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Comment by renewiltord | Hacker News Reader

The California Republican Party has stances on issues that are past what SF voters in the majority will accept.

He doesn’t have to paint them as demons because their stated positions on abortion and gay marriage will make them untenable to SF voters and place SF voters in vocal opposition. Any demonic painting is unlikely to move the needle.

This is merely a claim of fact about the CA GOP and SF, not a position on whether they are demons. It is not a claim that the CA GOP are evil because of these stances.

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Please don't take HN threads into tedious partisan flamewar. It's predictable and therefore boring, and inevitably turns nasty. We're trying to avoid that kind of thing here. I know the GP started it, but there's a difference between dipping a toe and jumping in.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Huh. I genuinely didn’t think I was doing that. I had to look the issues up on the website to quote them.

The point isn’t that I disagree or think they’re demons or whatever. The point is that SF residents are vocally opposed to CA GOP stances. “Painting them as demons” isn’t necessary because their stated aim is already past the Overton window for SF residents.

It’s like saying “he’s painting non-vegans as demons to prevent them from being voted in at the vegan conference”. They’re vegans. You don’t have to paint the non-vegans as demons. The perfectly non-demonic non-vegan falls outside the window! Pointing that out isn’t flaming! It’s factual.

Considering I’m pretty right wing, it’s a bit perplexing that you’ve gone and assumed I’m making a partisan attack on Republicans. I have a Gadsden flag, mate. And currently live in Texas.

But whatever, it’s your site. Run it how you want.

Ok, I believe you and I clearly misread your comment—sorry! But in terms of the dynamics of flamewar, it's likely a distinction without a difference because others would also misread it and we'd get the same effect. If you're posting something that might be mistaken for flamebait, the burden is on you (not you personally, of course—it applies the same way to all of us) to disambiguate from that:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

Edit: if you're going to edit a comment after someone has replied to it, it's best to make it clear where the edits are. Otherwise you can easily change the meaning of the reply, which can be unfair to others (not only to the user who replied, but also to readers).

I think you’re starting at shadows, like a cop who sees a gun in every man reaching for his wallet merely because he’s seen men reaching for guns a hundred times before.

That’s your life to lead but it is well worth asking oneself if there is truly some fifth column here or if one has convinced oneself into some Great Purge.

But your house, your rules. Edited the comment so that we can ensure that those primed for arson won’t use this particular lamp to light their torches.

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