[BryantD]

How do you manage to have conversations with people in your day to day life with so much assuming negative intent? Some people treat these little linguistic excursions as ways to achieve common understanding, rather than as a sporting event with winners and losers, you know.

What you can do if you're uncertain -- and my language was sloppy, good point! -- is say "hey, I'm not sure what you meant here; can you clarify?" And I say "yeah, I was unclear. I meant that the question was related to treaty status but after digging in, it's not required by treaty for that elected position to only be occupied by someone of a specific heritage. Thank you for pointing that out."

(I might not have said thank you, to be honest, and of course you're welcome to assume I'm just covering up because you called me on the phrasing.)

[mothballed]

>>> lie too obviously.

>>>what a great example of the tired old trick of attempting to use social justice language as a rhetorical lever.

>... assuming negative intent?

You're not fooling anyone. You kicked off saying I was lying obviously and used tired tricks and rhetorical levers, then surprise pikachud when I received negative intent and following that called out your contradiction.

Don't pretend to be the victim here and that bit about me being a liar was just helpful clarification with positive intent. You know what you're doing, then blaming me for what you're doing.