on the left? If so, what makes them left?

[@chibiraptor]

Sunday wants to simultaneously take a hyperliteral academic interpretation of what flowers is saying, as though she is speaking with academic specificity, while also allowing that she is just misrepresenting her beliefs, while also ignoring subsequent evidence of her beliefs. Sunday sounds like a knowledgeable guy, but his position on this sounds kinda dumb. He's going really hard on reducing flowers argument to its most hyperliteral, noncontextualized meaning. He wants to defend her position, and to do so, he needs to insist that all evidence past an arbitrary point (the debate) be discredited. Holy shit, this dude is pedantic as fuck. He wants to ignore her later statements in her videos, then also use the statement she gave him in a subsequent discussion.

[@ora5799]

I was there live, it was the most agonizing circular convo that was entirely semantic. PS also rejects actual clips from their debate which astounds me

[@zillafire101]

I just finished watching this on his channel, and I gotta say, it's probably one of the best discussions Vaush has had in a while.

[@TheArchalypse]

Most of it was trash what are you talking about.

[@JPEGBLACK]

if you call President Sunday watering down PF's positions with pedantry and mental gymnastics for 2 hours in a desperate attempt to make her shitty ideas defensible, then sure. great discussion.

[@JayD73]

I’m 1:30 through does this somehow turn into 10000 IQ debate in the last 45 minutes because everything up until now has been borderline insufferable 🤣

[@SuperSuperspoof]

@@JayD73 Amazingly enough, it does seem to take a sharp turn in that direction.

[@occasional_doomer]

Can someone explain what I’m missing about president sunday? He just comes of as a pedantic pseudo-intellectual to me. I’m 10 minutes in and his defense of PF is that “well if you altered her statement slightly, her position would be more defensible. Ignore all her actions and statements afterwords for some reason.” Why? The amount of energy and assumptions you need to interpret her position in this positive of a light is absurd to me. His efforts here just come off as some strange breed of leftist contrarianism at best.

[@vishg5148]

Yeah I don’t get it either, they both agree on the big picture but Sunday insists on this weird mental gymnastics thing to defend PF

[@OddlyGinger]

Watched this live and I feel the exact same way. He's just defending PF exactly like everyone else has, but he's trying to put a slightly more "intellectual" spin on it. Didn't work imo.

[@aylio3745]

Its hard to parse exactly what his motivation or thesis was in this conversation. I dont think it was negative. If I had to take a guess he wanted to primarily try to get reduce the tension between the two communities by getting Vaush to moderate his critiques of Flowers and to be more charitable in the future of potentially poorly phrased or thought out arguments. Though that ignores how Vaush was as charitable as possible to her in that conversation considering how pf went into it, how long it went, and how many opportunities he gave her to clarify or back off the position. Secondary seemed to be to try to defend decolonization or this autonomy argument which was not needed as the convo eventually made clear. I do wish he made his motivation clear from the beginning.

[@quedolapantera7623]

Sunday is pretty well read in many philosophy topics and he found flowers arguments similar to those of anticolonialism but used in a wrong way or ill-informed at best. He tries to make that point but I think this is a case in which the man was too deep in the sauce and forgot what the point was.

[@aylio3745]

@@Jonathanking88 I feel like the only reason this topic is still relevant is cause PFs circle just keeps bring it back up again. By that I'm talking about Luna, Non-compete, Noah, and others that were in that post non-compete debate cope stream.

[@hgbguy]

after watching the original politics 101 vid from vaush i feel like the best way to put this is president sunday doesn't believe in normative statements, nor in grass.

[@emilchan5379]

If everybody gave as much charity as PS gave to PF, we would have solved world poverty.

[@MrMucc]

"'Technically' ethnic cleansing would be in violation of international law", more like objectively and categorically. 1:52:40. Still, Vaush has the correct position.

[@aylio3745]

I still cannot understand what exactly was PSs motivation, goal, or thesis for this conversation even was after watching the intro multiple times. Because the convo eventually turned into a discussion about PF instead of his initial claim, as I interpreted it, of just wanting to defend the answer of Yes to Vaush's question as if he was in PFs shoes.

