Being an idiot in a viking suit justifies attempting to assassinate multiple acting government officials for the purpose of interrupting the certification of the election. OK.
It absolutely is not. Unless you're claiming that the 1/6 footage was all deepfaked and/or an Antifa false flag operation, the issue seems pretty unambiguous.
I'm not disagreeing with most of that, quite the opposite. What I take issue with is the media being brazenly unfair in select instances, which needlessly gives Q cultists ammunition to help radicalize "normies".
It's something I would take note of every once in a while, but I would have to think and/or research to come up with more than one or two examples offhand. The biggest one that immediately comes to mind is the infamous "very fine people on both sides" quote.
I've watched and read the full context[1]. He's not saying that all people on the neo-Nazi side are good, but that some of them were there only to peacefully protest in support of the legacy of Robert E. Lee. It's like the difference between Archie Bunker (a bigoted goofball, but mostly just an earnest guy struggling to deal with changes in society) and a literal militant Klansman/neo-Nazi.
That sentiment may be distasteful in itself to many people (I personally think Lee is just as undeservingly venerated as Rommel), but it's far less extreme than what he's been presented as having said. I'm not even saying that Trump's statement was necessarily correct; I'm saying that if he misrepresented the facts on the ground, and/or if what he (actually) said was arguably a dog whistle, that's what he should have been criticized for.
I'm a huge fan of Joe Biden these days, and it still leaves a sour taste in my mouth that during the campaign he cited that out-of-context quote as his motivation for running.
It's an interesting idea. So much of the US is just uninhabited land. I could see such policies not leading to overcrowding, but rather to increased development and economic growth across the country, particularly if combined with something like the Homestead Act.
Both sides have a tendency to cry wolf. Bush was awful, but he wasn't Hitler. Romney was treated particularly unfairly during his presidential run.
Regardless of one's feelings on Trump, it's clear that he wasn't treated entirely fairly by the media from the start. Sure, for a while they would tiptoe around calling him out for outright lies, but I also saw how his words and actions would at times be twisted and presented with with bad faith or the worst possible meaning taken as a presumption.
He may have been extraordinarily corrupt, and a constant embarrassment to the country on Twitter, but in terms of policy he was a relatively vanilla conservative. I've even given him credit for being the first president to enter office supporting same-sex marriage, and more broadly I don't dislike the libertarian-ish element of his base that also supports that in addition to legal weed.
None of the above negates the fact that Trump and his allies spent at least the second half of 2020 attempting to subvert our electoral process, came very close to succeeding, and then attacked the United States with intent to violently usurp control of the government. It doesn't negate that Trump-inspired white nationalist militias are currently the greatest domestic terror threat in America, while Trump continues to stoke their anger with lies. Whether his coup was "fascist" or parallels the actions of 34-year-old Adolf Hitler is irrelevant. I'll criticize the left for crying wolf as loudly as anyone; it doesn't logically follow that wolves don't exist.
It’s frankly exhausting to have discussions when both sides live in their own worlds.
It is indeed.
You sound arrogant, “only one side is correct and it’s my side”
I have very little patience for dishonesty. If that makes me seem "arrogant" to peddlers of disinformation, so be it.
BLM and Antifa caused billions in damages
Sure. That was terrible and uncalled for. Lots of bad ideas and movements come from the grassroots left, like "Defund the Police" and "All Cops are Bastards". I don't recall this being sanctioned or incited by Joe Biden or the Democratic Party, and it wasn't a coup d'etat.
in some places this is leading to the reintroduction of segregation
I didn't see where your source made a connection between these events. Either way, if you think that a racist principal imposing segregation in their school somehow vindicates right-wing insurrectionists, I don't know what to tell you.
FBI spied on trump on Clinton and Obama’s behalf. Utilizing a known fabricated document
This is an article about two British citizens independently making a decision to attempt to influence our election in a small way. I find that objectionable for the same reason as Russia's larger-scale election interference, but I don't see how it relates to the conspiracy theory of Obama spying on Trump.
election laws were changed last minute, broken among other things to effect a coup and they brag about it
Can you be more specific? All I'm seeing from an initial pass is that an effort was made to respond to right-wing voter suppression efforts and disinformation leading up to the election.
more people voted in 2020 than were registered in 2016 or 2018. With a 93% then out rate.
