4 ms·

I'm sad to see HN can't seem to have a normal conversation about anything related to USA politics. Can we try to maintain some sort of reasonableness?

by lucb1e 6y ago

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
I mean, there’s an attempted coup going on. It strikes me as unreasonable to expect a normal, dispassionate conversation on the topic of “the outgoing government says they might refuse to leave”.
- lucb1e 6y ago
  Do you think there are many people here that would support a breakdown of the democratic process, a coup? I'd hope that those people are in the vast minority. You can be passionate about a topic but that's different than extremist. I'm passionate about privacy but it's not like I think that people using Facebook are retarded and write about it in full caps.
  - NearAP 6y ago
    >>> Do you think there are many people here that would support a breakdown of the democratic process, a coup?<<< 1) Have you taken a look at Parler? 2) The Chair of Texas state GOP has called for the state to secede in the wake of the supreme court ruling 3) Diamond and Silk (and they are famous in the US in some areas) have called for a coup. 4) General Flynn who was once the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency endorsed a call for Trump to declare martial law and redo the election
    - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
      While I don't entirely disagree with what you're saying, I think you have to be pretty cautious about looking at social media. You could (and many people I'm familiar with did!) scan Twitter around the time of the Seattle autonomous zone and see lots of people calling for the rule of law to end.
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    Just last week there was a case filed with the Supreme Court, asking them to throw out the election results in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Arizona. (Hopefully we can agree that this would be a coup if it happened?) The President, most of his party in the House, and almost 20 states explicitly endorsed it.
  - iaHN 6y ago
    > Do you think there are many people here that would support a breakdown of the democratic process, a coup? I'd hope that those people are in the vast minority. Your naivete is being taken advantage of by bad faith actors.
    - lucb1e 6y ago
      This is what I mean. The comment I would have expected to see on HN goes something like: * This is not true because <some sound logic or data source> Instead, you just wrote that I'm naive and pretty much left it at that. Why does this topic make you do that? (Edit: just noticed that your profile even says you're a data scientist of all things!)
      - iaHN 6y ago
        It's a bit ridiculous at this stage to suppose that those supporting Trump's coup attempt are doing so in good faith. If you are not an American, I suppose it makes sense that you are not aware of the current political climate. If you are American, then you've been deliberately ignoring the obvious.
  - anigbrowl 6y ago
    Do you think there are many people here that would support a breakdown of the democratic process, a coup? There's enough. Aggregating various recent polling, it seems that about 1 person in 8 is OK with that, and maybe 2 more (for a total of 3/8) are passively in favor - that is to say, they won't do anything about it, but won't object if it happens. You don't need a majority of people to support a coup; indeed, that's kinda why it's such an attractive option to the unscrupulous. An important problem nowadays is that our media and interpersonal communications take place at lightning speed, but out political technology is many respects still rooted int he 18th century, and our administrative technology covers a span from 19th century unresponsive bureaucracy to 21st century oppressive surveillance. Politics as presently constituted does not work well for a lot of people, and so they are not invested in maintaining the status quo. Put simply, our economic infrastructure is highly distributed, but power is highly centralized and that makes a lot of people angry.
- tetrometal 6y ago
  Challenging the validity of an election is not a "coup". We need these challenges to keep our elections secure. I cheered Hillary for telling Biden not to concede under any circumstances. The left-biased media was worried about election fraud for months before the election (good!) and are now declaring it the "most secure election in American history" in spite of the broad introduction of mail-in voting. People living in democracies should scrutinize the hell out of their elections. https://spectator.us/reasons-why-the-2020-presidential-election-is-deeply-puzzling/ https://spectator.us/reasons-why-the-2020-presidential-elect... https://thefederalist.com/2020/11/23/5-more-ways-joe-biden-magically-outperformed-election-norms/ https://thefederalist.com/2020/11/23/5-more-ways-joe-biden-m...
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    Election challenges are fine! If Trump concedes on Monday after the Electoral College vote, I'll happily admit that I was wrong about this issue and I let my paranoia get the better of me. I think he's made it clear that he will not do that, and election fraud challenges are just the easiest strategy currently available to pursue his objective of staying in power.
    - tetrometal 6y ago
      I think I mostly agree with your first statement. I have a different take on the legal proceedings (there's still the vote count, at which point congress can make challenges, etc.) But certainly there are limits to how far the challenge can go. I'll be right there LOLing with you if he needs to be bodily removed from the WH. I disagree that he's given any indication that he'd go that far, though. Once his options are exhausted, he'll leave.
      - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
        I'm wholeheartedly glad to hear this. Thanks.
  - naiveai 6y ago
    They challenged the validity of the election, and they failed. Yet they continue to insist on fighting a losing battle and possibly refusing to leave the White House. That's called a coup attempt. A pathetic one, sure. But a coup attempt nonetheless.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
Unfortunately my countrymen are not known for their rational level-headed discourse, and tech workers really aren't inherently better people just because they know computer stuff.
- lucb1e 6y ago
  > my countrymen are not known for their rational level-headed discourse How does this help? Also it's not about being tech-savvy or not, yes we're all normal people. It's trying to maintain a level of reason on this forum. I'm genuinely interested in what people think of what Twitter does, but the tone of nearly every reply in the thread is somewhere between mildly polarized and extremist/conspiracy theorist.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
    Your post implied that you believed HN users above devolving into political bickering. My reply is meant as explanation as to why that belief is unfounded. Should we be better? Yes, but as long as we aren't banning political discussion entirely it's going to happen.
    - lucb1e 6y ago
      It's easy to say that people simply aren't better than this and this will simply continue to happen. I don't completely believe that. I was hoping that writing the above comment might inspire those not already crazed to maintain a more rational tone and perhaps flag and downvote more on the level of "merits the conversation" than "I (dis)agree with this".
      - AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
        > It's easy to say that people simply aren't better than this and this will simply continue to happen. I don't completely believe that. Trusting in people's good nature alone has never worked. If the community doesn't implement some mechanism to control the activity it doesn't want, then it will be done. You can refuse to believe that if you want, but I think you will find that belief challenged by reality. Not coincidentally, a mechanism of control for dealing with undesirable behavior is exactly what this whole Twitter thing is about in the first place. Since we've agreed that people here are not inherently better than the general populace, what makes you think that HN is more immune to this sort of thing than a community like Twitter or reddit?
tpoacher 6y ago
I'm pretty sure this is 'normal'. You probably mean 'rational'.
- lucb1e 6y ago
  For HN, I would say that rational is the normal that we hope to maintain.

