RPG.net bans posts in support of Trump
forum.rpg.net
forum.rpg.net
More importantly, these utter idiots don't even realize they are creating such profoundly anti-democratic precedents targetting a political rival that is actually contributing to their cause, as now they have very real and very specific examples of how they are being targettend and persecuted for their political views.
No, actually the second is punishing a person just because he presented an opinion on a president that you don't share and for some reason you feel it constitutes grounds to persecute and punish him. This sort of attitude is the hallmark of proper fascist parties and their militants, the kind that goes around wearing matching shirts persecuting those who don't fall in line or god forbid have opposite opinions.
The argument means shit. It's the action that counts, and these idiots decided it was a good idea to atively persecute and censor anything related to a political movement.
These morons don't even realize they're setting totalitarian precedents and are so full of themselves to the point they even boast their totalitarian leanings to have any moral basis, just like the textbook fascists from half a century ago did.
Censorship is never the solution. Censorship is the problem. Keep censoring idiots instead of demonstrating they are idiots and you end up making them out to be poor democratic martyrs instead.
Have they learned nothing from the history of fascist europe?
Trump got far and away the majority of news coverage in the run up to the 2016 election. Everything he said was breathlessly reported, fact checked, and sometimes mocked for its inanity. That did not work out well.
I'm sorry, if I'm paying for hosting and you come to a page I run and start saying stuff I don't care for yeahhhh I'm removing it. That's my right. It's not a public venue, domain names are usually handled as real-property as far as taxation and hosting fees are a real thing. If you come into my house and start spouting stuff I don't approve of, I'm showing you the door.
I'm all for free speech, and being allowed to support who and what you believe in but not on any given website. If you use a website, you have to play by the owner's rules. If you don't want to do that, go make your own... it's pretty easy and affordable.
This is false, and appears based on both narrowing consideration of accountability mechanisms to legal mechanisms and a faulty understanding of the reason for certain online exceptions to the general traditional legal liability of publishers, which is not lack of responsibility (otherwise they would apply to publishers more generally) but balancing of social costs/benefits of imposing legal liability.
Are you saying that they aren't exempted from responsibility because they are not responsible, but because it's better that they not be held responsible?
Why would they apply to publishers more generally if it was about lack of responsibility? If you recall the decisions about the Communications Decency Act, it states that - "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider."
This means that people that own or operate forums are not treated as publishers of the content on forums, and removes the responsibilities of being such a publisher. The act was passed in part because providers said it was injurious to force them to regulate all content - they shouldn't be responsible because they couldn't regulate content without massive cost.
Now you're saying that they should regulate all content - ok, but if that's the case then they should be treated as publishers of said content, since they can decide on a case-by-case basis what is and is not published on their platform.
No.
I'm saying:
(1) They aren't exempted from responsibility, full stop. Site owners and operators manifestly are held accountable for content by a variety of social mechanisms independent of legal liability; you are incorrect to equate responsibility or accountability with legal liability, which is a very small subset of accountability, and that alone, without any other errors, would be a fatal flaw in your argument.
(2) Also, yes, they aren't given the exemptions that apply to similarly situated parties in other media because the internet is fundamentally different mechanically or in ethical situation in a way which changes the ethical responsibilities of people actively deploying resources to selectively relay content, but because (in the somewhat idealistic view) because the perceived benefits of imposing the usual legal liability were viewed as less than the perceived collateral costs in economic development of freeing site operators from legal liability for user-supplied content with certain limitations, or (in the view more in tune with the realities of lawmaking) because the cost of buying off the objections of a set of big money internet interests with a liability exemption was viewed as outweighed by the benefits of imposing the sweeping obscenity and indecency controls they were packaged with.
> Now you're saying that they should regulate all content
No, I'm saying that operating a site inherently involves that, and that they have the right to choose how to do so, even when that excludes certain views from their site, and that that right is enshrined in the First Amendment.
I'm not saying anything about what they should do.
