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This just further highlights the delusion that everyone is living in right now, 50% of Americans think the other 50% is out to kill them and take away their bas

by vxNsr 6y ago

This just further highlights the delusion that everyone is living in right now, 50% of Americans think the other 50% is out to kill them and take away their basic rights. This is true of both sides, they each truly believe the other side is a real danger. And both sides will say the other side is the real problem and I’m both siding something that is obviously one sided. I cross the divide and have emphatically, honestly, without any irony been called an evil socialist by one and nazi authoritarian by the other.

zepto 6y ago
The problem is - both could be right!
- vxNsr 6y ago
  Well again as someone who talks to both extremes very often, they’re honestly not. They both just be left alone but have been led to believe by their media consumption that if they don’t do something the other side will, a kind of reverse prisoners dilemma.
  - zepto 6y ago
    I don’t know - it seems to me that the left would ban guns if they could, and the right would ban abortion if they could. Neither side is wrong to be afraid of the other doing these things.
fred_is_fred 6y ago
Let's not fall into the "whataboutism". Only one "side" has the President of the United States and other key leaders actively advocating for violence.
- vxNsr 6y ago
  Lol. I have the other side telling me that this all misunderstood and then they’ll point you to the AOCs, Sanders talking about “make lists, lock them up”. They’ll say one side is only talking, but look at Portland, Seattle, DC, etc. there was actual violence. Then the other side will point to Kenosha, which the Trump side will point to as well as proof for them. And they’ll tack on Portland. The truth is very much in the middle.
  - omgwtfbyobbq 6y ago
    Do you have a reference to the make lists/lock them up?
    - vxNsr 6y ago
      I think this is what they’re referring to: https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1324807776510595078 https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1324807776510595078 I don’t know though, this was in a WhatsApp group, I remember seeing the conversation about something she said but idk if this was it
      - omgwtfbyobbq 6y ago
        That sounds like take screenshots so we can call them out later, not make lists/lock them up.
  - B-Con 6y ago
    I'll second this. Neither side really instances the other side and many buy into the headline narrative that the other half aee basically all extremist nutjobs.
    - cambalache 6y ago
      Third! This is such a weird moment in America history. In one side you have a rag-tag group of: classical conservatives, flyover working class white people,cuban-americans, evangelicals and in the other you have hollywood, the media, the tech companies, their employees, and the colleges. This is not a right/left split, not even a liberal/conservative split, this is a power split (on which the regular people are just cannon-fodder soldiers) between old money and new money.
  - standardUser 6y ago
    One faction is actively doing everything they can to undermine our system of government, everyone else is not. That is the divide.
- thegrim33 6y ago
  So you have a vague, completely unprovable, argument, based on heresay and reddit posts, whereas I can point to the left rioting in major cities across the country for months on end. You can't deny this. There's thousands of hours of video footage. I fled Seattle a few months ago due to your party's nightly violence. The right is sitting at home and doing absolutely nothing. Even after obvious election tampering the right is STILL doing nothing. Only the left can point at the people doing literally nothing, as you spit in their face and torch American cities, and accuse them of violence.
  - k33n 6y ago
    The left is suffering from mass hysteria on a level never before seen.
  - macintux 6y ago
    > Even after obvious election tampering That's the problem. The only tampering that seems obvious to me is the years-long efforts to limit voting rights, and at the moment the desperate attempts to invalidate mail-in ballots. We can't agree on basic facts; how can we agree on remediations?
  - compiler-guy 6y ago
    If the election tampering were obvious, the Trump appointed judges would have accepted the cases and ruled that way. This election was roughly the same as any other us election in terms of fairness and all the rest. Probably better.
  - Jotra7 6y ago
    Fled Seattle? Give me break. What's it like being afraid of boogeymen and shadows? Seems exhausting.
- fennecfoxen 6y ago
  Complaints about "whataboutism" are a pretty poor way to excuse the set of problems that you are actually positioned to help solve.
- k33n 6y ago
  Aren't democrats constantly calling for (and committing violence) against their political opponents? Didn't see any red hats out with antifa when they were hitting people over the head with bike locks all summer. Also Cynthia Johnson literally called for Democrat "soldiers" to "make Trump supporters pay".
  - standardUser 6y ago
    That kind of hyperbole is both a huge part of the problem and, to me, impossible to espouse without being willfully obtuse.
    - k33n 6y ago
      I love watching my posts get insta-flagged by the far left, which absolutely detests freedom of speech. Terrible people. Sad.
  - dang 6y ago
    Hey, could you please stop posting flamewar comments to HN? We ban accounts that do that, and I don't want to ban you (especially a 10-year-old account!) but you've been breaking the site guidelines repeatedly, and we need you to stop. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules, we'd be grateful.
bigbubba 6y ago
I think the real truth of the matter is the majority of Americans know the sky isn't falling. Profit motivated media is blowing the political divide way out of the water, fear mongering to sell eyeballs to advertisers. I've got a few friends who are utterly convinced America is on the cusp of a civil war, but that's only a few. They're the ones who watch too much Fox News or CNN I think.
