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Again, I cite Hillary labeling me and mine as "irredeemable"; absolutely nothing has made me more "angry"† than that in all the Presidential elections since I c

• grzm 10y ago
  I can completely understand that. While we're having a useful discussion on how to rebuild trust, is it useful to bring up an emotional and tangential (albeit related) topic like this? I'm afraid it can potentially derail the conversation. (I hesitate to even bring this up for the same reason). That's not to say that this shouldn't be discussed. A lot of the language used during the campaign was particularly vicious and should be addressed. I just don't know if this particular micro-discussion is the place for it. Figuring out solutions to the things we agree on is particularly important given the highly polarized environment we find ourselves in. And with that, I'll take my answer off the air :)
  • hga 10y ago
    The problem is, it's anything but tangential. It flows directly from the French Revolution, and became a big thing in the US in the cultural '60s, which extended into the calendar '70s, the idea that the menu of solutions for your political problems includes outright liquidation of a subset of your opponents. How can I consider this to be tangential when our current President started his political career in the home of two of the most notorious '70s figures advocating this, who made a wild guess that 10% of the population could not be reeducated and would have to be liquidated? You might say, people they thought to be "irredeemable". And these are people of Hillary's generation. I bring this up not to attack Obama, but to show how well received such eliminationism is on the US Left (heck, in one of those things that makes you wonder if there's a God, the man had a feature article in The New York Times on 9/11 (written and printed before the attack, of course), with him standing on an American flag). That this sort of thing, including Hillary's speech, is not completely out of bounds means I cannot for a second assume the political struggle in the US is not existential for me and my family. And given that, I can't in the least see how trust can be rebuilt, at least prior to driving out of polite society all of these figures, instead of feating them. So, yes, it is, and unfortunately has to be a complete derail of the conversation, given that to the best I can discern you're not taking this issue seriously. Can I ask roughly how old are you? Did you grow up horrified at the mass murders by the tens of millions by the Left in the 20th Century, including by the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei AKA National Socialist German Workers' Party? How the Soviets were poised to kill > 100 million Americans in 30 minutes if they launched their misses and bombers? How Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge (Red Khmers, formally the Communist Party of Kampuchea per Wikipedia) killed off perhaps half their nation's people. How just having glasses was a death sentence, because it suggested to them that you might have a formal education? What's your opinion on the US crusade for gun control? Is it really about "gun safety"? Has it become something more sinister than the explicit through the 1970s "Keep guns out of the hands of blacks" (and other minorities starting around the turn of the century, but blacks were the foremost target)?
    • pjc50 10y ago
      > in the cultural '60s, which extended into the calendar '70s, the idea that the menu of solutions for your political problems includes outright liquidation of a subset of your opponents. > I cannot for a second assume the political struggle in the US is not existential for me and my family. So, I once asked my Romanian colleague what it was like in the revolution at the death of Ceaucescu. It was, obviously, horrifying and chaotic, with all sorts of self-appointed street violence squads. Since then I've generally cut him a bit more slack when he rants about leftists. That kind of thing sticks with a man. And so I also have some sympathy with the Cubans who've maintained that Cuba is some great commie threat to the US, etc. etc. What I cannot understand is the belief that there is going to be some kind of purge of white right-wing Americans. To me, the idea that "eliminationism" has any kind of base in the "left" (or at least the part that has the Democratic party in it) is just unrecognisable. To me, it is completely out of bounds already. (Edit: I suppose the US does maintain an internment camp for political opponents, beyond the rule of law, and Obama has failed to close it. But Bush opened Guantanamo and put its inmates there. This is also why we campaign against the unaccountable drone murder programme) I'm sorry I appear not to be taking it seriously, but I find it about as plausible as an alien invasion. Now, if you asked me who in the US was genuinely and plausibly afraid of eliminationism, I would have said the usual: ethnic minorities (not just black people and Native Americans, but bearing in mind the internment of Japanese people during the war), and non-straight people. And Jews. I'm middle-aged enough to remember the Cold War. I also remember walking past a TV showing footage which I assumed was Beirut and turned out to be the LA Rodney King riots. And I know enough history to know that massacres extend a long way back before the French Revolution. I'm baffled at the ascribing of the Nazis to the "left", given their explicitly murderous anti-Bolshevism and war with the USSR. The thing is, there are a lot of people on the left who believe that Trump is going to start exactly the same kind of eliminationist event. Aren't both sides afraid of the same thing? Has someone left their tu quoque mirror on upside down? Gun control is probably going to take another post tomorrow; but you can probably guess if I tell you I'm a Brit. In the meantime, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12054306 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12054306 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11288841 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11288841 (summary: the UK had an armed insurgency with AR-15s and it kind of sucked for everyone)