4 ms·

I expect this will be unpopular with many HN readers, but it needs to be said: US presidential elections are often ugly, but they're an important vetting proce

I expect this will be unpopular with many HN readers, but it needs to be said: US presidential elections are often ugly, but they're an important vetting process to make sure that whoever wins the election is highly competent. Tech companies went to great lengths to scrub content that was critical of Joe Biden during the last election, and now shockingly, he and his political appointments are demonstrating gross incompetence. This isn't a political left or right issue: we skipped an important step during the 2020 election.

prestigious 5y ago
Nobody wants to hear it. Everybody wants to believe Trump was the “worst president ever” but this one event is worse than anything trump did or had happen during his administration.
- VictorPath 5y ago
  > this one event is worse than anything trump did or had happen during his administration The US spent 20 years in Afghanistan, supposedly building up institutions that $2 trillion were poured into as 2300 Americans were killed. That the US would continue funding and arming Afghanistan, but would remove US troops was announced in mid-April. Within four months, the Taliban completely took over the country, a month before the final US withdrawal date scheduled for next month. It shows how much support these American-built initiatives had. This is not one event, it is 20 years of failure. I commend Biden for cutting US losses even if it invites criticism, 20 years is enough. This is the first good, tough decision Biden has made in my opinion.
- DarknessFalls 5y ago
  No, sorry. Trump owns the pandemic. He could have been sane, followed scientific advise and acted more quickly. Instead, try snorting bleach. Get some UV light inside the body. Hundreds of thousands dead and a good amount of that toll could have been avoided.
  - zozbot234 5y ago
    Agreed. Trump was telling us that the virus would just disappear. He was holding huge campaign rallies and gatherings with no masks and no distancing. This was very much a failure and it caused him to lose the election to even a lightweight candidate like Biden.
    - azangru 5y ago
      > He was holding huge campaign rallies and gatherings with no masks and no distancing. I haven't followed up on those: were there any spikes in new cases related to those events?
  - phkahler 5y ago
    >> No, sorry. Trump owns the pandemic. Nope. The pandemic was a no-win situation. When trump cut off travel to China he was called xenophobic, and then later it was said that he didn't act soon enough. The politicization of the pandemic (on both sides) was not appropriate and now we've got Republicans avoiding the vaccine out of spite. Some of his off the cuff comments were stupid and ill-conceived, but he never actually told anyone to do anything with bleach. His biggest mistake in the pandemic IMHO was having daily press conferences to in order to look like he was in charge and things were under control. So many things go wrong when people worry about appearances...
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > The pandemic was a no-win situation. A no win situation is not one with no wrong answers; Trump’s approach [0] was equivalent to handling the Kobayashi Maru by heading a maximum warp to the nearest Federation colony and bombarding it with photon torpedoes. [0] notably, but not limited to, obstructing early state access to emergency supplies and distributing federal supplies based on political affinity with the governor rather than need, with a deliberate strategy of maximizing the impact in Democratic-governed states and leveraging it as an election issue.
    - aw1621107 5y ago
      > When trump cut off travel to China he was called xenophobic, and then later it was said that he didn't act soon enough. In this particular case, those statements aren’t precisely contradictory. The travel ban was criticized because it was wholly inadequate for the purposes of preventing infected persons from entering the country, as American citizens (and their immediate (?) family IIRC) could enter freely. “Xenophobic” might have arisen out of the targeting of foreigners while leaving Americans alone, though I offer no opinion as to whether that is an accurate label. Even if the ban were effective, it was too late since IIRC there were already cases in the US, so that criticism is accurate unless I am remembering incorrectly.
- nobody9999 5y ago
