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A comment on Obama Expands Surveillance Powers on His Way Out. Parent comment

Re:Obama Expands Surveillance Powers on His Way Out by Pigo on Friday January 13, 2017 @10:45AM (#13391635)
How do you talk people down after spending a year telling them Hitler was coming to power? The same media that created Broadway shows to lambaste the last President for being a war-monger are crying tearful farewells for Barry because he said something about climate change once. All the willful ignorance I see day in and day out gets harder and harder to take.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Obama Expands Surveillance Powers on His Way Out by epistasis on Friday January 13, 2017 @10:55AM (#13391712)
Wow, with such a biased estimation of events, you must be talking about your own willful ignorance.

"Barry because he something about climate change once." If you willfully ignore everything that has happened, then perhaps you're not impressed or don't see drastic differences.

"How do you talk people down after spending a year telling them Hitler was coming to power?" Which is of course not in the least bit realistic.

Sure, one can create strawmen all day, and use those strawmen to push whatever argument they want, but nobody is the wiser for it. If you actually try to look at the world with as clear eyes as possible, rather than through the most rosy-colored or other filtered view, you will have a better chance of getting through days without them being hard and also of convincing people of your points of view.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Obama Expands Surveillance Powers on His Way Out by sp332 on Friday January 13, 2017 @12:15PM (#13392490)
The Obama part was a bit of hyperbole, not a strawman. But people really were saying Trump is literally Hitler. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-road-ahead_us_57e03b...
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Obama Expands Surveillance Powers on His Way Out by epistasis on Friday January 13, 2017 @12:33PM (#13392648)
Uh, your article does not support your thesis.

And it's not a mainstream perspective, it is at best a hyperbole of people saying hyperbolic things.

Two hyperboles don't make a right.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Obama Expands Surveillance Powers on His Way Out by epistasis on Friday January 13, 2017 @07:53PM (#13396123)
1. "It’s ridiculous to compare any living person to Hitler or Mussolini."

2. No mention of Hitler. A point by point comparison to a historical and previous description of fascism.

3. Not Hitler, talks about conservatism and totalitarianism.

4. No mention of Hitler anywhere.

5. " I am not suggesting that what is happening in the United States replicates in every sense what happened in Italy and Germany. "

6. "The Republican presidential candidate is not a Fascist, but his campaign bears notable similarities to the reign of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini."

Compare these viewpoints to the claim of "But people really were saying Trump is literally Hitler."

Edit: I should also say that I don't doubt you could come up with something somewhere where somebody claimed that Trump is "literally Hitler." However, it is not a prevalent or even mainstream viewpoint. Even calling Trump a fascist, and defending it based on evidence, is a pretty extreme and rare viewpoint.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Obama Expands Surveillance Powers on His Way Out by rfrank on Friday January 13, 2017 @08:14PM (#13396225)
His point was broadly about the tone in which Trump has been described in the media, and how that contributes to the division that currently exists in America.

"How do you talk people down after spending a year telling them Hitler was coming to power?" vs. "How do you talk people down after spending a year telling them a fascist was coming to power?" isn't a very meaningful distinction to me in that context. Your mileage may vary. Many mainstream outlets have expressed that opinion for a long time, and it's a point of view I've seen defended here on HN many times in political threads. I don't think it's a fringe viewpoint at all.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Obama Expands Surveillance Powers on His Way Out by epistasis on Friday January 13, 2017 @08:35PM (#13396297)
There's a difference between what all these people are warning of, and then "literally Hitler" of starting a world war and imprisoning all political opponents and then executing millions of the prisoners like cattle in an industrial processing plant.

The "literally Hitler" smear is an attempt to distinguish that careful, and important distinction, so that the entire thought can be dismissed as ridiculous.

Looking at each of those articles where they say "not hitler, but he still is making noises like he'll be bad," do you think that needs to be walked back? Were they ignoring reality, or facing an unpleasant reality?

"Literally Hitler" is not a thoughtful, fair, or even useful characterization of these viewpoints.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Obama Expands Surveillance Powers on His Way Out by rfrank on Saturday January 14, 2017 @01:57PM (#13399900)
Literally Hitler and literally fascism are both just bedwetting.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Obama Expands Surveillance Powers on His Way Out by sp332 on Friday January 13, 2017 @01:01PM (#13392910)
I think I misunderstood what you were calling "unrealistic". It doesn't matter whether Trump is really like Hitler. People really did make that comparison, and now the people who were convinced by those arguments are stuck on high alert. As Pigo said, it's going to be very hard to talk those people down to a point that we can have a productive political conversation.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Obama Expands Surveillance Powers on His Way Out by Pigo on Friday January 13, 2017 @01:33PM (#13393257)
I've seen people saying it's illegal to be Muslim now. You can't underestimate the intelligence of people on social media and rioting cities. Maybe it's different where some of you live, or some of your online circles.
[ Parent | on HN ]