Thread by @GregAFish

When former terrorist hunters become bloodthirsty agitators eager to murder their fellow citizens for the crimes of refusing to hate the same people and vote for a different party, they're no longer patriots. They're domestic terrorists. thedailybeast.com/michael-scheue…

I'm getting tired of saying this, but a developed, civilized country does not have a minority which rejects the legitimacy of elections they lose and calls for sectarian bloodshed and civil war to get their way. That's what happens in "shitholes" ran by sclerotic kleptocrats.

Both Scheuer and I criticized presidents with whom we disagree in public forums, as people in free nations do on a regular basis. But he wants to kill me for exercising the same exact right he did because he doesn't like what I say. What civilized modern society works like that?

I don't think Scheuer and his fans are dangerous because they have different views, no matter how much I may disagree with them. I think they're dangerous because their response to disagreement is to demand heads on pikes. It's a scenario straight out the Paradox of Tolerance.

You cannot come to an understanding with bloodthirsty lunatics. They do not see you as human. They hate you for merely drawing breath while they're aware of it. And they think of empathy and basic human decency as nothing more than weaknesses to crush under their shiny boots.

The "marketplace of ideas" will not save you from them because they only participate in it to gain enough followers to end whatever debate you think you were having with guns, clubs, and knives. Then they'll do a disrespectful puppet show with your corpse for their own amusement.

We have almost a century of very clear examples of what happens when right wing terrorism and fascism is allowed to run wild. And we really have to stop pretending that it won't do the exact same things today or that simply hoping for the best will stop it.