- fakedang 6y ago
  Still waiting for the "inevitable civil war Trump supporters will instigate, because they have guns", as mentioned to me by one of my friends.
  - bigbubba 6y ago
    I think the overwhelming majority of people who make claims like that are just full of hot air. If the shooting ever started, they'd be hiding indoors with the rest of us. This is one of the reasons I think the scenarios they propose is unlikely. This is nothing new of course, there have always been people willing to talk about extreme grandiose nonsense they'll never do. These people aren't hard to find if you go looking, making it easy for the media to broadcast their prattling to scare everybody else shitless. Scared, people stay tuned during the commercial break to hear the latest up to date news about what horrible things are surely imminent. A few months ago I had a few friends of either political persuasion telling me there would be a revolution or coup the day after the election. That didn't happen, and I think most are starting to realize it won't happen. By this time next year, when Biden's presidency is well underway, I think many of the people feeling very concerned today will feel foolish in retrospect.
- ritchiea 6y ago
  For the majority of Americans on HN or employed in tech or finance or some other salaried office work, the sky isn’t falling, we’re doing well. but we’re also a minority of Americans. Walk through towns & small cities in Indiana, Kansas, Florida, Alabama. In a lot of these places the sky is falling, there are few jobs & high rates of opiate abuse. There isn’t much of a social safety net. Unfortunately many of these people vote against their own financial interests, and honestly the democrats also aren’t addressing the roots of inequality sufficiently. The United States is basically divided between those of us who are doing well and those of us for whom the sky is at least looking brittle. That’s the issue putting pressure on society today.
hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
Granted, I haven't seen the data the people leaving FB are using to make their arguments, but at least they are saying that misinformation and posts arguing for assault or killing of individuals are much more prevalent among "conservative" groups: > We have a very good idea which actors in the US drive the largest volumes of this kind of content. In the last 14 days, the 10 pages responsible for the largest concentrated volume of likely violating Hate Speech comments have been: Breitbart Fox News The Daily Caller USA Patriots for Donald Trump Donald Trump for President Donald J. Trump Ben Shapiro Conservative Tribune by WJ US Chronicle The Western Journal These pages, and a few perennial others that didn’t happen to make the top 10 in the last two weeks, but that you can find by browsing the dashboard, are filling our platform with violent and hateful content at a rate and concentration that is simply overwhelming…
idrios 6y ago
Disappointed you're being downvoted. Everybody seems to have taken an "if you're not with us you're against us" approach. The left appeals to your sense of morality ("you're evil if you support this president") and the right appeals to your sense of intelligence ("you're an idiot if you support socialism"). My only issue is that it's become impossible to even talk about your opinions without being given a label. How does anyone grow in this environment?
- gnusty_gnurc 6y ago
  Both seem giddy about abridging individual rights and liberal values. Invite debate, look for commonality and move forward.
- throwaway201103 6y ago
  People don't seem to want to defend their positions anymore. They want to say what they feel and face no challenge or debate. Even this "key" data scientist won't talk to the media, won't be identified. Sorry then, I don't give his opinion a lot of weight. It's easy to throw stones from inside a safe space.
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
  >My only issue is that it's become impossible to even talk about your opinions without being given a label. How does anyone grow in this environment? I've heard this argument often. What I'm about to say is not directed at you personally but your argument. Maybe you, general you, are the one who needs to grow. It's possible that your knowledge of the subject is dated, judgement clouded by any number of things, that you underestimate the severity of the problem, that you're conflating a dislike of a person, movement, idea with groups of people, or other things. I say this because most of the time when people make this comment they follow it up or precede it with some very questionable statements. Generally these inappropriate statements are rooted in ignorance of the topic though sometimes your argument is used in bad faith to justify hateful or discriminatory ideals, speech, and action. Again, I'm not suggesting anything against you idrios, merely adding my experience with this argument.
  - 6y ago
citilife 6y ago
Honest question, why do the liberals feel in danger? I personally don't attribute myself to either side, nor did I vote for either. However... I've seen rioting (been caught up in one and feared for my safety), noticed stuff being blocked by the left (1st amendment), going after firearm ownership (2nd amendment), and a constant attack on all conservatives & their ideals / objectives. What exactly are the conservatives doing? I don't see anything necessarily being blocked / attacked? Am I missing something?
- FireBeyond 6y ago
