4 ms·

Kind of ironic given Bush and Obama were the ones to expand the surveillance state, Hillary demonised the shit out of Russia to try create an enemy/scapegoat, a

by Mikeb85 10y ago

Kind of ironic given Bush and Obama were the ones to expand the surveillance state, Hillary demonised the shit out of Russia to try create an enemy/scapegoat, and here Trump is, only a few days in power, not having done anything particularly bad. Also, I should add - for Democrats out there who keep trying to compare Trump to Hitler, say he's fascist, etc... That weak rhetoric is what gave you guys your worst election result in what, 80 years? The more you cry foul over nothing, the less people will actually believe it. Just an outsider's opinion after an entertaining and somewhat perplexing election.

soft_dev_person 10y ago
Yes, it's very interesting to see them apply even more of the same logic that failed miserably last year. Also in other countries with the same tendencies, they still don't seem to get that crying about how terribly racist and fascist these people are doesn't actually reach the intended audience. Maybe we can blame echo chambers for this...
Melk 10y ago
If you think Trump did nothing bad then you missed the last 24 hour news cycle. Hillary is a little old lady who ran for president a long time ago so I'm not sure why you brought her up. And also an outsider here, but I've seen Republicans call Obama a lot worse things then Hitler. So apparently weak rhetoric works well on the right.
- tnmrnis 10y ago
  Did calling Obama "Hussein" have a positive result on their popularity? I don't think so. Maybe there's a pattern.
- jankiel 10y ago
  Can you give an example? Being compared to Hitler is pretty high on my list so I'm interested. And how did that thetoric worked for right if Obama won?
  - XparXnoiAx 10y ago
    Do a search for "Obama Antichrist" and you'll see plenty of examples. "Obama devil" gets some hits, too.
    - leereeves 10y ago
      Worth a try. Obama antichrist - 445 thousand results Obama anti-christ - 2 million Trump Hitler - 32 million
      - vectorpush 10y ago
        Try Trump antichrist - 447k Trump anti-christ - 1.7mil Obama Hitler - 27mil I think the takeaway is that stringing a couple terms together in google gives us little in the way of political insight.
        leereeves 10y ago
        Interesting. I think the takeaway may be that both sides of the political spectrum are equally inclined to name calling. (One tiny piece of evidence these results are not mere coincidence: there are 4x as many such results for Trump/Obama Hitler than for "Jesus Hitler" - 9.5 million)
Melk 10y ago
If you think Trump did nothing bad then you missed the last 24 hour news cycle. Hillary is a little old lady who ran for president a long time ago so I'm not sure why you brought her up. And also an outsider here, but I've seen Republicans call Obama a lot worse things then Hitler. So apparently weak rhetoric works well on the right.
endisukaj 10y ago
The worst result in 80 years is winning the popular vote with a margin of about 3 million?
- wallace_f 10y ago
  When your opponent is Donald Trump: Yes.
- XparXnoiAx 10y ago
  The worst election result is losing the house, senate, and presidency all at once. Look at who has power, not the votes.
- halflings 10y ago
  In an electoral system that doesn't take the popular vote into consideration? Yes. Democrats are now pretending that they lost "by chance", but their campaign (like the Republicans') is engineered and fine-tuned/optimized to get the swing states, not to optimize by how much they will win in traditionally blue states.
- camperman 10y ago
  Oh you want to go with popular votes? Then Bernie Sanders should have been your candidate by a big margin but was prevented by the DNC's superdelegate system.
- flukus 10y ago
  Congratulations for winning a game that wasn't being played.
- wtf_is_up 10y ago
  No, the worst result was losing the presidency, house, senate, and 3+ Supreme Court seats to Donald Trump.
RangerScience 10y ago
I'm down-voting you, here's why: This is a headline and an article about "alternative facts", relating them to a book about comprehensive "alternative fact" propaganda. Not about any of things that you listed. You didn't add any meaningful information to the discussion, but have added divisive and heavily argued opinions, in a way that only furthers their divisiveness. This is not a comment on your opinions. This is a comment about whether expressing those specific opinions on this specific news item and in that specific manner was constructive or destructive to this community; I'm saying it's destructive.
- oneeyedpigeon 10y ago
  I don't see the phrase "alternative facts" (or even the word "facts", for that matter) in either the headline or the article. Nineteen Eighty-Four is very much about surveillance and totalitarianism (which is why, here in the UK, it seems even more prescient right now) so, while I disagree with Mikeb's political stance, I think your dismissal of their comment as not contributing to the discussion is unfair.
  - RangerScience 10y ago
    Well expressed! There is exactly one non-Orwell link in the article, and it's to an article with this headline: "Sales of George Orwell's 1984 surge after Kellyanne Conway's 'alternative facts'" The first explicitly political thing in the OP is "alternative facts"; so that's where I grabbed that from.
- zigzigzag 10y ago
  This is a perfect example of why downvoting shouldn't exist. None of the things you think you saw in the OPs comment are there. He is expressing an opinion that is widely held, here is a good essay on the habit of anti-Trump people of crying wolf: http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/16/you-are-still-crying-wolf/ Trump's spat over crowd sizes is stupid, but reflects someone terminally thin-skinned rather than a cunning well thought out attempt at mind control. Meanwhile, those of us who have read it will remember that 1984 dwells on hard-left totalitarianism and its habit of doing things like censorship, the desire for unitary thinking, interfering with disagreement by controlling the language and so on. Your comment doesn't actually rebut anything about what the OP said, but does try to lower the visibility of his views (suppressing speech) and does attack an entire class of speech on the grounds of "divisiveness" and "destructiveness" (unitary thinking). Trump is many things but hard-left is not one of them. Stupid phrasing today by his press guy aside, Trump's path to victory was built on a repudiation of 1984 style tactics: • Language control: political correctness, where words and phrases are redefined or suppressed through taboo • The 5-minutes hate: the establishment against Russia • Loyalty to the party: in our world the closest equivalent to a vast unaccountable power structure would be called "Washington" or "the elite". The parallels aren't perfect by any means; Trump loves surveillance just like Democrats do.
delegate 10y ago
I also find it funny that people compare him to Hitler. As if Hitler was the only and the baddest of them all. There were also: Stalin, Mao Zedong, Mussolini, Pol Pot, Francisco Franco, Pinochet, Ceausescu... Just in the 20th century there were hundreds of what we call 'dictators'. So it's a relatively common phenomenon. Some of the common traits that they shared: they got shit done, they were egomaniacs, extravagant, sometimes talked crazy and were obsessed with lies, deception and then spies and enemies. Killing (or creating the conditions for the death of) lots of people wasn't necessarily in their plans, it was just a necessary means to a glorious end.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > I also find it funny that people compare him to Hitler. I've seen him compared to Kim Jong-Un, Mussolini, Putin, the Roman Emporer Caligula, King Louis XVI of France, Emporer Maximilian I of Mexico, and to the leadership of the Communist Party of China generally, as well, among others. Your post seems to be premised on the idea that Trump has been compare exclusively to Hitler, and not or other authoritarians, which is not the case.