  >this one event is worse than anything trump did or had happen during his administration. You're missing the obvious point (as the British, Russians and innumerable others found out) that Afghanistan is not a nation per se. It's a collection of regions, clans, families and warlords. We picked certain warlords (the enemies of the Taliban) when we went into Afghanistan and the ones we picked were/are just as insular, corrupt and narrowly focused on their own interests as those who support the Taliban. We spent 20 years and a trillion dollars "training" the Afghan military and police to support the Kabul government. And as anyone could have (and many did) told you, as soon as we left, the army and police just melted away and the Taliban took control. This isn't a surprise, nor is it unexpected. If Bush II, Obama or Trump had pulled out the troops the exact same thing would have happened. Now it's done and we can let the Afghans go back to killing and oppressing each other as they've done for millenia. It's not pretty, and many will suffer, but it's not our war and we should never have had any part of it, except to kick bin Laden out of there and make it clear to the Taliban that they need to make sure folks who want to attack the US don't ever take up residence in Afghanistan again. But instead we went with the failed strategies of the past (nation building) and the inevitable happened. It's not Biden's fault. It's not Trump's fault. This is all on Bush II. We should have gone in, kicked al Qaeda ass (we did), make sure the Taliban knew we would make them pay for supporting al Qaeda (we did, somewhat) and then went home. By the time Obama took office, we were completely entrenched in the corrupt regime in Kabul. tl;dr: This was never going to end well and it's about time someone had the guts to pull us out. Now the same folks who were in a lather about "Obama's forever war" are complaining that Biden ended it. Feh. It's just political posturing and bullshit.
  - JackFr 5y ago
    > It's not Biden's fault. It's not Trump's fault. This is all on Bush II. We should have gone in, kicked al Qaeda ass (we did), make sure the Taliban knew we would make them pay for supporting al Qaeda (we did, somewhat) and then went home. I agree, but the temptation of nation building is just to great to resist it seems. The PhD's and think-tankers look back at the 'Wise Men' of the post-WWII era, basically inventing the modern world order and want to have a go at it. They want to point to the killing and destruction and say no it wasn't just revenge and deterrence, but that something good was created out of it. I truly believe it's well intentioned but it's hubris of the worst sort.
commandlinefan 5y ago
I remember the "vote blue no matter who" crowd - they were voting against Trump no matter who ran against him. And they did.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
zht 5y ago
didn't Trump/GOP want to pull out of Afghanistan as well? https://theweek.com/afghanistan-war/1003748/gop-takes-down-2020-page-touting-trumps-historic-peace-agreement-with-the https://theweek.com/afghanistan-war/1003748/gop-takes-down-2... Otherwise, why would they sign a peace agreement? "The Republican National Committee has removed a page from the 2020 campaign that says "Biden has had a history of pushing for endless wars" while "Trump has continued to take the lead in peace talks as he signed a historic peace agreement with the Taliban in Afghanistan, which would end America's longest war," The Washington Post's David Weigel noted Sunday."
- chroem- 5y ago
  They created a power vacuum by pulling out in the dead of night, and then willfully ignored rapid advances by the Taliban. Nobody is disagreeing that it was correct to withdraw, but the handling of this has been nothing but sheer incompetence. Saigon didn't have people so desperate that they were holding onto the outside of airplanes and then falling to their death.
  - jeromegv 5y ago
    Saigon had tons of very desperate people hoping to be airlifted and didn't get the chance, I don't know what Kool-aid you are drinking.
    - chroem- 5y ago
      They didn't cling to the outside of airplanes.
      - bonnie76 5y ago
        This is DA nang but yes they did https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=36lLBbhnkZU&feature=youtu.be https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=36lLBbhnkZU&feature=youtu.be
JackFr 5y ago
> Tech companies went to great lengths to scrub content that was critical of Joe Biden during the last election It was there for anyone to see. Bush & Obama Secretary of Defense Robert Gates on 'Face the Nation' [on Biden]: "He's a man of integrity, incapable of hiding what he really thinks, and one of those rare people you know you could turn to for help in a personal crisis. Still, I think he's been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades." The real issue is that even knowing that and agreeing, it was still pretty easy to vote for him given the alternatives of Trump and Bernie Sanders.
tablespoon 5y ago
> Tech companies went to great lengths to scrub content that was critical of Joe Biden during the last election, and now shockingly, he and his political appointments are demonstrating gross incompetence. This isn't a political left or right issue: we skipped an important step during the 2020 election. Biden botched this, but I don't think Trump would have done much better. I mean wasn't Trump already deep into the D-team of advisors, late in his term, and didn't he have a habit of making impulsive decisions? This isn't a partisan issue, it's a failure of the American political system as a whole. It's starting to get a late-period Soviet Union feel to it.

prestigious 5y ago

Nobody wants to hear it. Everybody wants to believe Trump was the “worst president ever” but this one event is worse than anything trump did or had happen during his administration.

