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The number of HNers who were earnestly arguing that this was the party of free speech indicates that this absolutely needs to be on the HN front page. > the ad

The number of HNers who were earnestly arguing that this was the party of free speech indicates that this absolutely needs to be on the HN front page. > the administration’s rhetoric about cracking down on students protesting what we saw as genocide forced me into hiding for three months. Federal agents came to my home looking for me. A friend was detained at an airport in Tampa and interrogated about my whereabouts.

traderj0e 6mo ago
[flagged]
- selectodude 6mo ago
  Democrats have so far not been led by the nose into bombing Iran and fucking up the global economy so I’m not sure how one can keep saying that with a straight face.
  - wredcoll 6mo ago
    It's pretty pathetic when the best argument you can make is a whataboutism that isn't even equivalent.
    - smallmancontrov 6mo ago
      If "led by the nose into bombing Iran" isn't being "owned by Israel," what is?
      - traderj0e 6mo ago
        It totally is. Democrats got led into Israel's wars too. Interestingly the support was different, like Trump got money from the Adelsons and Biden from pro-Israel lobbies.
        vel0city 6mo ago
        > Democrats got led into Israel's wars too. Which ones?
        jlarocco 6mo ago
        Have people already forgot about Gaza?
        vel0city 6mo ago
        The US was involved in Gaza? The United States was actively spending billions dropping munitions there? When? Under which administration was the US directly involved in bombing Gaza? Can you further clarify how the US was involved in the war in Gaza, and how that was the Democrats getting involved? And do you really feel that involvement was anywhere near what is happening or comparable with Iran at the moment?
        jlarocco 6mo ago
        [flagged]
        vel0city 6mo ago
        Its not US servicemembers pulling the trigger, its not US commanders deciding on targets, its not the POTUS starting the war. Pretty radically different things in my book. How many US servicemembers were injured or killed in the US's apparent major war with Gaza? We've spent ~$20B in grants for weapons procurement on Israel's behalf over several years, with a lot of that being defensive missile systems. I'm not a fan of us spending so much of our money on another country's military, especially when we hear over and over how we can't afford to feed kids or provide transportation to our people. But, we've spent over double than that so far in Iran in less than two months, and that's ignoring the many billions it'll cost to fix things that were destroyed so far. We're looking at the actual US cost of this war potentially reaching one trillion dollars. Its a scale that's so radically different. And also, one was in support of a country who we have defense agreements with who was attacked, and another was us deciding to go bomb a country seemingly unprovoked. Who is spreading whataboutism again?
    - traderj0e 6mo ago
      Parent comment isn't a whataboutism, if anything my comment could be seen as that. My point isn't to defend Trump's actions, only to call out that this is a scarier problem than it gets credit for when someone just blames MAGA. We're dealing with a two-front assault here, and they want you to think it's just the other party you don't like.
      - wredcoll 6mo ago
        My comment was trying to emphasize the parent's point, I was referring to the grandparent as whataboutism. It was a tad unclear. I wish america would stop sending money to israel, for a bunch of reasons. That desire is most likely to be realized by a strong democrat majority.
        traderj0e 6mo ago
        We've had a Democrat majority plenty of times in the past several decades, including under Biden, and they continued the unconditional support. When congresswoman Omar called out AIPAC's influence, nearly every other Dem joined in on a written condemnation. If anything they're just less blatant than Republicans about this, also some pro-Israel groups have a niche with one party or the other.
  - traderj0e 6mo ago
    Both sides of Congress passed emergency weapons funding for Israel at the start of this war. Even if some Democrats are scoring political points complaining about it since it's during Trump's term and the war has become a stalemate, they're on board at the end of the day, like they were with Iraq (as some forget) before things unraveled. And during Biden's term, it was Gaza instead.
