4 ms·

Strong disagree. One side is clearly interested in helping others simply because they need help. The other is clearly interested in help others that they can r

Strong disagree. One side is clearly interested in helping others simply because they need help. The other is clearly interested in help others that they can relate to (look like themselves) and have earned the right to help (such as believing in the right god.) or only helping people that can help them back.

deleted 6mo ago
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NoMoreNicksLeft 6mo ago
Quite a few on one side seem to want to "help others" so they can demonstrate publicly how awesome and righteous they are. And we can even falsify this hypothesis a bit... such people would, I speculate, be more interested in the appearance of helping than in the substance of helping. They'll tend to arrange the help in such a way as to garner the most publicity. And, most of all, they'll allocate their efforts such that they're vocal about how they're the good guys doing all the helping more than they're actively helping. Just to make sure everyone notices.
- ImPostingOnHN 6mo ago
  > Quite a few on one side seem to want to "help others" so they can demonstrate publicly how awesome and righteous they are Being awesome because you help those in need? How horrible! > more interested in the appearance of helping than in the substance of helping This is a common and tired talking point: "virtue signalling". It often comes from people who are less helpful than others, and resent how more helpful people receive accolades. Their own personal judgement about whether something actually helps isn't authoritative, and is usually motivated reasoning anyways.
  - ryandrake 6mo ago
    "Government shouldn't help people" is such a bizarrely popular take in the USA.
    - zozbot234 6mo ago
      I think the actual sentiment is closer to "first, do no harm" (a.k.a. the precautionary principle) which is not nearly as bizarre!
      - rootusrootus 6mo ago
        That might be the noble aspiration that lives only inside their head, while outwardly the sentiment seems to look more like "make the government harmful so we can justify making it smaller."
      - crote 6mo ago
        Which would be laudable if that was what is actually happening. In practice it looks more like DOGE: setting every part of the government you don't understand or emotionally dislike on fire. Meanwhile, large corporate sponsors are allowed to do immeasurable harm without any oversight whatsoever.
        NoMoreNicksLeft 6mo ago
        Last I checked, corporations can't even exist without government blessing them into existence. If you have a problem with corporations, maybe you should dig into the root of that matter.
        ImPostingOnHN 6mo ago
        How does your second sentence follow from the first? The root of the matter is the malicious harms committed against society by a given person or company or corporation. The fact that people and companies and corporations are, in a general sense, "allowed" to exist by the government, seems vaguely tangential to the matter.
    - tialaramex 6mo ago
      As I understand it the key Republican discovery was that their voters prioritize making people they don't like suffer over their own comfort. That probably doesn't seem rational but remember loads of these people think the Bible is a true story.
- watwut 6mo ago
  The other side actively goes out of their way to be cruel and is proud about it. All the while trying to stigmatize decency and help.
tjwebbnorfolk 6mo ago
There's a fundamental disagreement among people on what "help" really is. Giving money to someone who could otherwise work is very different from giving food to a single mother who is already working 10 hours a day. Giving needles to a drug addict "helps" them in a certain way, yes. But it also enables their addiction to continue. Yea it's easy for everyone to say "I believe in helping people!!". But which side of the fence you sit on in the US is non-trivially determined by what you believe "help" looks like in practice.
- deleted 6mo ago
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- foxglacier 6mo ago
  It's scary how blind people are to this. The right wing wants to help people in the long term and the left wing wants to help people in the short term. Both approaches seem obviously wrong to adherents of the other because they both disadvantage the group that the other wants to help. Approximately nobody is just bad and wants to harm people. That's a characterization both sides use against each other because they refuse to understand each other.
  - hn_acc1 6mo ago
    If there are ANY people the right wing wants to help, it's rich people and grifters, and "long term" to them is like 3 months. Sorry, but the current admin IS "just bad" and DOES want to harm people - see ICE.
    - foxglacier 6mo ago
      Try thinking of honest examples. If you can't, you're not competent to have thoughts about the topic because you will only be able to feel emotions and pretend they're thoughts.
      - drfloyd51 6mo ago
        How is ICE anything but bad? If someone really wanted to stop illegal immigration, punishing the businesses that betray American workers by hiring cheap illegal labor. That seems a bit more efficient than hunting people on the streets with technology that can also be used to hunt anyone for any reason.