by Mikeb85 10y ago

soft_dev_person 10y ago

Yes, it's very interesting to see them apply even more of the same logic that failed miserably last year. Also in other countries with the same tendencies, they still don't seem to get that crying about how terribly racist and fascist these people are doesn't actually reach the intended audience. Maybe we can blame echo chambers for this...

Melk 10y ago

If you think Trump did nothing bad then you missed the last 24 hour news cycle. Hillary is a little old lady who ran for president a long time ago so I'm not sure why you brought her up. And also an outsider here, but I've seen Republicans call Obama a lot worse things then Hitler. So apparently weak rhetoric works well on the right.

tnmrnis 10y ago
Did calling Obama "Hussein" have a positive result on their popularity? I don't think so. Maybe there's a pattern.
jankiel 10y ago
Can you give an example? Being compared to Hitler is pretty high on my list so I'm interested. And how did that thetoric worked for right if Obama won?
- XparXnoiAx 10y ago
  Do a search for "Obama Antichrist" and you'll see plenty of examples. "Obama devil" gets some hits, too.
  - leereeves 10y ago
    Worth a try. Obama antichrist - 445 thousand results Obama anti-christ - 2 million Trump Hitler - 32 million
    - vectorpush 10y ago
      Try Trump antichrist - 447k Trump anti-christ - 1.7mil Obama Hitler - 27mil I think the takeaway is that stringing a couple terms together in google gives us little in the way of political insight.
      - leereeves 10y ago
        Interesting. I think the takeaway may be that both sides of the political spectrum are equally inclined to name calling. (One tiny piece of evidence these results are not mere coincidence: there are 4x as many such results for Trump/Obama Hitler than for "Jesus Hitler" - 9.5 million)

