Political Memes

Hypocrisy, in this debate, seems to mean (borrowing from Wikipedia here):

"Advocating behaviors that one does not practice"

So, okay, let's say Adam punches Bob, and then Bob punches Adam. Is Adam a hypocrite? Notice that it doesn't depend on whether Adam is upset about being punched. He could be either upset or not upset about being punched in any of these scenarios that I'm about to list out. But as for whether he's a hypocrite, it only depends on what behavior Adam advocates. Here's some different beliefs Adam might advocate, along with a 🚨 if I'd consider it hypocritical, and a 🟢 if I'd consider it not hypocritical. I think that just a bunch of examples are probably the clearest way to articulate the distinction, but I will be happy to elaborate if you want.

"Nobody should punch someone else." 🚨 Here we have hypocrisy without exceptionalism. Adam may not believe he is special, but he just doesn't care or have the willpower to play by his own rules. Still hypocrisy.

"Only people with four letter names should get to punch people." 🟢 Here we have exceptionalism without hypocrisy. He he certainly thinks's someone special with a unique right punch people, but there's nothing self-contradictory about his view.

"Only people with three letter names should get to punch people." 🚨 An interesting example, because this is strictly bad for Adam. Here we see that even a belief that is bad for someone can be hypocritically held.

"Everybody should be able to punch people if they want to." 🟢 Notice here that this doesn't mean that he's not allowed to be upset about getting punched. He's just not allowed to be upset about it on the basis that "Bob shouldn't have been able to do it" - that would be hypocrisy. But he's perfectly allowed to be upset about the fact that the punch hurts. We can picture him saying something like: "Of course, I didn't want to get punched, but I believe that Bob has a right to punch me if he wants to."

"Morality does not exist, so there's no such thing as 'should punch' or 'should not punch'. But I want us all to kill people who punch people." 🚨 Hypocritical if Adam tries to prevent either him OR Bob from the death sentence 🟢 Consistent if Adam accepts the death sentence for him and Bob

"The Iron Law of Force dictates that anyone can punch anyone." 🟢 (this is roughly the U.S admin view)

So in this specific example, it would be hypocritical if the US said something like "Passages for delivery of supplies and goods should never be restricted by force." But the admin is not advocating this stance.