08-31-2021, 01:11 PM
(08-31-2021, 09:53 AM)Wes Mantooth Wrote: The danger is to everyone in this country. Inflammatory speech like this only furthers the divide and emboldens some to demonize fellow Americans. We've seen over and over (and over, and over, and over) again what this is doing to this country.
It's even worse with statements like this which are rather ambigious. Is he talking about anti-vaxers, or people who remain unvvacinated? Is he talking about MAGA people? Is he talking about the Proud Boys? Is he talking about Republicans? While there may be an answer to this in his own mind, to the people reading it it's up for interpretation.
There are consequences for labeling people as Nazi's, or facsists, or now the Taliban, just as there are consequences for the low IQ people who believed the DNC is filled with pedophiles. Whether you look to January 6th, or the Antifa/Protesters meeting Kyle Rittenhouse and Co., or any number of confrontations that play out on our streets almost daily, this type of language helps no one.
Forgetting all of the above, and the danger in using descriptions and language like this, this is just downright offensive and inaccurate. One only needs to read about what the Taliban did to that folk singer a few days ago to know there is no comparison to be made to anything that is occuring here. And that's just a singular example.
There's a plethora of things happening right now in that country. Here's a story of the Taliban demanding a woman cook for them, and when she said she couldn't they beat her and then shot her in front of her children. https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/17/asia/afghanistan-women-taliban-intl-hnk-dst/index.html
Here's a story about the beatings that are occuring and the targeting of activists and women and children. One of the more chilling things in here is that women are actually burning their diplomas because they're fearful that the Taliban will learn they are educated. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/08/25/kabul-women-activists-hide-fear-taliban-take-afghanistan/5580807001/
There really should be no need to explain this to anyone.. I'm not sure how anyone couldn't see the danger in using language like this. I'm also not sure how anyone can't see how stupid of a comparison it is either. That leads me to only one conclusion; they know exactly what they're doing and they don't care. This is all a means to advance their own political interests. And it's absolutely disgusting the lengths they'll go to villify the other side.
I've been on record as opposing such comparisons for several years, going back to the old board. I can tell you firsthand that recent events (the past few years) have only solidly reinforced that belief. I have seen virulent anti law enforcement rhetoric, either tolerated or propagated by many in the media, turn the atmosphere in which law enforcement works in to a toxic miasma. People routinely speak and act towards law enforcement in ways that were borderline unthinkable a few short years ago. Attacking officers taking someone into custody, throwing objects at law enforcement doing their job. Maybe national level politicians claiming that law enforcement is racist, serves white supremacy, started as slave catchers and looks to murder "people of color" whenever they can get away with it has something to do with that? Here's a wonderful example from NYC;
So when someone like Dill tells me such comparisons are an academic comparison and that he's engaged in scholarly research I call bullshit. Even giving Dill the benefit of the doubt that this is his intention, it most certainly is not the intention of the vast, vast majority of those engaged in such comparisons. And when people such as Dill seek to excuse such comparisons they're doing so with a broad brush, whether they realize it or not. You want to raise concerns about behavior, feel free. You want to make historical comparisons, do so, but don't use examples so extreme and inflammatory that the mere mention of the group being compared raises strong feelings.
As you stated, it baffles me that this even has to be explained to people, to me this is obvious as day. But that might be because I see the real world consequences of it every day instead of theorizing and debating about it from behind a computer screen.
