4 ms·

I'm not from the US, so I don't really have a direct horse in this race. Don't you think that polarization like this is exactly what led to the current situatio

I'm not from the US, so I don't really have a direct horse in this race. Don't you think that polarization like this is exactly what led to the current situation? Culture begets counter culture and demonizing the other side turns into a rallying call in turn.

tdb7893 2y ago
There's also a lot more nuance here and I definitely wouldn't say demonization of Democrats as a party is what lead to the current situation, that's seems a very oversimplified take. I would say more demonization of LGBT people, immigrants, scientists, government workers, media, etc. and demonization of those people is very different than demonizing the partisan apparatuses. I'm honestly on board with hating the Democrat political apparatus. You should be allowed to hate on a political party, it's weird to think that's inherently an issue (especially in the current climate). I think a big part of the problem is in the US we're only allowed 2 parties so if one doesn't stuff you find unacceptable you sorta just need to support the other. Gotta love the "land of the free".
- Etheryte 2y ago
  That's all fair, but you do understand that a large part of your point boils down to saying the problem isn't us demonizing them, the problem is them demonizing us, right?
  - tdb7893 2y ago
    I'm saying demonizing political organizations isn't a problem, demonizing broad classes of people is. For example: there's a difference between saying immigrants are "poisoning the blood of our country" (direct Trump quote) and "I would never vote for a Republican". The latter is generally fine and expected in any democracy. People have party preferences. Edit: there's also context and matters of degree that matter here but this is an HN comment and I'm not gonna write an essay.
    - astroid 2y ago
      Since OP didn't find it appropriate to include the context, I'll do it for them: https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/10/04/trump-poison-blood-quote/ https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/10/04/trump-poison-blood-qu... -- not even Snopes agrees with this take, and it is wildly out of context. This out of context take was started by Hasan Piker, a billionaire (or maybe multimillionaire I forget) zoomer streamer self professed 'socialist' lol: "I was up in New Hampshire the other day. The biggest complaint they have—it’s with all of the problems going on in the world, many of the problems caused by Hillary Clinton and by Barack Obama. All of the problems—the single biggest problem is heroin that pours across our southern border. It’s just pouring and destroying their youth. It’s poisoning the blood of their youth and plenty of other people. We have to have strong borders. We have to keep the drugs out of our country. We are—right now, we’re getting the drugs, they’re getting the cash. We need strong borders. We need absolute—we cannot give amnesty." I don't really like the phrase because it is definitely easy to use out of context - but heroin and fentanyl are in fact poisoing the blood of this country, and eliminating that is an admirable goal. There is another quote where he uses the phrase and you can see the full video/context, but the bottom line is not even snopes can get on board with this interpretation and they definitely would if they could manage. They once claimed a convicted terrorist wasn't a terrorist because there was no universally accepted definition of terrorism, since 'The Weather Underground' were a democrat-aligned group and they will bow down to anything left. And yet, they still don't agree with what is being claimed here.... The other quote was also in reference to drugs: "TRUMP: No, nobody has ever seen anything like this. And I think we could say worldwide. I think you could go to the... you could go to a banana republic and pick the worst one, and you're not going to see what we're witnessing now. No control whatsoever. Nobody has any idea where these people are coming from, and we know they come from prisons. We know they come from mental institutions [and] insane asylums. We know they're terrorists. Nobody has ever seen anything