you know the trick. A communist is just a Democrat you don't like, and a fascist is a Republican

you're afraid of. Or at least that seems to be how the terms get thrown around in common parlance,

at least by angry vociferous

partisans as they approach elections. These are rhetorical tricks employed by people who

cannot or will not engage in rational debate. Rather than tackling a policy or an ideology

directly, their strategy is to discredit the speaker by tethering them to an odious,

untouchable political philosophy.

And what's particularly infuriating about that

is how many people fall for it, rather than calling it out

as a sloppy ad hominem logical fallacy, which happens in part because

of a pervasive myth that all political ideology falls along a simple spectrum of left to right, and individual philosophies are just notches

along that ruler. If you think like that, then you would logically infer that the extreme

end of the left side of the spectrum is communism, and the

extreme end of the right side of the spectrum is fascism.

If someone who is conservative becomes much, much more conservative, they become a fascist.

If someone who's progressive becomes much more progressive, they become a communist.

My brain doesn't work like that.

Perhaps yours doesn't either. Allow me to illustrate why I think that that is deeply fallacious thinking.

When I get into arguments with my progressive friends, I am almost always arguing in favor of making the state smaller or for identity politics to be less important.

Which is the exact opposite of what a Nazi thinks.

Nazis want massive big-ass governments that control everything,

and they're rather notorious for making identity politics front and center of

...