“Thou hast committed fornication…”

"But that was in another country":

The controversy began when Brennan said of Vance, "Well, he was standing in a country where free speech was weaponized to conduct a genocide, and he met with the head of a political party that has far-right views and some historic ties to extreme groups. The context of that was changing the tone of it. And you know that. That the censorship was specifically about the right--"

If you read the article, you’ll notice the responses shoot the messenger, and offer no insight into how Vance’s intemperate and idiotic speech was received. That’s convenient because it shuts out any information from the countries beyond the sea, an old American practice dating back to the 19th century when America self-isolated from Europe and built its own self-serving narrative about what Europe thought and even how they lived. Dickens’ Martin Chuzzlewit gives an excellent example of what Dickens encountered on his tour of America. Martin is told by an American he’s just met, what life is really like in England (the American has never been there, Martin has just come from there), and what’s wrong with English government, and right with America and its government.

All the responses play on that ignorance, even as we have better communication with Europe since the 19th century, and a radically altered relationship with them.

Also, the argument drowns what Vance said (you won’t find out in those responses) in favor of what they say Brennan said. And she didn’t say the Holocaust was caused by the “weaponization” (can we stop using that ugly neologism yet?) of free speech. She summarized the critique of Vance’s speech by (especially) Germany: free speech was used, through lies and disinformation, to gain despotic power, which was then used to justify the Holocaust.

Which is quite a different kettle of fish than attacking Vance and Musk and Trump “ad Hitlerium.” (An even dumber neologism than the other, but not mine. It’s one of the cited critiques.) The attacks are literally in defense of what Vance said, without ever really citing any of his statements, or appearing to defend him.

Nice work, if you can get it. But it’s clearly meant to cover up Vance’s message (it’s no accident it was delivered overseas) so they can keep spreading it. 

And they never have to explain why Vance met with the neo-Nazi AfD.

“And besides, the wench is dead.”