In defense of Gary Johnson's "Aleppo" question?

[Chathamization]

65. Nor was there any segue to indicate they weren't talking about polling and the two-parties anymore

It's not uncommon for people to not recognize a word when they think you're talking about another subject. Johnson says that the case here. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but it's silly for people to assume he didn't know about the city based on the transcript.

You think that other people don't have enough of an 'in depth understanding' to be able to criticise a presidential candidate for not recognising a major battleground. Aleppo has far more people (well, had - many have fled, of course) than Afrin, and has been in the news for years (it's not just 'hot' now), because the fighting there has been sustained.

No, I think that criticizing him for superficial reasons when most people are happy with their ignorance is silly. There's a lot that gets said in the media that shows a complete lack of understanding, but it mostly gets ignored.

Yes, if he doesn't know what Aleppo is then it show's he doesn't have an in depth understanding of the situation there. But the same is true for not knowing a number of other places there, as well as having actual knowledge of what's happening in Aleppo besides "there's been fighting there." When people are ignoring the errors in the descriptions of Aleppo, or acting as if major areas of the Syrian conflict aren't important, then they honestly aren't actually interested in what's happening there. They're interesting in what's being talked about on cable. The fact that many conflate those two is pretty unsettling.

You're defending Johnson as being no worse than we are, when he plainly is.

Can't say I've paid enough attention to Johnson to make that judgement. But yes, most of the people who are talking about this don't know much about the situation there - and most importantly don't seem to care. I think most of the articles and comments about this demonstrate that.