  Michigan? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gretchen_Whitmer_kidnapping_plot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gretchen_Whitmer_kidnapping_pl... https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/05/01/849017021/protestors-swarm-michigan-capitol-amid-showdown-over-governors-emergency-powers https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/0... Literally armed people swarming government buildings to protest masks, bomb threats and plans, kidnapping. https://www.reddit.com/r/InsaneParler/ https://www.reddit.com/r/InsaneParler/ gives more insights. Washington? You have Matt Shea, an elected Republican: "In late October 2018, Shea acknowledged that he had distributed a document described as a "four-page manifesto" titled Biblical Basis for War that listed strategies that a "Holy Army" could employ. The document, consisting of 14 sections divided into bullet points, had a section on "rules of war" that stated "make an offer of peace before declaring war", which within stated that the enemy must "surrender on terms" of no abortions, no same-sex marriage, no communism and "must obey Biblical law", then continued: "If they do not yield — kill all males"." "In April 2019, The Guardian published records from a right-wing chat group of four people that Shea participated in, where Shea used an alias of ‘True Warrior’ in Latin. Other members in the chat group discussed carrying out surveillance, intimidation and violent attacks on political enemies, including Antifa activists and "communists." Shea himself volunteered to conduct background checks on residents of Spokane, resulting in Shea naming three individuals. One of the chat group's members forwarded the information to The Guardian, while another confirmed the existence of the chats and acknowledged the discussion on conducting surveillance on "Antifa" people." "An investigation commissioned by Washington House of Representatives reported, on December 1, 2019, that Shea had planned and participated in domestic terrorism on at least three occasions. This included his participation, organizing, planning, and promotion of the 2014 Bundy standoff in Nevada, the 2015 armed standoff in Priest River, Idaho, and the 2016 armed seizure of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Harney County, Oregon. Shea led a delegation of right-wing legislators from Oregon, Washington and Idaho that met with law enforcement on January 9, 2016, in Burns, Oregon and were appraised of confidential intended law enforcement strategies for dealing with the refuge occupiers. Shea then disclosed those details to Bundy, according to the report."
throwaway894345 6y ago
I take your broader point, but I don't think it's 50/50 as much as it is a vocal 10% on either side with the majority remaining pretty moderate and reasonable. I don't personally cross the divide, I'm a political liberal (earning me the 'socialist' brand from the right) but I don't dabble in the tribalism and try to be charitable toward those I disagree with (thus I'm a nazi to the 10% on the far left) but there's still a huge swath of people in the middle.
- BLKNSLVR 6y ago
  Very interesting that the text of your entirely non-aggressive, non-partisan point of view was "more grey than black". Keep up the charitable liberalism I say.
  - Yeroc 6y ago
    I think one of the issues (beyond media's propensity towards sensationalism to draw attention) is that the extremes at either end of a debate are very black and white. Black and white can be explained in a single sentence many times but everything in between is nuanced (or grey as you called it). The problem with nuanced positions is it requires more than a 280 character payload to explain...
    - throwaway894345 6y ago
      I think the bigger problem is that nuanced positions don't sell as well as sensationalism. Outrage is a powerful drug and the media has us hooked on it.
patjenk 6y ago
Is it necessary to name the problem if we know a driver of it?
adamsea 6y ago
I disagree that there is an equivalence. For example, I actually think that anyone who doesn't believe that the election was legitimate - i.e. that no meaningful fraud occurred - should be banned from the HN community. Their "arguments" are full of shit and are a bunch of pseudo-philosophical, pseudo-analytical, pseudo-objective cant. Their "evidence" is literally disinformation / propaganda. They're uninterested and in fact dismissive of real, actual evidence and facts as examined in multiple court cases - and they refuse to accept the validity of the outcomes of those cases. They wish to overturn the legitimate outcome of the Presidential election. Full stop. They act exactly like those crypto-racists who know that their true belief would be deemed unpalatable or unacceptable by the community so they'll blow as much smoke around as possible without ever stepping out to say what they're actually driving towards. I don't see anything remotely equivalent to this happening on the other side of the fence at this time. I've never seen anything like this in the United States and enough is enough. It's clearly dangerous to allow these views the shroud of legitimacy by giving them space in the public square, because it's gone so far that anything other than a total rejection ends up functioning as an implicit legitimization because the claims are so untrue, shocking, and destructive. By allowing the lie of election fraud to be presented as just another thing to be discussed on HN, HN is enabling those people and their cause, which is to overturn the results of a legitimate election. And I think it's unfortunate and wrong that I probably have a better chance of being banned from HN for this comment, than someone who is obviously attempting to undermine people's belief in the legitimacy of the 2020 Presidential election, which is to say, undermine small-d democracy in the U.S. and advocate for an authoritarian, one-party state. Which is literally what they're doing. And no, the Democrats or anyone else on the Left are not doing anything remotely equivalent to that right now.
x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago
So one side is trying to stage a coup using the SCOTUS as a weapon, thereby defying the will of the citizenry, and the best you an come up with is "Both Sides"?
- airb 6y ago
  One side believes the last 4 years has seen multiple attempts to remove their elected president. Not to mention the Justice kavanaugh confirmation madness.
  - loopz 6y ago
    Correction: Elected criminal lying president.
    - vxNsr 6y ago
      Lol. I love when someone like you comments this without any irony. You truly believe this nonsense like it’s gospel.
