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>If big companies face no consequences, then our society will fall apart. It currently is and I don't see any sign of it stopping. The foundation was laid in t

>If big companies face no consequences, then our society will fall apart. It currently is and I don't see any sign of it stopping. The foundation was laid in the 80s, the roof fell in on January 6th, and the Democrats don't have enough of a spine to actually fix the problem because Republicans keep calling them mean names.

nitrogen 6y ago
The fault in our society is not that one party is bad and the other party it's good, it's that both parties think that about each other and believe a whole bunch of distortions based on the extremes of either party. Rs think Ds are destroying our society just as much as Ds think Rs are doing the same. Both sides are vilifying Is for not taking enough of a stand on The Issues That Will End The World TM. The only way out is to fix that mutual misunderstanding, and to stop destroying the neutral space where that misunderstanding can be mended. I'd love it if whenever politics comes up on HN, we started brainstorming ways to do that, instead of amplifying the us vs. them rhetoric that is too prevalent elsewhere.
- eggsmediumrare 6y ago
  I agree with the sentiment, but it's also not helpful to lay blame equally. It's pretty obvious that the Republican party and their peripherals (fox news, et al) have caused way more damage than the Democrats. (Not to say that the problems in our society can be distributed fully between those two groups).
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - nitrogen 6y ago
    It's pretty obvious that the Republican party and their peripherals (fox news, et al) have caused way more damage than the Democrats. Obvious to whom, and damage to whom? Even those are things we need to work to restore a common view on. Even if you're right (and w.r.t. Fox News it'd be hard to be wrong), based on those I know who vary from middle left to far right, apportioning partisan blame, and blame in general, is just not going to be a productive way to frame the path forward. Maybe we need to take a breather, ignore who said what and why, and just look at where we really are, where we think we're going, and what we (as people, not as groups or parties or labels) can mutually agree to do to improve where we're going, and to find more common ground where we disagree on the fundamentals. There are far too many things for just a few of us in a single HN thread to solve, of course, and I suppose proposing that we "elites" "solve" them is one of the things that contributes to the coastal/inland left/right rift. But every time I feel compelled to comment on a political discussion on HN, I'm still going to try (and occasionally fail) to keep searching for a way out, rather than just adding to the volume of what already exists, and encourage everyone who reads this to do the same. We know there is pain, we know there are voices to be heard. Now we need to use that pain to come together instead of to break apart. If we can find ways to do this on HN, maybe we can spread that to all the other communities we are part of.
- bostonsre 6y ago
  Yea, tribal politics is so toxic and so incredibly entrenched in our government. There is no room for getting elected for someone who shuns parties in favor of saying that they decide for themselves on each and every issue and not what their tribe has already decided. I don't have the slightest clue about how to fight it or even make it slightly less bad.
- minikites 6y ago
  Do you really think both sides are the same? Do you really think if Biden loses in 2024 he would call upon his supporters to attack the government? Do you really think that even if Biden did do this, that he would find dozens of supporters in Congress? Sometimes one side really is worse and acting enlightened by saying "both sides are the same" is becoming increasingly comical as empirical evidence continues to mount showing that they are not. Trump is the first American president to not peacefully transfer power and he continues to have significant Republican support today. >The only way out is to fix that mutual misunderstanding, and to stop destroying the neutral space where that misunderstanding can be mended. Who do you think destroyed this neutral space? Do you genuinely think both sides are equally at fault for destroying it?
