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> Giving up on the administration is not a political win, it is damage control. I gave up on Trump in the winter of 2015/2016. I'm way ahead of you there. I'm

> Giving up on the administration is not a political win, it is damage control. I gave up on Trump in the winter of 2015/2016. I'm way ahead of you there. I'm just saying people have valid thoughts (polarization in general leads to t his) that might be considered premature. But if we're going to be evenhanded, angry left-wing people need to honor a cool off period for a while. Keep in mind that moderates who dislike Trump from the start can fairly blame left-wing shenanigans, at least partly, for the rise of Trump. Lumping them in with racists and downvoting them isn't healthy dialogue.

jacquesm 9y ago
If you gave up on Trump then that means that you at some point held him closer than you do today. I always thought he was a blow-hard and I'm terribly disappointed that someone like him can be elevated to any position of power. I really hoped that America was wiser than this. > Keep in mind that moderates who dislike Trump from the start can fairly blame left-wing shenanigans, at least partly, for the rise of Trump. Yes, but it would be a fig-leaf. A large number of them are pretty much on the record as being pissed off that a black guy became president. America really has a race problem even if on paper it is all pretty good. Especially the heartland. Denying this is allowing it room to grow. > Lumping them in with racists and downvoting them isn't healthy dialogue. Well, if you purposefully skew the weighting of the responses of the various parties to the point where you feel the violence on the 'left' is the equal of the violence on the 'right' then you're part of the problem. It becomes an 'us versus them' thing and staking out a position in such a polarized environment is something that you should do with great care. I'm not aware of any left leaning politician that has tacitly or openly condoned any violence on the left and some (definitely not all, for instance the Scalise shooting) was a direct response to other violence. To toss that all onto the same heap is disingenuous at best. If you want 'healthy dialogue' you're going to have to come to terms with inherent biases first. But that's hard to do.
- humanrebar 9y ago
  I moved from "everyone deserves to be heard out" to "this guy is a bully and a bad person in many other ways". It was clear when he made fun of a man's disability and just grew from there. To be fair to the GOP, Trump basically did a hostile takeover with a plurality of the vote on the right against a very fractured field. I'm not advocating for a pissing contest over who is more violent. I'm advocating for people to treat each other decently even if they disagree. I'm advocating for rational dialogue. I think this isn't the moment to win points for the left. Partly because I think the case isn't strong, but also because I don't see it solving the real problem of divisive American politics. The left can't "win" enough to forever banish Trumps from power. It only causes escalation, at least so far.
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    > I moved from "everyone deserves to be heard out" to "this guy is a bully and a bad person in many other ways". It was clear when he made fun of a man's disability and just grew from there. Ok, I thought it was rather very visible earlier on, such as before he even decided to run for president. > To be fair to the GOP, Trump basically did a hostile takeover with a plurality of the vote on the right against a very fractured field. They did not have to nominate him. > I'm not advocating for a pissing contest over who is more violent. Ok > I'm advocating for people to treat each other decently even if they disagree. I'm advocating for rational dialogue. It's pretty hard to have a rational dialogue when one side of the dialogue discards all facts as 'fake', brings their own 'alternative facts' to the table, tacitly and openly supports violence against their opposition and in general does whatever possible to polarize the society they are nominally supposed to lead. > I think this isn't the moment to win points for the left. This stopped being about 'points' long ago, this is about the future of a country. > Partly because I think the case isn't strong, but also because I don't see it solving the real problem of divisive American politics. Agreed, that problem starts at the top and it will take a serious amount of soul searching for the GOP to decide how far they will let this slide before they will put a stop to it. Chances are that it is already past the point where it can be arrested anyway but maybe there is still an outside chance the problem can be contained before it spills over. > The left can't "win" enough to forever banish Trumps from power. It only causes escalation, at least so far. This is not about left versus right, if that's your frame of reference today then you really should wake up and start paying attention, the damage to the United States as an institution both at home and abroad is immense.
    - zimpenfish 9y ago
      > Ok, I thought it was rather very visible earlier on, such as before he even decided to run for president. Being sued for racial discrimination in 1973 was a pretty big clue. But the birther nonsense should really have tipped everyone off about what was going on.
      - humanrebar 9y ago
        Good point. I knew he was unqualified well before. I forgot about the birth nonsense when I wrote that lost. I guess I upgraded him from fool to dangerous fool.
- lhnz 9y ago
  I've moved from "he's a total idiot who is unwilling to distance himself from the most backwards views of some of his supporters" to "he's a total idiot who's actually causing even deeper polarization since people on the Left aren't able to acknowledge that there are moderates that see him or the 'context' differently to them without implicating themselves as Nazis, and nobody on the Right wants to admit that he's creating an even more unhealthy political situation which is going to hurt everybody". > [...] then you're part of the problem. [...] > If you want 'healthy dialogue' you're going to have > to come to terms with inherent biases first. I honestly do not think you are having a healthy dialogue or coming to terms with your own inherent biases yourself. You just said that somebody was 'purposefully skewing' as if they did not really believe what they said. This is textbook bad faith arguing. You could do with reading what everybody is saying and imagining that they actually honestly believe these things and then go from there. My own two-cents are that left-wing violence and anger is partly to blame for both his rise and the deeper polarisation we are now seeing since it enabled the alt-right to play the victim and fight a war of optics [0]. However, it's not the only cause: a large component of what we're seeing is that Trump coming to power has emboldened the worst of the Right [1]. [0] Look at how they manage their image with propaganda, and their attempts to use the Left against itself: https://mobile.twitter.com/sebinsua/status/897164022440701952 https://mobile.twitter.com/sebinsua/status/89716402244070195... [1] https://mobile.twitter.com/bswud/status/747790921190744064 https://mobile.twitter.com/bswud/status/747790921190744064
