Republican National Convention(s)

[Dill]

(08-26-2020, 11:14 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: I literally could not ask for a better example.

Still stinging about my criticism of Islam, eh?  Don't worry, women are still being oppressed, gay people are being executed and apostates are being killed in the Islamic world.  All is right, from their perspective at least.

From the perspective that such comparison are so highly charged as to make their use a deliberate attempt to be inflammatory.  Are there no other totalitarian governments one could use an a parallel? 

I haven't argued against the earth being flat either.  I don't waste my time arguing against pure hyperbole.

Oh my, calling for no Nazi comparisons is now "suppressing political discussion".  You'll pardon me, I just got whiplash from my severe eyeroll.

It does no such thing, except to this determined to use the worst possible example in human history as their basis for comparison. 

Defining terms and articulating principles independent of issues discussed--why reject the "example" of standards that limit the free range of unsupported accusation? Why should "unsupported" be preferable to "long-winded? That's really the priority you are setting here.

For you, Trump/Hitler is still just a comparison of individual "persons."  One can certainly use other--and all--authoritarian leaders for Trump parallels, because there is a body of scholarship about such, exploring what they have in common, what makes them all  anti-democratic, what the "signs" are. But all aren't equally illuminating for American leaders; e.g., Stalin didn't accede to power in a democracy. He never had to denigrate the press or declare a state of emergency. His path around the rule of law was quite different. Trump is not a general who seized power in a military coup, like Pinochet. You won't notice this if it's all just about "bad examples of humans."

For the Trump case, the issue is how an authoritarian moves through, around and over the institutions of an apparently thriving democracy.  It's about the condition of the press, the state of public debate, the resistance (or not) of voters at every stage of the process, and about enabling legal rationales and the failure of checks.The situation of Kim in NK offers few or no institutional parallels here (though there may be fascinating similarities in narcisstic behavior).  Orbán and Erdogan might. However, for such a project to make sense, one must be able to see an institutional analysis with a practical ethical goal, not an attempt to free-associate one nasty person with a nastier one. But the latter is all one will see if institutions are largely invisible, the difference between analysis and accusation is nil, and empirical verification a "long-winded" hindrance to pre-judgment. 

But there is no assumption here that Trump has to be compared to only one other authoritarian, any more than it makes sense to say "Compare him to anyone BUT Hitler," because that one is "inflammatory." 

Despite my mention of the scapegoating of typical of right wing, authoritarian populism, your "highly charged" remarks about Muslims (a target you share with Trump) establish you have no problem with "a deliberate attempt to be inflammatory."  Deliberate charged, inflammatory hyperbole (or "intentional exaggeration") is your currency, to the very degree you find definitions, logical analysis and evidence-based argument "long-winded." Yet when empirically verifiable and remarkably consistent comparisons between Hitler's actions as German Chancellor and Trump's are on the table, your first impulse is neither to investigate nor refute, but to drag the red herring of "incivility" across every reader's path. 

In a forum predicated on free political speech, the way to kill political discussion of Trump/Hitler parallels is to refute the parallels. Show that Trump doesn't denigrate the press (or that Hitler didn't, or that such denigration really has no consequences), that he doesn't scapegoat minorities, obstruct justice, or terminate subordinates who put rule of law first, or seek to undermine the coming elections, etc. Or show that Hitler didn't do those things. Explain why it's just hyperbole to wonder if Trump will declare the national emergency he assures us is one of his "options." Or why looking into Kim's attacks on the NK free press (lol) would be more illuminating for the Trump case than Hitler's attacks on the German press.

But that's not your method. By declaring already noted parallels between Trump and Hitler "hyperbole," and then declaring you don't address hyperbole, you, who otherwise have nothing against hyperbole, position yourself to "refute" the empirical fact of parallels by just CALLING them hyperbole. Same gesture on the Esper/Milley thread when you spent at least 4 posts pre-judging and dismissing a Letter to them while unable to quote it or demonstrate you'd even read it--finally claiming it was beneath you to bother at all.

So yes, certainly, you'd like to suppress political discussion of any Hitler/Trump parallels, without actually addressing the empirical validity of those parallels.  "Eyerolls," accusations, and dismissals don't refute this. They confirm it.