You're entirely right.

In the words of MLK:

> Hate cannot drown out hate, only love can do that.

Please don't get me wrong — I wasn't trying to excuse my wording; I was just trying to explain that I don't mean to create a flamewar or bitter argument. My comments are a genuine expression of my thinking, and I'm not trying to make HN a place for ideological battle. I suppose these discussions just naturally veer into that sort of back-and-forth.

I hope that makes sense.

Sure, and I appreciate that. I think what makes this problem so hard is that we depart from that spirit without realizing that we've done so. This is why it feels like we're posting out of love and respect while the other party is being rude and is in denial, gaslighting, or worse. Meanwhile the other party feels exactly the same way. Each of us is casting our own shadow on the other.

That's unfortunately how human communication works, especially online, and it takes a conscious (and considerable) effort to learn to do otherwise. It's not easy! We're all working on it, including me. Unfortunately, when the topic is divisive and activating, the rapid-fire, low-information nature of internet comments causes threads like this to compound extremely quickly into an all-out war.