And I'm saying that no, it is not enshrined in the First Amendment. There is significant legislative regulation that applies to publishers and not to web hosts because they could not possibly regulate content on an individual basis.
That's why your second point is incorrect - if you read the legal decisions that have upheld the Communications Decency Act's Safe Harbor provisions, they aren't based on the collateral economic development cost or big money interests - they are based on the idea that it is an impossible task to regulate obscene speech online and that in order to do so, sites would have to chill speech. This chilling of speech (which is kinda what we're talking about here) is the reason sites are not treated as publishers, with again, the underpinning being that it would be impossible for them to regulate content.
If you are correct that they can do so and inherently do so, then the protections they are provided by not being held responsible, legally, as publishers, for the content they publish, should be stripped from them and websites and host should be treated as publishers, with all the regulations that apply therein.
Then you absolutely fail to understand the freedom of the press.
> if you read the legal decisions that have upheld the Communications Decency Act's Safe Harbor provisions, they aren't based on the collateral economic development cost or big money interests - they are based on the idea that it is an impossible task to regulate obscene speech online and that in order to do so, sites would have to chill speech.
I am unable to find cases meeting this description; I can find cases, OTOH, that have upheld the broad application of Section 230 because narrowing it would defeat it's intent by discouraging self-regulation and editorial control, which the court found to be a central part of Congress’ intent, most notably Zeran v. America Online, Inc., 129 F.3d 327 (4th Cir., 1997), which noted:
---[quote]--
Congress enacted § 230 to remove the disincentives to self regulation created by the Stratton Oakmont decision. Under that court's holding, computer service providers who regulated the dissemination of offensive material on their services risked subjecting themselves to liability, because such regulation cast the service provider in the role of a publisher. Fearing that the specter of liability would therefore deter service providers from blocking and screening offensive material, Congress enacted § 230's broad immunity "to remove disincentives for the development and utilization of blocking and filtering technologies that empower parents to restrict their children's access to objectionable or inappropriate online material." 47 U.S.C. § 230(b)(4). In line with this purpose, § 230 forbids the imposition of publisher liability on a service provider for the exercise of its editorial and self-regulatory functions.
---[end quote]---
Interesting that you quote Zeran because this is the most used portion:
[[The specter of tort liability in an area of such prolific speech would have an obvious chilling effect. It would be impossible for service providers to screen each of their millions of postings for possible problems. Faced with potential liability for each message republished by their services, interactive computer service providers might choose to severely restrict the number and type of messages posted.]]
Blumenthal v Drudge, where they didn't hold AOL liable for paying to re-post a libelous Drudge column:
In recognition of the speed with which information may be disseminated and the near impossibility of regulating information content, Congress decided not to treat providers of interactive computer service like other information providers such as newspapers, magazines or television and radio stations, all of which may be held liable for publishing or distributing obscene or defamatory material written or prepared by others.
US v. Backpage: http://www.dmlp.org/sites/dmlp.org/files/gov.uscourts.tnmd.5...
"On one hand, Backpage.com has painted a clear picture of the hazards of self-censorship if this is the case: websites such as Backpage.com will bear an impossible burden to review all of their millions of postings..."
They later quote that same bit about Tort in Zeran
There are about a half dozen others that reference the same bit about it being impossible and using the following chilling effect argument to uphold the application of section 230.
"...you have the right to free speech, not consequence free speech"
It makes me really uneasy though. I'm starting to think free speech should be protected in non-government situations as well. Because otherwise you can get your job/project/social media account/etc. destroyed by mobs if you happen to have an opinion that's not politically fashionable at the moment.
I could just be reading it wrong, but "you have the right to free speech, but not their consequences" seems to have an implicit "...because me and my friends will gang up and hound you if you say something we don't like" hanging at the end of the sentence
Everything that happened to Eich was a result of people organizing speech and associating with each other freely to amplify the power of their voices.
> and hosting fees are a real thing
What's the actual marginal cost of a few extra comments?
> It's not a public venue
It is.
> you come into my house
Your house is a private venue. In contrast, a public forum is a public venue (even if it's privately owned).