  - specialist 9y ago
    Left wing violence? Such as? Reminds me of the time someone cited the Rodney King riots as examples of left-wing hate speech. Or when the protestors at the WTO summit had to physically prevent some testosterone filled teenage agitators from Oregon, self-described "anarchists", from breaking crap because the police wouldn't act. (Almost as if allowing some violence to make the evening news served their purpose. Hmmmm.)
    - humanrebar 9y ago
      Anarchists in Oregon are as left wing as racists in Charlotte are right wing. The standard there would be how they (probably) vote, right? Or are there other criteria you would prefer?
- frubar 9y ago
  >To toss that all onto the same heap is disingenuous at best. I feel like what people who behave as you are miss is that it could just be ignorance. Ignorance can be cured but not with aggression. Did you see the story where a black man befriended a bunch of KKK and they all ended up leaving the organization at the end? He didn't get that result with righteous indignation even if he had every right to be righteously indignant.
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    You'd be hard pressed to attribute any aggression to me.
    - frubar 9y ago
      I don't mean physical aggression, I mean verbal bullying. And I may be projecting other "similar feeling" posts to yours too much. But the kind of behavior I'm seeing now is a bit saddening. I remember when HN guidelines said something to the effect of "Instead of saying 'C++ was created after C, idiot' you can shorten it to 'C++ was created after C'". But I see posts in the tone of yours which say something like "The left has isolated incidents of violence by deranged people, blasted by leaders on the left while the right has much more dangerous and common events which seem to be supported by the leadership. To put these two together is disingenuous and could only be done by a fascist.", where that last sentence could just be left off. The issue is assuming the absolute worst of everyone you talk to online that doesn't hold your opinion. Maybe the poster just has ignorant friends/family and really doesn't know any better. Maybe they have opinions right now that they're going to be really embarrassed about in 10-20 years. But if you immediately group them together with people like Hitler (didn't this used to kill the thread?) then you give up any hope of educating them (or, more importantly, other people on the fence who are reading the exchange). So I have to wonder what is even the utility of such posts except to signal to others which camp you're in.
      - jacquesm 9y ago
        You use quotes to show that I said something but I did no such thing. > Maybe the poster just has ignorant friends/family and really doesn't know any better. That's quite possibly true. But regardless, at least they don't stoop to putting words in my mouth that I never used in that particular order and with that particular goal. > Maybe they have opinions right now that they're going to be really embarrassed about in 10-20 years. Let's hope not, it would be painful for all involved. > But if you immediately group them together with people like Hitler Well, when Neo Nazis walk the land waving flags and re-living the past as much as they can invoking Hitler is fair game. Mind you: The pre World War II Nazis of old (and their sympathizers) to some extent could be forgiven because they could claim they had no idea what it all would lead to. But the present day Nazis and their sympathizers have no such excuse. > So I have to wonder what is even the utility of such posts except to signal to others which camp you're in. To try to convince someone to see things in a slightly different light. And if you had been reading this thread with a bit more attention you could see some of that at work. It's not going to be a large change but speaking out about this stuff is the least that we can do.
zimpenfish 9y ago
> moderates who dislike Trump from the start can fairly blame left-wing shenanigans, at least partly, for the rise of Trump What? The rise of Trump was entirely down to the GOP - for years - stoking both racial and anti-liberal resentment with only one goal - to dismantle anything Obama touched.
- humanrebar 9y ago
  Which of those people I listed stoked racial resentment? Can you provide citations? And I think you're ignoring a lot of things the left has been up to. The IRS scandal was a big deal, for example.
  - croon 9y ago
    > And I think you're ignoring a lot of things the left has been up to. The IRS scandal was a big deal, for example. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_targeting_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_targeting_controversy > The Republican majority on the House Oversight Committee issued a report, which concluded that although some liberal groups were selected for additional review, the scrutiny that these groups received did not amount to targeting when compared to the greater scrutiny received by conservative groups. The report was criticized by the committee's Democratic minority, which said that the report ignored evidence that the IRS used keywords to identify both liberal and conservative groups. > In January 2014, the FBI told Fox News that its investigation had found no evidence so far warranting the filing of federal criminal charges in connection with the controversy, as it had not found any evidence of "enemy hunting", and that the investigation continued. On October 23, 2015, the Justice Department declared that no criminal charges would be filed. Meanwhile: http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/346544-dreamhost-claims-doj-requesting-info-on-visitors-to-anti-trump-website http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/346544-dreamhost-cla... Classic misguided whataboutism. Fox News did it again.
    - humanrebar 9y ago
      There are plenty other examples. I just picked one. The Damore and Eich cases. The professor at the University of Missouri. The assault of Charles Murray.
throwawaymanbot 9y ago
I think "right-wing" people like to blame everyone else for bad things that happen. Its so infantile. (which fits the right wing psych profile) Its YOUR fault the KKK exists. Its YOUR fault that the alt-Right exists. its Hilarys fault, its BLM fault, its Obamas fault. Its immigrants fault etc etc ad nauseum. Not ONE "right-wing" person can say, hey, maybe it is my/our fault. Losers.
- zimpenfish 9y ago
  > Not ONE "right-wing" person can say, hey, maybe it is my/our fault. Losers. If they were capable of that level of reflection and self-awareness, they wouldn't be right-wing.

