[HN Gopher] U.S. Capitol Locked Down Amid Escalating Protests
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U.S. Capitol Locked Down Amid Escalating Protests
Author : fortran77
Score : 1261 points
Date : 2021-01-06 19:55 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.npr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.npr.org)
| znpy wrote:
| btw Trump just tweeted the following an hour ago:
|
| > Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have >
| been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, > giving
| States a chance to certify a corrected set of > facts, not the
| fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they > were asked to
| previously certify. USA demands the truth!
|
| (source:
| https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/13469004345402408...)
|
| If this is not an acknowledgment of an ongoing coup...
| dredmorbius wrote:
| The contest in the executive suite is ... strong.
|
| Mike Pence:
|
| _Peaceful protest is the right of every American but this
| attack on our Capitol will not be tolerated and those involved
| will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law._
|
| https://twitter.com/Mike_Pence/status/1346918222432374785
| [deleted]
| gigatexal wrote:
| As an American I am terribly sad today for America and Americans
| regardless of political affiliation. What an insane sight to
| behold. Trump loyalists sitting in Nancy Pelosi's office, a woman
| being rushed out having been shot, representatives drawing up
| impeachment articles, what a clusterfuck. A sad, sad day to be an
| American and a sad day for democracy because a demagogue has
| usurped it for his own wills and whims.
| hxhdjdjdjhd wrote:
| A lot of these psychopaths will justify this because of
| ANTIFA/BLM protests from before -- like its okay now.
|
| Like it or not, law and order is needed all the time for a
| functioning society because of all the idiots.
|
| The normalization of previous riots by talking heads and
| politicians have created this.
|
| It literally happens every election by some radicals (e.g:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_shooting_of_Dallas_poli...).
|
| If you are Republican or Democrat and find yourself getting so
| angry you are joining in on any nonsense that is violent or
| destructive like this you really need to just turn the tel-y off
| and take a break from social media algorithms feeding bull shit
| into your brain.
|
| Right now, if you open TikTok, you can literally see China
| turning up their algorithm to feed fuel to fire with more
| controversial videos. America did the same thing with Hong Kong
| through FB and Twitter.
|
| Take a break. Peace and love to all, take control of your lives.
| Manipulation is the game.
| [deleted]
| pixel_tracing wrote:
| I'm curious if this is an opportunity for spies to storm in with
| mob and plant surveillance devices in the capital
| fjdjsmsm wrote:
| Over the summer there were hundreds of thousands of people and
| they weren't allowed close to any government buildings. Now
| there's a few hundred and they just let them into the capital
| buildings with what seems like little resistance?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| ineedasername wrote:
| This is what happens when a country's leaders actively dog
| whistle an incitement to violence and others hitch their
| political future to fiction & propaganda instead of fact.
| eli wrote:
| It's not really a dog whistle. Just a few hours ago the
| President told his supporters gathered near the Whitehouse to
| march to the Capitol.
| mhh__ wrote:
| "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?"
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| Guns has been drawn inside the barricaded senate chamber.
|
| https://missouriindependent.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/g...
| mhh__ wrote:
| At least one shot so far, didn't say if it was outside or
| inside.
|
| Edit: inside.
| Merman_Mike wrote:
| A woman has been shot inside the capitol building by Capitol
| Police.
|
| Not going to post links, but there is video on Twitter.
| metalliqaz wrote:
| Trump wanted this. He did it on purpose. When the smoke
| clears, he should be in jail.
| wtfiswiththis wrote:
| "Let's have trial by combat." -Rudy 'America's Mayor'
| Giuliani to a crowd filled with far right pro-Trump
| militias like Oath Keepers, hours before the Republican
| coup attempt in D.C.
| [deleted]
| buzzy_hacker wrote:
| House* chamber
| fjdjsmsm wrote:
| Flagged? Does someone at Hacker News support the coup?
| dang wrote:
| This is the normal tug of war between upvotes and flags.
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
| ben_w wrote:
| Here's a "fun" thought: if you were running a foreign
| intelligence operation in the USA, surely you'd try to get one of
| your agents into the mob that got into the Capitol building and
| given free reign over all those computers, computers that were
| not locked properly before the legitimate users fled for their
| safety?
|
| I'm not just talking about Russia and China here, I mean _all_
| the intelligence agencies.
| abeppu wrote:
| This is totally not my area. But are most offices for members
| of congress not able to keep the _really_ secret stuff on their
| own systems? Like, is the most sensitive stuff only in a well-
| secured SCIF in the basement or something?
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| SOP when I worked in a similar environment was that if
| there's an evacuation you don't take time to lock up.
| Probably not an issue for a SCIF, but could be a problem if a
| congressperson has a safe in their office
| mhh__ wrote:
| Well yes. They'd probably have to be illegals though because
| the traditional legal spies will be stationed at embassies and
| the FBI will be watching them constantly and don't need to ask
| permission to stop them.
|
| Given the whole Russian play is destabilizing the US, Trump is
| so far gone now that they probably couldn't dream of it when
| planning whatever exactly they did do.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump%27s_disclosures_o...
| Then again if you ask nicely enough he'll give it to you.
| enkid wrote:
| I mean, they could also be agents, i.e., Americans acting on
| the behalf of a foreign power. I guarantee the Russians are
| at least encouraging this on social media. (Though I also
| believe this is predominantly a domestic problem)
| akiselev wrote:
| The threat has already been realized. Apparently a twitter user
| got into Pelosi's office and posted an screenshot of one of
| their computers (tweet deleted about an hour ago [1]). You can
| see the tweet at other sources [2]
|
| [1]
| https://twitter.com/ElijahSchaffer/status/134690542554391757...
|
| [2] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/pro-trump-
| report...
| FreezerburnV wrote:
| There's a good thread debunking that it was actually Pelosi's
| computer as well as details of the security protocols around
| the computers:
| https://twitter.com/foone/status/1346924327996772354?s=21
| mastercheif wrote:
| I'd love to be looking at Twitter's infrastructure dashboard
| right now. Peaks may be lower than a crazy catch in the Super
| Bowl or something but this is an hours long developing story with
| a ton of media
| pachico wrote:
| I live in Europe and believe me when I tell you the general
| perception about USA has gotten much worse during the last
| months.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| CSPAN reporting "The National Association of Manufacturers just
| asked Mike Pence to 'seriously consider' invoking the 25th
| amendment", which would remove Trump from effective control as
| President.
|
| Quoting a tweet by Sam Mintz
|
| https://nitter.net/samjmintz/status/1346931121423077376#m
|
| https://nitter.net/pic/media%2FErFCshI
| vezzy-fnord wrote:
| Interesting how all of the same liberal yuppies who endorsed last
| year's hot summer, with the authorities bowing before the rioters
| and tolerating breakaway microstates, have now turned into
| Thermidorian counterrevolutionaries demanding that the last
| futile attempt by Americans to make sure their country remains a
| country, rather than a global shopping mall, be punished with
| utmost strictness.
|
| A good time as any to quote Joseph de Maistre:
|
| "Every man has certain duties to perform, and the extent of these
| duties depends on his position in society and the extent of his
| means. The same action is by no means equally culpable when
| committed by two different men. Not to stray from our subject,
| the same act which results only from a mistake or a foolish
| characteristic in an obscure person, thrust suddenly into
| unlimited power, could be a foul crime in a bishop or a duke or a
| peer.
|
| Indeed, some actions, which are excusable and even praiseworthy
| from an ordinary point of view, are fundamentally infinitely
| criminal. For example, if someone says, I have espoused the cause
| of the French Revolution in good faith, through a pure love of
| liberty and my country; I have believed in my soul and conscience
| that it would lead to the reform of abuses and to the general
| good, we have nothing to say in reply. But the eye of him who
| sees into every heart discerns the stain of sin; he discovers in
| a ridiculous misunderstanding, in a small puncturing of pride, in
| a base or criminal passion, the prime moving force behind those
| ambitions we wish to present to the world as noble: and for him
| the crime is compounded by grafting the falsehood of hypocrisy
| onto treason. But let us look at the nation in general.
|
| One of the greatest possible crimes is undoubtedly an attack upon
| sovereignty, no other having such terrible consequences. If
| sovereignty resides in one man and this man falls victim to an
| outrage, the crime of lese-majesty augments the atrocity. But if
| this sovereign has not deserved his fate through any fault of his
| own, if his very virtues have strengthened the guilty against
| him, the crime is beyond description. This is the case in the
| death of Louis XVI; but what is important to note is that never
| has such a great crime had more accomplices. The death of Charles
| I had far fewer, even though it was possible to bring charges
| against him that Louis XVI did not merit. Yet many proofs were
| given of the most tender and courageous concern for him; even the
| executioner, who was obliged to obey, did not dare to make
| himself known. But in France, Louis XVI marched to his death in
| the middle of 60,000 armed men who did not have a single shot for
| their king, not a voice was raised for the unfortunate monarch,
| and the provinces were as silent as the capital. We would expose
| ourselves, it was said. Frenchmen - if you find this a good
| reason, talk no more of your courage or admit that you misuse
| it!"
|
| s/French Revolution/BLM
| totaldude87 wrote:
| [deleted]
| selykg wrote:
| I'm seeing plenty of pepper spray on tv at the moment.
| Miner49er wrote:
| No tear gas though
| selykg wrote:
| Not sure, there was smoke near the entrance area in one
| video I seen. So, possibly, but no idea.
| csomar wrote:
| This reminds of a scene in Homeland. I forgot the season/episode,
| but the basic plot is that a Media man who was urging supporters
| didn't think that these supporters would get armed and confront
| the police/FBI. It ended with one of these supporters killed and
| the man shocked as he clearly didn't think it would go that far.
|
| In my opinion, Trump is just doing that. I don't think he would
| have expected armed men to join this. He was probably doing it to
| save face. It doesn't help that democrats are making the
| situation worse by calling this a coup instead of taking a calmer
| sentence.
|
| Here are the possible resolution scenarios:
|
| - The men are disbanded. No one is hurt, maybe some charges
| against some of these men.
|
| - One fatal shot on one side or both sides. Sad event, but then
| the men are disbanded and harsher charges against some of them.
|
| The rest is drama.
| [deleted]
| claydavisss wrote:
| A last gasp of malcontents before the era of permanent $5k/month
| stimulus + permanent mortgage/rent forbearance begins.
|
| Can I get paid in BTC?
| exabrial wrote:
| In order to infringe on our personal rights and further entrench
| their monopolies, the first thing the two parties need to do is
| divide the people.
| [deleted]
| xenocratus wrote:
| Also, some statehouses are being attacked as well:
|
| https://twitter.com/KellyKSNT/status/1346906283421609985
| hertzrat wrote:
| Any non-twitter news sources?
| calmworm wrote:
| This is nonsense. I encourage you to reword your post or delete
| it. I saw another tweet with a picture of the "attack" and it
| was like 8 people milling about.
|
| edit: I've also read that the doors were opened to any
| protestors. There is no attack.
| hourislate wrote:
| Indifferent to the Clown show.
|
| But like him or not, Steve Bannon suggested this would happen. It
| has something to do with the Democrats and the way they went
| after Trump. He basically said they are setting the precedent for
| what happens when they're back in power. He said both sides need
| to remember respect is a two way street.
|
| I would recommend the following Real Time with Bill Maher
| Interview.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egVlN-kBjZg
| [deleted]
| jsheard wrote:
| https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/13469288825958850...
|
| _" This claim of election fraud is disputed, and this Tweet
| can't be replied to, Retweeted, or liked due to a risk of
| violence"_
|
| That's a new one. Twitter openly admits the content is dangerous,
| but they still don't want to ban him so they carved out a special
| quarantine mode instead.
| rement wrote:
| Not only that but the "call to go home" will be limited because
| it can't be retweeted or liked.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| Every last man or woman involved in instigating this must face
| the harshest possible punishment.
| MrsPeaches wrote:
| Live steam from inside the Capitol Building:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNJKNpAOs5k
| bilegeek wrote:
| Arrest Trump. Try for sedition. Goddamn, I'm scared.
| beezle wrote:
| "Moderate" Republicans tolerated and have associated with the
| MAGA wing. This is their Sudeten moment.
| Merman_Mike wrote:
| Where are the police? Is the police force and now the national
| guard not controlled by the DC Mayor's office?
|
| I don't understand how they weather 1000 protests a year in the
| capitol and weren't prepared for this.
| pluto9 wrote:
| > Is the police force and now the national guard not controlled
| by the DC Mayor's office?
|
| No. National Guard units are normally controlled by state
| governors, but since DC is not a state and has no governor, the
| DC National Guard is the only guard unit that reports directly
| to the president [1].
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_National_...
| Merman_Mike wrote:
| I'm not sure that's correct. See this AP article [1] talking
| about the national guard troops that were approved and are
| already in the capitol now.
|
| > Because D.C. does not have a governor, the designated
| commander of the city's National Guard is Army Secretary Ryan
| McCarthy. Any D.C. requests for Guard deployments have to be
| approved by him.
|
| [1] https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-donald-trump-
| politics-e...
|
| In any event, where are the Capitol Police? How were they not
| prepared for this?
| pluto9 wrote:
| It seems to be even more complicated than that actually, on
| second glance. Also from the Wikipedia article:
|
| > Supervision and control of D.C. National Guard was
| delegated by the president to the defense secretary
| pursuant to Executive Order 10030, 26 January 1949 with
| authority to designate National Military Establishment
| officials to administer affairs of the D.C. National Guard.
| The Army secretary was directed to act in all matters
| pertaining to the ground component, and the Air Force
| secretary was directed to act in all matters pertaining to
| the air component.
|
| > The National Guard may be called into federal service in
| response to a call by the president or Congress.
|
| So control is apparently shared in some way between the
| president, secdef, congress, and secretaries of the army
| and air force. But it does seem that the Army secretary's
| authority is delegated by the president, who remains the
| "commander in chief" of the guard unit.
|
| Of course the president is commander in chief of all guard
| units when they're called into federal service, but I
| wonder if service in DC is considered "federal" in that
| sense. DC is a federal entity, but a guard unit serving its
| home jurisdiction isn't usually what's meant by "federal
| service".
|
| Military organization is weird.
|
| In any case, it's not controlled by the mayor of DC. She
| can only request an activation (which she did).
| justin66 wrote:
| I wonder how many Capitol police officers it takes to clear
| the chamber and get all the lawmakers to safety, and how
| far they accompany them. They certainly do seem to be
| scarce.
| [deleted]
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| "Democracy is a system in which parties lose elections"
|
| - Przeworski
|
| In other words, the core concept of democracy isn't the elections
| or any of the other trappings, it's the fact that it's possible
| for one group to lose power, transition to another group and
| retain the possibility to transition back in a subsequent
| election to the original group.
| silexia wrote:
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2385 - this details
| the penalty for attempts to overthrow the government of the
| USA.
| osgovernment wrote:
| The police in the capital building were on video shaking
| these "protesters" hands.
| ImaCake wrote:
| This has historical precedent. The far-right in the Weimar
| republic were treated far more softly than the communists
| were. The complicit behaviour of the authorities definitely
| played favourites and can probably be partially blamed for
| what happened.
| pera wrote:
| Here are two examples of this:
|
| https://mobile.twitter.com/bubbaprog/status/134692019846141
| 9...
|
| https://mobile.twitter.com/cevansavenger/status/13469209243
| 1...
| grecy wrote:
| Which is surely a strong sign it's time to start arresting
| Police as accessories to terrorism.
|
| How can things get better unless that happens?
| ashtonkem wrote:
| They let them in; there are videos of them opening the
| cordons around the building.
|
| Some cops were either in on it, or at least sympathetic.
| They need to be dragged before Congress next month to
| answer for their behavior, assuming the republic survives.
|
| https://mobile.twitter.com/sugaspov/status/1346919943238000
| 6...
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Holy smokes so Trump should get 20 years for organising this?
| Or is he exempt?
| mhh__ wrote:
| Should and will are different questions. He also may be
| able to pardon himself depending on whose interpretation of
| the law you believe.
|
| If a prosecution is possible it will be up to Biden as to
| what to do. At very least I think everything his
| administration did should be carefully investigated,
| documented, and put in a museum as a warning.
|
| If he is pardoned he will probably be at war in the state
| of New York for the rest of his life.
| legulere wrote:
| Coming from Europe that seems like pretty lax penalties for
| American standards.
| mhh__ wrote:
| I believe you could once get a 50 year sentence for dealing
| crack, so yes.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| It's an interesting point. One thing I've noticed is that both
| sides increasingly believe that each election poses an
| existential risk to their side.
|
| Currently you see many conservatives repeating the meme that
| losing the Senate means a Republican will never win the White
| House again. The belief being that Democrats will change voting
| laws, open borders and amnesty to Dem-leaning immigrants, and
| possibly even pack the Supreme Court and add DC and Puerto Rico
| as new states.
|
| On the flip-side, similar sentiments were often expressed on
| the left of Trump heralding the end of American democracy.
| Republicans in power would permanently end fair elections
| through a combination of foreign election interference, gerry-
| pandering, dark corporate money, and voter suppression.
|
| Disregarding whatever merits these views have, the fact that
| they're widely held by a significant chunk of the citizenry
| creates a dangerous equilibrium. Like you say, in a healthy
| democracy the losing side focuses its energy on winning the
| next election.
|
| But if you think the other side's gonna use dirty tricks once
| in power, there is no next election to win. So you go all out
| it to stop the other side, and start looking for dirty tricks
| of your own. Now you've justified your opponents' bad opinion
| of you, and given them even more reason to win by any means
| unnecessary.
| mhh__ wrote:
| On that note, the Pa. State Senate Republicans are just
| refusing to swear in their new democratic colleagues.
|
| I Can't wait for this attitude to inevitably cross the pond.
| howlgarnish wrote:
| This is an artifact of first past the post electoral systems,
| which reward polarization. You can't demonize the other
| parties if there's more than one to choose from _and_ your
| governments are coalitions that may require you to genuinely
| work together next time.
| cozzyd wrote:
| Here's a former PA lawmaker, nearly elected to US congress,
| who may have been part of the group that breached the
| capitol:
|
| https://twitter.com/Redistrict/status/1346938310359396354
| rement wrote:
| Trump has called for everyone to go home. We will see if they
| listen to him.
|
| https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/13469288825958850...
| standardUser wrote:
| Trump also specifically said that he loves the insurgents that
| have occupied the nation's capitol. So a mixed message at best.
| d23 wrote:
| This is very blatantly a continued instigation, not an actual
| call to go home.
| bilekas wrote:
| How was it so easy to breach the building ? I see some videos of
| people just smashing basic windows, I really would have expected
| it to be more secure.
|
| These are supposed to be some of the most secure in the US??
|
| National Guard request was denied apparently.
|
| Anyone remember how many were deployed during BLM protests..
|
| America is now one of 'those' countries. All it took was 4 years.
| Wow.
| mhh__ wrote:
| They probably let them in because they don't want to be the one
| that starts shooting first.
|
| The national guard will probably be activated at some point and
| if they do there could be a bloodbath.
| bilekas wrote:
| There is video of them breaking through the windows and
| doors.. Nobody was 'let' in.
| mhh__ wrote:
| But they didn't immediately start shooting them is my point
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| Legislatures in many countries are not heavily secured. That is
| why protestors taking over the floor of the legislature is a
| fairly common thing (e.g. Taiwan not too long ago). The US
| Capitol is a major tourist site, tours are held daily and the
| building is supposed to seem open to the people whom it
| represents. What is secured is a nearby facility to which
| legislators can be evacuated in emergencies.
| gorbachev wrote:
| This was completely predictable after what happened in
| Bunkerville, NV.
| daniel-thompson wrote:
| This is stupid. At the end of the day, a lot of these clowns are
| going to be injured and/or in jail, and Joe Biden is still going
| to be president on January 20th.
|
| EDIT - Just to be clear, I'm saying the rioters are stupid, not
| anything/anyone else.
| content_sesh wrote:
| In Portland and Seattle this summer, cops gassed entire city
| blocks and started cracking skulls after a few bottles got thrown
| at them. But here they practically let the fascist mob walk into
| the capitol.
|
| And some people say that white privilege doesn't exist...
| doctorbaum wrote:
| Flagged? Why would this thread be flagged?
| josefresco wrote:
| It's not anymore, dang updated the thread.
| whatever1 wrote:
| Who flagged it ?
| [deleted]
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| Boy do I wish there was a place to discuss politics in a
| dispassionate way. I find these events fascinating from a
| historical and sociological point of view. It really is history
| in the making.
|
| HN is pretty good at this when it comes to other topics, when
| when it turns political, everyone pulls out their partisan
| membership card.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| For those of us who have to live in a nation that used to be
| solidly small-d democratic and seems to be trending in a
| different direction, it can be hard to be dispassionate about
| these issues. If you want a forum in which to dryly discuss
| momentous events, you might be looking for one that contains no
| one affected by those events.
| im3w1l wrote:
| The curse of politics is that as soon as any place for
| discussing it gets a reputation as being trustworthy, it
| becomes a valuable target to take over, sabotage or smear.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| I am American, but thanks for your sanctimonious dismissal.
|
| Discussing political events in a rational manner will _never_
| be a bad thing.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| I didn't say it was bad, I said it was difficult for many.
| My advice applies to anyone seeking dispassionate discourse
| on current events, no matter their background. It will be
| difficult to find such conversation among people affected
| by the events. That's all.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| Fair enough. Sorry if my reply was too hostile.
| 6a74 wrote:
| What do these protestors hope to accomplish?
| dr-detroit wrote:
| They will try to intimidate everyone with violence same thing
| they did in Russia to install Yeltsin.
| [deleted]
| Sharlin wrote:
| I highly doubt they have any sort of a plan. Just anger and
| hatred.
| metaxis78 wrote:
| They say that they believe an election was stolen (without
| evidence), and that they want the democratic election to be
| overturned (according to their signs).
| Izkata wrote:
| There is a crap-ton of evidence of fraud, but it's not been
| proven or disproven it could have flipped the election
| because no one is being given a chance in court. Almost all
| of the cases that have been dismissed have been dismissed on
| procedural grounds - sued the wrong entity, someone else
| should have sued, waited too long/should have waited longer,
| etc. One IIRC was even dismissed because "even if this was
| true, it would not have flipped the election, so it's not
| worth our time".
| biaachmonkie wrote:
| "There is a crap-ton of evidence of fraud" ??
|
| Where? Certainly not presented in any court case!