      - loopz 6y ago
        What Trump has going for him, is picking up issues that need to be addressed, that have gone been neglected in a fast-evolving world, leading to unfairness. However, how these issues are treated and how people are treated, is important in a democracy. https://theconversation.com/why-hard-core-trump-supporters-ignore-his-lies-144650 https://theconversation.com/why-hard-core-trump-supporters-i... If he's such a great leader and not just an opportunist populist, why do he need to instill a fear-culture where everybody who doesn't lick his boots get fired. People appointed by the same leader dare not speak up their own opinions. This isn't democracy. What type of leader do this? Hint: Communist leaders like Stalin, and fascist leaders like Mussolini. If you're unable to spot a liar yourself, it is not too hard to form your own opinion on this: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/23/opinion/trumps-lies.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/23/opinion/trump... https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/the-complete-listing-so-far-atrocities-1-1-004 https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/the-complete-listing-so-... https://www.dailywire.com/news/trumps-101-lies-hank-berrien https://www.dailywire.com/news/trumps-101-lies-hank-berrien https://duckduckgo.com/?q=trump+lies+list https://duckduckgo.com/?q=trump+lies+list Fortunately, a majority of the population see right through the lack of leadership and lies for what they truly are. The means are as important as the ends, and the ends are often obscured and full of misdirection, more like PR campaigns than anything of real and lasting value.
jfrunyon 6y ago
Except that only 50% is actually out to do it.
- bigbubba 6y ago
  Most of the republicans I know are disappointed, but not so severely that they want to go killing people. That sort of extremism is very fringe. Also, even if you count the mellow majority, they're far from 50%.
  - jfrunyon 6y ago
    > and take away their basic rights
    - bigbubba 6y ago
      Well I have some good news for you, they lost the election. A few of them may not like to admit that, but they lost nevertheless and any scenario where Biden or Harris isn't president a year from now is a delusion.
      - jfrunyon 6y ago
        Well I have some bad news for you, they don't believe they lost the election.
        bigbubba 6y ago
        Well the good news is that doesn't matter. They're sore losers but it won't amount to anything more than hot air, so take a deep breath and relax. Hit a blunt or something.
        jfrunyon 6y ago
        Do you really think that losing the election is going to make the Republicans go "huh, maybe we should stop trying to take away rights from millions of Americans? maybe we should stop treating millions of voters like trash?" It's not.
jaredklewis 6y ago
You seem reasonable, so please help me understand the other side. I’m a big fan of conservative thinkers like Milton Friedman and George Will. I’m against the left’s attack on free speech and find their obsession with identity, at best, perplexing. I prefer isolationist foreign policy and less military involvement from the US. I’m originally from a conservative area and have many conservative relatives I know to be good people. And yet I cannot conceive of how anyone could support Trump or the boot licking republicans who enable him. He is incapable of telling the truth. He does not seem to believe in reality, science, or expertise of any kind. He does not believe in rule of law. He is an authoritarian and egomaniac. Even before the election he challenged the idea of a peaceful transition of power. How is this supportable? Edit: And to be clear I get that we live in a two-party country and that a vote for a candidate is not a wholesale endorsement. You look at the options you have and choose the "lesser of the evils," as it were. Hell, I would vote for Trump if the other candidate was Stalin. Edit Edit: I know it’s bad form to make political rants like this on HN. I had a moment of weakness :/
- umvi 6y ago
  A lot of my conservative relatives are too old to even know what Twitter is, so they completely ignore Trump on that front. They like that Trump doesn't kowtow to the media and they like his judge picks, his foreign policy, and executive orders. The media would zing Romney with little zingers and he would get all hang dog and apologize, but Trump punched back instead and his voter base loved that they finally had a candidate that would stand up to the media. Trump also tried very hard to make good on his campaign promises. Can you imagine opening an embassy in Jerusalem under Hillary? I can't, and my conservative relatives love that he did that and that he stands up to China and acknowledged Taiwan's president. They also love that he fights back against identity politics (removing requirement for forced diversity trainings, etc). In short, from their perspective he goes to bat on a lot of their grievances. So yeah, his Twitter is a dumpster fire, but half his voter base doesn't even see it because they don't use twitter.
- vxNsr 6y ago
  Look I’ve had conversations like this a lot, it comes down to exactly what you said. Two parties ends up being the lesser of two evils, and trump to most conservatives absolutely was the lesser of two evils. As other commentators said, he fulfilled many of his campaign promises. He pushed foreign policy in a direction the whole world needed but didn’t want. He’s been drawing down foreign troops since his first day in office, so much so that apparently his generals were lying to him about how many ppl they had out there. It’s perplexing to me that if what you say you believe is what you believe why a politician being a liar is a problem for you. All politicians lie, none as brazenly as Trump sure; but every single one of them has been caught lying in the last 9 months, many have been pretty brazen in their hypocrisy. My many conservative friends will point to 1000s of small white lies and 100s of big ones that Biden told, as proof that the other side is just as complicit.

