> It's a dog whistle.

What is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

My evidence is that my interpretation is consistent with many other things I have learned about viewpoints like Kirk's, from observing him and others over a period of many years. It is not a matter of "plausible deniability"; my interpretation is plainly and straightforwardly the one that makes the most sense to me, by far.

As noted upthread, the example also clearly maps to a specific object example.

Your reading, meanwhile, requires transforming a rhetorical question about whether someone should be "treated better" than someone whom Kirk clearly sees as highly virtuous, into a claim that every single aspect described of that person is a basis for denigration. That is supremely uncharitable and frankly implausible.

> Your reading, meanwhile, requires transforming a rhetorical question about whether someone should be "treated better" than someone whom Kirk clearly sees as highly virtuous, into a claim that every single aspect described of that person is a basis for denigration. That is supremely uncharitable and frankly implausible.

That's kinda wild. You've not seen much of the anti- black, female, gay, and/or drug-using rhetoric that people use. It is an obvious dog whistle.

> You've not seen much

Yes, I have. People have been shoving it in my face for probably close to 20 years.

Overwhelmingly, it simply is not what it is represented as being.

And where people have expressed that kind of bigotry, it very clearly works very differently.

> Yes, I have. People have been shoving it in my face for probably close to 20 years.

> Overwhelmingly, it simply is not what it is represented as being.

I find these statements so juxtaposed to be rather interesting. I can see that you are not representing this as it is.

By "it", I mean the things that you are referring to, which people including yourself claim to be such rhetoric.

I have been shown countless examples, and done my own evaluation, and concluded that the people showing them were frankly incorrect in a large majority of cases. The words, commonly, simply do not mean what they are represented as meaning. They are only understood as having that meaning because they are processed by ideological opponents with unwarranted priors, in some cases seemingly resulting from psychological projection. (The pithy statement of this notion is "if you hear dog whistles all the time, maybe you're the dog".)

This is mediated by attempts to listen to the other side in their own words, and ask them pointed questions. I have used these to build a coherent model of several "right-wing" or "conservative" belief systems which I have found in the past to be consistent; new observations rarely give any rational reason to doubt my previous conclusions.

> By "it", I mean the things that you are referring to, which people including yourself claim to be such rhetoric.

Right. Those things are misrepresented.

> I have been shown countless examples, and done my own evaluation

I do not doubt this at all. You are surely aware that the best lies are coated in the truth.