Am bringing this up due to a discussion with a friend who was excited over Sarah Palin joining Newsmax. Reminding him that she was a neocon and had already subverted the tea party before was not enough due to his belief 'it is good for the party'. The fable of the scorpion and the frog was meant for the liberal mindset. While compassion and forgiveness are tenets of liberalism (not progressivism) and the western philosophy, it does not mean forgiving treachery. There is a delineation between supporting free speech, the need to have open dialogue, and allowing those that wish us harm to subvert our values. The current state of the west today is due to this exact conditions. The rift that created KIA2 is due to the same scorpion being offered passage time and time again. It is our burden to maintain the garden we have sown.
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I honestly don't know much about the specifics of the example you cited (the only things I "know" about Palin I heard from the same media firms who've been lying through their teeth the past 5 years about Trump, which makes me wonder how true they are), but this is a good reminder for vigilance.
The comment section of a blog I sometimes read has what they call a Shill Test which the blog owner administers to people he suspects of being a paid shill. The idea is to force the individual to state an opinion which no-one posting on a computer monitored by HR would be allowed to state. They are allowed to disagree with that opinion, but they are required to state that opinion before providing an argument against it.
It is an elegant solution to people who are unable for some reason to engage with wrongthink (be that because they aren't paid to argue in good-faith or they have a mental block preventing them from being able to do so).
I'm so confused as to how that actually works. Surely they'd just lie about it?
One of the "Shill Tests" is the following question: "Should we make pornography illegal?"
This is a multiple choice test which requires you copy/paste one of the answers in, even if you disagree with the answer and later on provide an argument against it. I won't paste the answers in because I don't even know if this site allows it, but
The assumption is that no paid shill would be able to post a comment that would include text advocating for child rape, bestiality, or child pornography, blame Jews for something, or advocate for policies which existed in Nazi Germany because presumably the HR departments of the shill organizations (and the people monitoring the comments) wouldn't allow it.
(I'm not sure the second answer blaming Jews is very effective, because that's the sort of thing I would expect to read from someone who glows in the dark, but that is one of the answers they give).
It's hard to say it's 100% effective, but it catches a lot of people who have a tendency to not argue in good faith who also refuse to take the test.