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Obama ordered something quite awful called "Fast & Furious" which was an extremely cynical attempt to allow gun smuggling to Mexico (with full knowledge of the government) and then use the ensuing violence and chaos as a political axe to try and chop down the 2nd Amendment. This is not a conspiracy theory, it actually happened.

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Except for the fact that a program with that name existed, no, those aren't facts and, yes, it's a conspiracy theory. And it's a conspiracy theory that actually distracts from the real problems with Fast and Furious and the rest of the gunwalking scandal.

How the hell is it a conspiracy theory?

You've been using HN primarily for politics, and partisan politics at that. This is an abuse of the site, and we eventually ban accounts that do it. We're also going to add this explicitly to the site guidelines (though it's already implied by them).

I realize that it was the GP comment that pushed the thread in this wrong direction, but the thing to do in that case is gently nudge it back, not shove it off a cliff.

Partisan? What the hell are you talking about?

I'm apolitical, I don't vote, and my comment was a plea to see this from a different perspective. It's bi-partisan.

And how the hell do I use the site PRIMARILY for politics? I must have tens of thousands of comments here.

I made a plea for rationality in the face of over-reaction and fear. A comment on a post about politics. I even said I was glad this was organizing the opposition to Trump; was that the problem?? This is nuts.

My comment wasn't addressed to you, but to hash-set (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13169884).

Sorry about that, the mobile view doesn't indent the threads very much and I thought you were replying to me; my bad.

Maybe when you reply to comments it might be worth using the username, so that if the comment is killed people with showdead=off know you're not replying to them.

With showdead set to "no", for me the comment still shows up as "[flagged]" with its header, which should make it clear. Does it look different for you?

(Tangentially, I do think the comment threading display could be improved, but looking honestly at my own designs, I know I'm not the one to make specific recommendations.)

Ah, right, thanks for that clarification.

There have been a few similar threads in the past where people haven't seen killed comments.

We changed the UI a few months ago to (try to) prevent those.

This echo chamber is dangerous. Partisan politics == everything you don't like to hear. Ha!

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