I'm sad to see HN can't seem to have a normal conversation about anything related to USA politics. Can we try to maintain some sort of reasonableness?

by lucb1e 6y ago

I'm sad to see HN can't seem to have a normal conversation about anything related to USA politics. Can we try to maintain some sort of reasonableness?

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago

I mean, there’s an attempted coup going on. It strikes me as unreasonable to expect a normal, dispassionate conversation on the topic of “the outgoing government says they might refuse to leave”.

lucb1e 6y ago
Do you think there are many people here that would support a breakdown of the democratic process, a coup? I'd hope that those people are in the vast minority. You can be passionate about a topic but that's different than extremist. I'm passionate about privacy but it's not like I think that people using Facebook are retarded and write about it in full caps.
- NearAP 6y ago
  >>> Do you think there are many people here that would support a breakdown of the democratic process, a coup?<<< 1) Have you taken a look at Parler? 2) The Chair of Texas state GOP has called for the state to secede in the wake of the supreme court ruling 3) Diamond and Silk (and they are famous in the US in some areas) have called for a coup. 4) General Flynn who was once the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency endorsed a call for Trump to declare martial law and redo the election
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    While I don't entirely disagree with what you're saying, I think you have to be pretty cautious about looking at social media. You could (and many people I'm familiar with did!) scan Twitter around the time of the Seattle autonomous zone and see lots of people calling for the rule of law to end.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  Just last week there was a case filed with the Supreme Court, asking them to throw out the election results in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Arizona. (Hopefully we can agree that this would be a coup if it happened?) The President, most of his party in the House, and almost 20 states explicitly endorsed it.
- iaHN 6y ago
  > Do you think there are many people here that would support a breakdown of the democratic process, a coup? I'd hope that those people are in the vast minority. Your naivete is being taken advantage of by bad faith actors.
  - lucb1e 6y ago
    This is what I mean. The comment I would have expected to see on HN goes something like: * This is not true because <some sound logic or data source> Instead, you just wrote that I'm naive and pretty much left it at that. Why does this topic make you do that? (Edit: just noticed that your profile even says you're a data scientist of all things!)
    - iaHN 6y ago
      It's a bit ridiculous at this stage to suppose that those supporting Trump's coup attempt are doing so in good faith. If you are not an American, I suppose it makes sense that you are not aware of the current political climate. If you are American, then you've been deliberately ignoring the obvious.
- anigbrowl 6y ago
  Do you think there are many people here that would support a breakdown of the democratic process, a coup? There's enough. Aggregating various recent polling, it seems that about 1 person in 8 is OK with that, and maybe 2 more (for a total of 3/8) are passively in favor - that is to say, they won't do anything about it, but won't object if it happens. You don't need a majority of people to support a coup; indeed, that's kinda why it's such an attractive option to the unscrupulous. An important problem nowadays is that our media and interpersonal communications take place at lightning speed, but out political technology is many respects still rooted int he 18th century, and our administrative technology covers a span from 19th century unresponsive bureaucracy to 21st century oppressive surveillance. Politics as presently constituted does not work well for a lot of people, and so they are not invested in maintaining the status quo. Put simply, our economic infrastructure is highly distributed, but power is highly centralized and that makes a lot of people angry.
tetrometal 6y ago