by vxNsr 6y ago

zepto 6y ago

The problem is - both could be right!

vxNsr 6y ago
Well again as someone who talks to both extremes very often, they’re honestly not. They both just be left alone but have been led to believe by their media consumption that if they don’t do something the other side will, a kind of reverse prisoners dilemma.
- zepto 6y ago
  I don’t know - it seems to me that the left would ban guns if they could, and the right would ban abortion if they could. Neither side is wrong to be afraid of the other doing these things.

fred_is_fred 6y ago

Let's not fall into the "whataboutism". Only one "side" has the President of the United States and other key leaders actively advocating for violence.

vxNsr 6y ago
Lol. I have the other side telling me that this all misunderstood and then they’ll point you to the AOCs, Sanders talking about “make lists, lock them up”. They’ll say one side is only talking, but look at Portland, Seattle, DC, etc. there was actual violence. Then the other side will point to Kenosha, which the Trump side will point to as well as proof for them. And they’ll tack on Portland. The truth is very much in the middle.
- omgwtfbyobbq 6y ago
  Do you have a reference to the make lists/lock them up?
  - vxNsr 6y ago
    I think this is what they’re referring to: https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1324807776510595078 https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1324807776510595078 I don’t know though, this was in a WhatsApp group, I remember seeing the conversation about something she said but idk if this was it
    - omgwtfbyobbq 6y ago
      That sounds like take screenshots so we can call them out later, not make lists/lock them up.
- B-Con 6y ago
  I'll second this. Neither side really instances the other side and many buy into the headline narrative that the other half aee basically all extremist nutjobs.
  - cambalache 6y ago
    Third! This is such a weird moment in America history. In one side you have a rag-tag group of: classical conservatives, flyover working class white people,cuban-americans, evangelicals and in the other you have hollywood, the media, the tech companies, their employees, and the colleges. This is not a right/left split, not even a liberal/conservative split, this is a power split (on which the regular people are just cannon-fodder soldiers) between old money and new money.
- standardUser 6y ago
  One faction is actively doing everything they can to undermine our system of government, everyone else is not. That is the divide.
thegrim33 6y ago
So you have a vague, completely unprovable, argument, based on heresay and reddit posts, whereas I can point to the left rioting in major cities across the country for months on end. You can't deny this. There's thousands of hours of video footage. I fled Seattle a few months ago due to your party's nightly violence. The right is sitting at home and doing absolutely nothing. Even after obvious election tampering the right is STILL doing nothing. Only the left can point at the people doing literally nothing, as you spit in their face and torch American cities, and accuse them of violence.
- k33n 6y ago
  The left is suffering from mass hysteria on a level never before seen.
- macintux 6y ago
  > Even after obvious election tampering That's the problem. The only tampering that seems obvious to me is the years-long efforts to limit voting rights, and at the moment the desperate attempts to invalidate mail-in ballots. We can't agree on basic facts; how can we agree on remediations?
- compiler-guy 6y ago
  If the election tampering were obvious, the Trump appointed judges would have accepted the cases and ruled that way. This election was roughly the same as any other us election in terms of fairness and all the rest. Probably better.
- Jotra7 6y ago
  Fled Seattle? Give me break. What's it like being afraid of boogeymen and shadows? Seems exhausting.
fennecfoxen 6y ago
Complaints about "whataboutism" are a pretty poor way to excuse the set of problems that you are actually positioned to help solve.
k33n 6y ago
Aren't democrats constantly calling for (and committing violence) against their political opponents? Didn't see any red hats out with antifa when they were hitting people over the head with bike locks all summer. Also Cynthia Johnson literally called for Democrat "soldiers" to "make Trump supporters pay".
- standardUser 6y ago
  That kind of hyperbole is both a huge part of the problem and, to me, impossible to espouse without being willfully obtuse.
  - k33n 6y ago
    I love watching my posts get insta-flagged by the far left, which absolutely detests freedom of speech. Terrible people. Sad.
- dang 6y ago
  Hey, could you please stop posting flamewar comments to HN? We ban accounts that do that, and I don't want to ban you (especially a 10-year-old account!) but you've been breaking the site guidelines repeatedly, and we need you to stop. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules, we'd be grateful.

bigbubba 6y ago

I think the real truth of the matter is the majority of Americans know the sky isn't falling. Profit motivated media is blowing the political divide way out of the water, fear mongering to sell eyeballs to advertisers. I've got a few friends who are utterly convinced America is on the cusp of a civil war, but that's only a few. They're the ones who watch too much Fox News or CNN I think.