> being allowed to support
And I'm not denying you that right. I'm just saying it's morally bad, and also counter-productive (to what you or they are trying to achieve) - you'll get more Trumps elected with policies like this, not less.
> go make your own... it's pretty easy and affordable
Yeah until you get censored by Facebook, Google, Twitter, PayPal, Visa, CloudFront etc. - censors / opponents of free speech have a lot of market power these days.
Facebook, Google, Twitter, YouTube are all advertising companies. They allow you, for free, to post your content on their advertising platform. They have every right to sensor you.
PayPal and Visa are financial companies, they have to protect themselves from high risk activity (pornography, drugs and drug precursors, money-laundering etc) and are allowed to refuse who they want for any number of reasons.
CloudFront... a CDN has the right to refuse to deliver content that they find questionable or flat out illegal, they could easily be drug into a costly legal battle and intrusive investigation if someone is say distributing child pornography, content advocating terrorism etc.
Maybe one could argue that Visa, PayPal and Mastercard are acting as a cartel/oligopoly? That would be interesting...
Uh no, the're things that actually happen. People are constantly trying to sell prodrugs and 'raws' via paypal, you can go on most darknet markets and buy both stolen and 'fake' paypal accounts for any number of uses, etc. A quick google of 'paypal drug dealers' or 'paypal steroids' quickly returns both written content and videos on how to make money selling steroids via paypal and social media.
Card networks like Visa limit what sort of pornography can be transacted via their network for various legality concerns. A quick google search will bury you in reading material from the EFF to Forbes to pissed off purveyors.
Etc etc so on and so forth, you lose, you get nothing, I said good day sir.
> A straw man is a common form of argument and is an informal fallacy based on giving the impression of refuting an opponent's argument, while actually refuting an argument that was not presented by that opponent.
Some of that IS legal content. PayPal and Visa/Mastercard have long lists of high-risk goods they simply won't deal with. That's not censorship, that's preventative damage control.
Still a strawman as there is no inherent financial damage of political speech compared to those high-risk goods.
As has been shown a few times now, this capability can be summarily revoked.
Yes all of these can be ultimate censored, but someone can walk up to you and forcefully hold their hand over your mouth too.
The rental model isn't an inherent part of web hosting, it's just much easier and much of the internet is geared toward things working that way.
I'm quite sure that it would be impossible to do that in some situations and for some use cases now, and in some areas it would not work out well, but in other areas it's trivially easy to find "business class" fiber service with at least 1-Gbit up and down, which is faster than the pipes a lot of hosting providers offer.
There's a much stronger case to be made against ISPs tampering with or denying service to those sorts of customers, who are directly paying for a physical connection to wherever they're located.
A sitting US president, by the strength of their mere words, have the power to change culture. Trump, just by talking the way he talks about the things he talks about, is changing what legal speech is now disavowed by society.
You seem to fail to grasp that a sitting US president is of more consequence than two men marrying one another.
But it is at least that, and so includes, as does the first Amendment, the right to choose what speech to support with one's own resources, including the platform one owns.
The freedom of speech not only does not obligate anyone else to expend their resources to relay your speech, it absolutely protects their right to decline to do so.
> Discussion is what makes peaceful progress possible,
RPG.net is a site dedicated to discussion of roleplaying games; it is not necessary for “peacefuk progress” for it to provide a platform for all (or even any) support or opposition to political candidates.
This is an interesting argument and implies that forum owners are responsible for the content that they publish. Is that what you believe?
A web host's right to exercise their speech by moderating the forum they pay for has absolutely nothing to do with the safe harbor laws you're alluding you. Just the same as kicking someone out of your house party for being an ass, you can be removed from internet spaces in the same way. Just because the interaction is digital doesn't grant you some higher set of ~rights~.
http://www.dmlp.org/sites/dmlp.org/files/gov.uscourts.tnmd.5...