[@auto117666]

I like President Sunday. However, I take issue with his 'interview' with PF. I watched it live and he basically frontloaded the questions to her with the most charitable version of the argument and she basically said, "yup". People complained in chat and she got furious. It would have been much better had he simply said, "In your convo with Voosh, you stated , can you elaborate on this?" Also, I watched her content, and sprinkled throughout her vids are jabs at "debate bros". To be fair, she also called out white choir students for singing a hiphop song. I guess she was never in marching band/choir in high school... If you couple that with her subsequent talks about the only reason she went to talk to Vaush was to "dunk on him" then it is hard to lend her credibility. From the evidence, it seems like she wanted to pick a fight with Vowsh from the start. Some good things happened from all this. We all got to learn much more about landback activism and donate to their cause and we all got to hear some interesting arguments about sovereignty.

[@Shtoops]

He is like a walking steelman. Every convo he has, he presents the best version of what ever position the person he's talking to has. It's very good for producing educational content, but not very useful for a debate like this.

[@kittytakes4991]

I have no idea why President Sunday is accusing Vaush of framing it in terms of sovereignty when Prof. Flowers was the one who said "the oppressed *SHOULD* have the right to do what they want with the oppressors", which means she was the one making a moral argument. She did not say "do", she said "should" Hard to tell if this is bad faith or if he's genuinely that stupid, but considering some of the other things he said in this debate, I'm leaning more towards a bit of both. For example, why does he have so much charitability for her but so little for Vaush? Edit: Watched it fully, and my stance hasn't changed much. The issue was the way in which President Sunday was framing this discussion was inherently gaslighting.

[@BunchyPanther42]

I’m so confused why everyone defends PF like their lives depend on it

[@tankiebot704]

because she's right? unlike you guys defending Vaush because you're part of a cult

[@JeepnHeel]

@@tankiebot704 Nope, that ain't it. Also, you're running out of people willing to keep covering their ears and insist she didn't say and type what she said and typed. At this rate, you might want to buy a mic and start rehearsing.

[@BunchyPanther42]

@@tankiebot704 so being against ethnic cleansing and generalizing a group of people based on nothing but the color of their skin is her being right? Yikes

[@tankiebot704]

@@BunchyPanther42 stop hiding behind skin color, white immigrants and white descedants of colonisers aren't the same. one was welcomed the other is there because his parents were part of an effort to subjugate mine. i have every right to want said people out of my nation

[@BunchyPanther42]

@@tankiebot704 I’m not hiding behind race, I just gave a summarized version of PF’s argument. And the white people in South Africa that she used in her example have nothing to do with the people who colonized South Africa except for their skin color. So I’m sorry but yeah forcefully moving people based on nothing but their skin color is ethnic cleansing.

[@Adze99]

This was a really interesting discussion, and I'm happy I get to hear it again after the live stream. I'm sad that they seem to be talking at crross purposes for most of it. I feel like Vaush was trying to construct rules for engaging in debates online, when the other person may either lie, omit information, or dog whistle their position. President Sunday seems to be more interested in a general set of rules for interpreting utterances, as if they were published in academic texts, where you don't have to worry about those things as much. I wish this was made more explicit, because I feel at some point Sunday stopped being helpful to Vaush in terms of how Vaush's work, and his aims, could be better served buy a different style of interpretation. Ultimately, Vaush is it a much more challenging position than President Sunday seems to understand, in terms of how to judge another person's intentions in a conversation, and what they might do with certain talking points in the long term.

[@Skullmiser]

I mean, if Tucker Carlson explicitly says he's not a white supremacist, then I guess that's that.

[@qwertyuiop42385]

I fucking hate when people try to deliberately use complicated language to avoid a point. You can speak plainly about this kind of thing if you have nothing to hide.

[@qwertyuiop42385]

Also President Sunday somehow managed to be more condescending towards Prof Flowers than anyone else I've heard speak about this, so that's a feat in and of itself I guess. Jesus Christ.