fakedang 6y ago
Still waiting for the "inevitable civil war Trump supporters will instigate, because they have guns", as mentioned to me by one of my friends.
- bigbubba 6y ago
  I think the overwhelming majority of people who make claims like that are just full of hot air. If the shooting ever started, they'd be hiding indoors with the rest of us. This is one of the reasons I think the scenarios they propose is unlikely. This is nothing new of course, there have always been people willing to talk about extreme grandiose nonsense they'll never do. These people aren't hard to find if you go looking, making it easy for the media to broadcast their prattling to scare everybody else shitless. Scared, people stay tuned during the commercial break to hear the latest up to date news about what horrible things are surely imminent. A few months ago I had a few friends of either political persuasion telling me there would be a revolution or coup the day after the election. That didn't happen, and I think most are starting to realize it won't happen. By this time next year, when Biden's presidency is well underway, I think many of the people feeling very concerned today will feel foolish in retrospect.
ritchiea 6y ago
For the majority of Americans on HN or employed in tech or finance or some other salaried office work, the sky isn’t falling, we’re doing well. but we’re also a minority of Americans. Walk through towns & small cities in Indiana, Kansas, Florida, Alabama. In a lot of these places the sky is falling, there are few jobs & high rates of opiate abuse. There isn’t much of a social safety net. Unfortunately many of these people vote against their own financial interests, and honestly the democrats also aren’t addressing the roots of inequality sufficiently. The United States is basically divided between those of us who are doing well and those of us for whom the sky is at least looking brittle. That’s the issue putting pressure on society today.

hn_throwaway_99 6y ago

Granted, I haven't seen the data the people leaving FB are using to make their arguments, but at least they are saying that misinformation and posts arguing for assault or killing of individuals are much more prevalent among "conservative" groups: > We have a very good idea which actors in the US drive the largest volumes of this kind of content. In the last 14 days, the 10 pages responsible for the largest concentrated volume of likely violating Hate Speech comments have been: Breitbart Fox News The Daily Caller USA Patriots for Donald Trump Donald Trump for President Donald J. Trump Ben Shapiro Conservative Tribune by WJ US Chronicle The Western Journal These pages, and a few perennial others that didn’t happen to make the top 10 in the last two weeks, but that you can find by browsing the dashboard, are filling our platform with violent and hateful content at a rate and concentration that is simply overwhelming…

idrios 6y ago

Disappointed you're being downvoted. Everybody seems to have taken an "if you're not with us you're against us" approach. The left appeals to your sense of morality ("you're evil if you support this president") and the right appeals to your sense of intelligence ("you're an idiot if you support socialism"). My only issue is that it's become impossible to even talk about your opinions without being given a label. How does anyone grow in this environment?

gnusty_gnurc 6y ago
Both seem giddy about abridging individual rights and liberal values. Invite debate, look for commonality and move forward.
throwaway201103 6y ago
People don't seem to want to defend their positions anymore. They want to say what they feel and face no challenge or debate. Even this "key" data scientist won't talk to the media, won't be identified. Sorry then, I don't give his opinion a lot of weight. It's easy to throw stones from inside a safe space.
Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
>My only issue is that it's become impossible to even talk about your opinions without being given a label. How does anyone grow in this environment? I've heard this argument often. What I'm about to say is not directed at you personally but your argument. Maybe you, general you, are the one who needs to grow. It's possible that your knowledge of the subject is dated, judgement clouded by any number of things, that you underestimate the severity of the problem, that you're conflating a dislike of a person, movement, idea with groups of people, or other things. I say this because most of the time when people make this comment they follow it up or precede it with some very questionable statements. Generally these inappropriate statements are rooted in ignorance of the topic though sometimes your argument is used in bad faith to justify hateful or discriminatory ideals, speech, and action. Again, I'm not suggesting anything against you idrios, merely adding my experience with this argument.
- 6y ago

citilife 6y ago

Honest question, why do the liberals feel in danger? I personally don't attribute myself to either side, nor did I vote for either. However... I've seen rioting (been caught up in one and feared for my safety), noticed stuff being blocked by the left (1st amendment), going after firearm ownership (2nd amendment), and a constant attack on all conservatives & their ideals / objectives. What exactly are the conservatives doing? I don't see anything necessarily being blocked / attacked? Am I missing something?

