No, they don't "all do this". No, it's not normal.
ollie north was also lying on behalf of the establishment who wanted to fund anti-communist partisans (the contras, a term only known to most millennials as a nintendo game)
The only difference between this statement and "all politicians do this" is the politicians who are not confronted about bad behavior. It's a pretty big overlap and sufficient to assert you are coming across as normalizing this behavior.
So not "all" who are confronted, but "almost" all. Not a very big difference, but that's still not "all".
> The only difference between this statement and "all politicians do this" is the politicians who are not confronted about bad behavior.
That means that in your view, phito's comment was essentially saying that "all politicians do this" (your words), unless they're not confronted. My point was that it's incorrect, because of "they will almost always say" in phito's comment - so the correct reading of that comment would be that almost all politicians do this when confronted, not all.
Right. I arrived at "not all" and you arrived at "not all" for different reasons. The combination of our assessments is correct. Both of us are incorrect if you decide that we have to show all our work, correct in that they draw the correct conclusion.
This is HN-tier pedantry that is immaterial to the question of whether or not the above comment is normalizing something not normal.
Nothing is Normal when it comes down to it, reality is what you can get away with.
If that makes you uncomfortable, then buckle up because reality is what THEY can get away with.