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Lack of evidence is the main reason those cases have
| failed. Lots of claims, no evidence.
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/55561877
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-
| election_lawsuits_relat...
|
| >Nearly all the suits were dismissed or dropped due to lack
| of evidence;[6] judges, lawyers, and other observers
| described the suits as "frivolous"[7] and "without
| merit".[8]
| metaxis78 wrote:
| You made a ton of claims and provided evidence for none of
| them.
| samvher wrote:
| Sources?
| razius wrote:
| Sadly this is the case, there's blatant election fraud
| evidence and the other side decided to look away just
| because they were the ones that won. Now people can't
| understand why the taking of the Capitol building is taking
| place.
| polotics wrote:
| Could maybe your Romanian perspective and memories be
| clouding your understanding? Do you have good links to
| the blatant evidence you mention?
| blackearl wrote:
| How can you trust the evidence coming from people who can't
| even file a lawsuit correctly? It's one thing if a few were
| dismissed for this reason, but nearly all of them means you
| are wasting time. The courts are right to throw out this
| nonsense. Courts that have been packed by the Republican
| party, mind you.
| FentanylFloyd wrote:
| > without evidence
|
| right https://files.catbox.moe/h45ttd.png
|
| thank God we have those """independent""" """factcheckers"""
| treeman79 wrote:
| For the country to not end up like Venezuela, Cuba, China, or
| any other socialist Marxist country.
| crummy wrote:
| Is it OK to avoid that if we have to sacrifice our democracy
| in the process?
| koolba wrote:
| If you truly believe the election was stolen then
| acquiescing to its results is sacrificing your democracy.
| maxerickson wrote:
| If your vote was counted in a fair election, your beliefs
| about the election aren't the thing that determines
| whether you have democracy.
| treeman79 wrote:
| China's cultural revolution left millions dead. Re-
| education camps are the norm. Zero freedom to go against
| party. Even though China is a "democracy"
|
| So yeah, a lot of people are scared s __tless.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| Do you really believe that 4 years of Biden will turn the
| US into Venezuela?? And in order to prevent this, you're
| willing to fight to turn it into a de-facto dictatorship?
|
| You have GOT to see the irony in your stance.
| julianlam wrote:
| There are only a handful of endings to this... hostage-taking
| of senators or house representatives, or failing that,
| occupation of the building.
|
| Considering that the senators and house representatives have
| been evacuated, the latter is looking more likely.
| CivBase wrote:
| According to some of the more conspiratorial comments in this
| thread, a coup.
|
| The actual answer is probably that they do not believe the
| claims of election fraud have been sufficiently investigated.
| I'm sure they want a more thorough investigation to be held
| before the election results are officially recognized by
| congress.
|
| That and they're just angry people who have resorted to rioting
| - like how a toddler resorts to a tantrum when it doesn't get
| its way. This appears to be an increasingly common theme with
| modern US politics.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| Let's be honest, no amount of proof would convince them. They
| would move the goalpost as far as necessary for them to get
| what they want. They just KNOW they WON the election and I
| fail to see what would budge their belief.
|
| I think it's a mistake to think that these people argue in
| good faith. I tried listening to what they have to say and
| they're not consistent, they're not coherent, they're not
| honest and they want the truth only if it confirms their
| beliefs.
| CivBase wrote:
| I agree. I'm not saying these people's demands are
| reasonable. I don't believe they are. OP just asked what
| their motivation was and I tried to give a serious answer.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| I understand. I just happen to side with OP on this, from
| where I'm standing, it looks like a coup attempt. It
| doesn't look conspiratorial at all. It looks like they're
| saying "fair elections" but they're meaning "Republican
| rule".
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| It's not conspiratorial! The president has stated, repeatedly
| and at length and to many different people, that he'd like to
| invalidate the election results and make himself the winner.
| This reflexive dismissal that he could mean what he says is
| coming very close to ending the country.
| CivBase wrote:
| That does not make this a coup. This is a riot. While there
| is no doubt that the rioters _want_ the election results to
| be overturned, there is no indication that they have the
| ability or intention to use force to make that a reality.
|
| These are angry people being disruptive and destructive.
| That's what a riot is. Calling it a coup is conspiratorial.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| There are many indications that they have the intention
| to use force to make it a reality. There was one
| protester standing at Pence's spot in the chamber,
| demanding that he come back and deliver the election to
| Trump!
|
| It's true that they don't seem to have the ability. But
| they didn't seem to have the ability to take over the
| Capitol building either. It's very dangerous to look at
| people trying their hardest to do a coup and dismiss it
| just because it'd be an uphill battle to make it work.
| CivBase wrote:
| One person shouting ridiculous demands does not a coup
| make.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Can we agree on a number then?
| CivBase wrote:
| I'd consider it a coup if there were an organized group
| with a remotely plausible plan for overthrowing the
| government.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Then we should be happy that they weren't a little bit
| more organized because then you might be looking at your
| elected officials as hostages. At this point in time
| their lack of ability should be counted down to luck, and
| nothing else.
| CivBase wrote:
| I agree that it's a good thing they weren't more
| organized. All riots would be more dangerous if they were
| more organized.
|
| Not sure what to make of the "luck" comment. I suppose
| we're always lucky that bad things aren't worse than they
| end up being.
| espresso_enigma wrote:
| Well, they halted the certification process, didn't they?
| dboreham wrote:
| Question worth asking. I'd suspect this is a huge tactical
| error because it forces mainstream politicians to pick a side
| between fascists and non fascists. Presumably most of them are
| going to pick the non side. This marginalizes the fascists
| which seems like a forced error.
| polotics wrote:
| It depends on how long a game is being played, this is more
| like 1923 Weimar Republic than 37...
| RealityVoid wrote:
| I'm not even from the US, but this might just be the
| scariest comment I read in this thread so far.
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| Would you mind explaining to the ignorant people (I'm
| ignorant people).
| RealityVoid wrote:
| Not ignorant, especially if trying to understand
| something!
|
| The idea with Nazi Germany was that it didn't suddenly
| pop into existence, as many would believe. It had a long,
| gradual, slide into it.
|
| In 1932 there was The Beer Hall Putsch [0] when the nazis
| tried to get the power but failed. As a consequence,
| Hitler was jailed and wrote his book and after he got out
| he continued his ascent.
|
| The scary implication of the comment is that even if this
| coup attempt fails, the USA is down a long slide out of
| democracy and this is just the beginning.
|
| It is quite scary for me as a non-US citizen because I
| used to look up to the US. Not anymore. The current world
| order is supported by US hegemony. Upending this could
| end up badly for the rest of the world, since transitions
| of power on the world stage are rarely peaceful.
|
| It's scary because the US seems heading down this road
| that is eerily similar to what happened in the past. And
| they say that history doesn't repeat itself, but it does
| rhyme.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_Hall_Putsch
| [deleted]
| redisman wrote:
| Terrorism is the unlawful use of force or violence against
| persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government or its
| citizens to further certain political or social objectives.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| Is this a coup?
| jacquesm wrote:
| Rhetorical question? If not a coup then certainly an attempted
| coup.
| polotics wrote:
| More of a dress rehearsal.
| neaden wrote:
| Yes. Armed protestors storming the capitol and taking over the
| legislative chambers at the request of the defeated president
| is 100% a literal coup.
| nso wrote:
| To which the penalty could be death. I doubt it will come to
| that, but these clowns are over their head.
| zucker42 wrote:
| Hell no we shouldn't kill people for this. I can hardly
| think of a more damaging and terrible way to combat these
| crazies.
| meepmorp wrote:
| Trump will blanket pardon them.
| [deleted]
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Not after January 20th.
| silexia wrote:
| If penalties like this are not enforced against violent
| attacks that intend to change the results of an election,
| then America will lose it's democracy.
| Spivak wrote:
| Executions are more about theatrics than being a
| reasonable punishment. There is basically no reason
| someone who's in custody and not posing or posing an
| /immediate/ threat to life and limb should be killed. And
| it won't have the effect you want anyway- you'll end up
| martyring them.
| manfredo wrote:
| Where are you reading that the protestors are armed? The
| linked NPR article does not say so. The NYTimes coverage [1]
| mentions that people posted pictures of weapons on Facebook
| on Tuesday, but does not mention that the people in the
| Capitol are armed.
|
| Breaching into government buildings in response to spurious
| allegations of electoral fraud is bad enough - there's no
| need to taint the message with embellishment, and doing so
| gives ammunition to people who want to claim that critics of
| these events are spreading falsehoods.
|
| 1. https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/01/06/us/electoral-vote
| neaden wrote:
| The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/us-
| news/live/2021/jan/06/georgia... as well as first person
| accounts on Twitter from people who work in the capital.
| vlozko wrote:
| If you've seen the NSFW video of the protestor getting shot
| in the neck while in the Capitol building, you would have
| noticed someone next to her holding a semi-auto rifle
| (AR-15, my best guess).
| Nimitz14 wrote:
| That're obviously the police...
| manfredo wrote:
| That guy is almost certainly police, seeing as he's
| shouting at the people to leave the building:
| https://i.imgur.com/teOuPwU.png
|
| https://i.imgur.com/kJZnAHc.png
|
| https://i.imgur.com/zzQWeZZ.jpg
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Not sure you can count tear gas and fire extinguishers as
| "armed" (that's what CSPAN is showing and reporting).
|
| Then again, the lack of firearms is probably why Capitol
| Police are playing it so calm.
| Spivak wrote:
| I mean my city counted wood shields, water bottles, and
| leaf blowers during the BLM protests. I don't think
| either group is armed but we should at least be apply the
| label consistently.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| babyshake wrote:
| It should be treated as a coup attempt.
| mhh__ wrote:
| This (aside from the realisation of how fragile american
| democracy is) isn't yet, but in the Pa. State Senate they have
| realised they can just refuse to swear in the newly elected
| democratic senator and refuse to let the Democratic Lt. Gov.
| Preside.
|
| These Republicans (particularly Ted Cruz) aren't stupid enough
| to believe their own words, but they're seriously playing with
| fire risking their countries democracy in the name of a '24 run
| at a time when China is only getting stronger.
| dunce2020 wrote:
| lmao no, just retards doing retard things.
| awnird wrote:
| https://twitter.com/AmyEGardner/status/1346899227964813314
|
| Armed fascists now taking the fight to Georgia. The republic is
| dead.
| justin66 wrote:
| This is sadly just another day at the office for Georgia
| election officials. Not really comparable to what's going on in
| the Capitol (the AJC didn't even have mention of it on their
| webpage last I checked)
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Not just yet, it's not.
|
| You sure seem eager to push that POV, though...
| Animats wrote:
| The riot is winding down. The Capitol Police cleared the building
| hours ago, and many of the crowd just hanging around have left.
| More cops from Virginia and DC have arrived, and are slowly
| pushing the remaining crowd back.
|
| Tomorrow, Congress will finish counting the electoral votes. I
| suspect that some, if not all, of the planned objections will not
| be made.
| _RPL5_ wrote:
| I sure hope so. There were dudes inside Congress waving rebel
| flags. Trump and friends probably didn't count on that when
| they were posturing on Twitter.
|
| Hopefully, that scares them straight and cools some heads. And
| not just Trump, but the entire political class who've been
| playing loose with divisive/identity politics for the last
| decade.
| tmpz22 wrote:
| The Confederate flag is being flown outside the senate floor [1]:
|
| [1]: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErEof0AXYAkTU-w.jpg
| boringg wrote:
| I am curious if federal prison is worth the photo op?
| paganel wrote:
| They're probably going to give an amnesty for today's events,
| what are they going to do? Throw thousands of people in jail
| and make them political martyrs?
| commandlinefan wrote:
| Especially difficult after having spent a year praising
| (often violent) protests.
| djakaitis wrote:
| Execute for treason?
| boringg wrote:
| I think they will go after key figures - that would be my
| take and rightfully so.
| runako wrote:
| Yes?
|
| The opposite sends the message that you run a low
| probability of sanction if you attack the US Capitol. Very
| bad incentive.
| boringg wrote:
| Exactly. Are you an economist per chance? Incentive logic
| runs rampant in economics.
| jedimastert wrote:
| If not, Trump will for sure
| boringg wrote:
| By the time charges are laid he's out.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| Doesn't matter. He can pardon them before any charges are
| laid out, or after and he can give a blanket pardon for
| crimes related to whatever and to anybody involved,
| because the pardons don't have to be to a named person.
| boringg wrote:
| I thought this hasn't been determined to viable yet as as
| strategy.
| favorited wrote:
| It's happened before. For example, President Carter
| pardoned all Vietnam War draft dodgers.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| "It's happened before" doesn't actually mean that it is
| legally effective, unless it has also been challenged and
| prevailed in court.
| tartoran wrote:
| He doesn't even know who they are, he can pardon them
| only nominally not as a category.
| vkou wrote:
| That might work, but would you like to put your life on
| the line for the capital crime of treason and
| insurrection, with the hope that a non-specific pardon
| will shield you from the rule of law?
| tomjen3 wrote:
| I would not, but there are people who are not the same as
| me.
| vlunkr wrote:
| I think you have to be in a really bad place mentally do what
| they are doing. They're either incapable of seeing the
| consequences, or they're happy to be martyrs for what they
| think is a just cause.
| ecf wrote:
| Or they think they will be pardoned because why not? Trump
| already pardoned literal war criminals.
| tim333 wrote:
| I wonder if there will be consequences for Trump?
| andylynch wrote:
| Unfortunately this is also going to be another superspreader
| event. Odds are this will lead to fatalities even without
| this violence.
| mhh__ wrote:
| > Flagged
|
| Does anything matter if this doesn't? The chat is fairly civil.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| HN doesn't chat.
|
| We prefer to have constructive discussions. Most of the
| comments here are not constructive nor charitable.
| lol768 wrote:
| Yeah, I was thinking this. Is it not possible to vouch for a
| post?
|
| It's a bit more important than the usual "political" posts that
| get flagged.
| [deleted]
| alasdair_ wrote:
| Is there ANY credible evidence of fraud, anywhere? Or are people
| protesting solely because they trust Trump?
| ksk wrote:
| Saying there was absolutely zero fraud in this election is
| inaccurate, but saying the election was "stolen" is inaccurate
| as well. Every election has irregularities - most of it is
| people making honest mistakes on forms. As is typical, it is
| fairly minor in this election as well. Big picture - there are
| problems with electronic voting that have been researched into
| by many academics. I believe we must insist that the source
| code to all voting systems to be made public.
| vancan1ty wrote:
| https://hereistheevidence.com/ presents some evidences, up to
| reader to decide if credible/substantial or not
| alasdair_ wrote:
| Have you found anything credible? All I can find with random
| clicks are lots of very long youtube videos that don't ever
| seem to get to the point and links to voting laws in
| particular states without any context.
|
| It gives the impression of there being plenty of evidence,
| but non of the items I looked at actually upheld what they
| claim.
| mhh__ wrote:
| Do we know who runs that site? It could be accidental but it
| looks like a very low information way to barrage one's
| opponents and avoid specific criticism
| meepmorp wrote:
| Without hyperbole, this is textbook fascism.
| MrRiddle wrote:
| Fascist Trump can't even get anyone from attacking him
| publicly whatsoever. You really like to use that word, but
| are clueless and careless.
| mhh__ wrote:
| "Orange man bad" has not aged well. This has to be one of not
| many times in politics where someone has been worse than even
| his own opponents could dream.
|
| History will not look kindly on people who turned a blind
| eye.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| Well, a number of Trump's opponents did think we'd be
| living in a fascist dictatorship inside of a year after he
| was elected. That didn't happen. This is very, very bad,
| worse than I expected, but plenty of people on Twitter
| expected the imminent end of the United States as a free
| society.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Not for lack of trying.