jacquesm 9y ago

If you gave up on Trump then that means that you at some point held him closer than you do today. I always thought he was a blow-hard and I'm terribly disappointed that someone like him can be elevated to any position of power. I really hoped that America was wiser than this. > Keep in mind that moderates who dislike Trump from the start can fairly blame left-wing shenanigans, at least partly, for the rise of Trump. Yes, but it would be a fig-leaf. A large number of them are pretty much on the record as being pissed off that a black guy became president. America really has a race problem even if on paper it is all pretty good. Especially the heartland. Denying this is allowing it room to grow. > Lumping them in with racists and downvoting them isn't healthy dialogue. Well, if you purposefully skew the weighting of the responses of the various parties to the point where you feel the violence on the 'left' is the equal of the violence on the 'right' then you're part of the problem. It becomes an 'us versus them' thing and staking out a position in such a polarized environment is something that you should do with great care. I'm not aware of any left leaning politician that has tacitly or openly condoned any violence on the left and some (definitely not all, for instance the Scalise shooting) was a direct response to other violence. To toss that all onto the same heap is disingenuous at best. If you want 'healthy dialogue' you're going to have to come to terms with inherent biases first. But that's hard to do.

humanrebar 9y ago
I moved from "everyone deserves to be heard out" to "this guy is a bully and a bad person in many other ways". It was clear when he made fun of a man's disability and just grew from there. To be fair to the GOP, Trump basically did a hostile takeover with a plurality of the vote on the right against a very fractured field. I'm not advocating for a pissing contest over who is more violent. I'm advocating for people to treat each other decently even if they disagree. I'm advocating for rational dialogue. I think this isn't the moment to win points for the left. Partly because I think the case isn't strong, but also because I don't see it solving the real problem of divisive American politics. The left can't "win" enough to forever banish Trumps from power. It only causes escalation, at least so far.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  > I moved from "everyone deserves to be heard out" to "this guy is a bully and a bad person in many other ways". It was clear when he made fun of a man's disability and just grew from there. Ok, I thought it was rather very visible earlier on, such as before he even decided to run for president. > To be fair to the GOP, Trump basically did a hostile takeover with a plurality of the vote on the right against a very fractured field. They did not have to nominate him. > I'm not advocating for a pissing contest over who is more violent. Ok > I'm advocating for people to treat each other decently even if they disagree. I'm advocating for rational dialogue. It's pretty hard to have a rational dialogue when one side of the dialogue discards all facts as 'fake', brings their own 'alternative facts' to the table, tacitly and openly supports violence against their opposition and in general does whatever possible to polarize the society they are nominally supposed to lead. > I think this isn't the moment to win points for the left. This stopped being about 'points' long ago, this is about the future of a country. > Partly because I think the case isn't strong, but also because I don't see it solving the real problem of divisive American politics. Agreed, that problem starts at the top and it will take a serious amount of soul searching for the GOP to decide how far they will let this slide before they will put a stop to it. Chances are that it is already past the point where it can be arrested anyway but maybe there is still an outside chance the problem can be contained before it spills over. > The left can't "win" enough to forever banish Trumps from power. It only causes escalation, at least so far. This is not about left versus right, if that's your frame of reference today then you really should wake up and start paying attention, the damage to the United States as an institution both at home and abroad is immense.
  - zimpenfish 9y ago
    > Ok, I thought it was rather very visible earlier on, such as before he even decided to run for president. Being sued for racial discrimination in 1973 was a pretty big clue. But the birther nonsense should really have tipped everyone off about what was going on.
    - humanrebar 9y ago
      Good point. I knew he was unqualified well before. I forgot about the birth nonsense when I wrote that lost. I guess I upgraded him from fool to dangerous fool.
lhnz 9y ago
