I'm trying to determine how you're applying this definition to our discussion. Your view seems to be that there is an implied threat arising from a member of a group hearing about or observing a serious offense (murder, assault, battery, etc) that has to do with intent, specifically where the attacker has negative feelings towards a group and a member of the group is the person who was attacked.

Is that right, or am I misunderstanding your position?

I'm not saying that killing people for holding a political position isn't going to be prosecuted as a hate crime, I'm saying that both the law and said prosecution are a bad idea. We appear to differ on that point...I get it.

When you say "implied threat", what are you talking about, legally?

Implied anything (intimidation, threats, mugging) is non-action.

Klansmen make me (as a person of mixed race and dark skin) uncomfortable because of many of their beliefs, but I defend their right to think the stupid and hateful things that they think.

Hatecrime legislation takes the thoughts of a murderer or assailant and turns them into something that they are not, namely action.

I think that 30 counts of intimidation should be no more or less reasonable to prosecute in a situation where the intimidator holds an unpopular view (anti-gay, anti-minority, etc) than where they hold a popular one (anti-neo-nazi, anti-fred phelps, anti-klan, anti-caucasian).

Racketeering (legally) encompasses a variety of activities. Fraud is not separate from racketeering, it's one charge among many that get looked at collectively. Multiple charges within a certain time frame mean that instead of fraud, bribery, extortion, murder for hire, sexual exploitation of children, etc, the blanket charge of racketeering can be applied.

Going "I doubt your bullet" or "I doubt your knife" or "I doubt your fist" won't save your life, true. The first amendment is not there to assert that individuals have a right to deprive others of life with a firearm, it's there to assert that the government may not prohibit an individual from owning a firearm with which they might protect themselves.

I see many arguments against firearms as akin to arguments around hate crimes. The offending thing is not the despicable action (murder, assault), but a peripheral thing (a gun, an opinion).

Why don't we just add those five words to all of the other amendments in the same manner and at the same time?

I don't want to have amendments that apply to citizens unequally on purpose...that's a pretty stupid way for a present or past supreme court justice to think about "fixing" a constitutional amendment.

This Netflix situation is more like:

1. I ask my cousin in N.Y.C. to drive to Auburn, Maine with a package for me
2. He arrives later that day and we reminisce about family over drinks
3. The next day, I move to Vermont, and ask him to deliver another package, but it takes two weeks for him to get there because my cousin can't afford to pay a fee to the state of Vermont to be able to travel at speeds over 5% of the posted speed limit

...or at least it's no worse an analogy. It's equally bad at describing what the fuck is actually happening, which is that Comcast is extorting other companies because it can.

To play the devil's advocate here there does seem to be considerable evidence that voting makes very little, if not zero, difference....

Citation needed, I think...

Uh, no. Voting in an election is not like bidding in a slave auction.

Our elected representatives may be shitty representatives, and they may shift positions on issues like a pair of 19-year-olds having sex, but "slave" seems to me to be an extremely inapt analogy (feel free to comment on my own poor analogy).

You have a vested interest in voting for the least crappy candidate (or best candidate, if one exists) in each election you have the opportunity to vote in. Not doing that (or simply not caring enough to know which candidates are potentially crappier than others) leaves us all with the shitty representatives we have now.

Perhaps a resurgence of mandatory civics classes would help maintain a reasonably sane electorate...perhaps not...but giving up on it all or throwing away the current system is not the solution to the problem.