  - nitrogen 6y ago
    Who do you think destroyed this neutral space? Do you genuinely think both sides are equally at fault for destroying it? The question isn't who removed it, the question is who will restore it. What will it take to get human beings talking to each other again?
    - minikites 6y ago
      It will take the Republicans acting like adults. This is what I meant by both sides being different. The Democrats are interested in governing. The Republicans are not, because they detest the very existence of government.
- jessaustin 6y ago
  Both parties are bad because only bad parties can succeed in our bad system. Also because they're basically identical. They are ants contending over a postage stamp, on a continent of political possibility. The only thing we can expect them to do is what they've already been paid by lobbyists to do before. That's why CARES Act is more of the same, except worse, that we already saw in the 2008-9 "bailouts". The next time most Americans suffer some easily foreseeable disaster, we can be sure that billionaires will feast even more and regular people will be helped even less. There's no logical reason to be fighting seven wars, having 5% of the world's population but 25% of its prisoners and 20% of its covid deaths... and 800 billionaires. Our polity is shit. We're not in a local maxima. Literally any possible change would be for the better. The system we have cannot be changed via the methods it allows, however. Juvenile pleas for understanding only prolong our misery.
  - nitrogen 6y ago
    I agree with most of what you're saying. There's a huge space of possibilities that are completely invisible to the current system. But I disagree weakly with the second to last sentence, and strongly with the last sentence. The system we have cannot be changed via the methods it allows, however. Not all at once, that's for sure. But the right small changes early on can lead to very large changes later. Some of those are possible, like voting methods other than first-past-the-post or instant-runoff. Some of them are in the direct control of people who visit HN, like the nature of social networking algorithms, and the metrics chosen to optimize them. Juvenile pleas for understanding only prolong our misery. For what it's worth, when I was a teenager, I was far less interested in understanding or compromise. That was about two decades ago. It's only after living in many, many different places as an adult that I think that "understanding" is not only possible, but necessary. My perspective now is anything but juvenile. When I'm saying we need to bridge the gap between left and right, I'm not saying we need to preserve the status quo exactly as it is. I'm saying that not doing so will practically guarantee that all sides end up worse than the status quo.
    - minikites 6y ago
      >When I'm saying we need to bridge the gap between left and right, I'm not saying we need to preserve the status quo exactly as it is. The Democrats have been trying to bridge the gap for 30 years and the Republicans keep spitting in their face (Newt Gingrich in the 90s, the entire party vs Obama in the 00s). The Democrats seem to have finally figured this out and Republicans are now upset that it isn't working any more. Republicans aren't interested in bridging the gap because if they do, their base will find someone who's "a real fighter, not a RINO".
AshWolfy 6y ago
democrats always seem to fold because the right has moneyed interests on their side, politicians will never act in our interests unless we make the cost of not doing so greater than the cost of helping us

