You raise a great point. Many people have such shallow reasoning powers they can't grasp the idea of being able to acknowledge gifts in corrupt people like Clinton and Hitler. Clinton is not only a gifted speaker/BS artist he is also extremely smart and a hard worker. That's on the plus side. On the negative side, well .. he's a rapist, felonist and treasonist.
What Arnold was saying about Hitler was more about how cool it would be to be able to have so much charisma that one could propagandize so many people. That's all. The left have dangerously weakened the public's analytical powers.
I agree, the lack of even the most basic sense of reason in the public conversation these days is really dismaying. I keep thinking that surely people aren't falling for this sort of stuff -- surely,
surely people can see the difference in admiring a person and admiring something *about* a person -- but I never see any broad sense of disgruntlement over the media's and the dems' assumption that people are indeed so stupid as to fall for it.
Could it be that the media and the Dems have appraised the public correctly? that the public really is so foolish? Surely not, I hope not. I know no one who would commit the "Arnold is a Nazi because he admired Hitler's speaking ability" fallacy. It's like I keep hearing about this dumbed-down public and they obviously make an impact on polls and things, but where are these people? Who are they? Maybe we've managed the paradoxical feat of being reasonably sophisticated and discerning as individuals but foolish and sheeplike as a collective -- a dumb public made of smart individuals.