“Huh” came across to me as sarcastic.
A noteworthy "huh", much like I'd say it out loud. It's an observation. The question is what was implicit, to be fair. But I wasn't obliging anything, just making the observation.
I disagree because I don’t think I ever changed my metrics. I was never asked for my opinion on the matter, or why I did not think the Reagan/AIDS was significant in this discussion.
The pivot to "I don't have to use sarcasm nor backpedal" in response to an ongoing tangent about world leaders (that you started), which seemingly had no connection at all except to cheekily connect back to my use of "huh"
The emote is genuine, I'm not annoyed or anything. It was a cheeky linguistic choice (imo).
We're talking about inferences, and you avoiding the topic of HIV/AIDs and not answering why you didn't think it was significant because you weren't asked is again, well, bias. Right? Optics and all that. Maybe a position should be volunteered, so we all know where we stand? Generally speaking, for future reference, as in this thread you answer me here:
I don’t think a hypothetical 2nd Carter term or a Ted Kennedy presidency, by which we could compare the results, would be dramatically different from the present outcomes.
I know it’s hard to come up with the what-ifs, but I’m just going by how the Democrats, and the general public, reacted in Reagan’s first term. By my standard, I don’t think he was any better or worse than the alternatives.
And this is where we're talking past each other I think. I'm not talking about who could've done better. I'm saying why his response was bad. If anyone else had been in, and anyone else had done (arguably) as poorly as he, we would be discussing them instead, and this thread wouldn't exist in its current form.
I'm not interested in justifying past failures by the unprovable assertion of "likely nobody could've done better". Not only is it unprovable, it's made in such a way to be complimentary. But someone else
could've been better. We'll never know. What we do know is what happened, factually. And people are going to criticise him for it. You may consider this unreasonable, but I would consider the fact that the AIDs crisis was so devastating to LGBTQ communities (
literally devastating) a justifiable black mark on whatever legacy he hoped to have.