[james-watson]

Ah, the "literally Hitler" argument!

What you energetic Godwinians forget, is that Hitler was a socialist and abused the executive powers of a massively oversized state to obtain his dictatorial powers.

Powers that the outgoing President of the USA pushed to new horizons in a government bureaucracy larger than has ever existed.

Perhaps if the Godwin-kin stopped creating turn-key totalitarian states, we wouldn't have to suffer from an endless list of genocidal dictators.

Or did you think Hitler was a conservative?

[EdHominem]

Ah, someone who just learned about "Godwin's law". How cute. But no, I didn't make an argument either way or compare anyone to anyone else so you need to recalibrate your meter.

I'm just saying that without standards, whatever they are, you'll accept anything.

And "it avoids civil war" isn't a justification because in some cases we'd be better off if the entire country in question burned itself to the ground in an internal struggle rather than inflicting it on the rest of the world.

> did you think Hitler was a conservative?

Wow you've got a Hitler fixation. I wasn't really talking about him, just our tendency to elect bad people and how in retrospect the fact that they're legally elected is no justification for what they end up doing.

No, I think he was a sociopath who threw the jews under the bus for convenience. And his policies didn't fit any right-left divide because neither liberal or conservative is a codeword for genocidal.

If you want to continue this line of thought, an interesting question to ask yourself is "If I put Hitler's words into the mouth of those the candidate preferred by the self-identified conservatives, and the candidate preferred by self-identified liberals, which group most-supports those misattributed statements?"

[james-watson]

> Had the Germans fought a civil war in the 1930s instead of accepting their populist leader they and the rest of the world would have been better off.

Oh, was there another populist leader the Germans should have rejected in the 1930s? Do enlighten me.

>Wow you've got a Hitler fixation. I wasn't really talking about him [...]

Projection at its finest. See above.

"LITERALLY HITLER!!!!!!!" is the totality of your argument. Perhaps you should broaden your critical thinking landscape.

[EdHominem]

As I said, it's kind of cute how you go on about things you've just heard about.

> was there another populist leader the Germans should have rejected in the 1930s?

Pray tell, which politician do you think I'm comparing to Hitler?

I'm certainly referring to Hitler. I am German. He's the last one of those in my country? Are you appropriating my culture?

But I'm not saying either of the US presidential candidates are Hitler, literally or otherwise, or even very much like him.

Pay attention here... I'm only saying that "legally elected" is almost the least important thing about them. What's important is how they'll govern, not if they managed to win a badly run popularity contest.

I do agree with the OP that his friend was hoping for something silly - violence in the street to stop Trump. But, unless the OP had a line where he'd wish for such a thing, he's actually the naive one. There certainly are some examples, like the one I shared from my homeland, where it's worth almost any internal pain (even civil war) to stop the legally elected candidate from assuming power.