I'll suggest that the burden of proof typically rests on the presenter, so yes, when presented with a claim I don't think it's crazy at all to ask for on point stuff to support that. Being a consumer of information doesn't in and of itself mean much if you can't ever share it. Like, if you found a study that disclaims something I've said, I only have your word on it unless you can show me what you saw because I might not be able to find it. If you saw something, hopefully you can find it since you know what you're looking for.A tragedy is personal. Unfortunately 27 is a statistic, which is exactly what those people now are. Data driven people are often quick to dismiss anecdotal stories, yet statistics are just anecdotal incidents which have been catalogued.
What happened to those 27 people (28 including the truck driver) doesn’t affect us in the slightest. It affects our public discourse though, which is what we’re here discussing. In that discussion you’re going to have those who think they deserved what happened, those who don’t and those who examine the totality of the situation, rather than the emotional aspect.
If you’re really as data driven as you say, you’d see that, which is why I mentioned soapboxes on either side of the bed. It’s really easy to see a discussion and choose the side not yet taken so as to cast shade on the other participants. That’s not devil’s advocacy, it’s sport.
Likewise it’s kind of a dick move to always demand citations and sources. Many of us are voracious consumers of information. We hoover it up from wherever and whenever we can get it. That doesn’t mean we all walk around with a cross-referenced index of writings and links to populate on your demand of “data driven, supported” evidence.
When I hit you with all those links in post #14, I was on a laptop and had very recently been examining the statistical spikes in illegal immigration, and who was saying what about it from a policy standpoint. If I’d been on a mobile device using data? You’d have gotten nothing. Not because I didn’t want to support my argument, but because ain’t nobody got time for that.
So sorry to say but a lot of times your questions do come off as aggressive and dickish. If you aren’t invested in the debate enough to go look it up yourself, then you’re asking others for answers that you don’t really value enough to be serious about them. That’s why you often switch to another line of questioning as soon as you get what you asked for. Whether your bias was preconceived against the information or you’re singularly focused on your position becomes irrelevant. People think “why did I bother?”.
I gave you 5 links to support my reasoning and you dismissed it out of hand, because all you seemed to care about was your question itself, not my answer. The answer was “it’s irrelevant” because my line of reasoning was about cause and effect, not grading the emotional quotient of tragedies on a sliding political scale. You didn’t catch that fact because you didn’t see what I was saying as important to the discussion. You appeared to be too busy being an ask-hole and I wasn’t down for that at the moment.
And that in a nutshell is why people often dismiss your interlocution as not worth their time. Simply changing your style of Q&A might yield more positive results. But that’s just me so...
Even then, hopefully the links and information are relevant to the question at hand. I don't intend to dismiss your point that border crossings are going up, but I don't think that would have direct relevance to the topic here.
But yeah, the question of "why did I bother". That's why I don't answer bad-faith questions. I have, in the past, typed up detailed posts with my arguments, facts, figures, whatever but then usually immediately get met by a group I call "the usual suspects" that tend to levy personal attacks, make inferences about me being unemployed living with my parents and whatever other personal attacks that they are allowed to get away with. That more than anything makes me measure my arguments and thing "why did I bother". Then it just becomes more fun to poke them for the entertainment rather than the intellectual exercise.