- smallmancontrov 6mo ago
  So they were weaponizing immigration law to deport pro-pali students? Care to back your feelings up with some facts?
  - fwip 6mo ago
    Not that far off from the truth. A number of college students who were protesting for Palestine had their college enrollment suspended, and lost their visas, effectively being deported. Which, yes, the university made that decision, but it didn't come without influence from the government.
    - FireBeyond 6mo ago
      Which universities? With such a small sample size, you have a whole lot of confidence saying "well, the Dems encouraged them".
- bdhe 6mo ago
  What facts would you point to, to argue that the Democratic party is "owned by Israel" more than the Republican party?
  - traderj0e 6mo ago
    https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/summary?cycle=All&ind=Q05&recipdetail=S https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/summary?cycle=All&ind... is one
wredcoll 6mo ago
> The number of HNers who were earnestly arguing that this was the party of free speech Do you think any of them were sincere?
- smallmancontrov 6mo ago
  I work in this industry. I sample the same distribution in person. I don't think they were, I know they were.
  - hn_acc1 6mo ago
    I'm seeing it in a lot of younger tech people. We had a NASA presentation at work about air quality and that forest fires are one of our biggest problems in CA. TWO separate people (from maybe 20-25 attending) brought up "do you think that if we managed our forests better, this could help?" (clearly talking about the crazy "raking the forests" Trump rhetoric). It blows my mind how "intelligent" people can be this stupid.
    - kelnos 6mo ago
      > "do you think that if we managed our forests better, this could help?" (clearly talking about the crazy "raking the forests" Trump rhetoric) Were they clearly actually talking about that? If that was their question, word-for-word, it's a good question! We are not managing our forests all that well. No, we shouldn't be doing Trump's dumbass raking "idea", but we should be doing controlled burns, at minimum.
    - headsman771 6mo ago
      I remember hearing about forest mismanagement long before Trump's presidential runs. It's curious how many people complaining about right wing talking points associate it solely with Trump.
    - vel0city 6mo ago
      While Trump's "raking the forest" take is clearly uninformed and unintelligent, there's a substantial kernel of truth to longstanding forest management policies making some of these wildfires worse than what they could have been. We've been artificially suppressing fires far too long in a lot of these places, for example. Not that this is the only factor in play here on a lot of these fires, and once again I do agree Trump's take is idiotic and ultimately he's not helping but pouring gasoline on the issue. Just pointing out, we definitely aren't managing our forests well for a multitude of reasons. https://news.berkeley.edu/2023/12/12/twenty-year-study-confirms-california-forests-are-healthier-when-burned-or-thinned/ https://news.berkeley.edu/2023/12/12/twenty-year-study-confi...
ifyoubuildit 6mo ago
I'm all ears if you've got someone that we can put in power that won't rat fuck us when it comes to privacy or civil liberties. Bonus points if they aren't just slightly less bad than the other guy.
- smallmancontrov 6mo ago
  Kamala was a lot less bad than Trump. It wasn't close.
  - drnick1 6mo ago
    [flagged]
    - bigfudge 6mo ago
      I'm not sure if you're joking and this is a backhanded compliment to Harris, or you're sincere in your belief that what Trump will negotiate is going to be better than the Obama deal he ditched in the first term. I hope you're joking!
    - smallmancontrov 6mo ago
      That's what they said about Obama, but he got Iran to give up their stockpile of enriched Uranium, give up enrichment beyond 4%, and submit to a severe inspection program. All for unfreezing less money than Trump has spent so far on the Iran War, let alone the $200B that he wants, let alone the economic damage from the Hormuz shutdown, let alone the $5T that happened last time a Republican asked to spend $200B on a quick little war. At the time, the Republicans whined incessantly about how soft Obama was. But they sure enjoyed dropping those Obama Bombs last year that he commissioned as a Plan B. Obama spoke softly, carried a big stick, and hammered out a brilliant deal. Trump bragged loudly, tore up the deal, swung the stick he inherited, missed, and fell in the oil. Sad. At the time, Israel whined incessantly about how Iran was going to secretly enrich anyway. But their own intelligence from compromising the enrichment program shows in hindsight that this was not the case and Iran was behaving themselves. That's why I base my expectations on track records, not on Republican whining.
