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This is still so relevant now: > This Orwellian preoccupation with the minutiae of 'historical proof' is typical of the political sectarian who is always quoti

• riazrizvi 8mo ago
  Relevant because it's universal human nature, to only have domain over a narrow context in life, and assert what's good/bad based on that limited view with others who occupy a different one. We use justifications which make sense to us that others rightly disagree with. It's not left politics, it's not right politics, it's not just politics, it's everything. Anyone who asserts they are beyond it are full of it.
  • throwaway894345 8mo ago
    Orwell and Asimov are talking about something entirely different than drawing flawed conclusions due to inexperience—they’re talking about people with access to the facts and choosing not to believe them. For instance, Alex Pretti’s murder was recorded from several angles and yet the American right still broadly claims that he attacked the agents, that he pulled his gun on them, etc. You don’t need to be an expert in policing or anything else to watch those videos and see that those narratives are plainly false. That’s of course only one example, but there are many others.
    • kikokikokiko 8mo ago
      These Minessota videos are classic examples of what Scott Adams used to call "two different movies being played on the same screen", in this case quite literally. From the point of view of a left leaning person, that movie shows a man being assassinated for no reason at all, nothing justify what happened. From the point of view of a right leaning person, Alex Pretti was actively interfering with law enforcement, and he entered a conflict situation while carrying a gun. If a cop is in the act of fighting you, and see a gun, you carry the risk of being shot, it's just reality. The right leaning person, just based on these facts, already reduces the charges from murder to manslaughter, max. Two movies on one screen, and there's NOTHING rational that can be said to change the mind of anyone. Everybody is watching the same damn screen, but the movies are completely different.
      • CamperBob2 8mo ago
        You seem to be using the terms "left leaning person" and "right leaning person" when you actually mean "normal people" and "sociopaths." Left and right have nothing to do with it.
        • kikokikokiko 8mo ago
          Yep, no rational argument can be used to make you (or me) see the same movie.
          • CamperBob2 8mo ago
            List the rational arguments in favor of the so-called "right-leaning" point of view (OP's term, not mine) with respect to the Pretti killing. Spoiler: there are no such arguments, effective or otherwise. To apologists it looks like a Rorschach test; to normal people it looks like a snuff film, brought to us by the same studio that is now distributing child pornography. Meanwhile, it's possible to favor free enterprise, (genuinely) smaller government, low taxes, free trade, and other so-called "right-leaning" perspectives without joining a slack-jawed personality cult that demands that you deny the evidence of your own eyes.
            • brabel 8mo ago
              In my country, lifting a finger against an officer on duty will land you in big trouble. If you got a gun on you and you resist arrest, like happened in this case, you are absolutely getting shot. I can’t really understand you Americans. What do you think an armed person reacting to arrest is going to do with that gun given the chance? If you were a cop would you take chances?? If you did you wouldn’t be here complaining about anything as you would be dead.
              • throwaway894345 8mo ago
                1. In the United States, we have Constitutional rights, including the right to carry a gun with proper permits. Like other rights, the state can't murder you for having a gun on your person, but if they have a credible reason to think that you are an immediate threat, they can shoot you. The legal standard for "immediate threat" does not cover this scenario because (1) Pretti wasn't resisting (2) the police stripped him of his gun before they executed him and (3) the agents approached Pretti for no reason at all; Pretti was clearly peacefully recording with his hands clearly visible. > If you were a cop would you take chances I wouldn't be a cop if I was afraid that every person with a cell phone might shoot me with a gun, or if I was afraid that every soccer mom in a car might try to run me over. And while American policing is riddled with accountability problems, it's important to emphasize that the crushing majority of American police can manage much riskier circumstances without murdering anyone--it seems to be exclusively the agencies under the Department of Homeland Security that behave like secret police on a regular basis.
  • itsalwaysgood 8mo ago
    That isn't human nature at all, that is a feature of our economy. The human nature bit is that we are inclined to follow conviction: belief in an idea. And if someone says something with conviction, whether true or not, our first instinct is to believe them, maybe even trust them.
    • riazrizvi 8mo ago
      I'm often baffled by how people online find a tone of disagreement to agree with people.
      • itsalwaysgood 8mo ago
        Sorry, didn't mean to offend you. My tone is bad. I just wanted to make a distinction between human nature and the benefits of specialization within an economy. You mentioned being an expert in a single domain, which I interpreted as specialized labor, as in an economy An economy isn't really related to human nature, directly.
• buzzerbetrayed 8mo ago
  No more relevant today than it was 5 or 10 or 20 years ago tbh
  • virgildotcodes 8mo ago
    Gravity has always been an important factor in our lives, but I'd say it's even more relevant when we're actively being spaghettified by a black hole.