[@thomaslondonderry7341]

thank god the bridge wasn’t burnt, President Sunday is truly a brainlord

[@troyareyes]

Whats stronger than a steel-manning? carbon fiber-manning? diamond-manning?

[@problemsolver3254]

true

[@IamIK3]

I love both of y'all, but this convo dips into levels of semantic pedantry that give me a compulsive need to go touch grass.

[@gmansplit]

Grass toucher? Weirdchamp.

[@Kropothead]

Imagine touching grass.

[@SteveIon35]

@@Kropothead i refuse to engage in such idealism

[@Kropothead]

@@SteveIon35 Not without asking the wife first, anyway.

[@darkphoenix2]

It's not like Vaush was enjoying it either, Sunday was the one turning it into a semantic debate

[@davidmickelson5373]

I believe Professor Sundays biggest problem is his understanding of should. It has never been about what can or cannot a sovereign entity do, but is always whether or not that should be accepted or the logical course of action

[@Achillusgaming]

Vaush "I just don't understand how you, (I.E. Professor Flowers) could ever morally permit". Sunday "You didn't say you her that person I'm talking to over there, the flower professor, professor flowers, im talking about you specifically when I say you, just so you know."

[@DamonXWind]

Never have I had a better understanding of the phrase ad nauseum with regard to repeating a shitty meaningless argument

[@francescarosalia3839]

I agree with Vaush's read of PF. It seems clear that they were talking about ethics from the beginning and not national sovereignty. However this debate got me to think and I think I agree with PS when it comes to charitability generally, but in this situation I don't know what Vaush could have done differently.

[@lettersnstuff]

1:37:12 “I don’t think she’s racist in that way, I don’t think she’s bigoted against white people, I think she’s adopted a categorisation scheme that tends to that [racism] But I don’t think her heart’s there” I think sums up the whole PF thing pretty well actually,

[@JeepnHeel]

Sprinkle in a large dose of self-importance and condescension (earn my brownie points), bake at 350 for No One Can Tell Me I'm Wrong on Twitter and we're pretty much there

[@jessicahansen1288]

Incredible how many people had their brains broken by the Professor Flowers debate...

[@kishendooken1856]

The mental gymnastics to defend Professor Flowers from the Left is a sight to be hold...

[@ashleecantu6470]

Sunday: "Yes, John Doe said, "I am a Nazi,' but that doesn't necessarily mean what your inferring it to mean. Let's slow this down, cowboy. Take 'I am,' for example. The word I is sometimes colloquially used to refer to a group of people. Since John Doe once vacationed in Germany, and there were Nazis in Germany back in the day, maybe he's just trying to make a statement that communicates how much he enjoyed his vacation. He felt accepted when he visited Germany, so he adopted the collective mindset of the German population, thus, the use of the word I. Since he still has pleasant memories from his vacation, he chose the word 'am' instead of 'was'. Then he chose the words 'a Nazi' instead of German bc he wanted to metaphorically explain to where he was referring." 🤯

[@bukowski9526]

I also have a bachelor's degree in Political Science and a minor in history - no state should have the ability to engage in ethnic cleansing. Wow that was so hard to say

[@nataliekhanyola5669]

If you see the self determination of a colonised people, in this case native Americans, on the same level as ethnic cleansing... you may just be a racist shitlib.

[@hinaruto43ver]

Ok, this man's intro is fire. Haven't made it through the debate yet, but had to say that before my mind was poisoned

[@Cam-bk8rt]

a very frustrating debate but worth listening to just to hear vaush straight-facedly say "I'm not even sure she's actually a professor"

[@Auss1e]

I'm taking notes to prepare for my future murder trial

[@benh2339]

if President Sunday's framing is correct then there was no point in having the conversation because who cares if a people has the physical ability to do something, what matters if they have the moral right to do something... PS seems to be in full pedant pseudo-intellectual mode for some reason. Like even his framing that PF's opinions outside of the debate aren't relevant leads me to think he's here for an intellectual "technical" victory over Vaush instead of an actual clarifying of the truth of the situation.

[@jansettler4828]

No, he's in "virtue signal" mode like Noah and all others who defend PF. Can't accept that sometimes black women is racist and white man debate bro is the good guy. That would mean you can't go down the classic online leftist think/dialogue tree.