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]

NoMoreNicksLeft 6mo ago

Quite a few on one side seem to want to "help others" so they can demonstrate publicly how awesome and righteous they are. And we can even falsify this hypothesis a bit... such people would, I speculate, be more interested in the appearance of helping than in the substance of helping. They'll tend to arrange the help in such a way as to garner the most publicity. And, most of all, they'll allocate their efforts such that they're vocal about how they're the good guys doing all the helping more than they're actively helping. Just to make sure everyone notices.

ImPostingOnHN 6mo ago
> Quite a few on one side seem to want to "help others" so they can demonstrate publicly how awesome and righteous they are Being awesome because you help those in need? How horrible! > more interested in the appearance of helping than in the substance of helping This is a common and tired talking point: "virtue signalling". It often comes from people who are less helpful than others, and resent how more helpful people receive accolades. Their own personal judgement about whether something actually helps isn't authoritative, and is usually motivated reasoning anyways.
- ryandrake 6mo ago
  "Government shouldn't help people" is such a bizarrely popular take in the USA.
  - zozbot234 6mo ago
    I think the actual sentiment is closer to "first, do no harm" (a.k.a. the precautionary principle) which is not nearly as bizarre!
    - rootusrootus 6mo ago
      That might be the noble aspiration that lives only inside their head, while outwardly the sentiment seems to look more like "make the government harmful so we can justify making it smaller."
    - crote 6mo ago
      Which would be laudable if that was what is actually happening. In practice it looks more like DOGE: setting every part of the government you don't understand or emotionally dislike on fire. Meanwhile, large corporate sponsors are allowed to do immeasurable harm without any oversight whatsoever.
      - NoMoreNicksLeft 6mo ago
        Last I checked, corporations can't even exist without government blessing them into existence. If you have a problem with corporations, maybe you should dig into the root of that matter.
        ImPostingOnHN 6mo ago
        How does your second sentence follow from the first? The root of the matter is the malicious harms committed against society by a given person or company or corporation. The fact that people and companies and corporations are, in a general sense, "allowed" to exist by the government, seems vaguely tangential to the matter.
  - tialaramex 6mo ago
    As I understand it the key Republican discovery was that their voters prioritize making people they don't like suffer over their own comfort. That probably doesn't seem rational but remember loads of these people think the Bible is a true story.
watwut 6mo ago
The other side actively goes out of their way to be cruel and is proud about it. All the while trying to stigmatize decency and help.

tjwebbnorfolk 6mo ago

There's a fundamental disagreement among people on what "help" really is. Giving money to someone who could otherwise work is very different from giving food to a single mother who is already working 10 hours a day. Giving needles to a drug addict "helps" them in a certain way, yes. But it also enables their addiction to continue. Yea it's easy for everyone to say "I believe in helping people!!". But which side of the fence you sit on in the US is non-trivially determined by what you believe "help" looks like in practice.

deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
foxglacier 6mo ago
It's scary how blind people are to this. The right wing wants to help people in the long term and the left wing wants to help people in the short term. Both approaches seem obviously wrong to adherents of the other because they both disadvantage the group that the other wants to help. Approximately nobody is just bad and wants to harm people. That's a characterization both sides use against each other because they refuse to understand each other.
- hn_acc1 6mo ago
  If there are ANY people the right wing wants to help, it's rich people and grifters, and "long term" to them is like 3 months. Sorry, but the current admin IS "just bad" and DOES want to harm people - see ICE.
  - foxglacier 6mo ago
    Try thinking of honest examples. If you can't, you're not competent to have thoughts about the topic because you will only be able to feel emotions and pretend they're thoughts.
    - drfloyd51 6mo ago
      How is ICE anything but bad? If someone really wanted to stop illegal immigration, punishing the businesses that betray American workers by hiring cheap illegal labor. That seems a bit more efficient than hunting people on the streets with technology that can also be used to hunt anyone for any reason.