Tom_G, your suggestion from cursory research that the numbers have been propagandized, and that they therefore somehow become invalid in many folks' minds is a good point and I cautiously accept your premise on that point.
I agree with you that "propagandization," if you define it as "gross exaggeration for the sake of making a point" is reprehensible, but for some folks to dismiss the simple fact on that basis is
itself reprehensible because we know that vast numbers of people have been subject to genocide and democide. I wonder if significant numbers of those people to whom you refer exist.
It's when the question of "how many?" comes into play that we have difficulty in assessing a true number, and that is where the disclaimers about estimates and projections must be made.
The
real matter at hand is the actual fact that large numbers of people have been killed
consistently and deliberately throughout history by many governments for political and ethnical purposes. Whether it's 1 million or 100 million can be a matter of debate and exaggeration but that does not diminish the reality of the matter and its impact on RKBA.
To say that accuracy isn't relevant because you know it's true is just a hair's breadth, in my opinion, from saying "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."
It's the debate about accuracy that isn't relevant.
In my opinion.
We differ there, although we agree that deliberate exaggeration is unethical. We might also disagree on the impact of exaggeration, if any in fact exists. (This, incidentally, brings up the question of "how do we know it's an exaggeration if we don't have exact numbers anyhow?")
Things get hot when we put a flame under them.
The exact temperatures don't affect the truth of that statement, unless we want to debate endlessly about how hot is hot . The calloused hands of Joe the Plumber allow Joe to disagree with Suzie the Seamstress on what is "too hot."
Surely, Suzie's exaggeration that "it almost burned my hand completely off" would be an unethical exaggeration, but that does not change the fact that the item in question got hot.
And yes, I do walk away from debates where they devolve into how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, or where the effort involved in further debate becomes pointless. I am not one who insists on having the last word. This policy was implemented during the first year of almost 25 years of marriage.
Oh, I exaggerated there. It was only 23 years.
Terry, 23ORN --which is the same, and only, "handle" I use across many boards.