[@MagisterMalleus]

@@jansettler4828 I dunno if I'd go that far; he seems pretty disparaging toward her throughout this whole thing. Maybe I'm naive but I got an impression of reasonably good faith from him overall

[@jansettler4828]

@@MagisterMalleus He literally did olympic level of mental gymnastics and straight up being wrong to justify the belief that PF just talked about state authority. Cmmon dude

[@breestb8061]

I remember that guy. His pfp looks like William Afton in those fnaf VHS tapes

[@thejudge1728]

Maybe I have a poor grasp of English language, but "should someone have a moral right to do X" and "does someone have a moral right to do X" sound like the same question to me. Prescriptivism is inherently based on morals, so there's no meaningful distinction here, right? It's like saying "can ice cream have the ability to melt".

[@rainbowkrampus]

Well, no, "should" is asking about the extension of moral rights. "Does" is asking about the present capacity of a person's moral rights. I think you might be getting hung up on the is/ought problem in the sense that someone having a moral right does not entail that they will exercise that right. So take away the abstractness of moral rights. Let's ask, should someone have a Coke or does someone have a Coke? The reasoning behind each answer differs even if the answer is the same for both questions. But colloquially they are often interchangeable and I wouldn't expect anybody to really make the distinction outside of an academic discussion. Which I believe is where PS gets hung up. He's extending a level of understanding to a person who is a simpleton and expecting others to functionally define her meaning for her as though that is the best approach to a good faith conversation. It's pretty weird. So pretty typical for PS :P

[@Delby5]

I know they’re not the same but if I was talking to someone during a debate I really wouldn’t care. And for the most part I’d be like same difference. None of this honestly matters in the long term though.

[@Painocus]

@@rainbowkrampus You can't just remove the moral abstraction and have those sentences mean the same thing tho. "Person X is going to be killed" and "It is moral that person X is going to be killed" are two very difference statements. As soon as you introduce the question of if something is moral you move into an ought statment.

[@DevinMacGregor]

"should someone have a moral right to do genocide" and "does someone have a moral right to do genocide" To rest of you, what would make genocide moral? should someone have a moral right to do murder" and "does someone have a moral right to do murder" The same, what would make murder moral?

[@R_AM02]

the thing that gets me, is that I was in communities that constantly got harassed by the far-right. I had to deal with that growing up, and because of that I know coded language. I have never had someone, in good faith, continue to use the same language over and over again after it was explained to them why the language was problematic. in my experience, that means the person has something to hide, or at the very very least (and this is the most charitable interpretation I can give) they are legitimately to stupid to understand why what they've said is wrong and they lack the compassion to at least try to be civil and change their language with you. but 99% of the time it was dog-whistles, and those dog-whistles were a thin sheet of paper that hide their disgusting beliefs behind it ad were the only thing that stood between their civility with you and a landslide of slurs and threats. I have no idea if this is my trauma, but when people insist on keeping a set language, and refuse to even budge on the issue no matter what, it means that language is hiding something. that's been my experience, and if it's wrong here, it will be the first time it's ever been wrong in my life

[@iceyroo]

Very entertaining debate!

[@SterlingEntertainmentStudio]

If I’d never heard of Vaush and you showed this to me and told me to identify the autistic person, I would’ve gotten it wrong.

[@miri745]

The mental gymnastics, my god

[@Cerberus1441]

It is legitimately INSANE how much fucking discourse has happened a result of this damned PF conversation.

[@datboiryancole670]

This is one of my favorite discussions. I still side with Vaush but Sunday tried his best and it was the best attempt so far

[@blcstriker9052]

A long and pedantic conversation to ultimately determine the difference of "could" and "should".

[@yewwowduck]

it's a pretty meaningful difference.

[@JRexRegis]

@@yewwowduck It's also not accurate at all. "could" has the same problem as "right" - it is ambiguous whether a capability to do something or a moral justification to do something is meant. Should, meanwhile, implies that there is a duty to do what is being discussed, forced by some impetus that makes it morally non-permissible not to do it.