FireBeyond 6y ago
Michigan? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gretchen_Whitmer_kidnapping_plot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gretchen_Whitmer_kidnapping_pl... https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/05/01/849017021/protestors-swarm-michigan-capitol-amid-showdown-over-governors-emergency-powers https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/0... Literally armed people swarming government buildings to protest masks, bomb threats and plans, kidnapping. https://www.reddit.com/r/InsaneParler/ https://www.reddit.com/r/InsaneParler/ gives more insights. Washington? You have Matt Shea, an elected Republican: "In late October 2018, Shea acknowledged that he had distributed a document described as a "four-page manifesto" titled Biblical Basis for War that listed strategies that a "Holy Army" could employ. The document, consisting of 14 sections divided into bullet points, had a section on "rules of war" that stated "make an offer of peace before declaring war", which within stated that the enemy must "surrender on terms" of no abortions, no same-sex marriage, no communism and "must obey Biblical law", then continued: "If they do not yield — kill all males"." "In April 2019, The Guardian published records from a right-wing chat group of four people that Shea participated in, where Shea used an alias of ‘True Warrior’ in Latin. Other members in the chat group discussed carrying out surveillance, intimidation and violent attacks on political enemies, including Antifa activists and "communists." Shea himself volunteered to conduct background checks on residents of Spokane, resulting in Shea naming three individuals. One of the chat group's members forwarded the information to The Guardian, while another confirmed the existence of the chats and acknowledged the discussion on conducting surveillance on "Antifa" people." "An investigation commissioned by Washington House of Representatives reported, on December 1, 2019, that Shea had planned and participated in domestic terrorism on at least three occasions. This included his participation, organizing, planning, and promotion of the 2014 Bundy standoff in Nevada, the 2015 armed standoff in Priest River, Idaho, and the 2016 armed seizure of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Harney County, Oregon. Shea led a delegation of right-wing legislators from Oregon, Washington and Idaho that met with law enforcement on January 9, 2016, in Burns, Oregon and were appraised of confidential intended law enforcement strategies for dealing with the refuge occupiers. Shea then disclosed those details to Bundy, according to the report."

throwaway894345 6y ago

I take your broader point, but I don't think it's 50/50 as much as it is a vocal 10% on either side with the majority remaining pretty moderate and reasonable. I don't personally cross the divide, I'm a political liberal (earning me the 'socialist' brand from the right) but I don't dabble in the tribalism and try to be charitable toward those I disagree with (thus I'm a nazi to the 10% on the far left) but there's still a huge swath of people in the middle.

BLKNSLVR 6y ago
Very interesting that the text of your entirely non-aggressive, non-partisan point of view was "more grey than black". Keep up the charitable liberalism I say.
- Yeroc 6y ago
  I think one of the issues (beyond media's propensity towards sensationalism to draw attention) is that the extremes at either end of a debate are very black and white. Black and white can be explained in a single sentence many times but everything in between is nuanced (or grey as you called it). The problem with nuanced positions is it requires more than a 280 character payload to explain...
  - throwaway894345 6y ago
    I think the bigger problem is that nuanced positions don't sell as well as sensationalism. Outrage is a powerful drug and the media has us hooked on it.

patjenk 6y ago

Is it necessary to name the problem if we know a driver of it?

adamsea 6y ago

I disagree that there is an equivalence. For example, I actually think that anyone who doesn't believe that the election was legitimate - i.e. that no meaningful fraud occurred - should be banned from the HN community. Their "arguments" are full of shit and are a bunch of pseudo-philosophical, pseudo-analytical, pseudo-objective cant. Their "evidence" is literally disinformation / propaganda. They're uninterested and in fact dismissive of real, actual evidence and facts as examined in multiple court cases - and they refuse to accept the validity of the outcomes of those cases. They wish to overturn the legitimate outcome of the Presidential election. Full stop. They act exactly like those crypto-racists who know that their true belief would be deemed unpalatable or unacceptable by the community so they'll blow as much smoke around as possible without ever stepping out to say what they're actually driving towards. I don't see anything remotely equivalent to this happening on the other side of the fence at this time. I've never seen anything like this in the United States and enough is enough. It's clearly dangerous to allow these views the shroud of legitimacy by giving them space in the public square, because it's gone so far that anything other than a total rejection ends up functioning as an implicit legitimization because the claims are so untrue, shocking, and destructive. By allowing the lie of election fraud to be presented as just another thing to be discussed on HN, HN is enabling those people and their cause, which is to overturn the results of a legitimate election. And I think it's unfortunate and wrong that I probably have a better chance of being banned from HN for this comment, than someone who is obviously attempting to undermine people's belief in the legitimacy of the 2020 Presidential election, which is to say, undermine small-d democracy in the U.S. and advocate for an authoritarian, one-party state. Which is literally what they're doing. And no, the Democrats or anyone else on the Left are not doing anything remotely equivalent to that right now.

x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago

So one side is trying to stage a coup using the SCOTUS as a weapon, thereby defying the will of the citizenry, and the best you an come up with is "Both Sides"?