Yes, as protecting and encouraging exercise of self-regulation and editorial functions is a central purpose of those laws, as discussed in Zeran v. America Online, Inc., 129 F.3d 327 (4th Cir., 1997), quoted in my comment in another subthread:
This 'Impossible Burden' element continued to expand the use of section 230, until the most recent protecting against child trafficking legislation.
Also, it was protection of self-regulation of obscene and/or libelous content, not general content.
That's the opposite of the safe harbor rationale.
If this is not impossible, then there should be no need for safe harbor.
Also, safe harbor has been used to defend not applying content policy; I'm not sure it's ever been used to defend the application of a content policy.
Completely regulating content may be impossible (or, at least, a greater burden relative to other irreducible costs) in online media, and at least the latter if not the former is a premise of the CDA safe harbor.
But since adopting and making best effort enforcement of a content policy does not require the ability to completely regulate content, site operators having a Constitutional right (as they clearly do) to adopt and enforce such a policy is not, in any way, inconsistent with the continued existence of the safe harbor.
My argument is as follows:
Publishers are required to strictly moderate their content.
Online publishers are protected from these requirements.
The reason that online publishers are not required to have strict moderation is because it is not possible to have strict moderation.
If it is possible to have strict moderation, then their protections should be removed and online publishers should be required to have strict moderation.
By applying strict moderation, you are showing that it is possible to apply strict moderation. Therefore, you should be treated as a publisher and made to comply with all other regulations relative to that status.
The ability to apply strict moderation -> the ability to moderate at all; however this is not necessarily true in reverse. You can moderate your forum and still be unable to comply with the law to the standard publishers can.
You're saying that moderation is possible without strict moderation. I'm not disputing that, but instead saying that strict moderation is possible, implied by the complete banning of a particular opinion.
If I'm incorrect about the possibility of strict moderation, it doesn't mean that logically there is a fallacy.
If I am correct, there is still no fallacy.
A blanket policy doesn't prove that strict moderation is possible.
Web hosts tend to have blanket policies prohibiting illegal content, and did both before and he whole time since CDA § 230 was adopted, without legislators or courts finding any inconsistency; to the extent impossibility of strict moderation is a necessary element of the justification of the provision, the mere possibility of stating a blanket policy does not, clearly, suffice to defeat it.
I doubt this would have made it to the front page of HN if they banned any support or opposition to political candidates. It made it to the front page because they specifically banned support of one politician.
I still think this is terrible.
Echo chambers are becoming more common with the wide-spread adoption of the internet and people are increasingly worse at handling disagreements. It is so easy to immerse yourself in communities that validate your ideas. Many online services push you into these echo chambers because, in general, people engage more with groups that express ideas they are comfortable with.
The internet is a never-ending record of the adverse effects of echo chambers. Politics, religion, game consoles, programming languages, frameworks, operating systems, browsers, text editors... they exist for just about everything and the effect is always the same. People immersed in echo chambers gradually stop being able to show empathy to those outside their group. Perceived public opinion is a powerful thing and we love to point to popularity as justification[1].
Humans need to be challenged in order to grow. Maybe RPG.net isn't the right place for people to be challenged politically. Then the mods should just ban discussions about any real-life politician. Targeting one politician just creates another echo chamber.
Again, I know they have the right to do this. They should be allowed to do it.
I think it's bad.
[1] Apparently it's called "argumentum ad populum". Cool! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum
> New Ban: Do Not Post In Support of Trump or his Administration
If they want to keep the gamming forum on topic they can ban all political discussion.
(As a comparison, HN has a ban in political discussion. It's difficult to ban all political discussion because the is an spectrum between 100% political and 100% technological, and some posts are both political and technological, and in some case there is not clear threshold.)
This isn't about being on topic, as it's a sitewide rule which applies even in the open-topic forums on the site.
So, criticizing it as not the best way to keep things on-topic is missing the point.
> As a comparison, HN has a ban in political discussion.
No, it doesn't, though it did as a quite controversial experiment for a few days a while ago. (If it did, this discussion, which is 100% political, would be banned.)
