Okay, today's Rat fixation that I want to rant about is "constructing hypothetical examples to justify my idiosyncratic position." Like, I'm not even interested in arguing about whether their conclusion makes sense in their hypothetical world, I'm more curious about what kind of chain of thought leads you to speculate about that in 2026. Like, maybe I'm reading way too much into this but in practical terms it feels like "how do I justify voting for the Republicans no matter how far-right they might go, if my local Democrats try to move the tiniest bit left?" which feels like the rat/tech ethos in a nutshell.
Or maybe it's the more traditional past time of trying to construct arguments in favor of controversial-sounding positions so that you can feel smarter and more open-minded than everyone else.
I can understand what they're saying, though. Like, his defining moment is the finale of SC1 where he does sacrifice himself and become this major culture hero. There is definitely room to question that warrior ethos and what it says about the Protoss and what that in turn says about how we think about the real-world cultures and ideas that inspired them, and I'm pretty open to those constructs not being particularly respectful. But within those background structures and the culture they describe the immediate storyline is about how the conclave and even the Khala itself is ultimately destructive and makes the Protoss more vulnerable even as it is their source of strength and identity, which feels actually pretty timely if you read it that way.