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| Conspiracy theory extremism slowly turning into domestic
| terrorism. It's not a matter of what is real or what isn't.
| It's a matter of bullying the rest of the population to accept
| their beliefs as the truth.
|
| https://www.hstoday.us/subject-matter-areas/infrastructure-s...
| 0xB31B1B wrote:
| no, there is no credible evidence of fraud, this is a fascist
| brown shirt style coup
| pibechorro wrote:
| There is very suspect video evidence of hidden away votes being
| snuck in once the room was cleared and those votes pushed Biden
| on top after Trump was winning. There is also iffy statistical
| data on the numbers of votes.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Have there been any Benford's Law studies? Post them!
| Rapzid wrote:
| Appeal to authority, what higher authority than the POTUS? For
| weeks people have been telling Trump and his enablers they were
| playing with fire. Well..
| f430 wrote:
| There definitely appears to be people on camera admitting to
| committing a serious felony:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txXfT2nLJ-w
|
| I don't think this is a Trump/Biden issue like it has been made
| out to be.
|
| If there are claims of election fraud, then let's see the
| evidence and release the audit of Dominion voting machines
| which many people laid down their professional lives to back
| the claims of election fraud.
| isbadawi wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Veritas
|
| Just fyi, Project Veritas has a decade-long track record of
| intentionally putting out misinformation.
| f430 wrote:
| Which has nothing to do with the content of the video where
| the person is seen admitting to essentially have committed
| election fraud by allowing thousands of people without a
| fixed home address to vote with a false one.
| [deleted]
| aigen001 wrote:
| Project Veritas should not be treated as a credible source.
|
| The Georgia election official has debunked these claims.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEYvOTvqlFs
| f430 wrote:
| Did you even watch the video? Do you not see the person
| admitting to committing a felony and allowing people
| without a fixed address to vote?
|
| I feel like this is really dangerous, when we begin
| rejecting video evidence of the perpetrator admitting their
| crimes because other mainstream media labels it as "fake
| news".
|
| Reminds me of the 1984 and Ministry of Truth
| aigen001 wrote:
| I watched the 40 second clip of a man chase another man
| with a microphone. Then a person who works at a homeless
| shelter says people used the homeless shelter as an
| address to vote. He alleges some of the people who
| registered their address to the homeless shelter are
| dead. At no point does Adam Seeley allege that those dead
| people voted or were counted in the final vote.
|
| Have you watched the Georgia voting systems manager,
| Gabriel Sterling, debunk the fraudulent claims of voter
| fraud?
| InitialLastName wrote:
| If that's your complaint, you should be really mad at
| Donald Trump for using an illegal residence as his voting
| address, right?
| alasdair_ wrote:
| People without a fixed address ARE allowed to vote. They
| are still residents of the state. I'm not sure what the
| point of this clip is - the thing that was admitted is
| completely correct and legal.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| Georgia law doesn't require having a fixed address to
| vote. You need to maintain GA residence. The full text of
| the relevant statute is here[0]. Note section 15b.
|
| The form requires an address for contact and precinct
| information. People without a permanent address can use a
| common place of residence (where they can receive mail),
| such as a shelter, or if they don't have one of those,
| they can register in the park they sleep in [1].
|
| Ultimately, it is up to the district registrar to
| determine if the residency is legitimate, but this is
| decided not based on the existence of a conventional
| fixed address, but based on the demonstrated intent to
| reside in the state (and more specifically the
| municipality).
|
| [0]: https://law.justia.com/codes/georgia/2010/title-21/c
| hapter-2...
|
| [1]: https://faq.georgiavoter.guide/en/article/how-to-
| register-to...
| f430 wrote:
| > You need to maintain GA residence.
|
| Which people without fixed address do not. We are talking
| vagabond voting without residence so they used the
| shelter's address.
|
| You can criticize Veritas all you want but that is not
| the focus here. Someone was caught on the record
| admitting to committing a felony in the state of Georgia.
| mikem170 wrote:
| Georgia made residency requirements for voting that allow
| the homeless to vote. That's their prerogative. Same
| rules allow people who live year round in expensive
| recreational vehicles to vote, also.
|
| Different organizations define residency differently.
| There is no single accepted way to prove residency.
| Sometimes a drivers license does the trick. Usually to
| get a a drivers license you need a utility bill or a
| lease. To get in-state tuition you need to prove a year
| of residency. Proof of residency for state taxes is more
| complicated, and varies by state. Residency is different
| than domicile, etc. As someone who has moved around a lot
| I've bumped into quite a bit of this.
|
| There's nothing in the constitution saying that a person
| needs to own or rent a house to vote.
| kyrra wrote:
| Every election has fraud, and this one was no different. It's
| just a matter of the scale of fraud. From all evidence thus-
| far, this election is not all that different than past
| elections when it comes to voter fraud. There was more chance
| for fraud (due to more mail-in voting), but no one has been
| able to prove it was large enough to impact any election
| result.
|
| So yes, Trump has been riling up his base with words of stolen
| election, which has led to this moment.
| rorykoehler wrote:
| The fraud was the black voter suppression.
| standardUser wrote:
| The only serious problems we can see from the 2020 election,
| aside from the normal voter suppression that has long been
| common in many states, was the deliberate hobbling of the
| USPS by a Trump appointee and donor that results in an untold
| number of ballots not being counted that would have been
| counted had the USPS been operating at it's normal
| efficiency.
| TehCorwiz wrote:
| I'm frustrated and saddened, but not surprised. What can we do
| but watch and seethe and hope? What words, shouts, or ululations
| can be uttered to bring relief to ourselves or our nation? What
| conversation is left?
| dang wrote:
| All: I've turned off the flags because this is the sort of new
| phenomenon that the site guidelines explicitly allow for:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
|
| Re the comments about flags: the messy tug-of-war that you're
| seeing between upvoting, flagging, and moderating is what always
| happens with this kind of story, so if you're drawing any
| significant conclusion about HN from this one case, it's probably
| exaggerated:
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
|
| While I have you: before commenting, make sure you're up to date
| on the site guidelines:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. They've changed
| significantly in the last year. Here's the kind of discussion we
| want: thoughtful, reflective, substantive. Here's the kind we
| don't want: snarky, reflexive, attacking. Make sure you can
| follow the core rule--" _Be kind._ "--and its corollary, which
| hasn't yet made it into the doc: " _If you 're hot under the
| collar, please cool down before posting._" That's in your
| interest for two reasons: your views will be better represented,
| and you'll help to preserve the all-too-fragile commons that we
| all depend on.
|
| (Also, for those who haven't seen any of my annoying mentions of
| this yet, large threads on HN are currently paginated for
| performance reasons, which means you need to click More at the
| bottom of the thread to get to the rest of the comments--or like
| this:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25661474&p=2
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25661474&p=3)
| detaro wrote:
| When does it stop being"protests" in the reporting?
| Karunamon wrote:
| When windows start getting broken, buildings set on fire, etc.
| From what I can gather thus far, it seems like it's people
| being where they're not supposed to be and refusing to leave.
|
| _edit from downthread_
|
| And there we go, they're breaking in now. Time to clean house.
| danielsju6 wrote:
| Windows were broken, that's how the inurectionists entered
| the capitol.
| Karunamon wrote:
| Is there a source on that not coming from some rando's or
| politician's Twitter account?
| cipherboy wrote:
| CNN: https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/congress-
| electoral-co...
|
| Ctrl+F for windows.
| Karunamon wrote:
| There it is, then. Thanks!
| pfraze wrote:
| Videos are easy to find
| tstrimple wrote:
| When the protesters have darker skin.
| FentanylFloyd wrote:
| I think those were "mostly peaceful fires"
| [deleted]
| syshum wrote:
| Most of the reporting by media around events around the
| nation in response to police violence were called protests
| even as they devolved into violence and clear rioting so I am
| not sure where you get this position from
| JxLS-cpgbe0 wrote:
| That's not true
| syshum wrote:
| So your response hinges on a single news outlet calling
| it riots and that is to represent all of the media?
| bananabiscuit wrote:
| If the media didn't have double standards, it wouldn't have
| any standards at all.
| mynameishere wrote:
| When they have darker skin the media will upgrade it to a
| "peaceful protest".
| Solvitieg wrote:
| In fairness, the 100 days of riots in Portland were also
| described as peaceful protets
| dunce2020 wrote:
| Disrupting a seat of power is a protest. Burning down some
| random gas station is not.
|
| EDIT: Attacking -> Disrupting
| Retric wrote:
| Attacking a seat of power is an insurrection. Occupying /
| disrupting a seat of power in a protest. It's a thin but
| critical line.
| dunce2020 wrote:
| Corrected my comment, they're disrupting a seat of power.
| meepmorp wrote:
| Neither is a protest, both are acts of violence.
| dunce2020 wrote:
| and you're a retard.
| voisin wrote:
| I am shocked and horrified that it is taking so long to clear
| those who have breached the Capitol. There is more police
| efficiency and aggression in a run of the mill BLM protest.
|
| Edit: for example:
| https://twitter.com/RedR1dngHood/status/1346908557560537091
| danbolt wrote:
| I think the people there are looking for a grand narrative with
| the feeling of a struggle between two sides. My guess is that
| Washington is attempting to avoid creating that environment to
| minimize conflict. That's why we see the burglars strolling
| like tourists guided by red velvet. [1]
|
| As a disclaimer, I'm not American, so take my feelings with a
| grain of salt.
|
| [1]
| https://twitter.com/JenniferJJacobs/status/13469023580061040...
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| I'm American and that possibility has occurred to me too. The
| police are trying to manage the situation without inflaming
| it, and especially without creating some Tienenmann-lite
| incident of violence.
| danbolt wrote:
| I think there's a bit of honesty to it as well. I bet the
| burglars need to see themselves as breaking into Mordor and
| challenging Sauron to save Middle-Earth. As much as
| Congress houses difficult things like partisan deadlock and
| lobbying, it's not a villain's lair in an action movie. I
| think it was smart of the capitol organizers to ensure
| Congress was secure, and then stay away from posturing like
| a James Bond villain.
| MivLives wrote:
| It's being live streamed on Twitch by people inside too. They
| locked them inside.
| hertzrat wrote:
| There is nothing those protestors would like more than a
| violent response. Imagine the social media response. The
| leadership is scared of sparking a bigger fire
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| What'll really spark a bigger fire is if the protesters are
| given time to do what they say they want, and recruit some
| congressmembers to declare Trump the election winner.
| cmurf wrote:
| This is nonsense, it's not how it works, Congress cannot
| choose the president unless no candidate gets a majority of
| Electoral College votes. Trump unquestionably lacks a
| majority of state certified Electoral College votes. And
| Biden unquestionably has a majority of state certified
| Electoral College votes - and per the Electoral Counts Act
| those certifications made by the safe harbor date, which
| was December 8, _cannot_ be disputed by Congress.
|
| Everything else going on is a show. And it is working
| insofar as Trump's sore loser supporters have sent him more
| money after the election than before the election. They
| love the lies. They hate the truth. They lack the coping
| skill to deal with truth, so they sign up for the lies.
| They purchase lies as a product, that is what Trump sells.
| It's who he has always been and always will be.
|
| Trump right now: _we had an election, that was stolen from
| us, it was a landslide election, and everyone knows it,
| especially the other side...but you have to go home now, we
| have to have peace._
|
| _they took it away from me, from you, from our country_
|
| _this was a fraudulent election...so many are treated with
| evil...go home in peace_
|
| Translation: We won, but you gotta go home. They stole from
| me, from you, from the country, but you gotta go home. They
| are evil, but you gotta go home.
|
| He is unfit for office. He's ill. The proper thing to do is
| wrap up the counting of ascertained Electoral College
| votes, declare Biden the winner. And then the House should
| immediately impeach Trump. And then the Senators can choose
| to remove him from office and ban him from ever holding
| public office again. That is the proper way to end this.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Storming the Capitol building isn't how it works either,
| but it happened! The whole point of a coup is to dictate
| new rules for how it works, by looking at things you
| cannot do and deciding to do them. Don't get me wrong,
| "they come back and finish the count" is the
| overwhelmingly likely outcome, but we can't ignore coup
| attempts just because they aren't likely to work.
| hertzrat wrote:
| They lose if they do something as distasteful as blackmail
| congressmembers to take a vote. They would lose support
| from everybody
| Ancapistani wrote:
| > Imagine the social media response
|
| No, this is a key difference between the sides of this issue.
| The people in DC aren't looking for a response on social
| media - they're looking for a response in real life, with
| arms if necessary. I think they may well get it this time,
| too.
|
| The Left doesn't seem to realize the table stakes are
| different with this.
| awnird wrote:
| The police and the fascists are on the same side.
| hertzrat wrote:
| "The Police" is an over generalization. We shouldn't ask the
| police to both intervene while also calling all of them
| fascists.
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| We can't identify a problem _and_ demand a solution?
| hertzrat wrote:
| There are police officers who mean well and also officers
| who abuse their power; and police forces in different
| places have different institutional cultures and
| leadership, some of which are odious and some of which
| are good. "The Police" is a very broad term
| bilbo0s wrote:
| What we probably shouldn't have done was to hire the people
| we hired to be police in the first place. That was the
| mistake from which all others followed. If the people you
| hire to police your laws will only police the laws they
| want to police, or even worse, will only police the laws
| against a certain demographic of people, then you don't
| have a police force. And acting like these people are
| police inevitably leads to scenes like the one we see
| today.
| watwut wrote:
| This amounts to argument that if cops feelings are hurt, it
| is ok for them to let things just happen. I mean, we expect
| more from snowflake sjws.
| philosopher1234 wrote:
| Yes we should, because both are apt.
| babyshake wrote:
| Some of those that work forces Are the same that burn crosses
| [deleted]
| alexilliamson wrote:
| Now you do what they told ya
| TwoNineA wrote:
| Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!
| tharne wrote:
| If you're going to make a sweeping assertion like this, it's
| important to show some concrete facts to back it up. Kind of
| like claiming an election was rigged :)
| ezluckyfree wrote:
| you're literally watching cops allow right-wing terrorists
| to stage a coup
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| You're _literally_ watching cops putting their bodies in
| the way to try their absolute hardest to stop it.
| ezluckyfree wrote:
| https://twitter.com/bubbaprog/status/1346920198461419520?
| s=2...
|
| Ah yes this looks like that
| _jal wrote:
| If the marked difference in behaviors of cops, depending on
| the identity of the protestors, over the last year does not
| convince you, I don't know what will.
| yardie wrote:
| Here you go:
|
| https://theintercept.com/2020/09/29/police-white-
| supremacist...
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/27/white-
| suprem...
|
| https://oversight.house.gov/sites/democrats.oversight.house
| .... (2006)
| tobobo wrote:
| Here's a police officer taking a selfie with one of the
| people storming the capitol today.
| https://twitter.com/bubbaprog/status/1346920198461419520
| rorykoehler wrote:
| This is a coup attempt. Why was the Capitol not cordoned
| off ahead of time (they even do this for small evictions
| etc) and why have the attackers not been shot? This is
| absurd. What kind of facts do you need?
| umvi wrote:
| How is this a coup attempt? A handful of random, largely
| unarmed citizens can't just take control of the
| government by storming one building. The federal
| government is massive, not to mention all the individual
| state governments. A coup would have to be led by actual
| politicians or military leaders in positions of power.
| vkou wrote:
| How is a mob storming the legislature at the direction of
| a politician not a coup attempt?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > How is a mob storming the legislature at the direction
| of a politician not a coup attempt?
|
| Especially when the specific goal is to use threats of
| violence to induce officials to overturn the election in
| which the inciting politician was defeated.
|
| This is an act of terrorism meant to effect an auto-coup.
| paxys wrote:
| They literally stopped the certification of Biden's win.
| What exactly do you call it?
| umvi wrote:
| Disruptive? If that's the definition of a coup, than this
| isn't a coup any more than an earthquake or hurricane is
| a coup.
| EliRivers wrote:
| Are they now controlling the military? Have they taken
| control of the media and silenced their critics? Have
| they rounded up in a sudden sweep all those in government
| who might oppose them? Are they pushing out prepared
| messages about how this is being done for the benefit of
| the people? Have they actually done anything involving
| taking control and establishing themselves as the
| legitimate authority, deposing the existing government?
|
| If this is a coup, it's the shittest coup ever, being
| done by the least competent coup conspirators I've ever
| seen.
| kadoban wrote:
| It doesn't stop being a coup attempt just because they
| suck at it. A stupid criminal is still a criminal.
| tashoecraft wrote:
| It's a coup, an uncoordinated, piss poor attempt at a
| coup, but a coup non the less.
| jandrese wrote:
| One does wonder if there is any kind of endgame strategy
| here. Are they going to occupy the Capitol building until
| Jan 20 so they can claim that Biden isn't president
| because the vote didn't happen?
|
| This seems a bit spur of the moment. Also, didn't
| President Trump say he was going to lead them to the
| Capitol building in his speech? Where is he?
| manfredo wrote:
| A tantrum.
|
| Nobody serious is under any illusion that Biden will not
| assume the Presidency. In a way, I think this kind of
| rhetoric empowers these kinds of protests and inspires
| people into thinking these actions might actually work.
|
| In reality, the long term impact of these actions is only
| going to hurt Republicans. As per The Economist [1], in
| 2000 the election was decided by only ~600 votes in
| Florida but still only 36% of Gore supporters felt the
| election was fraudulent. Only 23% of Clinton voters felt
| the same in 2016. Yet now, with an election decided by
| margins an order of magnitude larger than in 2016 and
| three orders of magnitude larger than in 2000 a
| staggering 88% of Trump supporters surveyed said they
| believed the election was fraudulent. This kind of brazen
| hypocrisy, and now coupled by the actions today, are
| going to stick with the Republican party for a long time.
| Most of the Republicans I know are aghast. I'm sure the
| set of Republicans I talk to are not representative
| (mostly college educated professionals), and that they'll
| alter how they communicate with an outwardly liberal
| person like me (deliberately or instinctively). But I
| think the Republican party is going to recognize Trump as
| a catastrophe that is leaving a deep scar in the party.
|
| 1. https://www.economist.com/united-
| states/2020/11/21/donald-tr...
| polka_haunts_us wrote:
| Speaking as a relatively conservative person, I would
| love "The Party" to tell Trump to stuff it, as I would
| have for the past 4 years. The reality is, if you allow
| me to make a comparison, in the UK they had a similar
| situation in the Labor party with a leader chosen by the
| membership that was hated by "The Party". "The Party"
| went and told the leader to stuff it and eventually got
| rid of him. In the meantime they're on year 10 or 11 of
| continuous Tory rule, with at least another 3 ahead.
|
| It's really nice for left wing types to talk about
| Republicans doing the right thing and going to all out
| war with Trump for the health of the democracy, I want
| him gone too. But the Realpolitik for Republicans on that
| one is a bunch of self sacrifice while the Democrats
| enjoy their endless summer. I don't really blame them for
| taking the path they did, even though I abjectly hate it.
| manfredo wrote:
| Support for Trump was understandable in 2016 when it was
| unclear how he would actually behave in the Presidency.
| Most Republicans I know saw it as a faustian bargian:
| have a Republican wacko in the White House or a Democrat.
| But I really don't see this persisting in 2020. I would
| not be surprised if Republicans employ ranked choice
| voting for their primary, or increase the number of
| superdelegates or otherwise take steps to avoid one
| primary candidate succeeding through appealing to a
| minority of Republican primary voters. We're already
| seeing Republicans like Romney distinguishing himself
| through opposition to Trump.
|
| Ultimately who knows - Trump might actually live up to
| his promise to run in 2024. But I am dubious that
| Trumpism will be anything but an aberration in the party.
| He managed to lose as an incumbent. That's a substantial
| failure, and one I think Republicans will remember.
| polka_haunts_us wrote:
| I agree, unless the GOP leadership already has been
| filled with his true believers (I don't know, I don't pay
| good enough attention), they're going to go the Democrat
| route with a lot more institutional control to prevent a
| Trump type from winning again. At the end of the day, the
| last thing any party machine wants is to be marginalized
| by a single member, especially an entryist like Trump.
| rorykoehler wrote:
| Time for not taking them seriously is long past
| manfredo wrote:
| I agree we should take them seriously for what they are:
| a group of agitators that aren't going to actually effect
| any change. No amount of protest or agitation among these
| groups is going to alter the outcome of the 2020
| election. The main harm they're doing is to the
| reputation of the Republican party itself. The notion
| that there is any possibility of overturning the election
| is counterfactual. Legitimate avenues of disputing the
| election have been explored and exhausted. Biden is
| already working with a transition team. All important
| institutions like the military, judiciary, and others
| recognize Biden as the 46th President.
|
| I agree, we need to take these events seriously. And the
| ones talking about a coup _aren 't_ taking them
| seriously. The staggeringly high rate of belief in a
| fraudulent election, and agitators like the ones we're
| seeing today are _very_ serious indicators in their own
| right. Resorting to embellishment and hyperbole
| ultimately diminishes is not being serious.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| The event taking place in Congress, which the protesters
| have successfully stopped, was the formal declaration of
| a new President. Preventing the peaceful transfer of
| power is a coup, even if we expect it won't last long.
| alistairSH wrote:
| The current POTUS asked them to do this (both during
| today's rally and previously); it's literally an attempt
| at a coup.
| umvi wrote:
| Could you elaborate on what, specifically, POTUS asked
| the protestors to do that qualifies this as a coup?
| Protesting alone isn't enough to qualify as a coup in my
| book, even if some protestors disrupted congress. Every
| large protest these days has bad actors that break stuff
| and loot and disrupt (recent BLM ones come to mind).
| alistairSH wrote:
| Transcript from today's rally.
| https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/donald-trump-speech-
| sav...
|
| At the end, he literally calls for an unruly mob of armed
| insurrectionists to march down Penn Ave to the Capitol.
| Sure, he never used the words "break down the doors" or
| anything like that but what did he think was going to
| happen? He's been using dog whistles that hint at this
| for a month and here we are. Particularly given the armed
| stand-off at the Michigan statehouse earlier this year.