I've moved from "he's a total idiot who is unwilling to distance himself from the most backwards views of some of his supporters" to "he's a total idiot who's actually causing even deeper polarization since people on the Left aren't able to acknowledge that there are moderates that see him or the 'context' differently to them without implicating themselves as Nazis, and nobody on the Right wants to admit that he's creating an even more unhealthy political situation which is going to hurt everybody". > [...] then you're part of the problem. [...] > If you want 'healthy dialogue' you're going to have > to come to terms with inherent biases first. I honestly do not think you are having a healthy dialogue or coming to terms with your own inherent biases yourself. You just said that somebody was 'purposefully skewing' as if they did not really believe what they said. This is textbook bad faith arguing. You could do with reading what everybody is saying and imagining that they actually honestly believe these things and then go from there. My own two-cents are that left-wing violence and anger is partly to blame for both his rise and the deeper polarisation we are now seeing since it enabled the alt-right to play the victim and fight a war of optics [0]. However, it's not the only cause: a large component of what we're seeing is that Trump coming to power has emboldened the worst of the Right [1]. [0] Look at how they manage their image with propaganda, and their attempts to use the Left against itself: https://mobile.twitter.com/sebinsua/status/897164022440701952 https://mobile.twitter.com/sebinsua/status/89716402244070195... [1] https://mobile.twitter.com/bswud/status/747790921190744064 https://mobile.twitter.com/bswud/status/747790921190744064
- specialist 9y ago
  Left wing violence? Such as? Reminds me of the time someone cited the Rodney King riots as examples of left-wing hate speech. Or when the protestors at the WTO summit had to physically prevent some testosterone filled teenage agitators from Oregon, self-described "anarchists", from breaking crap because the police wouldn't act. (Almost as if allowing some violence to make the evening news served their purpose. Hmmmm.)
  - humanrebar 9y ago
    Anarchists in Oregon are as left wing as racists in Charlotte are right wing. The standard there would be how they (probably) vote, right? Or are there other criteria you would prefer?
frubar 9y ago
>To toss that all onto the same heap is disingenuous at best. I feel like what people who behave as you are miss is that it could just be ignorance. Ignorance can be cured but not with aggression. Did you see the story where a black man befriended a bunch of KKK and they all ended up leaving the organization at the end? He didn't get that result with righteous indignation even if he had every right to be righteously indignant.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  You'd be hard pressed to attribute any aggression to me.
  - frubar 9y ago
    I don't mean physical aggression, I mean verbal bullying. And I may be projecting other "similar feeling" posts to yours too much. But the kind of behavior I'm seeing now is a bit saddening. I remember when HN guidelines said something to the effect of "Instead of saying 'C++ was created after C, idiot' you can shorten it to 'C++ was created after C'". But I see posts in the tone of yours which say something like "The left has isolated incidents of violence by deranged people, blasted by leaders on the left while the right has much more dangerous and common events which seem to be supported by the leadership. To put these two together is disingenuous and could only be done by a fascist.", where that last sentence could just be left off. The issue is assuming the absolute worst of everyone you talk to online that doesn't hold your opinion. Maybe the poster just has ignorant friends/family and really doesn't know any better. Maybe they have opinions right now that they're going to be really embarrassed about in 10-20 years. But if you immediately group them together with people like Hitler (didn't this used to kill the thread?) then you give up any hope of educating them (or, more importantly, other people on the fence who are reading the exchange). So I have to wonder what is even the utility of such posts except to signal to others which camp you're in.
    - jacquesm 9y ago
      You use quotes to show that I said something but I did no such thing. > Maybe the poster just has ignorant friends/family and really doesn't know any better. That's quite possibly true. But regardless, at least they don't stoop to putting words in my mouth that I never used in that particular order and with that particular goal. > Maybe they have opinions right now that they're going to be really embarrassed about in 10-20 years. Let's hope not, it would be painful for all involved. > But if you immediately group them together with people like Hitler Well, when Neo Nazis walk the land waving flags and re-living the past as much as they can invoking Hitler is fair game. Mind you: The pre World War II Nazis of old (and their sympathizers) to some extent could be forgiven because they could claim they had no idea what it all would lead to. But the present day Nazis and their sympathizers have no such excuse. > So I have to wonder what is even the utility of such posts except to signal to others which camp you're in. To try to convince someone to see things in a slightly different light. And if you had been reading this thread with a bit more attention you could see some of that at work. It's not going to be a large change but speaking out about this stuff is the least that we can do.

