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Comment by ubernostrum | Hacker News Reader

You're right. Trump doesn't believe Hitler did nothing wrong. He's just the overwhelmingly preferred candidate of people who believe Hitler did nothing wrong. It's an important difference! Those people obviously voted for him while believing he would never actually act on the things they care about!

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Going Godwin again doesn't make the argument any better.

This is what all those news articles lately have been about. You're too insulated from the rest of the country if you seriously think ~50% of the nation just voted for Hitler. That card's played out... every Republican's been [expletive] Hitler if you listen to the Democrats. That's election propaganda. Time to put that away. I mean, ideally we wouldn't all swallow it in the first place, but time to put it away.

So you're telling me it was a ridiculous liberal myth that David Duke supported Trump? That since the election results came in large numbers of people have reported increased harassment and threats of violence based on their apparent race, religion or national origin? That the Trump campaign refused to disavow the xenophobic tendencies of some vocal supporters?

I'd love to find out that it was all 100% manufactured and none of it ever happened or was true. But, y'know, it all did happen and was true. And it elected a candidate who began his campaign on explicitly racist (build a wall and deport all the "Mexican rapists") and xenophobic (ban all the Muslims) lines.

This sort of emotional nibbling around the edges of something to cause resonance is one of my least favorite forms of persuasion. It's so hamhanded.

How is it "nibbling around the edges"? We're talking about a man for whom the use of immigration policy to expel or deny entry to people he deemed undesirable was literally the founding of his campaign. It was the issue with which he chose to introduce himself to the electorate. Is it somehow unfair to conclude he felt it was an important thing, and unfair to judge him based on it?

I'm not taking issue with the substance of your argument. The form bothers me. You've worked your way through every possible guilt-by-association tactic there is. It's bush league argumentation.

So it's guilt by association to associate Donald Trump with positions and policies Donald Trump has espoused? This is the "stop making him look bad by reporting exactly what he said" debacle from the campaign all over again.

Yes, if you imply that Donald trump is guilty of actions those associated with him have taken, you are using guilt by association. It's definitional!

I understand that you feel strongly about this, but it's not illegal to hate someone. If there are people being threatened or harmed, we do have police and the general rule of law to handle those things. It's not like trump runs the government now!

Despite emotional currents we are mostly peaceful domestically. Our institutions are still democratic in nature. Trump has to share power with the other pillars of government.

We are very, very far from anything resembling naziism. No amount of hatred expressed in speech is equivalent. Action is required.

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