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I'm mostly going to split hairs here. I mostly agree with you. But I'd say the real destabilizing problem in the USA has been the partisan attitudes in politics

I'm mostly going to split hairs here. I mostly agree with you. But I'd say the real destabilizing problem in the USA has been the partisan attitudes in politics. You could almost claim that America is 2 countries, Democratia and Republica. That's how ridiculous our politics have become and why some of our problems, especially the ones you mentioned, have gotten so bad. I think they would always be "problems", but no where near as bad if all of our Congress would remember, "Oh wait, we are all Americas. We should be working together, not against each other." Edit: Why the hell are you getting downvoted so much?

dcow 6y ago
Yep. Just yesterday I encountered a pocket of “radical” anarchists that literally want to “utterly destroy the other side before rebuilding a good society”. Since when is that normal?
- wtvanhest 6y ago
  I’m curious, where did you encounter them?
- pnw_hazor 6y ago
  It is normal thinking for Marxists.
  - adamsea 6y ago
    Of course there are some who fit the description you imply. But there’s a huge range of political ideologies which have been influenced by Karl Marx and his intellectual successors - aka Marxism. Lol I think there was a Marxist hiding under my bed to get me the other night ;). Such an easy boogie-man word to use. Even scarier are those “cultural marxists.” Here’s some fact-based information: https://www.nyu.edu/projects/ollman/docs/what_is_marxism.php https://www.nyu.edu/projects/ollman/docs/what_is_marxism.php
    - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
      > In American capitalism's latest crisis, the combination of growing unemployment and worsening inflation has confounded all the usual experts. The most powerful nation in history cannot erase poverty, provide full employment, guarantee decent housing or an adequate diet or good health care to its people. Meanwhile, the rich get richer. Only Marxism, as an account ofthe rational unfolding of a basically irrational capitalist system, makes sense of our current chaos. In class struggle, it also points the way out. The rest is up to us. I'm calling baloney on the "fact-based information". That's not an objective source; that's a true believer being a cheerleader.
      - adamsea 6y ago
        Ahhh, I see your point. Fair. I read about the first third and assumed the rest was just as neutral. TBH I should have looked at the author more carefully - I thought the page was like the NYU equivalent of Stanford’s online encyclopedia of Philosophy, sort of an anodyne online primer. Thanks for pointing that out. However based on my understanding I will say that most is the article seems pretty on point as being a description of the basics of Marx / Marxist thought. I’ll also throw in that I think this is the thought that should demand our attention: > The most powerful nation in history cannot erase poverty, provide full employment, guarantee decent housing or an adequate diet or good health care to its people. Meanwhile, the rich get richer. Don’t have to be Marxist to see that.
        AnimalMuppet 6y ago
        >>> The most powerful nation in history cannot erase poverty, provide full employment, guarantee decent housing or an adequate diet or good health care to its people. Meanwhile, the rich get richer. > Don’t have to be Marxist to see that. No. And you can see the consequences that are plastered all over the evening news. Whether Marx has the right solution is a different question. But the problem is real. (Myself, I'd be inclined to say that Germany has a better solution than either the US or Marx. But I've never lived and worked in that system, so I don't really know.)
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  And why would anyone think that the kind of people who want to utterly destroy the other side are the kind of people who have the moral bearings to be able to rebuild a good society?
wtvanhest 6y ago
I expected downvotes with my comment because it is counter to what most people believe and the exact opposite message that the news gives. People heavily invested in politics will write off what I said immediately without really considering it.
adamsea 6y ago
IMHO while both political parties are deeply flawed and both corrupted by the power of big money in our system, this whole “partisan divide” thing that makes it sound like there’s no difference between the parties is silly, and inaccurate. The Democratic Party and the left has its problems. But “left wing extremism” isn’t on the top of the FBIs of list domestic terrorism threats. Of course ideally we all should be working together. But just like saying “all lives matter”, “working together” is often a way of denying historical truth and the flaws and struggles of our nation. Hacker News is supposed to be fact-based, right? IMHO folks should go do some googling about what political scientists - experts who work with reason, facts, are deep subject-matter experts and rational debate - have to say about the current functioning of the US political system. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/2017/10/13/16431502/america-democracy-decline-liberalism https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/2017/1... They talk about tribalism but it’s nuanced. And it’s not a simple “both sides need to listen and work together.” Sorry for the rant.
- NoOneNew 6y ago
  I do agree about the tribalism issue and the fact if both sides would stfu, they'd realize how similar they are instead of desiring to split hairs. But yes, there have been plenty of left wing terrorists. Ilich Ramírez Sánchez I think is the most famous one (Carlos the Jackal). Plenty of other ones, but he'd be the... Timothy McVeigh mixed with Bin Laden of left wing terrorism. That and citing Vox is like citing Fox News. No. They're different sides of the same coin. That and political science isn't a real science. Even the stuff I might agree with, it's all so warped in bias, I want to vomit.
  - adamsea 6y ago
    Vox and Fox are not alike. Fox News is notorious. Simply look at the racist or race-baiting things Tucker Carlson says - or what he doesn’t say. There’s no equivalent behavior at Vox of which I’m aware. Fox News is literally a right wing propaganda machine. Vox may have a bias and you may disagree with it but it’s not regularly engaging in fear-mongering, untethered from any sense of journalistic ethics or responsibility. Folks may not like hearing this but we all know this is true. Plus the particular article I linked to has interviews with reputable folks (Harvard profs, etc) so if nothing else it’s a source of reasoned opinion. Lastly, political science is obviously not a hard science but it’s filled with people who have spent their careers reading about history and politics and studying it so, there might be some signal in that noise there :).