like we're witnessing right now. It is a very sad thing for our country. It's poisoning the blood of our country. It's so bad, and people are coming in with disease. People are coming in with every possible thing that you could have. And I got to know a lot of the heads of these countries. They're very cunning people. Very street-smart people. If they're not street-smart, they're not going to be there very long. And when they send up those caravans, and I had it ended, we had the safest border in the history of our country, meaning the history, over the last 80 years. Before that, I assume it was probably not so bad. There was nobody around. But, we had the safest in recorded history by far. The least amount of drugs in many, many decades.*" Can you make a fake argument that this is implying race mixing is bad? I guess, but you'd be a liar. It is very clear he was using what is in my opinion a terribly worded phrase due to the ease of taking it out of context.... but you would be a liar if you said whattdb7893 said.
archagon 2y ago
Yes; but in my view, one of the political parties in the country has gone completely off the rails. I was raised right and actually have some core values, so how can I respect someone who enthusiastically voted for president “grab ‘em by the pussy”? There is nothing left to demonize: his sins and crimes are completely out in the open and his followers love 'em. An impeached felon and rapist who tried to blatantly steal the last election is our head of state, and I feel like I have nothing in common with half the country anymore. In truth, though, I don't think much of this is organic. Right-wing TV and radio (Gingrich, Limbaugh, Carlson, etc.) have been rotting brains around the country for decades. Our current situation is the result of a concerted propaganda campaign by the powerful and wealthy going all the way back to the Nixon impeachment, not some day-to-day disagreements about taxes or culture war issues.
- tstrimple 2y ago
  And it’s strong and consistent propaganda. It’s amazing to watch one right wing troll on Twitter state explicitly that he’s going to target the phrase CRT for demonization and within a week all conservative influences, news stations and politicians are talking about how awful CRT in our schools is. All of them sending the same message over and over again completely fabricating a drama out of nothing. And it works. Over and over again from migrant caravans to sharia law to immigrants eating your cats and dogs. Just blatant lies repeated enough completely warps peoples brains. Just look at how many conservatives believe Kamala wants free gender surgery for illegal immigrants and post birth abortions. There are literally tens of millions of people in this country with zero grasp on reality. I lost my own father to this pipeline. He is basically the “How I lost my father to Fox News” case except it was AM radio over decades as a long haul truck driver. He went from being an intellectually curious atheist to a Bible thumping trumper who constantly rants about Muslims coming to kill us all. The man has never met a Muslim in his life. I don’t recognize him anymore. I lost my mom to this too. She was turned anti-vax during covid and ended up dying to it in 2022. She successfully beat lung cancer after smoking all her life and then wouldn’t take the most basic precautions she had provided to her kids when we were growing up without any controversy and Covid won.
  - 2y ago
lbrito 2y ago
"Polarization" is an awful, borderline evil way to understand the world today. I hate that is mainstream. Every single time an extreme right-wing populist runs against any opponent who is _not_ extreme right-wing, the media portrays the election as a "sad reminder of our polarized world". That is absolute bullshit. Anywhere in the world, the histrionics, the deranged conspiracy theories, the chtonic racialism always come from one side alone, while the other side - which is more often than not garden variety right-wing, mind you - mumbles "let's not do that". But somehow mainstream media successfully portrays this dynamic as "polarization" and "a fight between two extremes".
watwut 2y ago
I do not think op has duty to enable. It is not even polarization to say you wont vote for a party.