  • JuniperMesos 8mo ago
    It's definitely interesting to see what ideas 1984 had that were salient to Asimov writing in 1980 - and also to see which of those ideas still have relevance in 2026, when the world has changed considerably again from when Asimov was writing.
  • GJim 8mo ago
    You are being downvoted by those who see the world solely though American eyes and with only recent experience of American politics to draw on. I know HN is USA centric, but bugger me! I didn't expect to see such a narrow viewing of the world stage in the voting on here. EDIT: And I'm getting drive-by downvotes for pointing this out! Nice.
    • throwaway290 8mo ago
      I can see your argument but I'm non american and think you underestimate the impact of USA on global stage. It was(?) de facto the most powerful democracy with most innovation and broad influence over the world, USAID and so on. Every dictator and tsar had to count with values like freedom of information and tolerance and following laws and trading instead of fighting. Now it's still maybe powerful but those values and influence coming from it are changing very quickly and that is super recent
• webdoodle 8mo ago
  [flagged]
  • add-sub-mul-div 8mo ago
    When people loudly assert there's no difference between the left and right in this era, I don't know how to give them the benefit of the doubt. Is it more generous to assume they're being disingenuous and too smart to actually believe what they're saying? Or vice versa?
    • ses1984 8mo ago
      There is of course a huge difference between left and right, but the democratic party is actually center-right, so... Previous poster didn't say there's no difference between left and right, they said both parties are bought and paid for by fascists, which is pretty much true, thanks to Citizens United v FEC which passed the last time democrats had control of Congress and the presidency. Congress could have responded, but didn't. At this time, democrats had 60 (!) seats in the senate, enough to end a filibuster, and they had to negotiate with MODERATE DEMOCRATS to pass the ACA. Moderate democrats are, on the face of things, the reason the ACA doesn't have a public option. Don't get me wrong, I still vote democrat any chance I get, and would encourage everyone to do the same, but unfortunately I have to do it despite the fact they're bought and paid by the donor class, which are, by and large, fascists. Democrats should started Jan 7th by screaming for Trump's arrest and not stopping until he was rotting in jail, but all we got was 4 years of nothing, followed by "too bad, so sad, we did everything we could".
      • mulmen 8mo ago
        This is one of those times where technically correct isn’t the best kind of correct. Ok yeah fine there are fascists in both parties. Now that we have that out of the way where are we? Oh, right. The same fucking place. Stop wasting everyone’s time with the soft apologetics. We have a system that moves slowly at a national level by design. One party is hellbent on tearing that down in favor of literal (techno-)fascism. The other wants to maintain the incremental refinement of our democracy. That’s it. One party is literally promising Nazi Germany while the other is offering the potential of the United States of America. So sure, when someone mentions Alex Preti’s murder or the literal Gestapo or the Epstein Files or unprecedented corruption or the irreparable harm to our international standing or the economic ruin that will take generations to heal or any of the other atrocities just tell them that Anthony Weiner was a creep. You won’t be wrong!
• zhoujing204 8mo ago
  Dictators are absolutely terrified of the paper trail. This is the entire reason for existence of the Great Firewall. The CCP invests heavily in sanitizing imported literature and curating the information supply to maintain cognitive capture over the populace. We are seeing parallel mechanics from the Trump/GOP camp: look at the library purges in conservative states and the push to co-opt moderation on platforms like TikTok. Access to the historical record isn't just a detail; it is the fundamental substrate of free speech.
  • riffraff 8mo ago
    But Trump and his administration also prove what GP is saying. Few care about the truth. Trump states obvious lies so blatant ("prices will go down 200%") that anyone who cares could tell they are untruth without needing to look up any paper trail, but it does not matter. Mike Johnson just quoted St Paul as saying you should respect the authority forgetting that the Romans beheaded him. And it's not like the Bible isn't available widely.
    • rsynnott 8mo ago
      That’s the interesting bit; Winston’s job turns out to be largely redundant. You don’t need to hide the evidence that the chocolate ration used to be higher; if a sufficiently charismatic person with sufficiently stupid hair says that it has increased, a lot of people will believe that.
      • TitaRusell 8mo ago
        How many Americans give a shit about history?
        • Recurecur 8mo ago
          All the smart and informed Americans…
    • squarefoot 8mo ago
      People is kept away from details by shortening their attention span with the production of continuous pervasive stimuli. Regarding Trump, when he does something apparently stupid (on behalf of the rich people pulling his strings, let's never forget this) he's just forcing the media and people consuming them to start talking about the next event without further exploring more important ones.
• pcf 8mo ago
  Because it's timeless, not just "relevant now".