Ding ding ding! A website is effectively the owner's house, if you come through their door you follow their rules or you leave.
If you say something on a website the owner is allowed to remove it, if you don't like that you are more than welcome to go make your own website for as cheap as probably 15$ a year with shared hosting.
I have a general distaste for communities like this and it's always disappointing to me when I see any community voluntarily turn itself into an obvious echo chamber.
The underlying premise is wrong, but many people no longer seem to recognize it. This is how the fringe builds power until it’s too late to stop them.
> [Donald Trump's actions are] so wholly incompatible with our values that formal political neutrality is not tenable. We can be welcoming to (for example) persons of every ethnicity who want to talk about games, or we can allow support for open white supremacy. Not both.
The problem is not Trump. The problem is the values they associate with him. They don't want people advocating those values on their forum, so they banned expressions of support for Trump.
Are you suggesting they are okay with people advocating those values sans Trump?
In the other, a company is proving you a connection to the network and nothing more, but in exchange for payment and often with no other choices.
The distinction makes sense because you can find another land lord to rent from, or buy your own house (as you can find another web host, or become a web host). But you still have to get power from the, usually one, local electric company (as you have to get a connection to the internet from your, usually one, local ISP).
"No. You know what? Fuck that noise. Ethnic cleansing is not "different views." Racism is not "different views." White nationalism is not "different views." Dogwhistling that attacks against your political enemies will continue if the media doesn't stop saying things you don't like is not "different views." Putting children in cages is not "different views."
This is not an argument over tax rates or the proper role of government in education. This is an argument about who will be allowed to exist in America.
Get the fuck out of this thread. Don't post here again."
Whether you agree with their decision to ban Trump support on their (privately owned) forums, you have to agree we are in a pretty grim state here in America.
Has Trump ever supported "ethnic cleansing"? No. Has he even supported racism? As far as I know, no, despite attempts to cast his criticism of illegal immigrants as generalised racism.
Those claims are absurd and extreme. This person appears to believe any sort of functioning immigration system at all is the same thing as mass murder.
It looks to me from my vantage point abroad like a section of American society has become so totally swamped in righteous anger, that they have concluded - but are unwilling to explicitly say - that US immigration controls and borders should be entirely abolished. The Democrats are not campaigning on that platform though. So what happens next?
Where is that coming from? It seems completely out of context with what was said.
Trump has been consistently proven to be racist, xenophobic, misogynistic - none of which are a crime - but should be considered seriously when at command of the United States.
These aren't straw men points. There are real victims out there suffering real consequences because of the hate and regression Trump has promoted. Children ARE being locked in cages. To say it's all Trump's fault would be careless and wrong however, but at the same time we wouldn't say the civil rights movement happened without Martin Luther King. Trump happens to be the leader of a hateful movement no one can hide from. It is indeed very grim.
Not only is one discriminating because of what you are and the other because of what you do and say, but the "do and say" side in this case is doing and saying things that are unquestionably morally repugnant, and in many cases actively inciting (or at least condoning) violence against classes of people...mainly because of what those people are.
Which I believe is considered a "protected class" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_group - whereas being a racist/white supremacist/alt-right (currently) isn't. That's the difference.
I am myself in favor of a couple of Trump’s policies, and I am pretty sure I am not a white supremacist or part of a hate group.
We have a lot of discussions on free speech but do we really need to post every single site that uses these tools to reiterate the same points?
>Pro:Free exchange of ideas is being threatened and is creating an echo chamber; i don't agree with the ideas but will die for you to say it >Con: They are privately operated and the first amendment isn't a catch all for all speech; XKCD comic showing you the door...
Maybe i'm cynical but most discussions just devolves to the same conversations being repeated with nothing interesting to add to the already long list of FB, Google, Go Daddy, Twitter posts/groups that have been censored/deplatformed. At this point it seems everyone already has their opinions firmly placed and nothing will really convince them otherwise.
