Comment by michaelmrose | Hacker News Reader

Comment by michaelmrose | Hacker News Reader

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Please explicate what precisely you mean by bigotry.

56% of Republicans believe the Qanon conspiracy is partly or entirely true.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2020/09/02/majority-o...

60% of them believe in imaginary voter fraud and support undemocratically overturning the election. 43% of them would support doing so via a military coup as long as someone else does it and it doesn't overmuch interfere with their beer drinking.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/sep/11/military-cou...

Please note that this is from 2015 long before any claims of election fraud could have been informed by any real concerns. The desire for violent over throw of the government generated the fake election fraud concerns not the other way around.

A former general has a public event where he openly discussed the merits of overthrowing our government like Myanmar.

https://newrepublic.com/article/162586/michael-flynn-trump-m...

There is little difference in my mind between Hitlers supporters in the 30s and Trumps supporters in the 2020s and in the modern day Republican party if you aren't a Trump supporter you aren't welcome near anywhere.

I mean precisely the dictionary definition: intolerance towards those who hold a different opinion.

If what you call opinions can be broken down into those we have judged true and false, moral and immoral, promoting of peace and justice or liable to breed hate and death why on earth would anyone be expected to tolerate equally the expression of opinions that by their own standards were evil and destructive as those they viewed as good and constructive.

I tolerate your ability to possess either because by no means do I count myself the master of your mind or soul but that doesn't mean that I will tolerate the idea of your opinion running unopposed. Subject to the rules of this forum I will happily call it out.

Perhaps you can tell me what part of what I said was objectively wrong? More than half of your fellows believe that a satanic cabal of pedos has stolen the country and almost half want the military to end democracy in the name of saving it and install a reality TV star.

Who is this "we" doing the judging of true and false? People of good conscience have debated weighty issues like political philosophy for thousands of years. Thinking that one half of the country is good and true and the other is hateful and evil is simplistic and wrong (I would go so far as to say that it is a form of evil.)

Republicans aren't half of the country any longer a mere 29% identify as Republicans and another 15% identify as independents who lean right.

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2020/06/02/in-changing-...

50-60% of that shrinking minority espouse beliefs that are crazy, dangerous, or both. Members of that shrinking minority are losing control of this nation and they are taking it badly. With shifting demographics voter suppression and disinformation isn't going to be sufficient to retain control and they are going to choose between violence and irrelevance and I don't think they will willingly choose irrelevance.

Using your numbers, it adds up to 44%. Dismissing my point because 44% is less than 50% is unwarranted.

Rounding. More relevant only 29% are willing to call themselves republicans.

To your point, I also am no longer willing to call myself progressive, or even "left-wing"....I don't want to be confused with the youthful, thoughtless, destructive, mob...and I'm a European anarcho-communist, so hopefully that means something. :-P I think in this regard, many, many, many people on both the "right" and "left" are in agreement.

Every time I’m tempted to actually get involved in the left-wing causes I support, I read something like this.

You’re saying there’s no difference between my Mom and Dad, and the Nazis. There’s no difference between my sister and the Nazis. There’s no difference between my in-laws and the Nazis.

Seriously. This is why people hate the Democrats, even though they agree with them in most issues.

I don’t care if we agree on everything. I’d never vote for someone who said the things you just did about my family.

Do you expect that the Nazis were uniquely evil? What trends in German society made them 'evil' that we lack?

Ordinary people are capable of great evil when they limit their sphere of empathy.

Most of the people are neither heroes nor monsters. The atrocities committed by the Nazis were committed by a minority of the population and ignored or tolerated by the majority of folks like your family.

I am deeply sorry that your family has fallen in line behind evil and hate because they simply cannot tell the difference between evil that tells them what they want to hear and decency that tells them things that make them uncomfortable. For you I hope that their innate quality as human beings enables them someday to see through the con and I hope you continue to love them regardless for the qualities they possess that are good and worthy. I don't hate you and I don't hate your family.

Your condescension speaks volumes.

How is that condescension? Odds are, iin Nazi Germany, everyone would have been a passive observer.

If your mom and your dad sincerely believe in the QAnon conspiracy, it doesn't make them inherently inferior people, but yes that's an absolutely abhorrent belief that is impossible not to compare to these situations.

But odds are most of us would be functionally the same by then.

I’m the only family who has heard of QAnon. They have no idea who she is.

You weren’t comparing QAnon supporters to Nazis. You were comparing Trump supporters to Nazis.

> There is little difference in my mind between Hitlers supporters in the 30s and Trumps supporters in the 2020s and in the modern day Republican party if you aren't a Trump supporter you aren't welcome near anywhere.

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