[int_19h]

> I'm not giving Trump a pass. I'm giving Trump supporters a pass, because I believe it's possible to support a candidate without supporting every position they espouse.

I have held that position for a while, but it became untenable due to the sheer number of outright awful positions that Trump espouses. It's no longer possible to say, "yeah, this one thing isn't nice, but there's still a net benefit".

At this point, there's no rational way to conclude that anything about Trump candidacy has a net benefit, unless you subscribe to some of his more abhorrent notions about religion, race etc - e.g. people of the "I'm not a racist, but there's something about blacks that makes them commit crimes and riot" persuasion, say. Or "I'm for freedom of religion, but Islam is a death cult". And so on.

So no. I don't buy into that whole "the call for genocide is mere hyperbole" thing. It would require such a manifest lapse of judgment to be realistic, that I would demand strong evidence of such in other matters to accept it.

[natrius]

You realize that you're calling for the excommunication of 40% of America, right? That is not a productive thing. I consider Trumpism a real threat to my life, but Trump supporters are fine with me. Once a bad idea spreads too far, you can't isolate it. You have to engage it productively.