[@konstantinoskotsomytis2544]

Omg, as a European, listening to Americans talking about these issues is so painfull! They are just incapable to see beyond the very specific circumstances of American history like color and colonialism. Nationalism was created as an answer to the aristocratic empires that dominated Europe in the 1700s. The people of Europe were mostly ruled by a multinational hereditary elite, on the top of which there was a king who, most of times did not even speak the language of his subjects. And yes they were oppressed. In the 1800s (and sometimes earlier) one by one the multinational empires of Europe, like the Spanish empire, the Ottoman empire, the Austro-Hungarian empire etc began to break apart and form smaller and somewhat nationally homogenous nation states. These revolutions were largely violent and A LOT of ethnic cleansing and genocide took place, usually towards the dominant national groups, but not always. If we hypothetically apply this to modern-day USA, a number of majority white, majority black and majority Latino states will be created after a series of largely violent revolutions. Minority groups trapped to the wrong side of the border will be forced to assimilate, (for example white Latinos in white ethnostates will be discouraged or even banned from speaking spanish), flee to another nation state or be killed. This isn't something that has never happened in history, it has happened plenty of times and we know the possible outcomes.

[@DrippyWaffler]

Holy shit so my dad took the professor Flowers side in this thing (keeping in mind NZ indigenous stuff is a bit more complicated as the treaty here stipulated they had their own sovereignity) but the mind control autonomy thing might be the tool to describe the issue, cheers!

[@yaroslav7432]

Little does vaush and sunday know what this debate would lead to

[@CommunistCreeper]

Mount Vaushmore!

[@Bar975]

Lol

[@CommunistCreeper]

@@Bar975 fight me

[@deanroedeo2606]

I never thought I'd feel this level of empathy for Vaush, but god this talk was painful, like passion of the christ level of pain. Good on him for holding his own still.

[@iceyroo]

President Sunday now realizes how dangerous PF is

[@stretchsebe3572]

Idk how I missed this vid when it first came out. Finding this after seeing how well Sunday did in scrutinizing Hazs 'definitions' of things in the recent debate is a bit disappointing .

[@DaJustifier]

Among the best debates/conversations out there. Smart, respectful, substantive, and important.

[@competingcoot4756]

The Patrick wallet meme keeps happening with these debates surrounding Ukraine and PF.

[@kneau]

1:54:17 -- in other words, separate from PF, it could be a sign of good faith toward future engagements if Vaush were to acknowledge the existence of unknown unknowns. 1:09:09 -- "The context of this conversation is the positions that I felt she had."

[@Superbajt]

You know what? I'm fine with accepting Sunday's interpretation, if it causes PF to apologize and "clarify" that's what she meant. It would be better for everyone.

[@Ringoshiiro]

This is an interesting tactic. Wonder how it would play out with PF responding.

[@tankiebot704]

apologise for what?

[@GabiGhita]

Superbajt? More like Superbased! No, really. Giving her an out is good. If you're cornered on a bad decision, typically you defend yourself by tripling down, which is what's she did. That's why I suspect PS is ignoring PF's subsequent videos. I mean, imagine your whole existence overnight reduced to "you're an ethnostater" being tweeted at you from all sides. Not many people are able to cope with that kind of backlash. An olive branch like "just admit this is what you meant and we're good" should absolutely be on the table. I mean, we're in the business of deradicalizing nazis here but we don't have a pathway for deradicalizing an aesthetically-left mirror image of that? P.S.: I mention the backlash-as-harrasment here, which I think is valid, but I can't not also acknowledge the vitriol and death threats that Vaush gets. I can't imagine the toll it must take on his mental health and I hope he is strong enough to not let them get to him. This is why I'm saying all this. I just want a ceasefire. I think that's what PS wants too. All this hate among us is pointless. Go hate some nazis if you have to, or Jabson Dinkle.

[@zotaninoron3548]

@@GabiGhita Its is not in her material interest to offer or accept an olive branch from Vaush. Her audience is cultivated on, in part, opposition to him and his audience. If she derives income from her videos, then she's trapped by her audience like a politician to a billionaire donor. And would take considerable effort to change course, were it something she'd even want, and it isn't.

