Cognitive Behaviour Therapy aims to ease disturbing feelings by exposing the sloppy thinking that provokes them and, usually, this means unmasking exaggerations.
I found a good example of this same process in a political discussion.
Peter Hitchens complains that critics of Vladimir Putin are all too ready to compare him to Stalin and argues that in spite of Putin's faults it's ridiculous to make hysterical accusations. Here is what he says:
Mr Putin, as often discussed here, is no paragon. He is indeed a man of many very bad faults, and his state is corrupt and violent. But to mention him in the same breath as Stalin is simply to betray a complete lack of the sense of proportion.
For me, it’s simple. Mr Putin has not yet opened a vast archipelago of homicidal labour camps, nor crammed millions of his citizens into them, nor launched a great terror on his people under which anyone may be seized without pretext, and tortured into confessing non-existent crimes before being shot in the back of the head or despatched to a living death in Norilsk.
Mr Putin has not deliberately caused a gigantic famine in which millions have died.
Mr Putin has not murdered many of his close associates. He has not signed an unscrupulous alliance with Hitler, partitioned Poland, or established an iron secret police despotism over the whole of Central Europe.
Nor has he persecuted legitimate scientists, nor has he embarked on anti-semitic purges of doctors. Nor has he encourage a pharaonic personality cult, requiring the erection of thousands of images of him.
Nor has he encouraged a cult around a boy (Pavlik Morozov) who betrayed his own parents to the secret police, nor has he compelled his own immediate colleagues to endure in silence the cruel imprisonment of their close family members..
