A Russian military district court in Yekaterinburg has convicted five members of a Marxist circle in Ufa to draconian sentences of between 16 to 22 years in prison and high-security penal colonies for allegedly plotting to overthrow the Russian government through terrorist means. The case marks a significant intensification of the crackdown on democratic rights in Russia and attempts to vilify Marxism and any left-wing opposition to the Putin regime.
shrug
And maybe Timothy McVeigh, Ted Kaczynski, and Osama Bin Laden were all patsies, sure. Anything’s possible.
The Russian state government doesn’t seem shy about arresting and punishing political prisoners for political crimes. At some point, you just have to take things at face value, until you’ve got evidence to the contrary.
If we want to go pedal to the metal on being contrary, we can insist these people weren’t Marxists, they weren’t even arrested, and the whole article is a hoax. But then why engage with the information at all?
Yeah, anything is possible, that’s the point.
If you’re ok with that, no point talking about it at all.
If you’re not okay with that, and you don’t like things appearing incoherent, dig a bit more to find what its about, don’t just point out to two statements that could be or could bot be self-excluding depending on the context.
But something actually happened. The point is to clarify it, not to fuzzy it by insisting contrary positions are more likely based on vibes.
Part of clarifying a position means validating it, logically. If we’re running into a logical contradiction, it guides where we look for more information and which sources we find credible.
If your point is to clarify anything, don’t just point out the potential contradiction, it doesnt clarify anything.
If your point is to get people to clarify it for you, then either accept the logical approach that could solve the contradiction in theory, either, if you don’t want a “maybe/maybe not” answer, ask for an answer about the actual case, and don’t satisfy yourself with your own guesses.
Or, as you say, go look for more information and credible sources.
To sum up, i just point out that what you feel as a contradiction may not be one in some cases, so lazy people like me may just assume it’s one of those cases.
If you’re unsatisfied with that, and that’s legitimate, you’ll have to switch from what could have happened to what seemed to happened, drop the theoretical side for the practical context of this case.