"Researching my book, I looked into what actually happened in the Weimar Republic. I found that, contrary to what most people think, Weimar Germany did have hate-speech laws, and they were applied quite frequently. The assertion that Nazi propaganda played a significant role in mobilizing anti-Jewish sentiment is, of course, irrefutable. But to claim that the Holocaust could have been prevented if only anti-Semitic speech and Nazi propaganda had been banned has little basis in reality. Leading Nazis such as Joseph Goebbels, Theodor Fritsch, and Julius Streicher were all prosecuted for anti-Semitic speech. Streicher served two prison sentences. Rather than deterring the Nazis and countering anti-Semitism, the many court cases served as effective public-relations machinery, affording Streicher the kind of attention he would never have found in a climate of a free and open debate. In the years from 1923 to 1933, Der Stürmer [Streicher's newspaper] was either confiscated or editors taken to court on no fewer than thirty-six occasions. The more charges Streicher faced, the greater became the admiration of his supporters. The courts became an important platform for Streicher's campaign against the Jews. In the words of a present-day civil-rights campaigner, pre-Hitler Germany had laws very much like the anti-hate laws of today, and they were enforced with some vigor. As history so painfully testifies, this type of legislation proved ineffectual on the one occasion when there was a real argument for it."
Nothing gets stopped by merely refusing to extend some small measure of legitimacy to whatever is deemed "bigoted". These policies and norms do not change minds, which is the skill these wannabe social engineers need to master.
Changing people's minds, as you mention, is a different problem entirely.
Free and open debate exposes evil. Attempting to suppress debate gives it a platform and allows it to grow.
I also didn’t see anyone making these arguments when YouTube and other platforms said they were going to target content the helps radicalize Muslims.
There needs to be some middle ground where we can protect those being targeted and protect free-speech.
My comment was a broad based comment about censorship of ideas.
I don't recall YouTube making any such comment, perhaps I missed it. I don't think they've been successful if they even tried.
And if this is an issue that concerns you more broadly I’m not sure how you could possibly miss the dozens or hundreds of news stories about online platforms trying to combat extremism.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/several-tech-giants-join-forces...
There's been broad based discussion about most of the major web platforms deplatforming speech they don't agree with. If you haven't heard about it you've had your head stuck in the sand, or more likely you simply agree with it because you agree with deplatforming those with whom you disagree. That's not an abnormal thing, most people would gladly take away their political opponents' ability to speak if they could get away with it. That's why it's important we don't allow it -- it's the "when they came for..." argument.
Your link talks about speech that specifically calls for violence and is credibly not covered by the first amendment. That's a bit different than the free exchange of ideas.
I don’t want people with differing opinions on healthcare, abortion, civil rights, etc. to be banned, but to me it’s more than a difference in political opinion when someone suggests people I care about are subhuman or citizens should be removed from the country by the millions.
Your “when they came for...” argument is actually a reference to a historical quote about the targeting of groups by the Nazi party. It’s hard for me to see the people wanting not to be labeled evil, subhuman, and criminal as playing the role of the Nazis in this case or how you could compare being told you can’t Tweet disgusting falsehoods with imprisonment or extermination.
What you fail to realize is that those particular groups are recruiting into organizations that explicitly require violence against anyone who disagrees with them. I know it's popular to pretend that isn't true, it's just an "internal struggle" or whatever, but that's simply not the case. When they say "we must fight the infidels", they literally mean, we're going to take up arms and go and murder all the infidels, specifically including as many noncombatants as we can find.
In general, people speaking in America aren't calling for that. I don't agree with what you refer to that they're advocating, and I think the right way to combat it is to argue why they're wrong, but they're not advocating murder of innocents. Those who do are falling afoul of the restrictions that have been allowed on speech and should be dealt with accordingly - making threats isn't legal.
I'm well aware of where the comment came from. Again, restricting speech you disagree with is a slippery slope, and that's why we don't do it -- or didn't, until it became fashionable to shut down all forms of conservative discussion on media that has become left wing propaganda arms.
The targets of bigotry being subjected to both the bigotry itself and the additional insult of the community they are participating in legitimizing it is, in fact, stopped by the community not legitimizing it.