hgoel 6mo ago
I was definitely one of those useful idiots, not on here though
celdon25 6mo ago
If it helps you feel better, I voted for free speech and feel that the administration did not hold up their end of the deal. The FTC’s recent “debanking” letter to the payment processors is just theater until something changes. I’ll leave it at that.
- miltonlost 6mo ago
  You found that after the first administration, in the end, he had earned your vote for Free Speech?
  - daveguy 6mo ago
    Some people weren't paying much attention to "politics" until Dumpty started going full crazy. Still unclear exactly when that started.
    - nancyminusone 6mo ago
      I don't really think he's even gotten that much crazier than his admittedly high 2016 baseline. He has gotten a lot better at execution of said craziness, especially after realizing consequences would be slow and few.
- vel0city 6mo ago
  > the administration did not hold up their end of the deal Trump? Not holding up his end of the deal? Who could have seen that coming!
  - fragmede 6mo ago
    The Art of the Deal!
  - celdon25 6mo ago
    Oh don’t get me wrong, I’m unironically looking forward to the other shoe dropping next term, so that we can finally get a generation of politicians that can bring on the great reset. Too much legacy software running on the kernel and it can no longer be maintained.
FuriouslyAdrift 6mo ago
Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences of that speech
- delecti 6mo ago
  It does if those consequences are imposed by the government.
- rootlocus 6mo ago
  So I'm free to murder, I'm just not free from the consequences of murder?
- emmelaich 6mo ago
  Depends what the consequences are, obviously.
- brigandish 6mo ago
  What is freedom of speech a freedom from?
- muddi900 6mo ago
  Freedom of speech is the freedom from State retailiation. What the hell are you on about?
StanislavPetrov 6mo ago
>The number of HNers who were earnestly arguing that this was the party of free speech indicates that this absolutely needs to be on the HN front page. The number of HNers (and people at large) who think that both corporate parties don't vehemently oppose free speech and privacy is disturbing. Right now, today, a massive number of Democrats who have spent years decrying Trump (and Republicans as a whole) as fascists are lining up to support a "clean" reauthorization of section 702 of FISA, which allows (despite the phony claims of its supporters) the warrantless and unconstituional surveillance of US citizens (and others). If our government was controlled fascists, why would anyone give them the power to spy on anyone without a warrant? Because it's all kabuki theater and everyone in DC is part of the same team, and you ain't on it.
- hgoel 6mo ago
  I don't think "both sides" works very well when one side has been supporting the murder of citizens for exercising their free speech, calling for denaturalization of citizens for expressing the wrong opinions or being from the wrong community, openly suppressing criticism by threatening to revoke broadcast licenses and barring reporters from DoD briefings for not taking sufficiently flattering photos. I don't think anyone posting here thinks that Democrats are pro-free speech and pro-privacy, and it would be great if we could have politicians that truly support free speech and privacy rights. But of the options currently available, one is much less bad than the other.
  - bit-anarchist 6mo ago
    Well, the "worst" side has currently returned to power, the other hasn't. There's no reason to belive that the other side wouldn't become worse in its own way to further solidify its power. Before you talk about priors, remember that Trump's 1st turn also wasn't as unhinged as this. While it is okay, perhaps advisable, to temporarily support the current less worse side, try to not build house for people that would gladly step on you once your usefulness runs out. As OP said: it's a small club, and you ain't in it.
    - 6mo ago

