A pretty good resource on this can be found by Googling "ad hominem fallacy fallacy".
> And no I don't want to defend Trump or Theil but rather the fundamental principle that no matter what in a democracy everyone have the right to say and mean what they want without having to fear the repercussions
I interpreted "repercussions" to mean ad hominem. Peter Theil has his reasons for supporting Trump. But I see the conversation shifting to his transitive guilt of bigotry/misogyny, as opposed to the political motivations for that support. I think this is ad hominem, as it's a focus on the moral scandal and not the political issues.
There are collateral damage to all political decisions you are just more accepting some rather than those the Trump supporters accept.
That doesn't mean they can't have a higher political goal than purely bigotry. In fact I believe both Altman and Thiel shows that you can in fact disagree without shaming.
Peter Thiel supports this man. He donates millions to his campaign. He's a surrogate for the campaign. He stood on stage and endorsed the campaign even as dozens of senior Republicans refused. He donated just last week, so much that he made the front page of CNN, after Trump pivoted to attacking the election itself.
If drones are a major concern of yours, good on you! You, too, should be working as diligently as possible to prevent Donald Trump from killing millions of people in new military strikes.
His rhetorics are not his politicis just like Hillarys rhetorics are not her politics. We will not get rid of Drones by voting on anyone of them.
Which brings me to my point. You are just accepting another kind of problematic foreign policy over another. They are both bad.
And again. I am not voting for any of them. I do not support any of them.
Your claims about Trumps killing millions of people is so absurd. But to use your own argument.
If you really believe Trump will kill millions I have no problem with your defending Hillary only killing hundreds of thousands.
If you are against that you are yourself doing what you accuse Altman for.
Your diplomacy is admirable, but I think there is a deeper issue here. I found your original text to be clear.
Thom's selfish and privileged expectation is that he can open with that attack, and that we'll all be polite and civil to him; even though he started the conversation by directly claiming that only dumb autocrats disagree with him. That's not how the world works though. Thom chose to be awful to a huge group of people; and he chose not to retract his shitty, awful words. he should expect people to treat him poorly.
Further, he's a white man who decided to tell a diverse group of people (who has never met) that we don't understand sexism or racism as well as he does. This was insane. The level of arrogance required to do this is... almost unmeasurable.
So a few things:
1) he shouldn't expect us to be polite. He was rude as FUCK in his opening, and he was also incredibly arrogant with his assertions about his understanding of american sexism and racism.
2) 'ad hominem' is not what you think it is. Don't use words you don't understand.
3) It's borderline insane for you to spend your life defending OP. ThomPete made REALLY bad decisions, and you have better things to do with your life than to defend a white male asshole who isn't actually being hurt at all.
4) The amount of "oh the poor rich white men who are suffering..." bullshit is off the charts. PG and Sama are suffering no harm at all, beyond a few words on Twitter. Their lives are completely intact. They're FUCKING FINE.
5) The people who will suffer in a DJT world are all powerless. They are people whose lives will not be completely intact. They are people who will be ruined. But you don't give a fuck aobut that because you're too busy vilifying people for being mean to an awful cunt like ThomPete.
Are the things Trump says and allegedly did reprehensible? Of course. But to bring them up in a conversation about the status quo in DC is still ad hominem, and to think that being right about his being a pig wins any debate about a possible evil power structure headed by Clinton is a straw man.
Donald Trump scares me. So does the cavalier attitude of so many who seem to have tunnel vision when it comes to politics vs the two minute hatee du jour.