| umvi wrote:
| > So we're going to, we're going to walk down
| Pennsylvania Avenue, I love Pennsylvania Avenue, and
| we're going to the Capitol ... But we're going to try and
| give our Republicans ... the kind of pride and boldness
| that they need to take back our country.
|
| That's it? No calls to illegally seize power, nothing.
| Just to march down a road and show support to a subset of
| politicians in the hope that they do technically legal
| things that are helpful to his cause.
|
| and on Twitter:
|
| > I am asking for everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain
| peaceful. No violence! Remember, WE are the Party of Law
| & Order - respect the Law and our great men and women in
| Blue. Thank you!
|
| If this really constitutes a "coup", it's the worst,
| weakest coup I've ever seen.
| triceratops wrote:
| > If this really constitutes a "coup", it's the worst,
| weakest coup I've ever seen.
|
| That's how incompetent Trump is. Can't even coup
| properly.
| rorykoehler wrote:
| It's a trial balloon
| Daishiman wrote:
| How maliciously stupid do you have to be to ask this?
| scarmig wrote:
| Even Republican representatives are calling it a coup
| attempt. Storming a legislative building to prevent the
| legitimate succession of power and threatening the
| physical bodies of legislators is the definition of a
| coup.
|
| Everyone identified and involved in this should be
| arrested, tried, and if convicted executed.
| kortilla wrote:
| You are calling for murder, that's not appropriate on
| this forum.
| scarmig wrote:
| No, applying the maximum penalty allowed by law after
| going through the proper process isn't "murder."
|
| Treason and insurrection are serious matters.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| Declaring things "treason and insurrection" and then
| proceeding to summary execution sounds more like a
| tyrannical dictatorship than a free Republic. The
| protesters shouldn't be doing this, but that doesn't mean
| our police forces should start slaughtering our citizens.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Uh, the comment talks about trials and conviction, not
| "summary".
| ALittleLight wrote:
| The parent comment literally says "and why have the
| attackers not been shot?" It seems like gaslighting to
| say "Why haven't the protesters been shot" and then
| pretend like what was meant was "After they've been
| legally tried and convicted."
|
| The punishment for trespassing on the Capitol building is
| not death. Calling for the police to murder protesters is
| immoral.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The parent comment literally says "and why have the
| attackers not been shot?"
|
| No, it doesn't, nor does anything upthread back to the
| one that was originally mischaracterized as calling for
| murder, which says: "Everyone identified and involved in
| this should be arrested, tried, and if convicted
| executed."
|
| > It seems like gaslighting to say "Why haven't the
| protesters been shot" and then pretend like what was
| meant was "After they've been legally tried and
| convicted."
|
| It also seems like gaslighting to invent a quote that was
| never posted, and then accuse someone of gaslighting
| based on that quote.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25661643
| dragonwriter wrote:
| That's not the parent comment of the one pointing to "the
| parent comment", nor even the parent comment of the
| comment four steps upthread from your "the parent
| comment" reference accusing its parent of advocating
| murder, nor is it from the same poster as either of
| those.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| I don't think we can have a productive conversation. I
| told you what I meant, quoted what I was responding to,
| and linked it. You seem to be insistent on intentionally
| misunderstanding or splitting hairs so you can invent
| some way my comment was wrong ("It wasn't a parent
| comment! It was a parent of a parent...").
|
| Gaslighting and intentionally misunderstanding strike me
| as trolling behaviors.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I told you what I meant, quoted what I was responding
| to, and linked it.
|
| And its not a post by the person who you were accusing,
| but by someone else, far upthread, whose position the
| person you are attacking never endorsed.
|
| If you want to criticize the person who advocated summary
| execution for doing so, fine.
|
| But its ludicrous to attack someone who explicitly
| advocated arrest, trial and punishment based on criminal
| conviction for "gaslighting" for merely saying in a later
| comment that they were advocating exactly what they
| advocated earlier in the discussion, and not what someone
| else had advocated.
| kortilla wrote:
| Calling for the max punishment of people directly is
| inciting violence.
|
| > Treason and insurrection are serious matters.
|
| They are, but this is no different than people claiming
| Snowden should be "tried, convicted, and executed". It's
| just lipstick on calling for his murder because there is
| no actual presumption of innocence.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| You mean like the outgoing president, who tacitly
| encouraged this, or the congresspeople who support the
| "stop the steal" movement? There absolutely _are_
| politicians and people in positions of power supporting
| this. A failed coup it may be, but it need to be
| successful to have been an attempt.
| [deleted]
| EliRivers wrote:
| But is it? It's a bunch of people with little idea how
| their own government works walking around and holding up
| flags. They're not actually deposing anyone, they're not
| taking control of anything. You don't suddenly start
| running the country by just walking into the big
| government meeting room and disrupting things. That's not
| a coup; I see no seizing of the reins of power here.
| caminocorner wrote:
| > rorykoehler 13 minutes ago [-] This is a coup attempt.
| Why was the Capitol not cordoned off ahead of time (they
| even do this for small evictions etc) and why have the
| attackers not been shot? This is absurd. What kind of
| facts do you need?
|
| Rory Koehler, why are you promoting violence and
| shootings on Hacker News?
| paganel wrote:
| > the attackers not been shot?
|
| Because that would have caused a bloodpath? Even the CCP
| didn't do that in Hong Kong, they let the protesters
| invade the local legislature and that was that, what are
| they going to do in there, anyway?
| tpmx wrote:
| Right. The Capitol building, while historically important
| isn't magical. Effective coups typically begin by taking
| control over TV broadcasting facilities.
|
| Maybe the next effective version will be hacking Facebook
| and Twitter, simultaneously...
| pmontra wrote:
| In a coup you race to arrest and maybe shot the leaders
| you're overthrowing. Anything else is less important.
| jandrese wrote:
| Hmm, how is Fox News/Breitbart/OAN/etc covering this...
| tpmx wrote:
| I listened in on the Fox News TV stream an hour ago: They
| were interviewing moderate republicans calling for calm.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Patriot on XM radio is currently ignoring it, which is
| interesting, because they played Trump speech almost in
| its entirety. Guy was egging them on.
|
| I guess they need to get talking points straight.
|
| edit: One of hosts broke the silence. He compared it to
| BLM and called on CNN to call it fiery, but mostly
| peaceful. I could not help but to chuckle.
|
| edit2: Even Trump got cold feet. He asked people to calm
| down. You can only play with fire for so long ( https://m
| obile.twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1346928882... ).
| wool_gather wrote:
| Good question; I just looked at OAN and there is nothing,
| just an earlier article about Trump's speech and one from
| early this morning "Citizens Gather in Washington,
| D.C..."
| sjg007 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that Foxnews was taken over.
| tpmx wrote:
| It seems like Fox News put a stop on supporting the
| extreme aspects of Trump at the end of November though?
|
| (Not supporting this horrible company that's responsible
| for so much suffering over the past two decades.)
| specialist wrote:
| Only when it became clear that Biden would win.
| bsanr2 wrote:
| They stormed the Capitol armed.
| rorykoehler wrote:
| Tiananmen square
| Miner49er wrote:
| If this was a BLM protest at the Capitol people would be
| getting shot if it got to this point.
|
| Edit: well apparently one women was shot.
| mrtosal wrote:
| Maybe not shot...but maybe tear gased? Rubber bullets?
| Remember when peaceful citizens protested the unlawful
| killing of a black man and the police happily used all of
| the above?
| jandrese wrote:
| Lots of pepper spray directly into the eyeballs from
| point blank range if the BLM protests are any indication.
| katbyte wrote:
| well i mean it's pretty common knowledge backed by many
| videos of cop vehicles being used in prodboys marches
| rallies ect, cops using unreasonable force against BLM, and
| almost none when its right wing protests, unlike the
| election where there is zero evidence.
|
| It's obvious watching things unfold, but also easy to find
| many news articles on it:
| https://newrepublic.com/article/157981/police-take-side-
| whit...
| s5300 wrote:
| You're kinda viewing the concrete fact right now buddy
|
| Enjoy your cognitive dissonance if you will though
| znpy wrote:
| I came to say this in a more ironic way, but this is clearer.
|
| During the BLM protests the police wasn't late at showing up
| fully armed.
| 45t3424rgf wrote:
| everything is fascist nice argument libtard
| Afforess wrote:
| Yep: https://twitter.com/MEPFuller/status/1346909804036386816
| user982 wrote:
| Police are standing back and standing by.
|
| https://twitter.com/jazmineulloa/status/1346898566703435779
|
| https://twitter.com/igorbobic/status/1346902299466203145
|
| https://twitter.com/bubbaprog/status/1346920198461419520
| csomar wrote:
| They are armed. You can't use tear gas against weapons but
| guns. Using guns will lead to deaths either way, so I think
| they are taking the correct stance.
| hertzrat wrote:
| Several people have claimed this, but none of the news
| sources mention it
| 13415 wrote:
| I haven't found a picture of a protester carrying a gun,
| but there are certainly vandals with clubs and bulletproof
| vests inside the Capitol, and some of them have broken into
| offices:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/01/06/us/washington-dc-
| pro...
| InitialLastName wrote:
| CSPAN reporting at least one law enforcement officer
| transferred to the hospital with a gunshot wound.
| hertzrat wrote:
| That sucks. I hope they are okay
| czhiddy wrote:
| The stark difference in the response to these "protests" vs the
| DC BLM protests:
|
| https://twitter.com/RedR1dngHood/status/1346908557560537091
| ngngngng wrote:
| "Some of those that work forces are the same that burn
| crosses"
| bilbo0s wrote:
| If this is true, America is a circus.
|
| How can you govern a nation under these conditions?
| moosey wrote:
| Haven't you noticed? We can't!
| ngngngng wrote:
| Our founders thought about that quite a bit, the answer
| they came up with? You can't.
|
| "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious
| People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any
| other." - James Madison
|
| As those were spoken over 200 years ago I think we can
| forgive the phrasing and understand the meaning of "moral
| and religious." And though at the time I'm sure these
| intelligent people thought that morality and religiosity
| were positively correlated, today I'm almost tempted to
| say that in my own relationships I see an inverse
| correlation, and I say that as a deeply religious person.
| watwut wrote:
| To be fair, to some extend it is like that everywhere.
| Armed services are generally attractive to people with
| authoritarian mindset - exactly like those movements.
|
| Plus, police can be more or less corrupt, but you never
| get 0 corrupt cops. You have always proportion of those
| who are work with criminals - helping or being direct
| members. You occasionally even have gangs composed of
| cops only.
| awnird wrote:
| It turns out you can't, which is why the republic is
| currently being toppled by fascist dictatorship.
| adsche wrote:
| I agree in principle. Especially that that response towards
| BLM was completely unjustified and plain wrong.
|
| However, after watching the streams for a while now, I feel,
| the current response _might_ have been the best to avoid
| shootings /deaths.
|
| Evacuation seems to have worked (so far, fingers are
| crossed). And I can definitely see right-wing terrorists
| shooting armed guards to get into the building and the
| chambers.
|
| The events are an absolute disgrace, but any stronger
| response might have triggered the terrorists even more.
|
| EDIT: Sorry, is this really such a stupid argument? Does the
| symbolism of entering the building trump that of a bloodbath?
|
| For context, right-wing groups 'stormed' German parliament a
| couple of months ago and nobody is talking about it anymore
| since nothing really happened.
| jandrese wrote:
| Shots have been fired in the capitol building.
| adsche wrote:
| Yes, one intruder has been shot.
|
| No injured guards/ officers/ staff/ journalists reported
| (afaik). I cannot help but think that this is a
| _comparatively!_ good outcome when dealing with armed
| right-wingers.
|
| EDIT: Heard on C-SPAN now: 5 reported injured now, 1 law
| enforcement. At least some of them gas related. I still
| stand by my opinion but I don't know for how long.
| watwut wrote:
| I have seen video of cops with hurt faces. Someone hit
| them.
| lefrenchy wrote:
| I think people are more trying to outline the difference in
| response, not calling for escalation. I think most people
| would want to see de-escalation in both cases. The point is
| more that the responses are clearly unequal.
| adsche wrote:
| Ok, thank you, that makes sense.
|
| I read replies from another thread before writing that
| (asking why people haven't been shot etc.) so I was on a
| different track here.
| staplers wrote:
| "America doesn't negotiate with terrorists"
| adsche wrote:
| I was not sure if this needed a response but here it
| goes: I don't think this is a negotiation but rather a
| tactical withdrawal.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=b.
| ..
| inscionent wrote:
| So you think they will be cleared?
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| What police efficiency during BLM protests? I have seen so many
| videos of looting and disorder that's enough for a couple of
| years for Russia and China to use in propaganda to justify
| their police state.
| TeaDrunk wrote:
| They fenced off the entire white house property and
| brutalized anyone who tried to cross the fence during BLM.
| These people apparently can just walk right in without even a
| bit of tear gas.
| mhh__ wrote:
| Well they tear gassed some protestors - not looters,
| basically just people milling around compared to this - so
| Donnie could hold a Bible upside down outside a church.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| They also let protestors take over a part of Seattle and
| declare an autonomous zone without police for a few weeks
| until two kids were shot.
| input_sh wrote:
| Here's police in front of US capitol during a BLM protest:
| https://twitter.com/Vanessid/status/1346906560769839107
|
| Compare it to what you see today.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| This is a photo of the DC National Guard at the Lincoln
| memorial. This is not the front of the US capitol.
|
| They couldn't prevent Gucci stores from being vandalized
| but they have preserved one of the iconic buildings of the
| US. At least they have their priorities straight.
| kortilla wrote:
| BLM took over an entire section of Seattle for weeks.
| delecti wrote:
| The cops pulled out before that happened, and it was quite
| peaceful there while that was going on. It's really not the
| same situation.
| paulnechifor wrote:
| It was peaceful. Very few people got murdered.
| viridian wrote:
| I'm not defending what's going on here, but CHAZ/CHOP had a
| higher murder rate than Somalia because of unelected
| volunteer "private security". Not sure how you see that as
| peaceful.
| ubercore wrote:
| Source, please. For both parts of that claim.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| I'm sure that was hyperbole, CHAZ/CHOP has 2 deaths and 4
| wounded in a 24 day period.
|
| So the murder rate is 2/24=0.0833_
|
| Somalia had a murder rate of 599 deaths in 2015. https://
| en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...
|
| 599/365=1.641
|
| That being said, at least 1 of the killings at the
| CHAZ/CHOP was by the self proclaimed security forces. As
| far as I know no one has ever been identified or held
| accountable. If the idea is that you do not need police/
| want to hold them to greater accountability because they
| are violent and kill innocent people but your replacement
| does the same thing...then what is the point?
| bumby wrote:
| Murder rates are typically reported on a per capita
| basis, not per day rate.
|
| Siri is reporting CHAZ had a population of 80(??) and
| Somolia a population of 15MM
| viridian wrote:
| Murder rate is a per capita statistic. Larger populations
| have more of all types of crime, almost by definition.
| umvi wrote:
| > and it was quite peaceful
|
| and also quite illegal and a complete breakdown of rule of
| law
| ALittleLight wrote:
| Quite peaceful? There were four shootings in ten days and
| at least two people killed [1]. I personally went there and
| within a span of an hour or so that I was there I saw a
| woman screaming about how she had been raped and I saw a
| mob of people violently ejecting a street preacher.
|
| 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_Autonomous_Z
| one#S...
| delecti wrote:
| In comparison to the violence that was going on _before_
| the cops pulled out of their precinct, it was definitely
| more peaceful. It was also many orders of magnitude more
| peaceful than the current situation at the Capitol.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| There were somewhere between 1 and 10 thousand people
| living in the zone. If we assume it was 10 thousand, and
| there were 2 murders inside of 10 days, then that works
| out to a rate of 73 (2*36.5) murders per year per 10k
| people, or 730 murders per 100k. That's approximately 7
| times the rate of the most murderous city in the
| world[1].
|
| I don't know what the murder rate in the neighborhood was
| prior to the occupation, but I'm pretty confident it
| wasn't nearly that high.
|
| 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_murde
| r_rate
| daenz wrote:
| I lived a block away from the CHAZ/CHOP and while it was
| mostly peaceful during the day, it was angry, aggressive,
| and deadly at night. I took video of a mob of people
| brutalizing (pushing to the ground, pinning on the ground)
| a Christian street preacher in broad daylight because they
| didn't like his annoying speech. At night, for days at a
| time, there were gunshots and people getting shot. If you
| think it was "quite peaceful" there, then you're getting
| your information from a severely biased source. I lived
| there and spent more time there than probably any of your
| sources.
| delecti wrote:
| My source is me, I live 3 blocks from it. Things were for
| sure a lot quieter at night with CHAZ/CHOP going on than
| they were in the week prior to it.
| eli wrote:
| And during that time they surrounded a federal courthouse...
| where people were free to come and go and court remained in
| session...
| burnthrow wrote:
| adios
| TeaDrunk wrote:
| They broke the windows of the capitol to enter it, and still
| made it all the way inside and are still roving.
| bengalister wrote:
| This to a certain extent reminds me of the yellow vest protests
| that we had in France end of 2018, beginning of 2019.
|
| Well it started for a somewhat different reason (a new "eco" tax
| on gas) but 1 of the protesters claim was that the president had
| only been elected by a quarter of French people and thus had no
| reason to stay in power. And we saw some protests turning violent
| with some protesters losing an eye, hit by rubber ball or gas
| canister (seen such comments on twitter about the US BLM protests
| and Trump/BLM protesters clashes). It was said that an helicopter
| was ready to fly the president out of Paris during the peak of
| the protests and some protesters managed to storm some ministry.
|
| The social unrest for me is partly to blame on social media. We
| also see that with the conspiracy theorists on covid19, but
| people don't watch traditional media anymore. They get
| information from Facebook groups or some twitter feeds, spend
| their time commenting on the same topic, see that some other
| people share the same opinion and thus think a large portion of
| their fellow citizen share the same point of view. It just
| reinforces extremist views or make them become dominant within a
| group.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Bye-bye, thread.
|
| Today certainly will reverberate decently, going forward.
| th48 wrote:
| This is partly a result of the left steadfastly opposing measures
| to protect the integrity of US elections, including strong voter
| ID laws (which are common throughout the developed world) out of
| fear that such measures will somehow disenfranchise people who
| apparently can't even spare an hour at the DMV every few years
| and can't afford to pay the small processing fee ($9-13, in
| NY[1]) to get an id. As a non-voter, such people being
| "disenfranchised" doesn't really bother me, and is a small price
| to pay for Americans collectively being able to have confidence
| in their election results.
|
| [1] https://dmv.ny.gov/id-card/get-non-driver-id-card-ndid
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Go read some English common law and get back to us
| ianleeclark wrote:
| Poor american left. When the right storms several capitol
| buildings, y'all're still the ones to bear the blame.
| th48 wrote:
| The people storming those buildings think an election was
| stolen from them, and no amount of 'fact check' thinkpieces
| in the NYTimes is going to convince them otherwise. Unless
| strong measures are put into place so both sides can have
| confidence in the outcomes of future elections, I expect more
| of this to occur.
| ianleeclark wrote:
| > The people storming those buildings think an election was
| stolen from them, and no amount of 'fact check' thinkpieces
| in the NYTimes is going to convince them otherwise
|
| Even with strong measures these people aren't going to
| accept something contrary to their world view. There's no
| satiating the blood lust of a fascist movement like Q Anon
| --thats why people refer to fascism as a death spiral.
|
| That's why I'm saying your blaming of the "left" is wrong:
| you're just trying to shoe horn yourself into the
| protagonist of reality by saying that this mob of lunatics
| agrees with your pet issue. They are literally storming
| capitol buildings, yet you think that they will suddenly
| trust the government in the future.
| th48 wrote:
| > Even with strong measures these people aren't going to
| accept something contrary to their world view. There's no
| satiating the blood lust of a fascist movement like Q
| Anon
|
| Only a fringe minority of the right actually believes in
| this. Most rightwingers, according to this Pew survey,
| don't even know what QAnon is, and surprisingly, they're
| even less likely to be familiar with it than
| progressives, suggesting progressives exaggerate its
| influence:
|
| > https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-
| tank/2020/11/16/5-facts-abo...