[@GabiGhita]

@@zotaninoron3548 I do agree with you. It's highly unlikely that PF will change her views, both for the reasons you described as well as her personal reasons (seeing the backlash as harassment is likely to make her double down, plus simply ego). It's wishful thinking on my part that she would ever do so. At this point, I'm really more interested in people listening to her and whatever allies she's made in the online left (who in turn influence people who listen to both them and her), so in that respect I believe that extending and maintaining said olive branch is important at least for others to see, if not for her. Hope that makes sense.

[@ahh_yes_mr_bax]

Tell me you dont interact with the outside world without telling me you dont interact with the outside world- PS: “i think everyone would approach a general question of allowing genocide from an Autonomy position instead of a moral one.”

[@zeeke.tv_4842]

The amount of charity these guys are giving to Professor Flowers is nauseating

[@TheFluffyKitty]

This felt like two brothers sitting down and having a talk

[@Dirdle]

In the history of astronomy, an *epicycle* is a second circular orbit added to an initial circular orbit to derive the observed elliptical orbit without having to violate a deeply-held faith in the divine perfection of the circle/sphere as a shape. The principle of parsimony can be too general to apply at times, which is why it's important to keep concrete examples in mind. When you start with a theory like "she was actually talking about autonomy" and then have to add more struts, more epicycles like "and then when she clarified later, it was because she'd mistakenly picked up your misunderstanding of the issue" in order to make your theory's predictions look exactly like the predictions of the theory you're trying to refute, you need to stop, kick yourself for stupidity, and move on. It's oddly reminiscent of certain arguments back during the Religion Wars, but I can't quite explain how.

[@darkphoenix2]

Holy FUCK, I'm an hour and five minutes into this and I don't think I'm going to understand the English language anymore when it's over. Am I just not smart enough to understand Sunday's arguments, or is he actually contorting his brain into a mess of Mobius strips to stay in this loop of "what she actually meant". Like, God damn. Language isn't this complicated. Everyone will think the same thing when they listen to that debate. The idea that she was just saying, in that whole 3 hours, was that "well sovereign nations can do stuff because they're nations" is ridiculous, but then that twist at the hour mark of the usage of the word "imagine"...my brain!

[@MisterPayneS]

In my ape brained opinion Sundays whole argument can ironically be summarized as just being a “grammar Nazi” To spend this much time going over every word of subtitle text as if it reads like a book is exactly the kind of nonsense that happens when someone puts up a blog about an out of context joke that reads horribly. Just purely based on the social contracts and agreed terms we all use with each other this is an air tight argument by Vaush but we have to be subjected to a Ted Talk because Sunday’s degree gives him the sense to say “yes, but” to everything on non social technicalities… If he would just put the degree down and have some convos with people outside our time could’ve been used for a more important situation or topic Thoughts?

[@PiggyKillerQ]

this video deserves a much more inflammatory title holy shit. this is mind melting.

[@traceuse13]

As someone who studied nationalism and national sovereignty/identity for my uni degree, President Sunday sounds like someone from one of my classes who is in the middle of a class discussion. This is not how most people think or talk about "having the right" to do something. Most people, including I assume Prof. Flowers, don't think and talk about it this way. Dude, touch grass and talk to normies lol

[@TheCaptainblaubeere]

idk if it tempest or whoever does the thumbnails but using mount vaushmore on some more debate thumbnails would be great. its such a cool artwork

[@sashaj2697]

"I'm not following this religiously" "I've watched that, probably more than anyone else alive" I wouldn't believe a word coming out of him

[@yewwowduck]

He's not following it religiously, the entire context, as cited by him, was about how Vaush parsed the information within the debate itself. The entire concern is toward providing Vaush with as valid critique as possible to ensure he is checking his own biases.

[@wiggledixbubsy98]

"Following this religiously" implies he got in at the ground floor and kept dwelling on it for months. He more than likely heard about it back then and watched it for context, then let it go, but it kept getting brought back up and so he got more engaged because the controversy just never went away