This has been the Democrat strategy for a long time now: make wonderful promises they don’t intend to keep, then blame everyone else when they don’t come to fruition. People keep voting for them despite this obvious fact, because Republicans make terrible promises that they actually try to keep.

We’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t. The only winning move is to not play flip the table and play a different game.

I was a lurker on Reddit. I had less than 500 Karma when I deleted my 12-year-old account a couple weeks ago.

I’ve already been more active on Lemmy than I was my entire time on Reddit. Everything here just feels more genuine.

So if I’m forced to argue with them, I make sure I’m the one having fun.

I can respect that. If they’ve proven themselves to be ignorrogant, there’s no reason to get all flusterfucked trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. I’ve dealt with enough people who use trolling as their primary debate strategy that I guess I got shit-triggered. Apologies, friend, for assuming the worst.

Sounds like this is more of a debate about semantics. “Whataboutism” is a recently-popularized term that doesn’t have a concrete definition yet. You see it as a tool to escape a debate by diverting attention, but I see it as a tool to highlight hypocrisy while continuing a debate. Really, I guess what matters is context - specifically, whether one is attempting to debate “in good faith” (another recently-popularized, inconsistently-defined term).

I certainly don’t know you or your personal relationship with your dad. He doesn’t sound like a great debate opponent, but to be fair, neither do you. Most people aren’t nowadays, sad to say. Somewhere between Trump and Biden, people forgot how to wait their turn and debate the idea, rather than the person. It takes two to tango, they say, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find two individuals who are able to set aside their egos and listen in earnest to opposing beliefs.

I guess I’m a bit biased. 2020 turned me into a misanthrope. 🤷

Honestly, in your example, you sound like, as you put it, a dumb cunt. The purpose of “whataboutism” is to point out hypocrisy in your debate opponent’s position. Your dad pointed out that a politician on your side did something equally deplorable to the one you’d called out on his side. Rather than respond to that and have a reasonable conversation about the nuance and differences between your chosen politicians, perhaps coming to better understand each other, you chose to devolve to nonsense, intentionally killing the conversation.

That screams poorly educated (but possibly with an expensive education that makes you feel superior enough that you don’t bother to question yourself and your ideals).