airb 6y ago
One side believes the last 4 years has seen multiple attempts to remove their elected president. Not to mention the Justice kavanaugh confirmation madness.
- loopz 6y ago
  Correction: Elected criminal lying president.
  - vxNsr 6y ago
    Lol. I love when someone like you comments this without any irony. You truly believe this nonsense like it’s gospel.
    - loopz 6y ago
      What Trump has going for him, is picking up issues that need to be addressed, that have gone been neglected in a fast-evolving world, leading to unfairness. However, how these issues are treated and how people are treated, is important in a democracy. https://theconversation.com/why-hard-core-trump-supporters-ignore-his-lies-144650 https://theconversation.com/why-hard-core-trump-supporters-i... If he's such a great leader and not just an opportunist populist, why do he need to instill a fear-culture where everybody who doesn't lick his boots get fired. People appointed by the same leader dare not speak up their own opinions. This isn't democracy. What type of leader do this? Hint: Communist leaders like Stalin, and fascist leaders like Mussolini. If you're unable to spot a liar yourself, it is not too hard to form your own opinion on this: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/23/opinion/trumps-lies.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/23/opinion/trump... https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/the-complete-listing-so-far-atrocities-1-1-004 https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/the-complete-listing-so-... https://www.dailywire.com/news/trumps-101-lies-hank-berrien https://www.dailywire.com/news/trumps-101-lies-hank-berrien https://duckduckgo.com/?q=trump+lies+list https://duckduckgo.com/?q=trump+lies+list Fortunately, a majority of the population see right through the lack of leadership and lies for what they truly are. The means are as important as the ends, and the ends are often obscured and full of misdirection, more like PR campaigns than anything of real and lasting value.

jfrunyon 6y ago

Except that only 50% is actually out to do it.

bigbubba 6y ago
Most of the republicans I know are disappointed, but not so severely that they want to go killing people. That sort of extremism is very fringe. Also, even if you count the mellow majority, they're far from 50%.
- jfrunyon 6y ago
  > and take away their basic rights
  - bigbubba 6y ago
    Well I have some good news for you, they lost the election. A few of them may not like to admit that, but they lost nevertheless and any scenario where Biden or Harris isn't president a year from now is a delusion.
    - jfrunyon 6y ago
      Well I have some bad news for you, they don't believe they lost the election.
      - bigbubba 6y ago
        Well the good news is that doesn't matter. They're sore losers but it won't amount to anything more than hot air, so take a deep breath and relax. Hit a blunt or something.
        jfrunyon 6y ago
        Do you really think that losing the election is going to make the Republicans go "huh, maybe we should stop trying to take away rights from millions of Americans? maybe we should stop treating millions of voters like trash?" It's not.

jaredklewis 6y ago

You seem reasonable, so please help me understand the other side. I’m a big fan of conservative thinkers like Milton Friedman and George Will. I’m against the left’s attack on free speech and find their obsession with identity, at best, perplexing. I prefer isolationist foreign policy and less military involvement from the US. I’m originally from a conservative area and have many conservative relatives I know to be good people. And yet I cannot conceive of how anyone could support Trump or the boot licking republicans who enable him. He is incapable of telling the truth. He does not seem to believe in reality, science, or expertise of any kind. He does not believe in rule of law. He is an authoritarian and egomaniac. Even before the election he challenged the idea of a peaceful transition of power. How is this supportable? Edit: And to be clear I get that we live in a two-party country and that a vote for a candidate is not a wholesale endorsement. You look at the options you have and choose the "lesser of the evils," as it were. Hell, I would vote for Trump if the other candidate was Stalin. Edit Edit: I know it’s bad form to make political rants like this on HN. I had a moment of weakness :/

umvi 6y ago
A lot of my conservative relatives are too old to even know what Twitter is, so they completely ignore Trump on that front. They like that Trump doesn't kowtow to the media and they like his judge picks, his foreign policy, and executive orders. The media would zing Romney with little zingers and he would get all hang dog and apologize, but Trump punched back instead and his voter base loved that they finally had a candidate that would stand up to the media. Trump also tried very hard to make good on his campaign promises. Can you imagine opening an embassy in Jerusalem under Hillary? I can't, and my conservative relatives love that he did that and that he stands up to China and acknowledged Taiwan's president. They also love that he fights back against identity politics (removing requirement for forced diversity trainings, etc). In short, from their perspective he goes to bat on a lot of their grievances. So yeah, his Twitter is a dumpster fire, but half his voter base doesn't even see it because they don't use twitter.
vxNsr 6y ago
Look I’ve had conversations like this a lot, it comes down to exactly what you said. Two parties ends up being the lesser of two evils, and trump to most conservatives absolutely was the lesser of two evils. As other commentators said, he fulfilled many of his campaign promises. He pushed foreign policy in a direction the whole world needed but didn’t want. He’s been drawing down foreign troops since his first day in office, so much so that apparently his generals were lying to him about how many ppl they had out there. It’s perplexing to me that if what you say you believe is what you believe why a politician being a liar is a problem for you. All politicians lie, none as brazenly as Trump sure; but every single one of them has been caught lying in the last 9 months, many have been pretty brazen in their hypocrisy. My many conservative friends will point to 1000s of small white lies and 100s of big ones that Biden told, as proof that the other side is just as complicit.