No, just like I never said Bannon's statement should be taken as a threat.

> People never, ever use hyperbole for effect

I never said that. What effect so you think Bannon was going for? I've explained what I think, and that that the statement was a neither literal nor hyperbolic.

If you want a productive dialog, you need to respond to what people actually say, rather than fantasies of what you'd like them to have said because it is convenient to argue against.

To me it sounds like Bannon is just a pompous blowhard who's making outrageous claims he will never, in a million years, be able to back up.

But that's not my point. My point is that I get to read his words myself and make up my own mind about them. I can decide he's a pompous blowhard or a serious threat to democracy and direct my own actions accordingly. I don't have to get a secondhand account from Facebook who tells me what to think about Bannon. Do you see the difference?

If you read Bannon's word and decide he's a threat then you can go around warning people about him if you like, or starting some counter-advocacy movement, or whatever (legal) action you want to take. If you have to rely on Facebook telling you which people are threats and which people are not, that gives them a power to direct the public discourse to their whims. The public needs to have the ability to view primary sources and make up their own minds about them.

I'm not concerned about the specific details of this one piece of speech, I'm concerned about the general principle of where the power to decide which speech is appropriate lies.

But as a tip, 'All you seem to be doing is repeating the statement and gesturing wildly at it going "See? See????? Bad!"' is horrifyingly bad technique when responding to someone who just said 'you need to respond to what people actually say, rather than fantasies of what you'd like them to have said'. gp is literally correct now. When someone says that you'll get much better results with literal quotes rather than unfair characterisations. You've got a good point, you can afford to be gentle.

I guess it was behind the gym, not the bleachers. Regardless, he had a specific location picked out and everything! Clearly a real threat.