Scott Alexander

Continuing the thread, Republicans will be hunted.

Continuing, police will stand down.

Scott writes, I've seen people try to walk this back by saying Adams only meant that they would be persecuted in some way that was metaphorically equivalent to hunting.

But I feel like good chance you will be dead within the year is saying he means the kind of hunting which literally kills you.

And police will stand down means that it will be the sort of extremely illegal thing that police would normally react to.

I've seen other people try to link this to examples of Republicans actually getting killed, such as Charlie Kirk.

But Adams was telling his readers there was a good chance that they would be dead within a year, which I think implies this fate happening to a significant proportion of ordinary Republicans, not just one prominent person.

Also, Kirk was five years after the comment was posted.

Can we dismiss this as a joke?

I think Adams has used the manipulation technique of saying things that might or might not be jokes and then strategically sticking to them or saying, what, me?

I was only joking.

Ha ha, you can't take a joke.

Depending on which was more convenient to him at that exact second.

Enough times that I'm not comfortable letting him have that escape.

Also, when I was replying to Joel Pollack about this, I happened to glance at his Twitter account and one of the top tweets was a repost of someone saying that, quote, the Democrat playbook is to arrest every single person who disagrees with them, end quote.

I think if I forced Pollack into some kind of extremely literal frame of mind, maybe asked him to bet money on whether I could tweet the words, the Democrats are wrong about immigration in my Democrat-controlled state without getting arrested, he would admit that, okay, they don't want to arrest literally every single person who disagrees with them.

He was exaggerating for effect, probably in much the way he's going to say that Scott Adams was exaggerating for effect.

You say stuff like, the Democrats are going to hunt you down and literally murder you.

They will torture your family and rape your daughter and eat your pets and turn your house into a church of Satan.

And what you mean is, I disagree with the Democrats and sometimes they go overboard cancelling people.