traderj0e 6mo ago

[flagged]

selectodude 6mo ago
Democrats have so far not been led by the nose into bombing Iran and fucking up the global economy so I’m not sure how one can keep saying that with a straight face.
- wredcoll 6mo ago
  It's pretty pathetic when the best argument you can make is a whataboutism that isn't even equivalent.
  - smallmancontrov 6mo ago
    If "led by the nose into bombing Iran" isn't being "owned by Israel," what is?
    - traderj0e 6mo ago
      It totally is. Democrats got led into Israel's wars too. Interestingly the support was different, like Trump got money from the Adelsons and Biden from pro-Israel lobbies.
      - vel0city 6mo ago
        > Democrats got led into Israel's wars too. Which ones?
        jlarocco 6mo ago
        Have people already forgot about Gaza?
        vel0city 6mo ago
        The US was involved in Gaza? The United States was actively spending billions dropping munitions there? When? Under which administration was the US directly involved in bombing Gaza? Can you further clarify how the US was involved in the war in Gaza, and how that was the Democrats getting involved? And do you really feel that involvement was anywhere near what is happening or comparable with Iran at the moment?
        jlarocco 6mo ago
        [flagged]
        vel0city 6mo ago
        Its not US servicemembers pulling the trigger, its not US commanders deciding on targets, its not the POTUS starting the war. Pretty radically different things in my book. How many US servicemembers were injured or killed in the US's apparent major war with Gaza? We've spent ~$20B in grants for weapons procurement on Israel's behalf over several years, with a lot of that being defensive missile systems. I'm not a fan of us spending so much of our money on another country's military, especially when we hear over and over how we can't afford to feed kids or provide transportation to our people. But, we've spent over double than that so far in Iran in less than two months, and that's ignoring the many billions it'll cost to fix things that were destroyed so far. We're looking at the actual US cost of this war potentially reaching one trillion dollars. Its a scale that's so radically different. And also, one was in support of a country who we have defense agreements with who was attacked, and another was us deciding to go bomb a country seemingly unprovoked. Who is spreading whataboutism again?
  - traderj0e 6mo ago
    Parent comment isn't a whataboutism, if anything my comment could be seen as that. My point isn't to defend Trump's actions, only to call out that this is a scarier problem than it gets credit for when someone just blames MAGA. We're dealing with a two-front assault here, and they want you to think it's just the other party you don't like.
    - wredcoll 6mo ago
      My comment was trying to emphasize the parent's point, I was referring to the grandparent as whataboutism. It was a tad unclear. I wish america would stop sending money to israel, for a bunch of reasons. That desire is most likely to be realized by a strong democrat majority.
      - traderj0e 6mo ago
        We've had a Democrat majority plenty of times in the past several decades, including under Biden, and they continued the unconditional support. When congresswoman Omar called out AIPAC's influence, nearly every other Dem joined in on a written condemnation. If anything they're just less blatant than Republicans about this, also some pro-Israel groups have a niche with one party or the other.
- traderj0e 6mo ago
  Both sides of Congress passed emergency weapons funding for Israel at the start of this war. Even if some Democrats are scoring political points complaining about it since it's during Trump's term and the war has become a stalemate, they're on board at the end of the day, like they were with Iraq (as some forget) before things unraveled. And during Biden's term, it was Gaza instead.
smallmancontrov 6mo ago
So they were weaponizing immigration law to deport pro-pali students? Care to back your feelings up with some facts?
- fwip 6mo ago
  Not that far off from the truth. A number of college students who were protesting for Palestine had their college enrollment suspended, and lost their visas, effectively being deported. Which, yes, the university made that decision, but it didn't come without influence from the government.
  - FireBeyond 6mo ago
    Which universities? With such a small sample size, you have a whole lot of confidence saying "well, the Dems encouraged them".
bdhe 6mo ago
What facts would you point to, to argue that the Democratic party is "owned by Israel" more than the Republican party?
- traderj0e 6mo ago
  https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/summary?cycle=All&ind=Q05&recipdetail=S https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/summary?cycle=All&ind... is one

wredcoll 6mo ago

> The number of HNers who were earnestly arguing that this was the party of free speech Do you think any of them were sincere?

smallmancontrov 6mo ago
I work in this industry. I sample the same distribution in person. I don't think they were, I know they were.
- hn_acc1 6mo ago
  I'm seeing it in a lot of younger tech people. We had a NASA presentation at work about air quality and that forest fires are one of our biggest problems in CA. TWO separate people (from maybe 20-25 attending) brought up "do you think that if we managed our forests better, this could help?" (clearly talking about the crazy "raking the forests" Trump rhetoric). It blows my mind how "intelligent" people can be this stupid.
  - kelnos 6mo ago
    > "do you think that if we managed our forests better, this could help?" (clearly talking about the crazy "raking the forests" Trump rhetoric) Were they clearly actually talking about that? If that was their question, word-for-word, it's a good question! We are not managing our forests all that well. No, we shouldn't be doing Trump's dumbass raking "idea", but we should be doing controlled burns, at minimum.
  - headsman771 6mo ago
    I remember hearing about forest mismanagement long before Trump's presidential runs. It's curious how many people complaining about right wing talking points associate it solely with Trump.
  - vel0city 6mo ago
    While Trump's "raking the forest" take is clearly uninformed and unintelligent, there's a substantial kernel of truth to longstanding forest management policies making some of these wildfires worse than what they could have been. We've been artificially suppressing fires far too long in a lot of these places, for example. Not that this is the only factor in play here on a lot of these fires, and once again I do agree Trump's take is idiotic and ultimately he's not helping but pouring gasoline on the issue. Just pointing out, we definitely aren't managing our forests well for a multitude of reasons. https://news.berkeley.edu/2023/12/12/twenty-year-study-confirms-california-forests-are-healthier-when-burned-or-thinned/ https://news.berkeley.edu/2023/12/12/twenty-year-study-confi...

ifyoubuildit 6mo ago

I'm all ears if you've got someone that we can put in power that won't rat fuck us when it comes to privacy or civil liberties. Bonus points if they aren't just slightly less bad than the other guy.