zimpenfish 9y ago

> moderates who dislike Trump from the start can fairly blame left-wing shenanigans, at least partly, for the rise of Trump What? The rise of Trump was entirely down to the GOP - for years - stoking both racial and anti-liberal resentment with only one goal - to dismantle anything Obama touched.

humanrebar 9y ago
Which of those people I listed stoked racial resentment? Can you provide citations? And I think you're ignoring a lot of things the left has been up to. The IRS scandal was a big deal, for example.
- croon 9y ago
  > And I think you're ignoring a lot of things the left has been up to. The IRS scandal was a big deal, for example. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_targeting_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_targeting_controversy > The Republican majority on the House Oversight Committee issued a report, which concluded that although some liberal groups were selected for additional review, the scrutiny that these groups received did not amount to targeting when compared to the greater scrutiny received by conservative groups. The report was criticized by the committee's Democratic minority, which said that the report ignored evidence that the IRS used keywords to identify both liberal and conservative groups. > In January 2014, the FBI told Fox News that its investigation had found no evidence so far warranting the filing of federal criminal charges in connection with the controversy, as it had not found any evidence of "enemy hunting", and that the investigation continued. On October 23, 2015, the Justice Department declared that no criminal charges would be filed. Meanwhile: http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/346544-dreamhost-claims-doj-requesting-info-on-visitors-to-anti-trump-website http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/346544-dreamhost-cla... Classic misguided whataboutism. Fox News did it again.
  - humanrebar 9y ago
    There are plenty other examples. I just picked one. The Damore and Eich cases. The professor at the University of Missouri. The assault of Charles Murray.

throwawaymanbot 9y ago

I think "right-wing" people like to blame everyone else for bad things that happen. Its so infantile. (which fits the right wing psych profile) Its YOUR fault the KKK exists. Its YOUR fault that the alt-Right exists. its Hilarys fault, its BLM fault, its Obamas fault. Its immigrants fault etc etc ad nauseum. Not ONE "right-wing" person can say, hey, maybe it is my/our fault. Losers.

zimpenfish 9y ago
> Not ONE "right-wing" person can say, hey, maybe it is my/our fault. Losers. If they were capable of that level of reflection and self-awareness, they wouldn't be right-wing.