|
| The election integrity issue is another matter, and I
| could easily see most on the right coming away from the
| 2020 election thinking that it was stolen out from under
| them, through ballot box stuffing, dead voters, repeat-
| voters, and illegal immigrant voters. But I doubt the
| left will compromise even slightly on this issue, and
| will just keep 'fact checking' it in the hope that it
| will go away, and denounce measures like voter ID laws as
| disenfranchisement.
| fabianhjr wrote:
| > both sides
|
| Ah yes, the US two-party system.
|
| The Democratic and Republican Party agree that it is in
| their interest to retain the two-party system induced from
| FPTP voting and the Electoral College and that is unlikely
| to change through reform from my point of view.
|
| Some of the predominant ideologies in the US:
|
| https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Democratic_socialism (PSL)
|
| https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Liberal_conservatism (GOP)
|
| https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Libertarianism_in_the_United_St
| a... (US Libertarians)
|
| https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Social_democracy (DSA)
|
| https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Social_liberalism (DEM)
|
| etc.
| kharms wrote:
| Millions marched for women's rights, millions marched for gay
| rights, millions marched for voters rights, millions marched for
| democracy.
|
| Now this desperate man called for protest, and what did he get?
| Thousands.
|
| It's a tough moment for our nation, but I am reassured. First the
| people, then the courts, then the states, now congress and the
| Vice President have all repudiated Trump's dictatorial
| aspirations.
| egragaabad wrote:
| it' time for civil war!
| mhh__ wrote:
| National Guard activated now.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Source? (Not saying you're wrong, just... can't trust very much
| that you hear right now.)
| mhh__ wrote:
| CNN. Not just DC's too.
| azemetre wrote:
| Someone on reddit made an interesting comment about how many
| foreign agents are using this opportunity to plant bugs in
| various locations.
| christophilus wrote:
| I was just thinking that one of those loonies is probably
| planting a bomb somewhere hidden. Security is going to have to
| do an insane sweep of the place once before congress is allowed
| back in.
|
| Edit: Also, if someone wanted to go to war with the US, it
| looks like it'd be pretty trivial to shut down the central
| leadership... This is quite an event.
| mhh__ wrote:
| > I was just thinking that one of those loonies is probably
| planting a bomb somewhere hidden.
|
| This is not impossible, CNN are reporting at least two bombs
| have been rendered safe by EODs
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| And yet, we are supposed to follow the wisdom of the top
| comment with this all being about some "Free Speech"
| argument.
| Asmod4n wrote:
| Protests? This is treason and a coup. Trump most be held
| responsible for this.
|
| The police aren't even wearing riot gear while shots and teargas
| are being fired into the capitol.
| finnh wrote:
| shots and teargas fired into the capitol by protesters? can i
| get a cite for that? nothing i've read so far indicates that,
| outside of a bomb threat.
|
| (which to be clear is awful, these coup-attempting "protesters"
| are treasonous idiots, but i haven't yet heard of them
| shooting)
| Asmod4n wrote:
| https://twitter.com/mepfuller,
| https://twitter.com/olivia_beavers
| finnh wrote:
| thanks
| polka_haunts_us wrote:
| I can't vote to unflag things, but this really, really should not
| be flagged. It is just a _little_ more important than most
| political garbage.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Why, seriously? Those of us who care what is happening have the
| news and political discussion sites open in other tabs. No one
| who cares is ignoring current events. I think it's just as
| important to flag it as anything else that doesn't meet the
| rules.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| Please don't speak for so many people. I, for example, do not
| have such sites open.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Thanks. I edited to clarify that people who care have them
| open.
| tkzed49 wrote:
| On this website, we pretend that the entire world can be
| reduced to a good-faith discussion between two sides with equal
| merit. Anything that is incompatible with this is distasteful.
| dang wrote:
| That's not true, and you'll notice also that the OP is now
| not flagged.
| polka_haunts_us wrote:
| I just want to give the obligatory thank you dang, I
| moderated and eventually administrated a modestly sized
| sports forum for 5 years, and I didn't do half as good a
| job as you do solo modding this place, especially at times
| like this.
| realmod wrote:
| Claiming fraud without any evidence at all just because you lost
| is ridiculous. This is clearly a huge attack on democracy by
| Trump and his supporters/sycophants.
|
| Edit:
|
| How are the rioters even able to breach the security and
| allowed/able to stay there? Feels like some very bad policing -
| are they overwhelmed or is it intentional?
| rwcarlsen wrote:
| I don't understand how the same people who said we should defund
| the police are forcefully suggesting that we need a strong police
| response here? I'm not going to take any sides. All sides are so
| rife with hypocrisy that I just don't know what to say.
| himujjal wrote:
| also i am wondering how hackernews has become twitter.
| slowhand09 wrote:
| Also the Mayor of the city who refused to allow Nat Guard to
| stay in DC hotels, is the person who requested the Nat Guard
| come to "protect" DC. A big part of the discussion here shows
| how few people look beyond their own opinion for facts. I'm
| fortunate enough to have access to most news networks thru-out
| the day. I watch Fox; I watch CNN, MSN, etc. All are lying to
| some extent. All are shaping the "news" they feed you. CNN...
| is the least honest and objective. IMHO.
| neaden wrote:
| If the fire department came to my house right this moment,
| broke down the front door, and started spraying water
| everywhere I would be pretty upset! If they did it when my
| house was on fire and I called them, I would be pretty
| grateful! That's not hypocrisy, it is understanding there is
| a time and a place for things.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| That was out of DC guard not the DC units
| masklinn wrote:
| > But all sides are so rife with hypocrisy that I just don't
| know what to say.
|
| You apparently know how to both-sides insurgents invading the
| capitol so you've got that going for you.
|
| But here's a hint: "defund" and "abolish" are different words
| with different meanings, and using one rather than the other is
| purposeful.
| travisoneill1 wrote:
| No they aren't. According to the Oxford English Dictionary:
|
| de*fund
|
| prevent from continuing to receive funds. "the California
| Legislature has defunded the Industrial Welfare Commission"
| neonate wrote:
| There's a longstanding prison abolition movement that insists
| that that's what it means, and from what I've read, this
| whole line of thinking originated with that movement, so the
| distinction you're drawing is not so clear cut.
| dudul wrote:
| How would the police continue to operate without funds?
| jedimastert wrote:
| We don't need a strong police presence. There are armed people
| storming the Capitol building, this is absolutely the time for
| a military response.
| MrRiddle wrote:
| You have almost 80 million people thinking those people are
| correct. This is not a coup, this is a brink of civil war.
|
| And that's healthy, I believe opposing sides should have a go
| at it.
| jdashg wrote:
| This is one of the few things it's critical to have a defense
| force for, but it's not what police are primarily used for.
|
| I would love less counter-protest action in general, but it
| feels pretty reasonable to demand equal counter-protest action
| in comparison to other protests historically. What we see today
| is not the former.
| lambda_obrien wrote:
| I spent 10 years in the US Navy and these rioters are a disgrace
| to my and every other veteran's service. I'm ashamed to be an
| American today in the face of these traitors.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| This is so shameful.
| rcpt wrote:
| Smith and Wesson stock jumped up 20% so far
| croissants wrote:
| Dang, this isn't a joke [1].
|
| [1] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/SWBI/
| bananabiscuit wrote:
| I think it's important to remember that these are not
| "protestors". They are opportunistic rioters that are co-opting a
| legitimate movement as an excuse to behave like animals.
| inscionent wrote:
| co-opting...right
| [deleted]
| finnh wrote:
| what legitimate movement?
| bananabiscuit wrote:
| The movement to ensure accuracy in our electoral system,
| regardless of who that would favor as a result.
| inscionent wrote:
| Cool story, bro
| whatever1 wrote:
| Stop the mushrooms
| bananabiscuit wrote:
| No need for the attitude. It's perfectly legitimate to
| question a close race without having to be ridiculed for
| the entire time it takes to do so. If in the end it's
| legit, then it's legit. What's the problem with being
| sure there wasn't any non-sense?
| JxLS-cpgbe0 wrote:
| They have halted vote certification. This is the opposite
| of "being sure there wasn't any non-sense [sic]," this
| will slow down that process.
|
| If you actually believed in verifying the votes, you'd be
| against the rioters that are stopping that from
| happening.
| inscionent wrote:
| It wasn't a close election.
|
| There was a legitimate process.
|
| This is sour grapes, mashed into violence.
| bananabiscuit wrote:
| The 2016 election wasn't as close as this one but that
| didn't stop anyone from trying to overturn it in one way
| or another for close to 4 years.
|
| Antifa is also sour grapes.
|
| Approximately half the country voted for Trump, all my
| liberal minded peers can do is come up with excuses for
| how misguided and racist they must be and choose to
| charicaturize that group by their most extreme members
| instead of putting in even a minimum effort to see things
| from a different point of view.
| whatever1 wrote:
| Nonsense like not voting for the supreme leader? Get
| lost.
| jhayward wrote:
| That is a lie.
|
| There is no "movement to ensure accuracy". There is a coup
| attempt to alter the honest outcome of a legitimate
| election.
| LeafletOnDemand wrote:
| 'Far-Right Protestors'
|
| So if you're a Trump supporter you're now apart of the 'Far-
| Right'? I wonder if this labeling by the media has led to the
| protests we see today.
|
| As a side note, you never see 'Far-Left Protestors' as a title.
| Surely there had to have been some 'Far-Left' protests in recent
| memory.
| MivLives wrote:
| History in the making right here. This[1] might be an early
| contender for image of the year
|
| [1]https://twitter.com/igorbobic/status/1346906369232920576/pho..
| .
| makeworld wrote:
| Perhaps this one:
|
| https://twitter.com/igorbobic/status/1346906369232920576
| pizza wrote:
| It's this one for me, with the guns drawn at the entrance to
| the House Floor
| https://twitter.com/GettyImagesNews/status/13469076714259374...
| [deleted]
| bikeshaving wrote:
| As far as photos go, this photo isn't well composed or
| evocative of anything. Compare this photo to the one of the
| Ohio COVID protests last year (https://slate.com/human-
| interest/2020/04/ohio-protester-zomb...). I'm sure better
| photographs of the protest will emerge soon.
|
| This one is wow
| (https://twitter.com/ByMikeBaker/status/1346912374406615042).
| azernik wrote:
| I rather prefer this one, from the same thread - better
| composition, and the CSA flag adds some oomph
|
| https://twitter.com/igorbobic/status/1346902299466203145
| raphlinus wrote:
| Doesn't compare to this one:
| https://twitter.com/stevennelson10/status/134690995241006284...
|
| I have difficulty believing it's real, but it's from the
| account of a legit reporter. I predict, this will be one of the
| iconic images from the 53rd week of 2020.
| paganel wrote:
| That photo has "Escape from New York" [1] vibes. John
| Carpenter is a genius.
|
| [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082340/
| ethbr0 wrote:
| God, poor Capitol Police.
|
| Imagine having to try and reason with that crowd, to avoid
| having to shoot anyone.
| ecf wrote:
| The much more likely scenario is that they just let people
| through because an overwhelming majority of law enforcement
| are Trump voters.
| ra7 wrote:
| Here is a guy occupying the senate chair:
| https://twitter.com/TheRachLindsay/status/134691299372915916...
| adsche wrote:
| I would not want terrorists personally honored by such a
| distinction. Seems like something they'd aim for.
| xyst wrote:
| anybody know if there's any live streams from one of these idiots
| storming the capitol? apparently someone has been shot and in the
| chest inside the capitol
| enraged_camel wrote:
| This is history in the making. Whoever is flagging this, please
| kindly log off.
| TehCorwiz wrote:
| Where's the tear gas and rubber bullets? Where is the national
| guard? There was more police response for a fscking photo op!
| [deleted]
| dragontamer wrote:
| DC's National Guard just activated. It took a few dozen
| minutes, but its a full 100% response with 1100 troops
| allegedly being deployed.
|
| I think the optimists were hoping that these protesters would
| calm down if given the space. But at this point, its clear that
| they aren't calming down and need to be met with more force.
|
| Hopefully things remain somewhat peaceful. I don't think
| anyone's actually been hurt yet: just lots of property damage
| right now.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > DC's National Guard just activated. It took a few dozen
| minutes
|
| The Guard was requested _yesterday_ , in advance of the
| protests, to prevent this kind of thing.
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/d-c-mayor-calls-
| nationa...
|
| Took more than a few dozen minutes.
| dragontamer wrote:
| Hmm, good point.
|
| I've only really been following things when shit hit the
| fan today. It took multiple dozens of minutes after the
| Capital was breached before the National Guard was called
| in, which is still too long in my opinion.
| 09bjb wrote:
| https://twitter.com/jaboukie/status/1346888652216037376?s=21
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Where's the tear gas and rubber bullets?
|
| Tear gas was deployed and live fire (not rubber bullets)
| exchanged within the Capitol.
|
| But, yeah, allowing them to breach the Capitol and open fire
| within the building is very different than we've seen with
| protests with a different ideological bent. But it's consistent
| with how right-wing white protestors have been treated
| elsewhere in the country recently by law enforcement.
| Lammy wrote:
| TPTB want a tragedy to happen to manufacture societal consent
| for giving up our right to self-defense.
| WindyLakeReturn wrote:
| I wonder how many of the current group is armed compared to
| past incidents were rubber bullets were used. Is it possible
| that there is a concern that escalating force may result in an
| increase in violent response? Is it like a smaller version of
| MAD policy, one involving guns instead of nukes. Those who have
| the ability to ensure MAD get different treatment than those
| who don't have the ability to ensure MAD.
| philk10 wrote:
| The Defense Department has just denied a request by DC
| officials to deploy the National Guard to the US Capitol.
| TehCorwiz wrote:
| EDIT: Source -
| https://twitter.com/byaaroncdavis/status/1346908166030766080
|
| "BREAKING: A source tells me The Defense Department has just
| denied a request by DC officials to deploy the National Guard
| to the US Capitol." -Aaron C. Davis (Investigative Reporter
| for The Washington Post)
| nkozyra wrote:
| https://twitter.com/byaaroncdavis/status/134690816603076608
| 0
| awnird wrote:
| https://twitter.com/byaaroncdavis/status/134690816603076608
| 0
|
| Army is on the fascist side.
| awnird wrote:
| The Military declined to intervene, they've taken the side of
| the coup.
| travisoneill1 wrote:
| Declining to use military force against a riot is not siding
| with the rioters. By your logic the military also sided with
| the BLM looters.
| mistermann wrote:
| Yikes! Should I make haste to the bomb shelter??? Please
| inform!
| 0x1F8B wrote:
| No. They are taking this very slowly because it is a very
| serious issue. The military doesn't just start rushing into
| something like this.
|
| I feel like I'm going crazy listening to people make calls
| for the MILITARY to get involved.
| awnird wrote:
| The military got involved in Ferguson lol.
| 0x1F8B wrote:
| Ferguson did not involve the transfer of power of the
| executive branch of the USA.
| TehCorwiz wrote:
| So it's acceptable to police people protesting police
| violence but not those who are preventing the operation
| of our government? Really? What the fuck are "...enemies
| foreign and domestic." If not people disruption our
| democratic processes?
| 0x1F8B wrote:
| No it's not acceptable. But let the police get the
| situation under control. Why bring in the military?
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Perhaps so. How soon, though? Not in the first half
| hour...
| ezluckyfree wrote:
| The national guard was deployed at BLM protestors during
| Trumps bible photoshoot.
| TeaDrunk wrote:
| They were deployed during ferguston and portland.
| tgb wrote:
| This is a great example of gaslighting. The speaker of the
| house calls for national guard deployment while rioters are
| literally in the House chamber. Yet we're the crazy ones
| for suggesting that they get involved? This is what the
| National Guard does, it's not begging for a military coup.
| 0x1F8B wrote:
| The history of any military interceding in election
| issues is not a good one. There are police for this and
| this is incident is developing. Give it time before you
| call in the guns. I'm not gaslighting anyone -- I'm
| saying this needs to be handled delicately.
| tgb wrote:
| Where have you been this election? There were National
| Guard stationed outside my state's capitol building for
| days while votes were being counted.
| 0x1F8B wrote:
| In any case, it looks like you got what you wanted.
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/06/pentagon-has-not-
| approved-re...
| 0x1F8B wrote:
| Sure, with a clear mission planned and dictated by the
| state you were in. They didn't just send in the troops
| right away in reaction to an ongoing situation that also
| happens to be the certification of the election of the
| president.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| The history of violent mobs interceding in election
| issues is not a good one! If the incident is allowed to
| develop any further, we'll end up in a situation with
| competing claims of legitimacy and the military will have
| to intervene anyway.
| 0x1F8B wrote:
| By all accounts the people in power were committed to
| certifying the election. We've got no reason to think
| they have changed their minds on this. The police were
| underprepared and overwhelmed by protesters (terrorist,
| coupists, whatever), they also chose not to fire on these
| protesters, so this happened. Let the police get it under
| control, let the election get certified (whenever and
| where that happens), and then we can begin to sort this
| mess out. That process may yet involve the National
| Guard, but their role and objective should be crystal
| clear.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Why should we be confident that the police will be able
| to get it under control?
| [deleted]
| giantg2 wrote:
| Last I heard, the DC mayor requested activation of the guard,
| but stipulated that they not be armed nor wearing armor.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Whew. I would think _hard_ about putting my people in that
| position if I received that request.
| jacquesm wrote:
| What makes you think they didn't think hard about it? Your
| elected officials are under siege.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| _Then don 't send the military in unarmed._ You're not
| going to put my people out there to be punching bags (or
| skeet).
| adsche wrote:
| Just heard on C-SPAN: "The Defense Department has just denied a
| request by DC officials to deploy the National Guard to the US
| Capitol."
|
| Source: Washington Post reporter
| https://twitter.com/byaaroncdavis/status/1346908166030766080
| adsche wrote:
| Update: White House says National Guard now dispatched:
| https://twitter.com/PressSec/status/1346918582832168964
| ezluckyfree wrote:
| yeah cause they're all busy staging a violent coup
| pohl wrote:
| Moreover, where are AG Barr's badgeless secret police?
| onedognight wrote:
| Your sentiment is apt, but Barr is no longer the AG.
| 0x1F8B wrote:
| Do you want this to escalate? This would be a bad time to start
| making martyrs out of these people.
| akiselev wrote:
| How about before it turns into an actual coup, streaming live
| globally?
|
| Either put up a fight or give up on democracy.
| [deleted]
| Havoc wrote:
| Whole thing is a joke. Police literally let them in:
|
| https://twitter.com/i/status/1346932484152430596
|
| ...might just as well have given them a guided tour
| Eupolemos wrote:
| That the police let them in makes this whole thing quite the
| opposite of a joke.
| TehCorwiz wrote:
| An IED was just discovered, these are not protests, this is
| insurrection and sedition.
|
| https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Live-updates-U-... @
| 12:59p
|
| EDIT: fixed time.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| NBC:
|
| _on MSNBC: At least one IED was found. It 's now in the hands
| of law enforcement._
|
| https://nitter.net/oneunderscore__/status/134692342971531673...
| awnird wrote:
| https://twitter.com/alexadobrien/status/1346911413965520899
|
| Fascist insurrection now live in Kansas as well.
| travisoneill1 wrote:
| When I was a kid my family went to DC for a vacation. We walked
| up the stairs of the capitol and in through the front door. It's
| a sad state of affairs that barricades are necessary now.
| [deleted]
| themark wrote:
| Do they need to vote inside the Capitol in order for the process
| to move ahead?
| iso1631 wrote:
| Even if they didn't vote, Trump and Pence get fired at 12pm on
| Jan 20th, and Pelosi becomes president.
|
| The _only_ way for Trump to remain president past 12pm Jan 20th
| is for the joint session to declare him president.
| themark wrote:
| Makes sense. I am wondering about the protocol though.
| shadowfacts wrote:
| It is despicable how tepid the police response to armed rioters
| storming the Capitol has been compared to the response to BLM
| protests over the summer.
| Dirlewanger wrote:
| What evidence do you have that they are armed? In every piece
| of media I've seen, no one has anything in their hands.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| Other than political viewpoints, I don't really see much
| difference.
| ShakataGaNai wrote:
| BLM they had military out in full force, even though BLM was
| non-violent protests. Flip side this terrorism event was
| known to be coming and they did very little to prepare for
| it. Nor are they stopping it with any great haste.
| cltby wrote:
| The BLM riots cost about $1-2 billion dollars of property
| damage [1]. Taking as given the standard gov't value of
| life of $9M, this works out to 110-220 life equivalents.
| This would qualify the BLM riots as one of the deadliest
| terror attacks to ever happen on US soil.
|
| [1] https://www.axios.com/riots-cost-property-
| damage-276c9bcc-a4...
| _-david-_ wrote:
| Hundreds of the BLM protests were violent (7%).