nitrogen 6y ago

The fault in our society is not that one party is bad and the other party it's good, it's that both parties think that about each other and believe a whole bunch of distortions based on the extremes of either party. Rs think Ds are destroying our society just as much as Ds think Rs are doing the same. Both sides are vilifying Is for not taking enough of a stand on The Issues That Will End The World TM. The only way out is to fix that mutual misunderstanding, and to stop destroying the neutral space where that misunderstanding can be mended. I'd love it if whenever politics comes up on HN, we started brainstorming ways to do that, instead of amplifying the us vs. them rhetoric that is too prevalent elsewhere.

eggsmediumrare 6y ago
I agree with the sentiment, but it's also not helpful to lay blame equally. It's pretty obvious that the Republican party and their peripherals (fox news, et al) have caused way more damage than the Democrats. (Not to say that the problems in our society can be distributed fully between those two groups).
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- nitrogen 6y ago
  It's pretty obvious that the Republican party and their peripherals (fox news, et al) have caused way more damage than the Democrats. Obvious to whom, and damage to whom? Even those are things we need to work to restore a common view on. Even if you're right (and w.r.t. Fox News it'd be hard to be wrong), based on those I know who vary from middle left to far right, apportioning partisan blame, and blame in general, is just not going to be a productive way to frame the path forward. Maybe we need to take a breather, ignore who said what and why, and just look at where we really are, where we think we're going, and what we (as people, not as groups or parties or labels) can mutually agree to do to improve where we're going, and to find more common ground where we disagree on the fundamentals. There are far too many things for just a few of us in a single HN thread to solve, of course, and I suppose proposing that we "elites" "solve" them is one of the things that contributes to the coastal/inland left/right rift. But every time I feel compelled to comment on a political discussion on HN, I'm still going to try (and occasionally fail) to keep searching for a way out, rather than just adding to the volume of what already exists, and encourage everyone who reads this to do the same. We know there is pain, we know there are voices to be heard. Now we need to use that pain to come together instead of to break apart. If we can find ways to do this on HN, maybe we can spread that to all the other communities we are part of.
bostonsre 6y ago
Yea, tribal politics is so toxic and so incredibly entrenched in our government. There is no room for getting elected for someone who shuns parties in favor of saying that they decide for themselves on each and every issue and not what their tribe has already decided. I don't have the slightest clue about how to fight it or even make it slightly less bad.
minikites 6y ago
Do you really think both sides are the same? Do you really think if Biden loses in 2024 he would call upon his supporters to attack the government? Do you really think that even if Biden did do this, that he would find dozens of supporters in Congress? Sometimes one side really is worse and acting enlightened by saying "both sides are the same" is becoming increasingly comical as empirical evidence continues to mount showing that they are not. Trump is the first American president to not peacefully transfer power and he continues to have significant Republican support today. >The only way out is to fix that mutual misunderstanding, and to stop destroying the neutral space where that misunderstanding can be mended. Who do you think destroyed this neutral space? Do you genuinely think both sides are equally at fault for destroying it?
- nitrogen 6y ago
  Who do you think destroyed this neutral space? Do you genuinely think both sides are equally at fault for destroying it? The question isn't who removed it, the question is who will restore it. What will it take to get human beings talking to each other again?
  - minikites 6y ago
    It will take the Republicans acting like adults. This is what I meant by both sides being different. The Democrats are interested in governing. The Republicans are not, because they detest the very existence of government.
jessaustin 6y ago
Both parties are bad because only bad parties can succeed in our bad system. Also because they're basically identical. They are ants contending over a postage stamp, on a continent of political possibility. The only thing we can expect them to do is what they've already been paid by lobbyists to do before. That's why CARES Act is more of the same, except worse, that we already saw in the 2008-9 "bailouts". The next time most Americans suffer some easily foreseeable disaster, we can be sure that billionaires will feast even more and regular people will be helped even less. There's no logical reason to be fighting seven wars, having 5% of the world's population but 25% of its prisoners and 20% of its covid deaths... and 800 billionaires. Our polity is shit. We're not in a local maxima. Literally any possible change would be for the better. The system we have cannot be changed via the methods it allows, however. Juvenile pleas for understanding only prolong our misery.
- nitrogen 6y ago
  I agree with most of what you're saying. There's a huge space of possibilities that are completely invisible to the current system. But I disagree weakly with the second to last sentence, and strongly with the last sentence. The system we have cannot be changed via the methods it allows, however. Not all at once, that's for sure. But the right small changes early on can lead to very large changes later. Some of those are possible, like voting methods other than first-past-the-post or instant-runoff. Some of them are in the direct control of people who visit HN, like the nature of social networking algorithms, and the metrics chosen to optimize them. Juvenile pleas for understanding only prolong our misery. For what it's worth, when I was a teenager, I was far less interested in understanding or compromise. That was about two decades ago. It's only after living in many, many different places as an adult that I think that "understanding" is not only possible, but necessary. My perspective now is anything but juvenile. When I'm saying we need to bridge the gap between left and right, I'm not saying we need to preserve the status quo exactly as it is. I'm saying that not doing so will practically guarantee that all sides end up worse than the status quo.
  - minikites 6y ago
    >When I'm saying we need to bridge the gap between left and right, I'm not saying we need to preserve the status quo exactly as it is. The Democrats have been trying to bridge the gap for 30 years and the Republicans keep spitting in their face (Newt Gingrich in the 90s, the entire party vs Obama in the 00s). The Democrats seem to have finally figured this out and Republicans are now upset that it isn't working any more. Republicans aren't interested in bridging the gap because if they do, their base will find someone who's "a real fighter, not a RINO".

AshWolfy 6y ago

democrats always seem to fold because the right has moneyed interests on their side, politicians will never act in our interests unless we make the cost of not doing so greater than the cost of helping us