smallmancontrov 6mo ago
Kamala was a lot less bad than Trump. It wasn't close.
- drnick1 6mo ago
  [flagged]
  - bigfudge 6mo ago
    I'm not sure if you're joking and this is a backhanded compliment to Harris, or you're sincere in your belief that what Trump will negotiate is going to be better than the Obama deal he ditched in the first term. I hope you're joking!
  - smallmancontrov 6mo ago
    That's what they said about Obama, but he got Iran to give up their stockpile of enriched Uranium, give up enrichment beyond 4%, and submit to a severe inspection program. All for unfreezing less money than Trump has spent so far on the Iran War, let alone the $200B that he wants, let alone the economic damage from the Hormuz shutdown, let alone the $5T that happened last time a Republican asked to spend $200B on a quick little war. At the time, the Republicans whined incessantly about how soft Obama was. But they sure enjoyed dropping those Obama Bombs last year that he commissioned as a Plan B. Obama spoke softly, carried a big stick, and hammered out a brilliant deal. Trump bragged loudly, tore up the deal, swung the stick he inherited, missed, and fell in the oil. Sad. At the time, Israel whined incessantly about how Iran was going to secretly enrich anyway. But their own intelligence from compromising the enrichment program shows in hindsight that this was not the case and Iran was behaving themselves. That's why I base my expectations on track records, not on Republican whining.

hgoel 6mo ago

I was definitely one of those useful idiots, not on here though

celdon25 6mo ago

If it helps you feel better, I voted for free speech and feel that the administration did not hold up their end of the deal. The FTC’s recent “debanking” letter to the payment processors is just theater until something changes. I’ll leave it at that.

miltonlost 6mo ago
You found that after the first administration, in the end, he had earned your vote for Free Speech?
- daveguy 6mo ago
  Some people weren't paying much attention to "politics" until Dumpty started going full crazy. Still unclear exactly when that started.
  - nancyminusone 6mo ago
    I don't really think he's even gotten that much crazier than his admittedly high 2016 baseline. He has gotten a lot better at execution of said craziness, especially after realizing consequences would be slow and few.
vel0city 6mo ago
> the administration did not hold up their end of the deal Trump? Not holding up his end of the deal? Who could have seen that coming!
- fragmede 6mo ago
  The Art of the Deal!
- celdon25 6mo ago
  Oh don’t get me wrong, I’m unironically looking forward to the other shoe dropping next term, so that we can finally get a generation of politicians that can bring on the great reset. Too much legacy software running on the kernel and it can no longer be maintained.

FuriouslyAdrift 6mo ago

Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences of that speech

delecti 6mo ago
It does if those consequences are imposed by the government.
rootlocus 6mo ago
So I'm free to murder, I'm just not free from the consequences of murder?
emmelaich 6mo ago
Depends what the consequences are, obviously.
brigandish 6mo ago
What is freedom of speech a freedom from?
muddi900 6mo ago
Freedom of speech is the freedom from State retailiation. What the hell are you on about?

StanislavPetrov 6mo ago

>The number of HNers who were earnestly arguing that this was the party of free speech indicates that this absolutely needs to be on the HN front page. The number of HNers (and people at large) who think that both corporate parties don't vehemently oppose free speech and privacy is disturbing. Right now, today, a massive number of Democrats who have spent years decrying Trump (and Republicans as a whole) as fascists are lining up to support a "clean" reauthorization of section 702 of FISA, which allows (despite the phony claims of its supporters) the warrantless and unconstituional surveillance of US citizens (and others). If our government was controlled fascists, why would anyone give them the power to spy on anyone without a warrant? Because it's all kabuki theater and everyone in DC is part of the same team, and you ain't on it.

hgoel 6mo ago
I don't think "both sides" works very well when one side has been supporting the murder of citizens for exercising their free speech, calling for denaturalization of citizens for expressing the wrong opinions or being from the wrong community, openly suppressing criticism by threatening to revoke broadcast licenses and barring reporters from DoD briefings for not taking sufficiently flattering photos. I don't think anyone posting here thinks that Democrats are pro-free speech and pro-privacy, and it would be great if we could have politicians that truly support free speech and privacy rights. But of the options currently available, one is much less bad than the other.
- bit-anarchist 6mo ago
  Well, the "worst" side has currently returned to power, the other hasn't. There's no reason to belive that the other side wouldn't become worse in its own way to further solidify its power. Before you talk about priors, remember that Trump's 1st turn also wasn't as unhinged as this. While it is okay, perhaps advisable, to temporarily support the current less worse side, try to not build house for people that would gladly step on you once your usefulness runs out. As OP said: it's a small club, and you ain't in it.
  - 6mo ago