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Whataboutism (and comparing wildly different things, muddling them into a superficial similarity) is going to kill your country.

• _heimdall 2y ago
  I find it important to consider what is motivating whataboutism in general. It usually comes off to me as a mazy argument, but its an attempt to point out inconsistency of one's opinions. The problem isn't when someone raises a "but what about..." argument, the problem is if someone uses it to retroactively justify something. Its totally fair, in my opinion, to ask why someone should care about this Signal chat if they didn't care about Hillary Clinton's personal email server. On the flip side, its also reasonable to ask why someone wouldn't care about this signal chat if they previously wanted to put Hillary in prison for using her email server for official communications.
  • aredox 2y ago
    But you need to compare comparable things. Those whatabout arguments are almost always based on very superficial similarity - it "looks" to be the same thing, when those are by nature profundly different.
    • _heimdall 2y ago
      For sure, the approach can often be used to make logical comparisons where they aren't really equivalent. The Hillary Clinton email server situation feels very similar to this Signal thread issue to me though. Both involved government officials using unofficial forms of communication for official work, likely confidential work in both cases. I say likely because this one seems like it would have been classified if reviewed, and for Hillary we just don't know what was on the email server and I don't know of a public report that investigated communications that involved both her server and official servers.
      • acdha 2y ago
        For Hillary, we do know. Her server was not in violation of policy at the time for unclassified data - the policies were strengthened later – and she did not intentionally store classified data there. The FBI said nothing was classified at the time after their investigation but identified a hundred emails which should have been: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/08/hillary-clintons-claim-that-zero-emails-were-marked-classified/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/08/hillary-c... In this case, I think the difference is intent and ambiguity. This information was clearly known to be classified (remember last week when they were arguing that the flight details of immigrant deportations were classified and couldn’t be shared with a federal judge? Kinda hard to say information about military strikes which haven’t happened yet is less sensitive.) and it’s clearly something at the level to qualify as a federal record, but they don’t show any signs of having stored a copy.
        • _heimdall 2y ago
          > she did not intentionally store classified data there Intent is always hard to prove. Either someone has to admit they intended to break the law, or they had to make the mistake of creating evidence that makes the intent clear (like writing it down or saying it to a witness who can be compelled to testify). It is likely a realistic legal loophole that the documents stored weren't already classified, though that is gray area enough that it could very well come down to a judge's determination of whether to consider the letter of the law or the intent of the law. All that said, my original point was simply that I find it important to understand why someone reaches for a "what about..." type argument. I see a lot of people hold inconsistent ideals depending on the context, and I meet very few people who seem to be principled in how they think through tough topics.
          • acdha 2y ago
            > Intent is always hard to prove They found her telling people not to use it for classified information. The items which were there were not marked as classified at the time. That’s a contrast to creating a group for the stated purpose of talking about a classified operation and enabling automatic message deletion (records laws mean they’re supposed to review before deleting).