Challenging the validity of an election is not a "coup". We need these challenges to keep our elections secure. I cheered Hillary for telling Biden not to concede under any circumstances. The left-biased media was worried about election fraud for months before the election (good!) and are now declaring it the "most secure election in American history" in spite of the broad introduction of mail-in voting. People living in democracies should scrutinize the hell out of their elections. https://spectator.us/reasons-why-the-2020-presidential-election-is-deeply-puzzling/ https://spectator.us/reasons-why-the-2020-presidential-elect... https://thefederalist.com/2020/11/23/5-more-ways-joe-biden-magically-outperformed-election-norms/ https://thefederalist.com/2020/11/23/5-more-ways-joe-biden-m...
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  Election challenges are fine! If Trump concedes on Monday after the Electoral College vote, I'll happily admit that I was wrong about this issue and I let my paranoia get the better of me. I think he's made it clear that he will not do that, and election fraud challenges are just the easiest strategy currently available to pursue his objective of staying in power.
  - tetrometal 6y ago
    I think I mostly agree with your first statement. I have a different take on the legal proceedings (there's still the vote count, at which point congress can make challenges, etc.) But certainly there are limits to how far the challenge can go. I'll be right there LOLing with you if he needs to be bodily removed from the WH. I disagree that he's given any indication that he'd go that far, though. Once his options are exhausted, he'll leave.
    - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
      I'm wholeheartedly glad to hear this. Thanks.
- naiveai 6y ago
  They challenged the validity of the election, and they failed. Yet they continue to insist on fighting a losing battle and possibly refusing to leave the White House. That's called a coup attempt. A pathetic one, sure. But a coup attempt nonetheless.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago

Unfortunately my countrymen are not known for their rational level-headed discourse, and tech workers really aren't inherently better people just because they know computer stuff.

lucb1e 6y ago
> my countrymen are not known for their rational level-headed discourse How does this help? Also it's not about being tech-savvy or not, yes we're all normal people. It's trying to maintain a level of reason on this forum. I'm genuinely interested in what people think of what Twitter does, but the tone of nearly every reply in the thread is somewhere between mildly polarized and extremist/conspiracy theorist.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
  Your post implied that you believed HN users above devolving into political bickering. My reply is meant as explanation as to why that belief is unfounded. Should we be better? Yes, but as long as we aren't banning political discussion entirely it's going to happen.
  - lucb1e 6y ago
    It's easy to say that people simply aren't better than this and this will simply continue to happen. I don't completely believe that. I was hoping that writing the above comment might inspire those not already crazed to maintain a more rational tone and perhaps flag and downvote more on the level of "merits the conversation" than "I (dis)agree with this".
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
      > It's easy to say that people simply aren't better than this and this will simply continue to happen. I don't completely believe that. Trusting in people's good nature alone has never worked. If the community doesn't implement some mechanism to control the activity it doesn't want, then it will be done. You can refuse to believe that if you want, but I think you will find that belief challenged by reality. Not coincidentally, a mechanism of control for dealing with undesirable behavior is exactly what this whole Twitter thing is about in the first place. Since we've agreed that people here are not inherently better than the general populace, what makes you think that HN is more immune to this sort of thing than a community like Twitter or reddit?

tpoacher 6y ago

I'm pretty sure this is 'normal'. You probably mean 'rational'.

lucb1e 6y ago
For HN, I would say that rational is the normal that we hope to maintain.