You Are Still Crying Wolf

I'm not really sure that this answers my question.

I'm interested in how what we share hopes to influence others of a different viewpoint.

So to you:

"It's absolutely pertinent to the discussion what kind of people Trump willingly choses to put into positions of influence."

To someone else it wouldn't be, so I'm interested in, for example, how you'd go about influencing/debating with someone who didn't share that viewpoint?

The GP post does something I've seen a lot and raises a point with an implication that because they find that point to bad, it obviously is bad and no further persuasion is needed.

For instance:

"I don't doubt Trump's intentions, but it's looking like the alt-right is using his campaign (and will use his administration) for their own ends."

That's reads as an implication that this is a bad thing, perhaps because alt-right is bad.

I'm interested to hear how the poster would hope to influence someone of the opposing view (that alt-right is good). To me, it would seem that raising a point that someone else thinks is actually good wouldn't be a way to change their mind, but I see almost everyone in this and other debates do it.

So I guess I'm just trying to understand what/how raising points like this (one the poster holds self-evident if holding their viewpoint but otherwise unpersuasive) could hope to persuade someone who thought the point raised was actually good.

I'm also trying to avoid sounding like a dick over this. I don't know everything so my view that this sort of point raising might not work may be wrong, so I'm trying to ask about the actual process of influencing others who share different views.

"I'm interested to hear how the poster would hope to influence someone of the opposing view (that alt-right is good)."

That isn't the point. If someone believes that the alt-right is good, it is very difficult to convince them otherwise, and this isn't anywhere near an argument towards that end.

Instead, this is an argument for people like me, who are unsure of Trump's intentions and who are looking at the article's arguments that Trump is not leaning in unsavory directions.

The idea is that, even if Trump is no worse than any traditional Republican, he is surrounding himself with people who are.

I'm not sure why you think the poster (or me) is trying to change anyone's mind who already believe that the Alt-right or Bannon are good people.

There is room for such arguments, of course, but not every discussion needs to be framed as winning over the Alt-right.

In this case, I think what people are trying to achieve is to say to those who are generally liberal: "No! Don't normalize Trump and his allies' behavior. Don't say that everything is ok when it is not. Because then you start to ignore it when it becomes true in way that are subtler than you expected, like banning Muslims without using a scary-sounding "Muslim Registry" [1]"

The normalization of this president is part of what allowed so many people to sit out the election. See also https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/15/dangerous-fa...

[1] http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/16/13649764/t...

I didn't necessarily think you/OP were trying to influence (I did mention that the OP might just be sharing an opinion).

I was just interested in kicking off a more on-topic discussion about 'influence' and how one might do that, and less about the specific politics.

Not that it matters much as the post has been flagged now anyway.

That's interesting.

Did you find the point important/did it have an effect on your pre-existing opinion?