Yeah, they’re referring to the old idiom ‘actions speak louder than words’.
When people pass laws saying kids don’t get lunch at school, that trans people can’t legally change their gender, that being homeless is a crime, and that women can’t have abortions, they are saying all those things.
And when people tell you who they are, believe them.
Yeah, they’re referring to the old idiom ‘actions speak louder than words’.
What actions? This is done most commonly toward strangers they don’t know at all.
If someone were to say, for example, “I’m okay with the government picking up the slack to keep a kid from starving, but it shouldn’t be treated like a solution. Instead, it should be seen as a temporary necessary measure while resources are put into solving the real problem, by preventing children from being in a position where their own parents aren’t capable of feeding them to begin with, since they’re the ones who should be doing it”, the people I’m talking about would happily contort it into “they want kids to starve”, because that requires no thought/effort, and you get to look morally superior to boot, since now that guy’s just evil, because what a horrible thing it is to want children to starve!
Fact is, almost nobody is willing to even take the majority of people at their word, much less actually steelman an argument, which is how you really end up with rock solid positions and arguments, instead of having to rely on stupid rhetorical and semantic maneuvers.
Oh for… that’s not the law they passed. The law they passed banned school lunches, and they did nothing to address child hunger to make up for it. I would say they most certainly want kids to starve.
And if your take overall is ‘that person’s actions/beliefs are fine as long as they only impact people they don’t know’ that’s… not great. To quote Calvin & Hobbes, ‘we’re all ‘someone else’ to someone else’.
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The OP is talking about maintaining friendships with individual people. When was the last time you actually picked an individual person’s brain about where they stand on something, instead of just putting people in whatever stereotype bucket confirms your biases the best?
if your take overall is ‘that person’s actions/beliefs are fine as long as they only impact people they don’t know’
I have to say, in a comment chain about people uncharitably extrapolating and twisting viewpoints, this is very fitting, lol. What an absolutely ridiculous interpretation.