That was pretty cool. I'm not sure what you're suggesting it has to do with right-wing beliefs.
here’s a couple video explaining some of their concerns about the election
Sure, I'm aware that Trump and his allies claim to have concerns. That's what we're discussing here. Do you have more specific points and sources that aren't videos?
I get it that you are not familiar with Bush v. Gore
Yup, this is the first I've heard of George Bush and Al Gore. Thanks for letting me know about them.
It's easy to pick a random clown in a camp and then zoom 1000x to paint a bad picture
Sure. I agree with that. I'm not claiming that this is the official platform of the GOP, simply that it's a radical and dangerous element of society that Trump and his wing of the party are actively cultivating by continuing to promote lies.
And the "voter suppression" are a joke
Sure. They didn't work in the end, but they made it a lot closer than it would have been. The new ones may work or they may not, but we shouldn't tolerate any voter suppression in America.
showing ID with proof of your address
No one is opposed to requiring an ID to vote. The For the People Act included a voter ID provision, with alternative documents such as utility bills allowable as a fallback.
If you want to require IDs without that fallback, how about we make federal voting IDs available to everyone in the country at no cost and with minimal hassle or time investment? If the intent isn't voter suppression, this should be perfectly agreeable.
Sure both sides are claiming it, but only one side is correct.
On the right, we have:
* USPS sabotage and state-level voter suppression measures in urban areas leading up to the 2020 election
* Post-election soft coup attempt via the courts (including having broken precedent to rush a SCOTUS appointment during the election, which could have changed the outcome of the coup attempt in a different timeline)
* Failed to advocate for open source voting systems (which isn't a widely known or politically relevant issue on either side at present)
* Pushed for stronger voting rights and increased voter participation — both uncontroversially positive properties of a democracy, but also happen to benefit the Democratic Party at the current moment
* Proposed measures in the For the People Act that were arguably overly ambitious or aggressive in the current political environment, such as stricter campaign finance regulations, which were promptly renegotiated within their own party ranks
To frame these as comparable is borderline gaslighting.
* USPS sabotage and state-level voter suppression measures in urban areas leading up to the 2020 election
* Post-election soft coup attempt via the courts (including having broken precedent to rush a SCOTUS appointment during the election, which could have changed the outcome of the coup attempt in a different timeline)
I was with you until this somehow turned into "both sides are equally bad". We should absolutely push for greater transparency and verifiability into the internals of such critical infrastructure.
The fact that one side has not prioritized this isn't similar to the other side's repeated attempts to overthrow our government.
This is an idea I've been interested in since it came up last month (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27582145), but I don't personally feel strongly enough yet to land on either side.
That being said, for all its faults, I would expect that reddit does indeed have more productive discourse than most other (non-HN) social media platforms, particularly Twitter with its enforcement of shallow/short-form comments. /r/the_donald is obviously an extreme example of an alt-right cesspool, but it's not obvious that it was less polite or constructive than the equivalent communities on other platforms.
Agreed. I think it's a major issue in political discourse when people begin to identify with labels and slogans, and treat them as prescriptive (ideals to be adhered to) rather than descriptive (approximate reflections of one's current general beliefs).
Surveys consistently show that most of us agree on far more than we disagree when questions are phrased in politically neutral terms. People quickly realize when they actually talk to other people that most are fairly reasonable and relatable, even if they have good faith disagreements on particular points, but social media being optimized for maximum engagement with shallow/short-form discussion just results in seeing the most extreme elements of society talk over each other and largely fail to come to a common understanding.
when you aligned anyone right of center with neo-Nazis
Again, I didn't say that.
Furthermore, while it's entirely beside the point, I personally do hold many political positions that might be considered right of center in America; for example, I'm in favor of liberal gun rights and a restriction on late-term abortions.
When I use the term "neo-Nazi", I mean it in a literal sense, not as an insult directed at conservatives. In fact, I went out of my way to distinguish between the center-right and neo-Nazis. There's a big difference between advocating for a balanced budget and joining an armed white nationalist militia to fight a satanic pedophile cult. Pretending otherwise is an obvious bad faith argument.