Melk 10y ago

endisukaj 10y ago

The worst result in 80 years is winning the popular vote with a margin of about 3 million?

wallace_f 10y ago
When your opponent is Donald Trump: Yes.
XparXnoiAx 10y ago
The worst election result is losing the house, senate, and presidency all at once. Look at who has power, not the votes.
halflings 10y ago
In an electoral system that doesn't take the popular vote into consideration? Yes. Democrats are now pretending that they lost "by chance", but their campaign (like the Republicans') is engineered and fine-tuned/optimized to get the swing states, not to optimize by how much they will win in traditionally blue states.
camperman 10y ago
Oh you want to go with popular votes? Then Bernie Sanders should have been your candidate by a big margin but was prevented by the DNC's superdelegate system.
flukus 10y ago
Congratulations for winning a game that wasn't being played.
wtf_is_up 10y ago
No, the worst result was losing the presidency, house, senate, and 3+ Supreme Court seats to Donald Trump.

RangerScience 10y ago

I'm down-voting you, here's why: This is a headline and an article about "alternative facts", relating them to a book about comprehensive "alternative fact" propaganda. Not about any of things that you listed. You didn't add any meaningful information to the discussion, but have added divisive and heavily argued opinions, in a way that only furthers their divisiveness. This is not a comment on your opinions. This is a comment about whether expressing those specific opinions on this specific news item and in that specific manner was constructive or destructive to this community; I'm saying it's destructive.

oneeyedpigeon 10y ago
I don't see the phrase "alternative facts" (or even the word "facts", for that matter) in either the headline or the article. Nineteen Eighty-Four is very much about surveillance and totalitarianism (which is why, here in the UK, it seems even more prescient right now) so, while I disagree with Mikeb's political stance, I think your dismissal of their comment as not contributing to the discussion is unfair.
- RangerScience 10y ago
  Well expressed! There is exactly one non-Orwell link in the article, and it's to an article with this headline: "Sales of George Orwell's 1984 surge after Kellyanne Conway's 'alternative facts'" The first explicitly political thing in the OP is "alternative facts"; so that's where I grabbed that from.
zigzigzag 10y ago
This is a perfect example of why downvoting shouldn't exist. None of the things you think you saw in the OPs comment are there. He is expressing an opinion that is widely held, here is a good essay on the habit of anti-Trump people of crying wolf: http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/16/you-are-still-crying-wolf/ Trump's spat over crowd sizes is stupid, but reflects someone terminally thin-skinned rather than a cunning well thought out attempt at mind control. Meanwhile, those of us who have read it will remember that 1984 dwells on hard-left totalitarianism and its habit of doing things like censorship, the desire for unitary thinking, interfering with disagreement by controlling the language and so on. Your comment doesn't actually rebut anything about what the OP said, but does try to lower the visibility of his views (suppressing speech) and does attack an entire class of speech on the grounds of "divisiveness" and "destructiveness" (unitary thinking). Trump is many things but hard-left is not one of them. Stupid phrasing today by his press guy aside, Trump's path to victory was built on a repudiation of 1984 style tactics: • Language control: political correctness, where words and phrases are redefined or suppressed through taboo • The 5-minutes hate: the establishment against Russia • Loyalty to the party: in our world the closest equivalent to a vast unaccountable power structure would be called "Washington" or "the elite". The parallels aren't perfect by any means; Trump loves surveillance just like Democrats do.

delegate 10y ago

I also find it funny that people compare him to Hitler. As if Hitler was the only and the baddest of them all. There were also: Stalin, Mao Zedong, Mussolini, Pol Pot, Francisco Franco, Pinochet, Ceausescu... Just in the 20th century there were hundreds of what we call 'dictators'. So it's a relatively common phenomenon. Some of the common traits that they shared: they got shit done, they were egomaniacs, extravagant, sometimes talked crazy and were obsessed with lies, deception and then spies and enemies. Killing (or creating the conditions for the death of) lots of people wasn't necessarily in their plans, it was just a necessary means to a glorious end.

dragonwriter 10y ago
> I also find it funny that people compare him to Hitler. I've seen him compared to Kim Jong-Un, Mussolini, Putin, the Roman Emporer Caligula, King Louis XVI of France, Emporer Maximilian I of Mexico, and to the leadership of the Communist Party of China generally, as well, among others. Your post seems to be premised on the idea that Trump has been compare exclusively to Hitler, and not or other authoritarians, which is not the case.