VictorPath 5y ago
> this one event is worse than anything trump did or had happen during his administration The US spent 20 years in Afghanistan, supposedly building up institutions that $2 trillion were poured into as 2300 Americans were killed. That the US would continue funding and arming Afghanistan, but would remove US troops was announced in mid-April. Within four months, the Taliban completely took over the country, a month before the final US withdrawal date scheduled for next month. It shows how much support these American-built initiatives had. This is not one event, it is 20 years of failure. I commend Biden for cutting US losses even if it invites criticism, 20 years is enough. This is the first good, tough decision Biden has made in my opinion.
DarknessFalls 5y ago
No, sorry. Trump owns the pandemic. He could have been sane, followed scientific advise and acted more quickly. Instead, try snorting bleach. Get some UV light inside the body. Hundreds of thousands dead and a good amount of that toll could have been avoided.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  Agreed. Trump was telling us that the virus would just disappear. He was holding huge campaign rallies and gatherings with no masks and no distancing. This was very much a failure and it caused him to lose the election to even a lightweight candidate like Biden.
  - azangru 5y ago
    > He was holding huge campaign rallies and gatherings with no masks and no distancing. I haven't followed up on those: were there any spikes in new cases related to those events?
- phkahler 5y ago
  >> No, sorry. Trump owns the pandemic. Nope. The pandemic was a no-win situation. When trump cut off travel to China he was called xenophobic, and then later it was said that he didn't act soon enough. The politicization of the pandemic (on both sides) was not appropriate and now we've got Republicans avoiding the vaccine out of spite. Some of his off the cuff comments were stupid and ill-conceived, but he never actually told anyone to do anything with bleach. His biggest mistake in the pandemic IMHO was having daily press conferences to in order to look like he was in charge and things were under control. So many things go wrong when people worry about appearances...
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > The pandemic was a no-win situation. A no win situation is not one with no wrong answers; Trump’s approach [0] was equivalent to handling the Kobayashi Maru by heading a maximum warp to the nearest Federation colony and bombarding it with photon torpedoes. [0] notably, but not limited to, obstructing early state access to emergency supplies and distributing federal supplies based on political affinity with the governor rather than need, with a deliberate strategy of maximizing the impact in Democratic-governed states and leveraging it as an election issue.
  - aw1621107 5y ago
    > When trump cut off travel to China he was called xenophobic, and then later it was said that he didn't act soon enough. In this particular case, those statements aren’t precisely contradictory. The travel ban was criticized because it was wholly inadequate for the purposes of preventing infected persons from entering the country, as American citizens (and their immediate (?) family IIRC) could enter freely. “Xenophobic” might have arisen out of the targeting of foreigners while leaving Americans alone, though I offer no opinion as to whether that is an accurate label. Even if the ban were effective, it was too late since IIRC there were already cases in the US, so that criticism is accurate unless I am remembering incorrectly.
nobody9999 5y ago
>this one event is worse than anything trump did or had happen during his administration. You're missing the obvious point (as the British, Russians and innumerable others found out) that Afghanistan is not a nation per se. It's a collection of regions, clans, families and warlords. We picked certain warlords (the enemies of the Taliban) when we went into Afghanistan and the ones we picked were/are just as insular, corrupt and narrowly focused on their own interests as those who support the Taliban. We spent 20 years and a trillion dollars "training" the Afghan military and police to support the Kabul government. And as anyone could have (and many did) told you, as soon as we left, the army and police just melted away and the Taliban took control. This isn't a surprise, nor is it unexpected. If Bush II, Obama or Trump had pulled out the troops the exact same thing would have happened. Now it's done and we can let the Afghans go back to killing and oppressing each other as they've done for millenia. It's not pretty, and many will suffer, but it's not our war and we should never have had any part of it, except to kick bin Laden out of there and make it clear to the Taliban that they need to make sure folks who want to attack the US don't ever take up residence in Afghanistan again. But instead we went with the failed strategies of the past (nation building) and the inevitable happened. It's not Biden's fault. It's not Trump's fault. This is all on Bush II. We should have gone in, kicked al Qaeda ass (we did), make sure the Taliban knew we would make them pay for supporting al Qaeda (we did, somewhat) and then went home. By the time Obama took office, we were completely entrenched in the corrupt regime in Kabul. tl;dr: This was never going to end well and it's about time someone had the guts to pull us out. Now the same folks who were in a lather about "Obama's forever war" are complaining that Biden ended it. Feh. It's just political posturing and bullshit.
- JackFr 5y ago
  > It's not Biden's fault. It's not Trump's fault. This is all on Bush II. We should have gone in, kicked al Qaeda ass (we did), make sure the Taliban knew we would make them pay for supporting al Qaeda (we did, somewhat) and then went home. I agree, but the temptation of nation building is just to great to resist it seems. The PhD's and think-tankers look back at the 'Wise Men' of the post-WWII era, basically inventing the modern world order and want to have a go at it. They want to point to the killing and destruction and say no it wasn't just revenge and deterrence, but that something good was created out of it. I truly believe it's well intentioned but it's hubris of the worst sort.