As that has long been a central purpose of RPG.net policy on acceptable participation, I think this particular rule is probably doing exactly what is intended.
> These policies and norms do not change minds
Perhaps, but in this case they aren't intended to, so that's not an argument against the policy.
No one is suggesting that, so I'm not sure why you are beating that strawman.
> It just leaves the participants unprepared when confronting this "bigotry" in the real world, as inevitably they will.
Just because I'm quite prepared to (and used to) dealing with inclement weather in the “real world” doesn't mean I forego HVAC in my home or places I rent for social gatherings where that weather isn't conducive to the purpose of the gathering.
So? It's a privately-run forum.
I’m not interested in sharing an online space with people who are more than happy to tear my country down.
"Eisenhower got elected President for overseeing a war that was ALL ABOUT killing Nazis. We should return to those days." — Cessna"
Why not just ban all political posts?
Look at these 5 videos. People on the left are allowed to bring their whole selves to RPG.net. People on the right are not welcomed to do the same.
https://www.wsj.com/news/types/voices-from-a-divided-america
And if your "whole self" actively supports others who espouse such views, even if you do not directly do so yourself, then while I won't go so far as to say you're as bad, you're certainly bad enough that you should also not be welcomed in that way.
Now please take a few minutes and look at the people in the videos (see my previous comment) who are Trump supporters. Those are real people who support Trump. Please let me know specifically which ones are bad enough that they should not be welcomed.
Therefore, anyone supporting him also supports these things, and should not be welcomed.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/i-shouldnt-exist-1540823580
I'm disappointed in you, @danaris.
The article says he's a fiscal conservative, so that explains why he's a Trump supporter, if he is (it doesn't actually outright state that, just says that he's a conservative), but I don't consider it to be a good enough excuse. Maybe two years ago before we knew just what kind of politician and President he would be, but not now.
I understand the dilemma the Republican party has right now. Many of them don't actually believe in the horrible things that Trump supports, but feel like they don't have any choice because the Democratic party opposes so many of their policy positions.
But policy should take a back seat when you're confronted with actual evil, and that's what we're dealing with right now. Nazis. Literal, not-even-slightly-kidding gas-the-Jews lynch-the-blacks ethnic-cleansing white-power Nazis are what Trump truly represents right now, and the Republican party leaders, by and large, won't even denounce them and say they don't support that shit.
If you support Trump, now, you support the rise of literal Nazis, and I don't care what else you believe in or support, that's something I can't see any value in even allowing in the debate.
Intolerance of intolerance is the only acceptable form of intolerance. I think that this intolerance for others through trump support is what they are banning first and foremost.
This seems vulnerable to a meta-level attack: "who gets to decide what is intolerable?"
(p.s. the Thanks is generally for your response. Just want to be appreciative for peoples thoughts while discussing this topic)
So now the game becomes figuring out how to label what your opponent is doing as intolerance so that you can conveniently be intolerant of it.
On the other hand, Obama invaded 2 countries and kept on waging a war in two others. He also lied about closing Guantanamo Bay.
It's easy to come up with one-sided examples for any politician. That's what politics is, really - the game of (shitty) trade-offs.
Except unlike with Trump, with Obama, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon, Johnson, Kennedy, the nominees from the other major party who ran against those, most governors in the last 100 years, most of the Senate for the last 100 years, probably a majority of the members of the House of Representatives over the last 100 years, and probably even a large majority of state legislators...if you got into a tit for tat exchange of one-sided examples with a supporter of your candidate's opponent, you'd both run out at about the same time and each would have scored about equally.
PS: it may have been unclear, because I should have also quoted your next sentence, "That's what politics is, really - the game of (shitty) trade-offs", as that was actually more of what I was addressing.
The point was that the trade-offs with Trump are way beyond the normal parameters we've had to consider trading off before. Pick various politicians and go look up their records on fact check sites. They are all pretty terrible, but Trump takes it to a new level of terribleness.