tdb7893 2y ago

There's also a lot more nuance here and I definitely wouldn't say demonization of Democrats as a party is what lead to the current situation, that's seems a very oversimplified take. I would say more demonization of LGBT people, immigrants, scientists, government workers, media, etc. and demonization of those people is very different than demonizing the partisan apparatuses. I'm honestly on board with hating the Democrat political apparatus. You should be allowed to hate on a political party, it's weird to think that's inherently an issue (especially in the current climate). I think a big part of the problem is in the US we're only allowed 2 parties so if one doesn't stuff you find unacceptable you sorta just need to support the other. Gotta love the "land of the free".

Etheryte 2y ago
That's all fair, but you do understand that a large part of your point boils down to saying the problem isn't us demonizing them, the problem is them demonizing us, right?
- tdb7893 2y ago
  I'm saying demonizing political organizations isn't a problem, demonizing broad classes of people is. For example: there's a difference between saying immigrants are "poisoning the blood of our country" (direct Trump quote) and "I would never vote for a Republican". The latter is generally fine and expected in any democracy. People have party preferences. Edit: there's also context and matters of degree that matter here but this is an HN comment and I'm not gonna write an essay.
  - astroid 2y ago
    Since OP didn't find it appropriate to include the context, I'll do it for them: https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/10/04/trump-poison-blood-quote/ https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/10/04/trump-poison-blood-qu... -- not even Snopes agrees with this take, and it is wildly out of context. This out of context take was started by Hasan Piker, a billionaire (or maybe multimillionaire I forget) zoomer streamer self professed 'socialist' lol: "I was up in New Hampshire the other day. The biggest complaint they have—it’s with all of the problems going on in the world, many of the problems caused by Hillary Clinton and by Barack Obama. All of the problems—the single biggest problem is heroin that pours across our southern border. It’s just pouring and destroying their youth. It’s poisoning the blood of their youth and plenty of other people. We have to have strong borders. We have to keep the drugs out of our country. We are—right now, we’re getting the drugs, they’re getting the cash. We need strong borders. We need absolute—we cannot give amnesty." I don't really like the phrase because it is definitely easy to use out of context - but heroin and fentanyl are in fact poisoing the blood of this country, and eliminating that is an admirable goal. There is another quote where he uses the phrase and you can see the full video/context, but the bottom line is not even snopes can get on board with this interpretation and they definitely would if they could manage. They once claimed a convicted terrorist wasn't a terrorist because there was no universally accepted definition of terrorism, since 'The Weather Underground' were a democrat-aligned group and they will bow down to anything left. And yet, they still don't agree with what is being claimed here.... The other quote was also in reference to drugs: "TRUMP: No, nobody has ever seen anything like this. And I think we could say worldwide. I think you could go to the... you could go to a banana republic and pick the worst one, and you're not going to see what we're witnessing now. No control whatsoever. Nobody has any idea where these people are coming from, and we know they come from prisons. We know they come from mental institutions [and] insane asylums. We know they're terrorists. Nobody has ever seen anything like we're witnessing right now. It is a very sad thing for our country. It's poisoning the blood of our country. It's so bad, and people are coming in with disease. People are coming in with every possible thing that you could have. And I got to know a lot of the heads of these countries. They're very cunning people. Very street-smart people. If they're not street-smart, they're not going to be there very long. And when they send up those caravans, and I had it ended, we had the safest border in the history of our country, meaning the history, over the last 80 years. Before that, I assume it was probably not so bad. There was nobody around. But, we had the safest in recorded history by far. The least amount of drugs in many, many decades.*" Can you make a fake argument that this is implying race mixing is bad? I guess, but you'd be a liar. It is very clear he was using what is in my opinion a terribly worded phrase due to the ease of taking it out of context.... but you would be a liar if you said whattdb7893 said.

archagon 2y ago

Yes; but in my view, one of the political parties in the country has gone completely off the rails. I was raised right and actually have some core values, so how can I respect someone who enthusiastically voted for president “grab ‘em by the pussy”? There is nothing left to demonize: his sins and crimes are completely out in the open and his followers love 'em. An impeached felon and rapist who tried to blatantly steal the last election is our head of state, and I feel like I have nothing in common with half the country anymore. In truth, though, I don't think much of this is organic. Right-wing TV and radio (Gingrich, Limbaugh, Carlson, etc.) have been rotting brains around the country for decades. Our current situation is the result of a concerted propaganda campaign by the powerful and wealthy going all the way back to the Nixon impeachment, not some day-to-day disagreements about taxes or culture war issues.

tstrimple 2y ago
And it’s strong and consistent propaganda. It’s amazing to watch one right wing troll on Twitter state explicitly that he’s going to target the phrase CRT for demonization and within a week all conservative influences, news stations and politicians are talking about how awful CRT in our schools is. All of them sending the same message over and over again completely fabricating a drama out of nothing. And it works. Over and over again from migrant caravans to sharia law to immigrants eating your cats and dogs. Just blatant lies repeated enough completely warps peoples brains. Just look at how many conservatives believe Kamala wants free gender surgery for illegal immigrants and post birth abortions. There are literally tens of millions of people in this country with zero grasp on reality. I lost my own father to this pipeline. He is basically the “How I lost my father to Fox News” case except it was AM radio over decades as a long haul truck driver. He went from being an intellectually curious atheist to a Bible thumping trumper who constantly rants about Muslims coming to kill us all. The man has never met a Muslim in his life. I don’t recognize him anymore. I lost my mom to this too. She was turned anti-vax during covid and ended up dying to it in 2022. She successfully beat lung cancer after smoking all her life and then wouldn’t take the most basic precautions she had provided to her kids when we were growing up without any controversy and Covid won.
- 2y ago

lbrito 2y ago

"Polarization" is an awful, borderline evil way to understand the world today. I hate that is mainstream. Every single time an extreme right-wing populist runs against any opponent who is _not_ extreme right-wing, the media portrays the election as a "sad reminder of our polarized world". That is absolute bullshit. Anywhere in the world, the histrionics, the deranged conspiracy theories, the chtonic racialism always come from one side alone, while the other side - which is more often than not garden variety right-wing, mind you - mumbles "let's not do that". But somehow mainstream media successfully portrays this dynamic as "polarization" and "a fight between two extremes".

watwut 2y ago

I do not think op has duty to enable. It is not even polarization to say you wont vote for a party.