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| Well, now the National Guard has been deployed, so I
| suspect we'll soon see a sharp change in atmosphere
| OCASM wrote:
| Were they destroying property and throwing molotov cocktails at
| them like Antifa/BLM did over the summer?
| awnird wrote:
| The police specifically allowed the terrorists into the
| building. They are on the same side.
|
| https://twitter.com/i/status/1346924307692318723
| rattray wrote:
| Wow, that's unbelievable. What possible explanation could
| there be for this?
| bradlys wrote:
| 84% of police are Trump voters. That's the explanation.
| [deleted]
| Merman_Mike wrote:
| A handful of cops and hundreds of people in an angry mob?
| Is it really a mystery why they didn't fight too hard to
| keep the barriers shut?
| gdubs wrote:
| It's the US capitol, it's incredibly surprising. It's
| outrageous. There's no lack of adjectives.
| cltby wrote:
| It's quite unfair to call them terrorists when they've harmed
| no one and destroyed nothing. Remember, riots are the voice
| of the unheard!
| miguelmota wrote:
| > It's quite unfair to call them terrorists when they've
| harmed no one and destroyed nothing.
|
| People were harmed and property was destroyed. There's
| plenty of videos of fights breaking out and capitol windows
| being broken.
|
| https://twitter.com/search?q=washingtondc%20windows%20until
| %...
| radicalriddler wrote:
| They are disrupting political process via force in the name
| of ideology. They're domestic terrorists.
| cltby wrote:
| The standard was set last summer. Leftists spent three
| months torching police stations, attacking courthouses,
| looting businesses, and confronting politicians in their
| homes. I continue to be assiduously reminded that none of
| this constituted terrorism. Don't see why this should be
| treated any differently.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| Sure, but they didn't interfere in the election of the
| President. Open your eyes.
| recursive wrote:
| I saw a video on twitter of a window getting destroyed.
| cardiffspaceman wrote:
| There is a photo going around of a man carrying off a
| dais across the Rotunda. The British web site I saw it on
| made a joke about Antiques Roadshow.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > they've harmed no one
|
| Besides the democratic process
|
| > destroyed nothing
|
| Besides the capitol
|
| > the voice of the unheard!
|
| I've been hearing about them weekly for the last 4 years
| and I'm not even in the US
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| It's true. "terrorism" is a bad word and we should not use
| it. The definition prohibits an objective meaning.
|
| And I would rather see this police response for BLM, than
| that response for these people.
| dwaltrip wrote:
| They broke into the Capitol building. Smashed windows.
| They've attempted to break into the House and Senate
| chambers.
| meetups323 wrote:
| At least one person has been shot.
| https://twitter.com/AP/status/1346918654076723202
| cltby wrote:
| One of the peaceful protestors was apparently shot in the
| neck by law enforcement. Hopefully this gross abuse of
| power will be investigated. ACAB! Rest in power!
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/TaylerUSA/status/1346913549898149
| 888?s=2...
| croissants wrote:
| I'm confused by this video, what evidence is there that this
| is "allow[ing] the terrorists into the building"? All I see
| is law enforcement opening a gate. The Twitter account
| appears to be a random unverified person, so I can't rely on
| that either.
|
| Not saying the police response has been perfect, but this
| video doesn't say much about that.
| bradlys wrote:
| > All I see is law enforcement opening a gate.
|
| That is literally letting them in. They didn't stand their
| position. They literally walked backwards and let the crowd
| in.
| pat2man wrote:
| Or perhaps they were more focused on getting the people
| inside to safety than they were about the actual physical
| building.
| RIMR wrote:
| Why would capital police escort armed rioters into the
| Senate building for "safety" if their job is to ensure the
| safety of the Senate building, Senators, and staff?
|
| This is a backwards argument. The police didn't do their
| jobs. They were even seen taking selfies with the
| trespassers:
| https://twitter.com/bubbaprog/status/1346920198461419520
| nsilvestri wrote:
| The point stands: the summer BLM protests in DC were
| marching in the closed-off streets around the White House
| and were met with even stronger resistance from the police.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| https://twitter.com/bubbaprog/status/1346920198461419520?s=
| 0...
|
| And, you know, taking selfies with them.
| jMyles wrote:
| > It is despicable how tepid the police response
|
| Having been gassed and flashbanged all summer in Portland while
| protesting for Black Lives, the last word I can imagine using
| to describe police restraint is "despicable." I don't wish that
| shit on anybody.
| xauronx wrote:
| I think the double standards are despicable.
| adsche wrote:
| Yeah. I understand the unfortunate symbolism of right-wing
| intruders taking the chambers but I still think in terms of
| injuries/ fatalities while staff and lawmakers were
| evacuated, this was a successful de-escalation. (This [well,
| 'taking' the parliament] happened in Germany, too, and no-one
| was talking about it anymore days later because nothing
| really happened.)
|
| It is unfortunate though, that this strategy is only
| seemingly applied to white people.
| shadowfacts wrote:
| You're right, practicing restraint is very important. What I
| meant is that the difference itself is what's despicable. An
| actively hostile, antagonistic response to protestors who
| were almost entirely peaceful versus doing almost nothing to
| impede armed rioters breaking into the Capitol.
| cltby wrote:
| It seems widely agreed that 93% of BLM protests were
| peaceful [1]. That remaining 7% slice was responsible for
| $1-2 billion of property damage [2], on par with a serious
| natural disaster. I don't know how someone can continue to
| use the "mostly peaceful" line with a straight face.
|
| [1] https://time.com/5886348/report-peaceful-protests/ [2]
| https://www.axios.com/riots-cost-property-
| damage-276c9bcc-a4...
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| I think they've responded well. All the congresspeople were
| evacuated safely, I expect that if they had any chance of
| causing harm there the police response would have skyrocketed.
|
| What you had after the evacuation was complete was just a few
| fools breaking some windows, posing on the dias for Twitter
| likes, and wandering the hallways. I'm surprised they haven't
| spray painted their message on the walls yet.
|
| Government property gets vandalized all the time, and can be
| replaced. The last thing you want to do is to kill these people
| who have been trapped in a cult of disinformation and turn them
| into martyrs, possibly building into a civil war. Currently,
| the response makes them look weak, but at the end of the day
| they'll all just leave, hopefully without loss of life.
|
| That civil war must be avoided at all costs, and if a tepid-
| looking response, a few of them getting away without being
| arrested, a few panes of glass, and some carpet cleaning are
| what that costs, then I'm more than happy to pay it.
|
| I'm less enthusiastic about the criminals at the top escaping
| prison time, as Joe Biden seems intent on allowing per his
| messaging, but again, if prosecuting everyone complicit in the
| previous administration's crimes has a 1% chance of inciting
| civil war, well, it's just not worth it.
| aluminum96 wrote:
| The difference between the police responses to BLM protests in
| public parks last July and armed Trump supporters storming the
| capitol is shocking.
| patagonia wrote:
| Politics maybe off topic, but this is partially our fault. It's
| always frustrated me that politics are largely unaddressed on HN.
| Not talking about it doesn't make it not so.
| NietzscheanNull wrote:
| At this point, I don't believe this story can be categorized as
| simply "politics." This is momentous historical event that's
| absolutely unprecedented in modern U.S. history.
| patagonia wrote:
| Agreed. This story has moved beyond "politics" narrowly
| speaking. I'm suggesting that, by not discussing actual
| politics the people building the technologies enabling the
| the causes of today, it's irresponsible.
| altdatathrow wrote:
| > but this is partially our fault
|
| Yes, I've called dang out on his inaction numerous times. HN is
| utterly filled with alt-right scum.
| paulnechifor wrote:
| You might be living in a bubble if you think HN is alt-right.
| Trump got 46.9 % of the vote. He has nowhere near that level
| of support here.
| altdatathrow wrote:
| Now is not the time but I can bring up thousands upon
| thousands of examples of commentary on this forum. And of
| course there's plenty of reasonable people but there's a
| ton of absolute pieces of shit that post things across this
| forum every day and nothing happens.
|
| Except when I call them out directly, dang swoops in and
| tells me I can't personally attack another user etc.
| dang wrote:
| Politics aren't unaddressed. There have been plenty of
| political threads this year, and every year. At the same time,
| political flames will take over the site completely if allowed
| to, so we can't allow them to. This is a hard problem.
|
| If you or anyone want to know how we think about that problem,
| there are a lot of past explanations at these links:
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?query=political%20overlap%20by:dang&...
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?query=primarily%20test%20by:dang&sor...
| foobiekr wrote:
| This. Facebook and the other social networks have spent a
| decade and a half curating echo chambers for insanity and this
| is the predictable result. It's been a long, slow buildup to
| this, not quite another McVeigh moment but not too far from it.
|
| What will it take for tech people to acknowledge that, combined
| with the fake-drama-soaked media, they've built something
| socially corrosive?
| mekkkkkk wrote:
| Is it avoidable though? Social media might be accelerating
| the development of echo chambers, but the underlying reason
| why it works is because people seem to enjoy tribalism. I'm
| not sure that connecting people globally could end up in any
| other way. Most people are not capable of being part of a
| large community of like minded people and still keep
| objectiveness and perspective. This is something I've been
| thinking about a lot, and it seems rather hopeless. I'd love
| to have my mind changed.
| jonwachob91 wrote:
| Plenty of political discussion happens on HN, but dang does a
| good job of removing the toxic comments and letting the civil
| comments remain.
| mhh__ wrote:
| This is the case when the discussions are big enough to
| remain but there is an "I'm alright jack" underbelly to HN
| which I suspect would denounce Trumpism in polite
| conversation but finds liberalism distasteful enough to
| downvote.
| mhh__ wrote:
| No citation yet but apparently MSNBC are reporting an IED has
| been found.
|
| MQ-9 time at this point...
| MattGaiser wrote:
| CNN has one near the RNC.
|
| https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/congress-electoral-co...
| hertzrat wrote:
| Trump is a bad and scary man, but one of the only good things
| he's done is post this tweet:
|
| "I am asking for everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful.
| No violence! Remember, WE are the Party of Law & Order - respect
| the Law and our great men and women in Blue. Thank you!"
| hertzrat wrote:
| Everyone needs to work extra hard to recognize when somebody
| they don't like does something good. I'm sure his subsequent
| and prior tweets were awful, but its legitimately helpful for
| him to discourage violence during such a tinderbox event. We
| also have:
|
| Ivanka: "American Patriots -- any security breach or disrespect
| to our law enforcement is unacceptable," Ivanka Trump tweeted.
| "The violence must stop immediately. Please be peaceful."
|
| Cuccinelli called on people breaching the Capitol grounds to
| disperse.
|
| "There is a proper venue to resolve grievances," he wrote.
| "This is not it."
| kevinventullo wrote:
| Also Trump: "Stand back and stand by."
| tartoran wrote:
| After he instigated his constituents? Seems to me he's only
| covering for his ass. Trump is a master gas-lighter, his
| statements are contradictory with each-other (when he does make
| any sense) and has so many of them, he jumps around topics and
| he talks and talks and talks. He's really tiring person to
| listen to. I bet his supporters don't really understand
| anything anyway.
| pstuart wrote:
| A day late and a dollar short, considering that he agitated for
| this event in the first place.
| hikerclimber wrote:
| nice! anarchy.
| hertzrat wrote:
| This is a tinderbox. If one person on either side fires a bullet,
| the ripple effects could be unbelievable
| root_axis wrote:
| This is a failure of leadership by the republicans - plain and
| simple. I don't care if this comment is perceived as partisan,
| it's a statement of fact. If the republican leadership had
| unequivocally come out against the narrative that the election
| was stolen, this wouldn't be happening.
|
| Edit: Yes, it's true that the top leader and his acolytes have
| engineered this outcome, but the majority of the republican
| leadership did not want this and do not benefit from this, they
| were (with some exceptions) simply too cowardly to speak out
| against it.
| propelol wrote:
| What is the point of a national guard if they can't be used to
| defend the capitol?
| jeffbee wrote:
| The DC National Guard, unique among all other guards, is
| under the command of the President. A state governor can call
| up that state's Guard, but the government of D.C. cannot.
| oliwarner wrote:
| They were requested by the DC Mayor and approved by the
| Pentagon for deployment yesterday by... But no idea where tf
| they are.
|
| https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/04/politics/muriel-bowser-
| dc...
| triceratops wrote:
| They had their chance to do the right thing last January.
| Instead of holding a fair impeachment trial in the Senate, with
| witnesses, they chose to let this clown show go on. They are
| complicit.
| whatshisface wrote:
| "Impeachment trials" are not really designed to be fair in
| the way actual trials are. They are legally designed to be a
| popularity contest among the legislature; hence why the
| Republican party was able to block it, and also why they
| would have been able to vote no if they had decided not to
| block it. Honestly, letting the term run out and having the
| president lose in a typical election is probably the least
| debatable way to change the president. There is some
| historical precedent for impeachments being used as political
| tools, while elections are wreathed in tradition and
| legitimacy.
| triceratops wrote:
| I'm not doubting they would've voted no even if they'd
| called witnesses and had a real trial. But (and this is
| speculation) there'd be a lot more people aware of Trump's
| corrupt conduct in office and he would've lost by a far
| larger margin.
|
| Although...who am I kidding. The right-wing media would
| probably have covered the full impeachment trial in the
| same way they covered the House impeachment proceedings.
| Just play a silent video of politicians talking, and have
| their own pundits say "This is BS we won't even insult you
| by making you listen to it".
| jandrese wrote:
| One of the articles of impeachment was on obstruction of
| justice. In a normal court that would have been open and
| shut. The White House was extraordinary and blatant with
| the obstruction. It was well documented. The conviction
| on the obstruction charge was voted down by an even
| larger margin than the collusion charge, which I thought
| was strange because thanks to all of the obstruction the
| hard evidence was a bit lacking. They had few documents
| to work with because the Trump Whitehouse explicitly
| refused to honor all of the subpoenas they were served.
|
| Basically he knew that the Senate would cover for any
| crime so long as he delivered the votes, so he ran the
| place like a mob boss.
| newacct583 wrote:
| > letting the term run out and having the president lose in
| a typical election is probably the least debatable way to
| change the president
|
| Except that didn't work out, did it? Remember he was
| impeached for trying to cheat at an election. And people
| (lots of people) warned he'd continue on that path.
|
| I mean, let's be honest: it would have been better in
| hindsight to have actually removed him from office.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Well, we're comparing reality, the case of a lost
| election, (thousands of protestors without broad support)
| to a counterfactual, the case of an impeachment (a
| million protestors? support from every Republican?).
| threatofrain wrote:
| I'm not sure what would even happen if the GOP voted to
| condemn their own president. To whom would frustrated GOP
| voters petition then? Would they fracture into a third
| party?
| whatshisface wrote:
| The reality nearest to our own where the impeachment
| attempt succeeded is the one where the Senate was
| D-majority that year. Only a few seats would have to be
| different for that, whereas the counterfactual of
| republicans voting against one of their own would require
| a shift in the very elements of politics. Imagine a world
| where a D-majority legislature impeached a Republican
| president. Instead of pointing to an election, Democrats
| would have to point to a 1000 page report that nobody
| wants to read. Republicans would be calling it a
| "political move" and the whole party would be unified
| against its fairness.
| hedora wrote:
| Many Republicans on TV agree with you.
|
| The party needs to split into the anti-democracy, pro-Trump
| faction, and the rest of the party. The moderate wing could
| easily pull some people that voted Democrat this year, and form
| a stable, coalition government.
|
| This would help de-radicalize our political system.
| threatofrain wrote:
| This isn't a failure of leadership like my code failed to
| compile just now. This is leadership with a vision.
| [deleted]
| MattGaiser wrote:
| > If the republican leadership had unequivocally come out
| against the narrative that the election was stolen, this
| wouldn't be happening.
|
| They all came out against Trump when this started in 2016. Was
| not even a speed bump.
| duxup wrote:
| The senators could have voted to convict convict during the
| impeachment trial.
|
| That would have been more than a speed bump. They had the
| opportunity to act, chose not to (well except for Romney).
| MattGaiser wrote:
| You can very fairly blame them for not removing him. I
| don't think you can blame them for the storming as Trump
| has the support of the base. They do not.
| jgwil2 wrote:
| Cruz, Hawley, et al. helped escalate the situation to
| this point. This would not have happened if they weren't
| planning on protesting certification in the first place.
| There are degrees of culpability here. It obviously
| starts with the mob itself, then Trump, then his
| supporters in congress, then other Republicans who
| hesitated to accept the election results, etc.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Trump's been riling his base up with lies and almost
| everyone important in the republican party has been doing
| nearly nothing to disagree. They're supposed to be about
| half of our elected leadership. They _can_ be blamed for
| inaction.
|
| If they were openly and clearly disagreeing with Trump,
| then they wouldn't be at fault. But they're giving tacit
| approval.
| duxup wrote:
| I would blame those who haven't taken issue with the
| spreading of conspiracy theories and certainly those who
| spread conspiracy theories when it is convenient for them
| that leads to this kind of thing.
| kadoban wrote:
| Most of them came out against Trump only so long as it didn't
| matter, and in the least effectual way they could. They also
| almost universally stopped even pretending once he was
| elected.
| Justsignedup wrote:
| Failure is far from an understatement. This is sedition. My
| only hope is that this completely destroys the republican
| party. They supported this for long enough. Trump is the
| inevitability of such a corrupt group.
|
| Just because the ship is on fire and on the last 10 inches you
| said "OKAY START PUTTING WATER ON THE FIRE" doesn't mean you
| weren't part of the group throwing matches 10 minutes before.
|
| I come from the USSR. I come from a family who were gassed in
| the Nazi camps. We saw this shit. When Trump started speaking,
| I saw history repeating itself in front of my very eyes.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| Not sure why this post is getting downvoted. This is
| literally how Putinism or Erdoganism starts.
| tharne wrote:
| It's getting downvoted because it's equating a handful of
| angry hillbillies who absolutely no one is taking seriously
| to an authoritarian revolution in a country that was never
| democratic to begin with.
|
| This is bad and these folks should be punished, but this
| not the second coming of Vladimir Putin. Hyperbole is not
| helpful, and it's exactly what these idiots want. Don't
| give it them.
| RoboticWater wrote:
| This is significantly more than a "handful" of
| hillbillies trying to upend the legal results of the
| presidential election following the explicit rhetoric of
| the incumbent, and unless I'm mistaken, this riot began
| after one of Trump's "Stop the Steal" rallies.
|
| I'm not qualified enough in foreign affairs to justify
| the allusion to Putin or Erdogan, but let's not play this
| down either.
| bdamm wrote:
| How do you imagine that authoritarians get going? Hint:
| It requires a horde of angry hillbillies, every time.
| willcipriano wrote:
| Just the first counterpoint that comes to mind, the
| Bolsheviks were angry hillbillies?
| tharne wrote:
| Usually revolutions are headed by the upper middle
| classes, not the lower classes. Che was a doctor. Pol Pot
| was educated at elite European schools. Heck, look at the
| founding fathers of the U.S. These were guys with
| education and money.
| triceratops wrote:
| Isn't Trump a guy with education and money?
| watwut wrote:
| Degree and money yes. Education as in learning and
| knowing things, not so much.
| wonnage wrote:
| mao was a farmer you dumb hillbilly
| dang wrote:
| Hey, can you please not post like this here? or like
| these?
