by zahlman | 2026-01-26 15:34:00+00:00
You are consistently condescending throughout the above (thus, this is my last reply) and have repeatedly misrepresented my meaning (for example, I did not "try to hide behind things I call factual analyses"; where I call things objective fact, they are actually objective fact that I either have established or can easily establish, and where I don't, they are opinion to the extent that common sense would interpret them as opinion). Most importantly, you continually conflate flags with downvotes. I consistently, explicitly, extremely clearly was specifically complaining about flags and not about downvotes; the argument

> Regardless, a threat of a downvote is hardly "intimidation" and calling it such is emotional rhetoric.

is blatantly misrepresentative. I said the word "flag" over and over and over again and did not talk about downvotes; and I referred to the effects of flagging (a comment in my history that is [flagged] in the view presented to me cannot be seen even with a direct link in a private browsing tab; a comment that is downvoted, even to -4 but without flags, can be).

You scold me for lack of reading comprehension, and then condescend to me about the "learning" process, but you overlook a central point that I made abundantly clear and attack a strawman.

And you completely disregard everything I've shown you about how I've been treated unfairly in this situation.

> I suspect you will arrive at the conclusion that these aren't murders (or that their actions are already normal and/or excusable) and therefore you are simply cannot be normalizing and/or excusing their actions. Of course, such thoughtless posts will be flagged

Again setting aside downvotes because I did not complain about downvotes:

That is unfair treatment. It does not violate HN commenting guidelines to express that conclusion. My conclusion is justified by extensive research and by prior general awareness of how LEO operates and what happens at protests. It is not at all "thoughtless" to say so; I put considerable thought into this, and have brought forward large amounts of evidence and reasoning. It is frankly offensive to tell me otherwise.

I am simply not "thinking" about the specific matter of whether other people will have a strong emotional reaction to being told that the thing they consider murder might in fact be legally justified. Because I care about truth; and because HN (in principle, to my understanding) only tolerates these submissions because of the potential for actual discussion, which involves people disagreeing about things.

You've made it abundantly clear, by this, that no matter how I actually went about it, you would consider it inappropriate to make comments that suppose that ICE agents (citizens with due process rights, BTW) might not have committed murder, and would consider that it's inappropriate that comments making any argument of that form are permitted to remain publicly visible (again: flagging, not downvoting); only concurrence is okay.

And many recent political threads have made it abundantly clear to me where that leads: an environment where people chant "Nazi, Nazi, Nazi, fascist, fascist, fascist" — despite the admonitions "Be kind." and "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." Maybe you're okay with that, but I'm not. The solution to divisiveness is not to exclude one side of the divide.