dcow 6y ago

Yep. Just yesterday I encountered a pocket of “radical” anarchists that literally want to “utterly destroy the other side before rebuilding a good society”. Since when is that normal?

wtvanhest 6y ago
I’m curious, where did you encounter them?
pnw_hazor 6y ago
It is normal thinking for Marxists.
- adamsea 6y ago
  Of course there are some who fit the description you imply. But there’s a huge range of political ideologies which have been influenced by Karl Marx and his intellectual successors - aka Marxism. Lol I think there was a Marxist hiding under my bed to get me the other night ;). Such an easy boogie-man word to use. Even scarier are those “cultural marxists.” Here’s some fact-based information: https://www.nyu.edu/projects/ollman/docs/what_is_marxism.php https://www.nyu.edu/projects/ollman/docs/what_is_marxism.php
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    > In American capitalism's latest crisis, the combination of growing unemployment and worsening inflation has confounded all the usual experts. The most powerful nation in history cannot erase poverty, provide full employment, guarantee decent housing or an adequate diet or good health care to its people. Meanwhile, the rich get richer. Only Marxism, as an account ofthe rational unfolding of a basically irrational capitalist system, makes sense of our current chaos. In class struggle, it also points the way out. The rest is up to us. I'm calling baloney on the "fact-based information". That's not an objective source; that's a true believer being a cheerleader.
    - adamsea 6y ago
      Ahhh, I see your point. Fair. I read about the first third and assumed the rest was just as neutral. TBH I should have looked at the author more carefully - I thought the page was like the NYU equivalent of Stanford’s online encyclopedia of Philosophy, sort of an anodyne online primer. Thanks for pointing that out. However based on my understanding I will say that most is the article seems pretty on point as being a description of the basics of Marx / Marxist thought. I’ll also throw in that I think this is the thought that should demand our attention: > The most powerful nation in history cannot erase poverty, provide full employment, guarantee decent housing or an adequate diet or good health care to its people. Meanwhile, the rich get richer. Don’t have to be Marxist to see that.
      - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
        >>> The most powerful nation in history cannot erase poverty, provide full employment, guarantee decent housing or an adequate diet or good health care to its people. Meanwhile, the rich get richer. > Don’t have to be Marxist to see that. No. And you can see the consequences that are plastered all over the evening news. Whether Marx has the right solution is a different question. But the problem is real. (Myself, I'd be inclined to say that Germany has a better solution than either the US or Marx. But I've never lived and worked in that system, so I don't really know.)
AnimalMuppet 6y ago
And why would anyone think that the kind of people who want to utterly destroy the other side are the kind of people who have the moral bearings to be able to rebuild a good society?

wtvanhest 6y ago

I expected downvotes with my comment because it is counter to what most people believe and the exact opposite message that the news gives. People heavily invested in politics will write off what I said immediately without really considering it.

adamsea 6y ago

IMHO while both political parties are deeply flawed and both corrupted by the power of big money in our system, this whole “partisan divide” thing that makes it sound like there’s no difference between the parties is silly, and inaccurate. The Democratic Party and the left has its problems. But “left wing extremism” isn’t on the top of the FBIs of list domestic terrorism threats. Of course ideally we all should be working together. But just like saying “all lives matter”, “working together” is often a way of denying historical truth and the flaws and struggles of our nation. Hacker News is supposed to be fact-based, right? IMHO folks should go do some googling about what political scientists - experts who work with reason, facts, are deep subject-matter experts and rational debate - have to say about the current functioning of the US political system. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/2017/10/13/16431502/america-democracy-decline-liberalism https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/2017/1... They talk about tribalism but it’s nuanced. And it’s not a simple “both sides need to listen and work together.” Sorry for the rant.

NoOneNew 6y ago
I do agree about the tribalism issue and the fact if both sides would stfu, they'd realize how similar they are instead of desiring to split hairs. But yes, there have been plenty of left wing terrorists. Ilich Ramírez Sánchez I think is the most famous one (Carlos the Jackal). Plenty of other ones, but he'd be the... Timothy McVeigh mixed with Bin Laden of left wing terrorism. That and citing Vox is like citing Fox News. No. They're different sides of the same coin. That and political science isn't a real science. Even the stuff I might agree with, it's all so warped in bias, I want to vomit.
- adamsea 6y ago
  Vox and Fox are not alike. Fox News is notorious. Simply look at the racist or race-baiting things Tucker Carlson says - or what he doesn’t say. There’s no equivalent behavior at Vox of which I’m aware. Fox News is literally a right wing propaganda machine. Vox may have a bias and you may disagree with it but it’s not regularly engaging in fear-mongering, untethered from any sense of journalistic ethics or responsibility. Folks may not like hearing this but we all know this is true. Plus the particular article I linked to has interviews with reputable folks (Harvard profs, etc) so if nothing else it’s a source of reasoned opinion. Lastly, political science is obviously not a hard science but it’s filled with people who have spent their careers reading about history and politics and studying it so, there might be some signal in that noise there :).