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25662616
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25595546
|
| We're trying for quite a different sort of discussion,
| and the two sorts are not compatible, the way forest
| fires and hiking are not compatible.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| andylynch wrote:
| This is not longer sedition, this is an insurrection. Right
| now we're seeing pictures of guns drawn in the house chamber.
| razius wrote:
| Hear me out, what if it was actually stolen?
| guardiangod wrote:
| Hear me out, what if Santa Clause exists? What? You can't
| prove he doesn't exist? It's a cover up!
|
| Grow up. The courts shot down the accusations multiple time
| already. If you have any concrete proof you better present it
| now.
| [deleted]
| giantg2 wrote:
| Not saying it was stolen, but just adding some
| perspective...
|
| Some people don't agree with the courts decisions,
| especially when they are ruling contrary to state
| constitution or law. You can see this in some of the
| rulings for PA election law. For example, some counties
| were counting mail-in ballots with deficiencies, while
| others were not. In some cases, like the PA senate seat
| that spans Alleghany and Westmoreland counties, this would
| lead to some people's deficienct mail-in votes either
| counting or not counting based solely on if they live in
| one county vs the other. Or that the PA constitution and
| voting law is very explicit in detailing what events
| qualify one to use a mail-in ballot.
|
| So in specific scenarios (which may or may not have swayed
| the election), it appears that rule of law may have been
| violated. And that in itself is concerning.
| razius wrote:
| Go read the court documents and see why they shot it down.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Someone replied "Go read the court documents and see why
| they shot it down."
|
| They shot it down because the accusations made in court
| were all petty nothings. For all the big talk of fraud and
| theft, that's not what was in those filings.
| duxup wrote:
| There has been zero evidence to show it.
| mynameishere wrote:
| Well, for example the PA election was illegally conducted.
| The US Constitution requires that the legislature set the
| rules for the elections and the Governor dictated a
| significant change (mail in ballots sent unrequested to
| voters). I know that exactly zero Democrats care about such
| legal quibbles, but there you go--it's not "zero evidence".
| Other states had similar issues.
| duxup wrote:
| Still zero evidence of fraud.
|
| Lawsuits regarding PA election where dismissed, it was
| legal.
| staunch wrote:
| It is still fair to ask the question and have it answered.
| For me the answer is twofold:
|
| 1. Trump said the 2016 election was being stolen up until
| the minute he won. He had this delusional/face-saving
| excuse ready last time and he had to actually use it this
| time.
|
| 2. The total lack of evidence of any widespread voter
| fraud, including from all areas that are entirely
| Republican controlled, where there is no opportunity for a
| Democratic conspiracy.
| jandrese wrote:
| The question was asked, and has been thoroughly
| investigated at this point, but the administration did
| not like what they heard so they're pretending they never
| got the answer. It's childish and embarrassing for them
| to continue pretending that the question is still open.
|
| Unfortunately we have many examples of debunked theories
| that maintain a public consciousness for a very long
| time. MSG, Flat Earth, Vaccine induced autism,
| Creationism, etc... All it takes is for motivated people
| to refuse to accept the evidence and continue repeating
| unfounded claims as if they were still valid. They can do
| this until they grow old and die, and there will always
| be at least a few people who follow.
| marktangotango wrote:
| I was glad to hear McConnel and Pence finally (FINALLY) do the
| right thing.
| TehCorwiz wrote:
| They were speaking out of both sides of their mouth, per
| usual. They deserve no credit, they only acted when their
| actions would have no consequences.
| systemBuilder wrote:
| Look if you still fault them for doing the right thing why
| should they do the right thing? Give it a rest! Acknowledge
| that they have done the right thing now! People deserve
| credit for taking the correct moral stand unlike the
| terrorist group attacking Washington DC right now!
| Hnrobert42 wrote:
| Agreed. We must allow for people to change their mind.
| triceratops wrote:
| > moral stand
|
| They're refusing to undermine the system from which their
| own legitimacy and power derives. There's nothing moral
| about it.
| tartoran wrote:
| They had so many chances to do the right thing though. It
| still is good that they didn't go crazy hysterical like
| Trump and eventually accepted but I won't cut them any
| cookie for it.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Don't say that. That makes people reluctant to be adults
| and do what needs to be done. People deserve some
| recognition for, eventually, doing just that.
|
| edit: Guys. By resorting to ad hominems and offering no
| incentive for changing one's mind, you are practically
| guaranteeing calcification and re-entrenchment. Are you
| happy that you contributed to the situation in a positive
| way?
| TehCorwiz wrote:
| Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, three times
| is a pattern.
|
| Let them earn respect by demonstrating that they
| understand their wrongs and taking ongoing substantive
| action to change.
| sorokod wrote:
| This is an OK attitude to young children, not adults.
| raverbashing wrote:
| You give recognition to a toddler when it learns how to
| use the toilet, not when grown men in positions of
| responsibility do the bare minimum it's expected of them
| philosopher1234 wrote:
| When the murderer stops stabbing his victim for a second
| to take a breath you dont commend him. These are adults.
| They are malicious. They are not trying to do the right
| thing, and deserve no commendation.
|
| You don't appease Hitler, you stop him.
| jfengel wrote:
| You mean, treat them like special snowflakes?
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > offering no incentive for changing one's mind
|
| What offers even less incentive is when someone knows
| they will never be held accountable.
|
| Give them some credit when they give a mild amount of
| evidence that they have actually changed their ways.
| Doing the right thing in a single instance is not enough
| evidence.
| [deleted]
| jandrese wrote:
| I wasn't sure if McConnel finally found a conscious or if he
| was simply pissed off at Trump for spreading the "Stop the
| Steal" nonsense that likely suppressed a little bit of
| Republican turnout and lost them the Ossoff/Perdue race. That
| speech seemed carefully calculated to draw the maximum ire of
| the President.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| But only when violence was on their literal doorsteps.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| Well the Republican "leadership" is no longer a monolithic
| entity, it's split between Trumpists and establishment types.
| The former have been leading it all. The latter have been
| speaking out against it all along, but to no effect.
| jandrese wrote:
| There's barely any "establishment" members left in the
| Republican party. They were primaried to death in the past
| couple of decades, or chose to quit when they saw what
| direction their party was heading. Like it or not Trump and
| his brand of politics is the modern Republican party.
|
| https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-there-are-so-few-
| mo...
| staplers wrote:
| The writing was on the wall and they knew it. Now that Trump
| doesn't benefit them, they will act like they don't support
| him.
| excalibur wrote:
| This is terrorism, plain and simple. Donald Trump is the leader
| of a terrorist cult.
| hertzrat wrote:
| I think that the republicans have benefitted a lot from
| hyperbole and insults. People need to tone down their
| language
| wtfiswiththis wrote:
| Stop supporting seditionists.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| The US Capitol has been stormed into and guns have now been
| drawn in the chamber of the Senate.
|
| I think it is also time for people to face the fact that
| this is not hyperbole.
| jandrese wrote:
| Shots have been fired in the Capitol building.
| neaden wrote:
| Accurately describing what is going on is not hyperbole.
| People like you gaslighting us about what we see is what
| has allowed Trump to get away with so much.
| macspoofing wrote:
| So you're saying this isn't anything like Seattle's 'Summer of
| Love'?
| neaden wrote:
| The republican leadership is the person who is leading this
| coup.
| TehCorwiz wrote:
| They invited this! It's the republican leadership that's
| perpetuation this!
| tolbish wrote:
| And it hasn't exactly been subtle either. That this isn't
| apparent to anyone that has been conscious for the past year+
| makes you wonder if you're going crazy, doesn't it?
| AsyncAwait wrote:
| > This is a failure of leadership by the republicans - plain
| and simple.
|
| The cops have a strange affinity for certain kinds of
| 'protesters' too, we all know it would end differently if BLM
| or 'Antifa' did this.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| >The cops have a strange affinity for certain kinds of
| 'protesters' too, we all know it would end differently if BLM
| or 'Antifa' did this.
|
| You mean they would have let the protestors occupy several
| blocks of the city while declaring independence for several
| months until their private security forces murdered too many
| black teenagers?
| notJim wrote:
| I went to protests all summer where the cops were beating
| the shit out of people for standing on the street outside
| an empty building. They sure as hell weren't removing the
| cordons and taking selfies with people inside.
| polka_haunts_us wrote:
| Based on this summer, probably with an Autonomous Zone on
| Capitol Hill.
| dr-detroit wrote:
| Hillary's cousin Dahnald ate their party and now they are
| hostage to King Kushner's whims.
| enw wrote:
| I'm sad and disappointed at the response.
|
| This further increases the divide and makes it harder for us to
| have any non-extremist (whether left or right) and nuanced
| discussions.
| rement wrote:
| >Today, I'm ordering a citywide curfew for the District of
| Columbia from 6:00 p.m. on Wednesday, January 6, until 6:00 a.m.
| on Thursday, January 7.
|
| https://twitter.com/MayorBowser/status/1346902298044325893
| wnevets wrote:
| The difference between the police/military presence when people
| are protesting the death of unarmed civilians and this nonsense
| is glaring and very telling.
| speedgoose wrote:
| .
| pedrocr wrote:
| > Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If
| a story is spam or off-topic, flag it. Don't feed egregious
| comments by replying; flag them instead. If you flag, please
| don't also comment that you did.
| julianlam wrote:
| I'd say the breaching of the senate chamber by ordinary
| civilians protesting election results counts as an interesting
| new phenomenon...
| akersten wrote:
| You don't think the nation's capitol being infiltrated in a
| coup attempt is an "interesting new phenomenon?"
| [deleted]
| jedberg wrote:
| Very related to HN and tech, Trump posted a video on Twitter
| urging protestors to go home, but in the same video he reiterated
| his belief that the election was stolen.
|
| Twitter promptly marked the video as misinformation and disables
| likes, comments, and shares, basically preventing the message
| from getting out.
|
| I'm not even sure what the right move for Twitter is there.
| dhruvkar wrote:
| Are there people here on HN that believe the election was stolen?
| I haven't seen any evidence, most of the lawsuits haven't borne
| fruit either. However, I also recognize that there may be
| blindspots/biases.
|
| I'd really like to hear from anyone who believes this, to present
| a cogent argument. I promise not to attack. I want to hear the
| argument from the other side. I also beseech the rest of HN to
| please refrain from attacking anyone who is doing so.
| Vomzor wrote:
| This is a good read, if you only read one link of my post let
| it be this one: https://spectator.us/reasons-why-
| the-2020-presidential-elect...
|
| It's my understanding Trump supporters are mad their concerns
| aren't taken seriously. Most court cases were dismissed on
| technicalities, without looking at the provided evidence or
| testimonies.
|
| This is supposed to be the evidence: https://got-
| freedom.org/evidence/
|
| One example, the Georgia video:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ0xDWhWUxk And the comments
| about that video: https://thefederalist.com/2020/12/07/no-the-
| georgia-vote-cou...
|
| Then there's this:
| https://twitter.com/MArepublican18/status/134659696972941721...
| https://twitter.com/Maximus_4EVR/status/1346582356899991552
|
| PA & AZ Republicans wanting to decertify Biden after the
| election fraud hearings in their states. Not sure how serious
| those attempts are.
|
| I'm European so I don't have a horse in this race.
| dtauzell wrote:
| I stopped reading the first article after this:
|
| "We are told that Biden won more votes nationally than any
| presidential candidate in history. But he won a record low of
| 17 percent of counties; he only won 524 counties, as opposed
| to the 873 counties Obama won in 2008. Yet, Biden somehow
| outdid Obama in total votes."
|
| >>Yet, Biden somehow outdid Obama in total votes.
|
| If you look at the populations of these various counties it
| isn't puzzling at all.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-votes-
| counties-...
| jmull wrote:
| Well, these are lists of claims, but they are
| unsubstantiated.
|
| The question is, where is the evidence of fraud?
|
| The people pursuing these issues need to go beyond tweeting
| or holding press conferences and bring evidence to court.
|
| So far, that hasn't happened.
|
| At this point there's been plenty of opportunity, so it
| doesn't seem there's evidence to substantiate this stuff.
| elinear wrote:
| I have seen this article [1] being thrown around among my
| conservative friends, and while I do not have the statistics
| background to understand the detailed analysis, it seems to
| suggest some strange behavior around the reporting of mail-in
| votes. Not exactly evidence, but something that may have
| warranted investigation at the time.
|
| [1] https://votepatternanalysis.substack.com/p/voting-
| anomalies-...
|
| edit: I'm looking for folks to give their take on this analysis
| since I nowhere qualified. A good summary is the final two
| sections of the article.
| 542458 wrote:
| The vote spikes are simple - early voting ballots getting
| reported [1]. Biden encouraged his supporters to vote early.
| Trump did the opposite. Accordingly, the early/absentee votes
| are ~90% for Biden. Due to the way they get counted they come
| in larger lumps than day-of vote counting. As far as I can
| tell the rest of the post is statistical gish-gallop with
| some graphs and equations to make it all look more
| convincing.
|
| I also want to say that the sources of reported votes isn't a
| mystery, and the author could easily have found out that they
| were early votes if they had wanted to. Either they didn't
| check, or didn't want to inform people of those very relevant
| facts.
|
| [1]: https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-wi-pa-mi-
| vote-s...
| Klonoar wrote:
| There are shill accounts that pop up whenever the topic comes
| up - if you look at the creation date / comment history of the
| accounts, often they're within the past few days and only
| discussing that.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't break the site guideline against insinuations of
| shilling without evidence. There are simpler explanations for
| such accounts.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| Put simply, I don't know what to believe. As an IT security
| worker, I have absolutely no faith in the election since voting
| required the use of hackable electronic voting machines.
|
| We need to restore trust in the system. An idiot needs to be
| able to understand and audit it. Until that happens, there will
| always be people who think it's rigged, and politicians will
| always exploit that.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > I have absolutely no faith in the election since voting
| required the use of hackable electronic voting machines.
|
| This is mostly not true. See https://ballotpedia.org/Voting_m
| ethods_and_equipment_by_stat... . Almost every state produces
| a voter-readable paper trail for all votes.
| tubbyjr wrote:
| "mostly not true" and "almost". I see career politician in
| your future.
| MrRiddle wrote:
| "Almost every state" is enough these days?
| tubbyjr wrote:
| "I do not recall" will be his next line
| rcxdude wrote:
| It's not, but the only state without a paper trail for
| everything which went Biden in the last election is New
| Jersey (The other 7 states which have some level of
| exposure to digital manipulation voted Trump).
| tubbyjr wrote:
| Huh, who woulda thunk that, where they had checks &
| balances it went for Trump. What a thing coincidence is
| haha
| [deleted]
| jariel wrote:
| "no faith in the election since voting required the use of
| hackable electronic voting machines."
|
| The voting machines produce a paper ballot, which can be
| recounted and audited.
|
| The elections were fine.
|
| 100% of the issue is derived from Trump's attempt to sow
| doubt, and of course, his enablers.
| razius wrote:
| Two issues that raised red flags for me:
|
| - All logs deleted from the machines - Machines are connected
| to the internet
| titzer wrote:
| This is complete BS. Most, if not all, states require paper
| records from voting machines. And no, they aren't internet-
| connected.
| razius wrote:
| - https://www.politico.com/story/2019/06/27/paperless-
| voting-m... - https://twitter.com/KanekoaTheGreat/status/
| 13334934000839843...
|
| This is why we would need an official investigation.
| titzer wrote:
| Like I said, most states use a paper trail.
|
| It would be great to do a full, transparent audit of the
| complete system and apply national standards. Let's do
| it! That's part of the point of the Federal Elections
| Commission, but that's been politicized and intentionally
| crippled.
|
| But make no mistake, people who are crying about massive
| fraud are not actually serious about doing any of that.
| ghostwriter wrote:
| > Like I said, most states use a paper trail.
|
| Most states don't matter, the swing states do.
|
| > But make no mistake, people who are crying about
| massive fraud are not actually serious about doing any of
| that.
|
| Those people signed affidavits, what papers did you sign
| that make you liable under the penalty of perjury to get
| any weight and seriousness to your position?
| titzer wrote:
| People are holding the Capitol building by force, and you
| think they are worried about consequences from signing
| paper?
| ghostwriter wrote:
| That's what you get when the SCOTUS dismisses the case by
| one sentence without looking into those affidavits. Those
| 72 million citizens that supported and approved of the
| formal court hearings and wanted investigations to happen
| are not silent servants of those who sit in the Capitol
| building during normal days. When the due process is
| ignored by one side, another side has a full right to
| demand the due process by acting physically. They have
| this right granted to them by the US Constitution, which
| is above anyone in the Capitol building.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| I'm not aware of a line in the Constitution allowing what
| is happening. The Declaration of Independence mentions
| it, but not the Constitution.
| ghostwriter wrote:
| The Declaration sets principles behind a just and fair
| government, the Constitution outlines how this _just_
| government would function (it would function lawfully).
| When the government doesn 't follow the principles and
| doesn't apply the required due process when it needs to
| be applied, it gets outisde the notion of a just
| government. The right to the current actions lies in the
| Constitution itself, as it doesn't allow for the current
| government to exist in its current form (doesn't function
| lawfully), and it doesn't fit the notion of a just
| government.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > Most states don't matter, the swing states do.
|
| The swing states all have a paper trail:
|
| Michigan: paper ballots
|
| Wisconsin: paper ballots or machines that produce a paper
| ballot
|
| Pennsylvania: paper ballots
|
| Georgia: machines that produce a paper ballot
|
| Arizona: paper ballots or machines that produce a paper
| ballot
|
| https://ballotpedia.org/Voting_methods_and_equipment_by_s
| tat...
| ghostwriter wrote:
| Did the court rule to investigate the claims made in the
| affidavits and to check the paper trails and if they
| match and, based on the results of the investigation,
| prosecuted one party or the other? Or did they dissmiss
| them under technicalities not related to the sworn
| affidavits? That's the due process to follow.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Did the court rule to investigate the claims made in
| the affidavits
|
| No, because no one made legally-cognizable claims based
| on the affidavits in court, instead withdrawing or
| avoiding making fraud claims in court filings (though
| sometimes referring to them in court arguments and then
| admitting they weren't part of the case) and preferring
| to take the "evidence" to "hearings" run by political
| allies with no adjudicative role as an act of political
| theater.
| ghostwriter wrote:
| > No, because no one made legally-cognizable claims based
| on the affidavits in court
|
| That's not how courts are supposed to work. If they
| worked as you say, there would be no reason to have
| hearings for the majority of rape/abuse accusations. The
| courts are there to have a formal process which would
| determine whether provided evidence and witnesses have
| weight and elements of truth, and whether additional
| investigations are required. it would also be required to
| establish whether anyone who signed the affidavits had to
| be prosecuted for perjury, because the just process would
| have to _determine_ and _prosecute_ the lying side (as
| that side is not known beforehand). None of that took
| place, there were no hearings, and the filings were
| dismissed without the required due process.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > That's not how courts are supposed to work.
|
| That's exactly how courts are supposed to work.
|
| > If they worked as you say, there would be no reason to
| have hearings for the majority of rape/abuse accusations.
|
| No, accusations that someone has committed rape (whether
| by prosecutors or in civil litigation by the alleged
| victim seeking damages) are legally cognizable claims.
|
| > The courts are there to have a formal process which
| would determine whether provided evidence and witnesses
| have weight and elements of truth, and whether additional
| investigations are required.
|
| No, they only exist to do that in the case of concrete
| disputes where there is a cognizable legal claim that the
| proferred evidence is relevant to resolve.
|
| > it would also be required to establish whether anyone
| who signed the affidavits had to be prosecuted for
| perjury.
|
| It would only be required for that if a prosecutor was
| charging them for perjury. The mere signing of an
| affidavit doesn't create a perjury dispute that a court
| needs to resolve if there are no perjury charges offered.
|
| > None of that took place, there were no hearings, and
| the filings were dismissed without the required due
| process.
|
| There were plenty of hearings, the Trump team
| _deliberately, voluntarily_ either withdrew fraud claims
| or did not include them, making any alleged evidence of
| fraud irrelevant to those legal cases.
