Having repeatedly moved the goalposts in your favor (People who are food insecure will frequently describe themselves as "starving", but this was apparently unsatisfying), I produced multiple sources, where you have produced none, and merely argued your incredulity and derision. All you've really expressed is that you're hopping mad about some kind of "ideology" that you've attributed to me. But yes, I used a pretty mild ad-hominem attack in the sentence discussing how you were relying on ad-hominem invective, that was indeed the joke, well done
The truth is, you made a pithy statement that you believed was undeniably true, which omitted significant complexity inherent in the claim. For example, social programs in the United States are seldom if ever implemented on a federal level, the verb "to starve" is not a technical and precise description of a particular phenomenon, etc. When I made an equally pithy and oversimplifying (but I would still argue more true) statement, you and others started making demands for statistical rigor, something which I don't claim to have done here to the standards of a scientific study or a court of law, but at least did any of at all. The pattern of isolated demands for rigor and what appears to be the product of some kind of emotional escalation - vagaries about how you've lived in poorer countries before and thus can speak to the conditions of 330M people simultaneously without sources while demanding sources from others, and the assertion that merely arguing with you about this is indicative of delusion. I guess that you're elevated here specifically because you claim that I must be motivated by "ideology". This statement is on its face tautological: any argument either of us makes is going to be somewhat shaped by our respective worldviews of course. But a common usage of "ideology" as a criticism by political pundits is designed to evoke conspiracies out of cold war spy stories, a rhetorical tactic designed to evoke the visceral reaction that someone following an "ideology" must be part of some sort of well-organized enemy faction, rather than merely an individual who has come to some conclusion on their own
I felt the need to edit this post to spell this out because I find the ease with which people slip into this way of thinking, especially on the internet, pretty disturbing. I would like for you to take a step back from this kind of brinksmanship here, because even if I'm wrong, I don't think that means that we are enemies, and I would like to think that if you thought about it, you would agree with at least that
The truth is, you made a pithy statement that you believed was undeniably true, which omitted significant complexity inherent in the claim. For example, social programs in the United States are seldom if ever implemented on a federal level, the verb "to starve" is not a technical and precise description of a particular phenomenon, etc. When I made an equally pithy and oversimplifying (but I would still argue more true) statement, you and others started making demands for statistical rigor, something which I don't claim to have done here to the standards of a scientific study or a court of law, but at least did any of at all. The pattern of isolated demands for rigor and what appears to be the product of some kind of emotional escalation - vagaries about how you've lived in poorer countries before and thus can speak to the conditions of 330M people simultaneously without sources while demanding sources from others, and the assertion that merely arguing with you about this is indicative of delusion. I guess that you're elevated here specifically because you claim that I must be motivated by "ideology". This statement is on its face tautological: any argument either of us makes is going to be somewhat shaped by our respective worldviews of course. But a common usage of "ideology" as a criticism by political pundits is designed to evoke conspiracies out of cold war spy stories, a rhetorical tactic designed to evoke the visceral reaction that someone following an "ideology" must be part of some sort of well-organized enemy faction, rather than merely an individual who has come to some conclusion on their own
I felt the need to edit this post to spell this out because I find the ease with which people slip into this way of thinking, especially on the internet, pretty disturbing. I would like for you to take a step back from this kind of brinksmanship here, because even if I'm wrong, I don't think that means that we are enemies, and I would like to think that if you thought about it, you would agree with at least that