Replies

Kevmo: We didn’t even declare war against Vietnam nor Afghanistan. The last time we declared war was when it was an existential threat, ww2. Why is it that you are pushing things back to such a time? Oh, it is because of your a priori approach towards this whole thing.
US7: Good to know that the constitutional provisions regarding how America’s military might must be levied mean so little to you.
***There are congressional authorizations for sending force throughout our history without declarations of war, just like Vietnam, Afghanistan, Grenada, Gulfwars1&2, etc. It’s even signed off that there can be unauthorized force applications for a full 2 months before congress even has to be asked.

Kevmo:And you passed up the chance to moderate this particular dispute, showing where your intentions lie.
US7: Asking for others to ‘moderate a debate’ is a common troll tactic, so what would be the point?
***I’m not aware that such a thing is a common troll tactic. Since it is so common, you could easily provide 3 recent examples and since I haven’t heard of them I figure I could moderate such debates. Go ahead, find those 3. Should prove interesting, except for the obvious foreseeable event that you won’t be finding them.

No one’s obliged to moderate a ‘debate’
***There you go again with that “obliged” stuff. I ASKED you to consider it. I didn’t OBLIGE you. Try to stop doing that strawman argumentation stuff, it doesn’t look good on you. Lose that intellectual weight.

when one side is manifestly
***You came in at the end. Nothing “manifestly” about it other than you upholding a priori reasoning as sound, and obviously falling into the troll well. You never went to the front side of the argument.

refusing to ignore the plain documentary evidence,
***When you get hit by a train, it’s not the caboose that kills you.

notwithstanding your trollish and unserious demands for one.
***Demands? It was a fricken REQUEST. You’re all twisted around like a pretzel. Ask yourself when was the last time there was a 40-nation coalition to kick a regional bully out of a country he had invaded over oil resources? Yup, it was when we kicked Saddam out of Kuwait.

Just as an FYI: if you change someone's username to "troll", it doesn't ping them. But they can still see which post you responded to in the thread. Just so you're aware, in case you'd like to stop being so needlessly petty.

I’m not aware that such a thing is a common troll tactic. Since it is so common, you could easily provide 3 recent examples and since I haven’t heard of them I figure I could moderate such debates. Go ahead, find those 3. Should prove interesting, except for the obvious foreseeable event that you won’t be finding them.

It's common enough that other people have talked about it. Bold is emphasis mine:

The final troll tactic we’ll talk about here is a form of gaslighting. It typically happens when you go public about the trolling you are experiencing. Suddenly the trolls are shocked — shocked I tell you! — that their actions are interpreted as harassment. They’ll claim that you just can’t take a joke, or that you are scared of an “open debate.”...Some people choose engagement. They get involved in debates with their trolls, they try to reason with the trolls, and provide evidence that proves them wrong. While I’ve found that sometimes this is helpful — trolls who show up at speaking gigs and try to take over the Q&A inevitably help me prove my points — when it comes to online trolling, I rarely engage. These are trolls, not truth seekers, and every minute I spend engaging with them is a minute I can’t spend creating content and supporting people who aren’t abusing me.

Types of internet trolls...The debate troll – these are always looking for debate or argument and can never agree to lose even when they know they are in the wrong. They are always determined to have the last word

It's so ubiquitous that it even has a dedicated term: sealioning. Quote: "Rhetorically, sealioning fuses persistent questioning—often about basic information, information easily found elsewhere, or unrelated or tangential points—with a loudly-insisted-upon commitment to reasonable debate. It disguises itself as a sincere attempt to learn and communicate. Sealioning thus works both to exhaust a target's patience, attention, and communicative effort, and to portray the target as unreasonable. While the questions of the "sea lion" may seem innocent, they're intended maliciously and have harmful consequences." — Amy Johnson, Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society (May 2019)