commandlinefan 5y ago

I remember the "vote blue no matter who" crowd - they were voting against Trump no matter who ran against him. And they did.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

zht 5y ago

didn't Trump/GOP want to pull out of Afghanistan as well? https://theweek.com/afghanistan-war/1003748/gop-takes-down-2020-page-touting-trumps-historic-peace-agreement-with-the https://theweek.com/afghanistan-war/1003748/gop-takes-down-2... Otherwise, why would they sign a peace agreement? "The Republican National Committee has removed a page from the 2020 campaign that says "Biden has had a history of pushing for endless wars" while "Trump has continued to take the lead in peace talks as he signed a historic peace agreement with the Taliban in Afghanistan, which would end America's longest war," The Washington Post's David Weigel noted Sunday."

chroem- 5y ago
They created a power vacuum by pulling out in the dead of night, and then willfully ignored rapid advances by the Taliban. Nobody is disagreeing that it was correct to withdraw, but the handling of this has been nothing but sheer incompetence. Saigon didn't have people so desperate that they were holding onto the outside of airplanes and then falling to their death.
- jeromegv 5y ago
  Saigon had tons of very desperate people hoping to be airlifted and didn't get the chance, I don't know what Kool-aid you are drinking.
  - chroem- 5y ago
    They didn't cling to the outside of airplanes.
    - bonnie76 5y ago
      This is DA nang but yes they did https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=36lLBbhnkZU&feature=youtu.be https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=36lLBbhnkZU&feature=youtu.be

JackFr 5y ago

> Tech companies went to great lengths to scrub content that was critical of Joe Biden during the last election It was there for anyone to see. Bush & Obama Secretary of Defense Robert Gates on 'Face the Nation' [on Biden]: "He's a man of integrity, incapable of hiding what he really thinks, and one of those rare people you know you could turn to for help in a personal crisis. Still, I think he's been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades." The real issue is that even knowing that and agreeing, it was still pretty easy to vote for him given the alternatives of Trump and Bernie Sanders.

tablespoon 5y ago

> Tech companies went to great lengths to scrub content that was critical of Joe Biden during the last election, and now shockingly, he and his political appointments are demonstrating gross incompetence. This isn't a political left or right issue: we skipped an important step during the 2020 election. Biden botched this, but I don't think Trump would have done much better. I mean wasn't Trump already deep into the D-team of advisors, late in his term, and didn't he have a habit of making impulsive decisions? This isn't a partisan issue, it's a failure of the American political system as a whole. It's starting to get a late-period Soviet Union feel to it.