If anything, by suggesting that these are the same people, you are the one equating conservatives with neo-Nazis. Call me far-left, far-right, or whatever else you want; I just don't see someone like Bush/McCain/Romney storming the Capitol with a Confederate flag while calling for the assassination of acting government officials.
Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
I didn't attack any particular ideology. I politely described my opinion on a specific organization that attempted to overthrow my country's government, first via a soft coup and then by force, as it related to the current discussion.
That's a great approach. I like the concise way of stating it. I'll apply it to a couple things that are popular topics right now.
---
Automated fact checking:
The negative consequences are pretty obvious. It's easy to cheer when the target is neo-Nazis who want to overthrow the government. Well what if the shoe were on the other foot, and Republicans had been able to compel social media companies to flag posts disputing Trump's claims of election fraud as misinformation? It's not exactly censorship, but it's a ridiculously powerful lever for manipulating public opinion.
On a more mundane level, clamping down on non-mainstream opinions could cause a lot of low-level chronic harm. For example, it's not hard to imagine social media "fact checking" disrupting discussions on fitness and/or nutritional science to promote the food pyramid and the importance of a low-fat diet for heart health, or to shut down conversations about medical uses of cannabis because the DEA still has it listed as schedule 1.
Maybe there's a reasonable middle ground, but it's dicey either way.
---
Killing or reforming the filibuster:
The obvious negative consequence (from a center-right to left-wing perspective) is that Republicans will regain a trifecta of power and find themselves with carte blanche to pass all sorts of wildly unpopular laws eviscerating civil liberties.
Even so, I say do it. The filibuster is massively advantageous to Republicans because it gives them the ability to complain about problems while offering few or no solutions. I say we call their bluff, and risk giving them the opportunity to pass their agenda.
Either they'd still do nothing (in which case they'd lose a lot of single-issue voters), or they would do the things that they claim to want to do (in which case they would lose the next election in a landslide and never hold power again).
As-is, they're stuck in between a rock and a hard place trying to appeal to:
* Pro-life Christians
* Gun owners
* Right-leaning libertarians
* "Selfish"/anti-tax rich people
* The alt-right / neo-Nazi / Q cultist crowd
* Populists (who may not necessarily be conservative, as evidenced by the overlap in support for Trump and Bernie)
* People with conservative social/cultural values
* Typical center-right conservatives (to the extent that they still vote Republican consistently, or at all)
That's just what I can think of off the cuff, but even that is a pretty diverse coalition. All they really have in common is that they oppose (or, in some cases, believe they oppose) various parts of the Democratic agenda (both real and imagined). Their continued unity depends on the GOP remaining a superposition of all the different values they each independently project onto it. The second the GOP actually gets a chance to pass a major law along partisan lines, whether they choose to do it or not,
the superposition collapses and shoes will start to drop.
What do you think will happen if they take power and proceed to ban all abortions, remove every form of gun control, repeal the Affordable Care Act, take federal action against vaccine development/distribution during a pandemic, pass or shoot down a relief bill during a pandemic, escalate or deescalate the Drug War, dramatically increase or decrease environmental regulations while a climate disaster affects a red state, and/or dramatically alter regulations on the Internet / social media / E2EE / cryptocurrency? What if, with a legislative majority and in the absence of the filibuster, they don't do any of those things? I suggest that any action or lack thereof would be a huge blow to their support in some of those groups; they would have to pick their poison.
The wildcard here is if they were to use such a trifecta combined with their current dominance of the Supreme Court to enact anti-democratic reforms to prevent any further transfer of power. However, seeing as this is already the direction we're heading in, I would say that it's vitally important to override the filibuster and pass voting rights legislation now so that we have a stronger chance at remaining a democracy, rather than accept the massive gamble of doing nothing.
The greatest threat facing humanity today isn't climate change. It's the current Republican Party, and the prospect of world's most powerful military and nuclear arsenal ending up in the hands of a hypothetical future theofascist America.
Speculation: conflation of his reasonable and factual statement with the ostensibly similar far-right talking point that the cure (social distancing) is worse than the disease.