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Comment by dcolkitt | Hacker News Reader

One of the most destructive trends in recent political discourse is the tendency to seek out the worst, rather than the best, arguments from the opposing side.

Instead of engaging with articles from The National Review or Mother Jones, we just dunk on the most outrageous morons and trolls we can scour on Twitter or Reddit.

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Yup, this is exactly the problem with modern politics. Take the absolute worst of the other side and project it to all of them. You like Republicans? You can't be anything other than a neo nazi racist white supremacist extremist. You leaning left? Then you have to be a communist shill who wants to tax every remotely financially successful person to death and take all liberties away from everyone ever. It's really tiring.

This argument would have more weight if "the worst" was rightfully repudiated by Republicans instead of reelection, pardons, denialism, or blistering conspiracy theories. There are outrageous acts on both sides but only the Left consistently calls out the missteps of their own.

Like the riots?

You mean the property damage and looting that was repeatedly repudiated by the left, as GP pointed out? Yes.

it wasnt though

This is just lazy. It took sub-1 second to google for this information.

"However, after George Floyd’s death, Joe Biden repeatedly condemned violent protests. In a May 31 post on his blog shortly after George Floyd’s death, he wrote, “Protesting such brutality is right and necessary. It’s an utterly American response. But burning down communities and needless destruction is not. Violence that endangers lives is not.”"

https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-biden-condemn-v...

yeah right. because the narrative the past 6 months was definitely that Biden didn't want them to riot.

Those are words, but that is not a coherent statement.

Not sure what you’re referring to. Failing to condemn white supremacists? That’s a talking point which is more about taking Trump’s erratic speech patterns out of context than it is a reflection of his actual statements or personal views. https://youtu.be/RGrHF-su9v8

So no, you can't find a liberal police captain who’s calling for Trump supporters to be shot in the head, can you?

Why should he/she? That has nothing to do with the generality of “talking to the other side”.

If you just want extremism, just pick some random Antifa post supporting “the killing of fascist police”.

> That has nothing to do with the generality of “talking to the other side”.

It has everything to do with it. You should ask the question why does a police chief want to put bullets in Biden supporters?

If you have such people in the police then can you understand why someone in Antifa supports “the killing of fascist police”?

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