|
| Presumably, if they had evidence of fraud that they
| thought would hold up in court they wouldn't have done
| that. And, given the success of the claims that they
| _did_ make, it isn't like the Trump team was afraid of
| advancing even marginal claims.
| ghostwriter wrote:
| > No, accusations that someone has committed rape
| (whether by prosecutors or in civil litigation by the
| alleged victim seeking damages) are legally cognizable
| claims.
|
| A cognizable claim is one that meets _the basic criteria
| of viability_ for being tried or adjudicated before a
| particular tribunal. Now, tell me what 's the difference
| between the claims that have signed affidavits and
| accusations of someone committing a rape that make the
| former not meeting the basic criteria of viability,
| whereas the latter does meet them?
|
| > The mere signing of an affidavit doesn't create a
| perjury dispute that a court needs to resolve if there
| are no perjury charges offered.
|
| Sure, but if actions of one of the two parties lead to
| the constitutional crisis, the court had better
| investigate which side is the lying one, don't you think
| so?
|
| > It would only be required for that if a prosecutor was
| charging them for perjury.
|
| And to establish whether there was a perjury, you need to
| investigate it through a formal process of hearings and
| other elements of the due process.
|
| > There were plenty of hearings
|
| Dismissing the case is not hearing of the case, there
| were other hearings related to the matter, but not the
| legal hearing of the case with witnesses attending and
| being interrogated.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Sure, a cognizable claim or controversy is one that
| meets the basic criteria of viability f
|
| No, its one that taken on its face states a violation of
| the law, from someone who would be entitled to a remedy
| under the law, which the court has the power to remedy.
|
| _Viability_ is a step or two down the road.
|
| "Standing" and "failure to state a claim" are grounds for
| dismissal than are about not having a legally cognizable
| claim, and which come before any assessment of the
| viability of the claim.
|
| "laches" (that, assuming the claim was valid, it is
| barred by unreasonable delay by the complaining party
| which would cause unreasonable harm to the interests of
| the defendant or third parties which would not have
| occurred had the claim been made timely) is a similar,
| though distinct, ground. (A lot of the post-election
| challenges to procedures which were well-known before the
| election were barred by laches, with the harm relied on
| being the denial of voting rights of voters who relied on
| the processes to vote.)
|
| > Now, tell me what's the difference between the claims
| that have signed affidavits and accusations of someone
| committing rape
|
| That there _were no actual claims made to courts_ based
| on the affidavits; the fraud stories that the campaign
| claims that the affidavits support weren't advanced in
| court, or were withdrawn voluntarily.
| jandrese wrote:
| From what I understand nobody signed the affidavits. Once
| there was a legal consequence to lying they all backed
| out. This might have changed later, but was true of the
| original 40some lawsuits that were filed.
| ghostwriter wrote:
| The courts dissmissed the cases after there were signed
| affidavits. Those signed affidavits are still there,
| waiting for the formal due process, and the courts are
| more than welcome to take the cases and investigate them
| with subsequently prosecuting the lying side. That's what
| those who stormed the Capitol today have among their
| demands.
| MrRiddle wrote:
| "Most" is enough, right?
| jmull wrote:
| Did you take any comfort from the Georgia hand-count?
| paganel wrote:
| The 2000 elections were most probably stolen, but Al Gore
| played the safer card and accepted defeat. Since then I don't
| see how anyone can trust the process.
| travisoneill1 wrote:
| How so? The vote differential from FL was clearly within
| the margin of error of the counting methods, but that only
| suggests the possibility of a counting error, not a steal.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Gore lost because of the poor design of the Florida
| butterfly ballot. The official 537 vote margin is a
| political expedience.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_presiden
| tia...
|
| > About 19,000 ballots were spoiled because of overvotes
| (two votes in the same race), compared to 3000 in
| 1996.[18]:215-221 According to a 2001 study in the
| American Political Science Review, the voting errors
| caused by the butterfly ballot cost Gore the election:
| "Had PBC used a ballot format in the presidential race
| that did not lead to systematic biased voting errors, our
| findings suggest that, other things equal, Al Gore would
| have won a majority of the officially certified votes in
| Florida."
|
| And yet the protests then were level-headed, largely
| peaceful, and fully justifiable.
| travisoneill1 wrote:
| Are you suggesting that the design was made with the
| intention to take votes from Gore? Because that would be
| necessary to call it a "stolen" election. I acknowledge
| the possibility that the outcome was in error.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| I'm not saying it was explicitly intentional but it isn't
| believable nobody on the election commission was aware of
| the alignment issues from previous elections. It is
| either straight up incompetence or willful neglect.
| Either way, the will of the people wasn't acted upon.
| jMyles wrote:
| This argument only works if you ignore the voters who
| were improperly purged from the voter rolls for having
| the same or similar names as convicted felons.
| hansthehorse wrote:
| Joe Kennedy almost certainly stole the 1960 election for
| his son. Nixon knew this but decided it wasn't worth the
| national grief to fight it.
| tubbyjr wrote:
| This is why I love American Democracy, especially when
| they invade other countries to enforce the democratic
| process.
| huntermeyer wrote:
| I don't believe it was stolen.
|
| I think we should be able to see how our vote was recorded.
|
| The whole system is based on trust. Right now that trust is
| being threatened (eroded?). Since there isn't a way to
| individually inspect the system, we have to rely on the word of
| others to validate it.
|
| The government doesn't always act in the best interest of the
| populace and often outright lies to it. This begs the question,
| should we take their word for it?
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| That is impossible to square with a secret vote.
|
| The tried and tested way to hold free and fair elections are
| paper ballots, simple boxes with obvious seals, and observers
| from all parties as well as international ones.
| [deleted]
| umvi wrote:
| I do not believe the election was stolen. But I also don't
| believe we had perfect election integrity either. In my mind
| any system involving hundreds of millions of people is bound to
| have _some_ bad actors, mistakes, fraud, etc. It 's important
| to acknowledge when and where it happens, and how to improve.
| But claiming any given election had near perfect integrity
| raises some alarm bells with me at least.
| pgrote wrote:
| Thank you. I feel the same way.
|
| I vote in every election. There are problems with many
| elections, especially ones for US President. Those problems
| are baked into the system we've established as a nation.
| States run their own elections. States elect US Presidents
| and not citizens.
|
| I don't think states could coordinate a conspiracy to change
| citizen votes to steer elections one way or another. Too many
| moving parts, too many people. It is fair one state has one
| set of rules that differ from another? Yes. It is the way the
| USA is built.
|
| It frustrates me to no end that a group of people say, "The
| election had no issues" just as it frustrates me when someone
| says, "The election was stolen." Those thoughts are always
| perpetuated by those who lead political parties.
| tylerhou wrote:
| > It frustrates me to no end that a group of people say,
| "The election had no issues" just as it frustrates me when
| someone says, "The election was stolen."
|
| I think this is a strawman. Can you find me a source of a
| prominent Democrat that said that this election had no
| issues? Most of the time, people who support the election's
| outcome mean that there was no fraud significant enough to
| change the outcome, or that this election had less
| fraud/was more secure than a previous election.
|
| On the other hand, when Trump says the election was stolen
| [1] (along with some Congressional Republicans), he means
| that the outcome should have been him winning.
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/134692888259
| 58850...
| bas wrote:
| Every election has had issues. Voter fraud, however, is
| rare. Voter suppression is common and tactical.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| If you look for it, just about every state has had some
| anomalies that were noted by the officials. It's all boring.
|
| All of it has been on a scale that wouldn't affect the
| outcome of elections. For example in Georgia 2 ballots were
| submitted in the names of dead people. In Colorado they are
| investigating non-matching signatures on a few hundred
| ballots.
|
| This kind of stuff is routine, and happens in every election.
| Of course it isn't perfect, but its a decent enough system
| that has worked well in 100s of countries across centuries
| jmull wrote:
| Are there a lot of people claiming the election was near
| perfect?
|
| I see people saying there isn't evidence of wide-spread fraud
| sufficient to overturn the results of the election.
|
| There do seem to be a lot of people making the mistake of
| trying to cast this as black and white, totally fraudulent or
| totally perfect. But that never made sense.
|
| (Edit: typo)
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| Coming out and saying that you think the election stolen
| gets you labeled a conservative nutter. So wise commenters
| won't say that, instead they will do what you've noted.
| Imply that folks are saying the election was perfect, and
| then say that they think there might have been some
| "imperfections" going on.
|
| That way the listener doesn't automatically correctly
| categorized their point of view as nuttery, but is drawn
| into listening longer out of decorum. And the speaker
| doesn't suffer a loss of reasonableness for "wanting the
| truth".
| xpe wrote:
| Yes, this is part of a known playbook for people who want
| to seem credible while stoking fear, uncertainty, and
| doubt.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| This is just your cognitive bias away from an extreme
| position. Actually election integrity in the US is pretty
| close to perfect. 10s of cases out of 100s of millions/low
| billions of votes cast. This has be exhaustively studied, MIT
| has produced papers.
|
| The closest thing to a widespread problem is voter
| suppression, where states administer elections in regionally
| uneven ways to suppress one party's turnout. This is
| predominately against black citizens in the south after
| Shelby v Holder.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| We don't identify voters and we removed chain of custody on
| ballots. Instead we put unsecured boxes on street corners
| to collect ballots and put them in the mail. We eliminated
| signature validation. The list goes on. I have no idea who
| got the most legitimate votes, but neither does anyone
| else.
|
| >The closest thing to a widespread problem is voter
| suppression, where states administer elections in
| regionally uneven ways to suppress one party's turnout.
| This is predominately against black citizens in the south
| after Shelby v Holder.
|
| I agree with you 100% but that just means every election is
| illegitimate.
| tylerhou wrote:
| Your post shows how much disinformation has propagated.
|
| > We don't identify voters and we removed chain of
| custody on ballots.
|
| Source? Voters are identified by signature (and in some
| places voter ID). Re: chain of custody, as far as I'm
| aware, states generally require representatives from both
| major parties (plus independents) to be present when
| ballots are moved or opened. Since states generally have
| the power to conduct their elections as they deem
| appropriate, finding a national source is impossible, but
| I invite you to find me an example where such a chain of
| custody was violated.
|
| Mail-in-ballots do not subvert this chain of custody [1].
|
| > Instead we put unsecured boxes on street corners to
| collect ballots and put them in the mail.
|
| Drop boxes are locked with keys and are monitored with
| video surveillance. Sometimes, people set fire to ballot
| boxes, but when this happens security is tightened [2]
| [3]. In any case, the small number of ballots damaged by
| arson would not change the outcome of an election.
|
| > We eliminated signature validation.
|
| This is not true. Give us a source. The closest thing to
| "eliminating signature validation" is giving voters the
| chance to fix signatures [4]. "Eliminating signature
| validation" is a false claim that Trump has spread [5].
|
| > I have no idea who got the most legitimate votes, but
| neither does anyone else.
|
| The fact is Biden got the most legitimate votes. End of
| story. Any other claim is refusing to accept the
| overwhelming evidence that there was no significant
| fraud. That's not to say that the vote count is accurate,
| but all evidence shows that any inaccuracies would not
| have changed the outcome of the election.
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/article/fact-checking-mail-
| in-voting...
|
| [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/26/us/elections/in-
| boston-so...
|
| [3] https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/10/20/us/trump-
| biden-elect...
|
| [4] https://apnews.com/article/pennsylvania-
| election-2020-pittsb...
|
| [5] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/08/11/tr
| umps-la...
| trhway wrote:
| > In my mind any system involving hundreds of millions of
| people
|
| in a popular vote elections even a hundred thousand votes
| would be just a rounding error. In US electoral system just a
| few counties going wrong way could turn the elections, ie.
| theoretically "some bad actors, mistakes, fraud, etc." would
| be enough to do it. Add to that the facts like Dominion
| Voting Systems (whose machines were used in some of those key
| states and counties if i remember correctly) being a client
| of SolarWinds ... and one can have more than enough for a
| good conspiracy theory. At least i have :)
| joshuamcginnis wrote:
| If you don't get a lot of responses, it isn't because those
| with cohesive arguments don't exists; it's because it has
| become increasingly dangerous to express views counter to the
| mainstream narrative.
| pertymcpert wrote:
| Ok, why don't you tell us what you think? No one is going to
| attack your home.
| joshuamcginnis wrote:
| That you have to offer that sort of reassurance makes my
| point.
| Const-me wrote:
| > No one is going to attack your home.
|
| Not OP, but one possible explanation, people see which
| comments are downvoted.
|
| I don't really care about these 4 bytes in the SQL DB on
| the other end of the world, with no connection to real
| life. But I think some people care.
| derision wrote:
| Tell that to senator Hawley
| dtauzell wrote:
| Even those with opinions that match the mainstream (the vote
| was valid) are getting threatened:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/03/us/election-officials-
| thr...
| Daishiman wrote:
| Downvotes are scary?
| th48 wrote:
| Absolutely, given how polarized things are, I have little
| trouble believing poll workers and others with the ability to
| put their thumbs on the scales would do just that.
| curt15 wrote:
| For all the fraud allegations thrown around by Trump and his
| allies, his lawyers have consistently refused to allege fraud
| in their court proceedings. See for example
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/18/us/politics/trump-giulian...
| razius wrote:
| Something to get you started, some tweets from the threads are
| bullshit but you'll figure it out:
|
| -
| https://twitter.com/KanekoaTheGreat/status/13440093584729579...
| - https://twitter.com/TalkMullins/status/1346559560987897857 -
| https://twitter.com/kr3at/status/1345910829384777728 -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9fX5c7hGf4
| tossthere wrote:
| The media's ad-supported business model and the effects of
| branding on consumer behaviors naturally results in an
| extraordinarily pro-left media environment. The cost of
| advertising is bid up by brands that benefit from presenting a
| liberal image, and it drowns out all alternative views.
|
| Just to illustrate, take greenwashing as an example. Companies
| market their products as being good for the environment because
| that drives sales, and you can find that message on every shelf
| in the grocery store. There are many alternative views, very
| convincing ones in my opinion, that choosing the bottle of
| water that uses a thinner plastic is still harmful to the
| environment, and supporting greenwashing by purchasing it
| actually results in net harm to the environment because it
| reduces adoption of better options (reusable bottles, tap
| water) and distracts consumers from issues that could actually
| have a meaningful impact on climate change (innovation in
| direct air capture, greener steel production or air travel, a
| carbon tax, etc).
|
| But how would that message ever reach consumers? It doesn't
| make them spend more, so people never hear any of this.
|
| The result is a populace that believes they are saving the
| world by not asking for a straw at Starbucks.
|
| This is happening at an ideological level. Major brands either
| declare no political stance, or they declare a pro-left stance.
| Every celebrity either declares no political opinion, or
| declares a pro-left political opinion. (Or declares any pro-
| right opinion, even vaguely or accidentally, and has their
| brand harmed or destroyed for it.)
|
| I'm something like a Clinton-era liberal, I guess, but the
| media environment is concerning to me. I would choose Biden
| over Trump, but the fact that the election was this close even
| with every major media source being so aggressively and overtly
| anti-Trump and pro-Biden does concern me. I can't ignore the
| fact that if the media environment was more balanced and less
| ad-driven, it probably would have been an easy victory for
| Trump. And I do think all of the above is material to the
| subject of election integrity and the health of our democracy.
| bcheung wrote:
| Is there any source that has a bunch of the claims and
| refutations to it?
|
| Just saying fraud doesn't exist doesn't help calm the outrage
| of those who believe it was stolen. Also based on how partisan
| the impeachment was it is likely people don't trust the
| government to have any sense of accuracy and merely attribute
| it to partisan lines.
|
| The strategy of acknowledging what someone says and then
| responding to it often calms down difficult interpersonal
| conflicts. I think the same applies here.
|
| We understand you believe "A", we do not believe that because
| of proof "B".
|
| Instead the approach taken is largely ad hominem's which only
| escalate things further.
| jmull wrote:
| They're out there if you want to search for them.
|
| I went through three or four of the statistical analyses that
| purported to show the election results were practically
| impossible.
|
| They were trivially junk. E.g. one compared the voting rate
| in 2020 and 2016 but used votes to registered voters in 2020
| but votes to eligible voters in 2016.
|
| The others were similarly laughable, but no body cared when I
| posted this.
|
| Others says it better than I can, but the people who believe
| this stuff believe it because they want to, not because it
| makes sense. Facts and reason didn't get them to this point
| and facts and reason isn't going to pull them back.
| karmelapple wrote:
| Have any links handy?
| jmull wrote:
| They're out there if you want to search for them.
| TehCorwiz wrote:
| Two things:
|
| 1) You can't reason yourself out of a position that you
| didn't reason yourself into. They don't care that the data is
| bad, they care that it supports their worldview.
|
| 2) The folowing remains true now as it did more than 70 years
| ago: "Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware
| of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their
| remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are
| amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged
| to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The
| anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play
| with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they
| discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They
| delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to
| persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert.
| If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall
| silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for
| argument is past."
|
| -- Jean-Paul Sartre
| moosey wrote:
| A person can believe anything they want.
|
| If there were evidence of a stolen election, then Trump would
| have won a number of court cases from one of the MANY judges,
| mostly ... well, conservative, to use a label ... that he
| placed his cases in front of.
|
| Anyone can look at these cases and have an understanding of the
| actual evidence presented, and see, objectively, that there was
| not significant election or voter tampering, and definitely not
| significant enough to change the election.
|
| I'm far more concerned about attempts to make it harder to vote
| before the election - the one drop box per county in TX, for
| example, then I am that any election was stolen.
| nostromo wrote:
| I don't believe the election was stolen.
|
| But I will say: it's almost impossible to prove an election
| has been stolen after the fact with mail-in ballots. Once the
| outer envelope is removed and destroyed, the ballot is
| irreversibly anonymous. It's impossible to tell if an
| anonymous ballot is fraudulent or not -- there's no ability
| to audit it by contacting the voter.
|
| Mail-in ballots are particularly vulnerable to fraud,
| something the New York Times correctly worried about back
| before Trump.[1]. And we just had more mail-in ballots than
| ever before thanks to Covid.
|
| HN has long been suspicious of voting systems; we all know
| how often systems are hacked by bad actors. I don't think
| it's a stretch to think that election tampering is possible,
| particularly in close elections.
|
| 1. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/us/politics/as-more-
| vote-...
| titzer wrote:
| Would you care to provide evidence that mail-in vote fraud
| has _ever_ been a significant issue in any US election
| anywhere, at any time, at any level, now or in the past?
| Because I have never seen any such evidence, and mail-in
| ballots have been used for over a century.
| nostromo wrote:
| Your asking someone to prove something that can't be
| proven _by design_.
|
| It's impossible to know how many votes are or are not
| fraudulent, which is a side effect of efforts sold as
| ways to increase voter turnout.
| tubbyjr wrote:
| I have never bothered to look for any specific evidence,
| therefore it is not true.
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| So what you're saying is that it's possible that there were
| fraudulent ballots in support of Trump?
| xpe wrote:
| > Mail-in ballots are particularly prone to fraud,
| something the New York Times worried about back before
| Trump.
|
| This is mischaracterization of the article.
|
| 1. The title that shows up in the browser bar (the HTML
| <title>) is: "As More Vote by Mail, Faulty Ballots Could
| Impact Elections".
|
| 2. The title as shown on the page is "Error and Fraud at
| Issue as Absentee Voting Rises". So, clearly, the article
| speaks about both fraudulent _and_ faulty ballots. In my
| view, the article is not well organized. The two ideas are
| too fluidly mixed.
|
| So, with this context in mind, let's discuss two paragraphs
| from the article: In 2008, 18 percent of
| the votes in the nine states likely to decide this
| year's presidential election were cast by mail. That number
| will almost certainly rise this year, and voters in
| two-thirds of the states have already begun casting
| absentee ballots. In four Western states, voting by mail is
| the exclusive or dominant way to cast a ballot.
| The trend will probably result in more uncounted votes, and
| it increases the potential for fraud. While fraud in
| voting by mail is far less common than innocent
| errors, it is vastly more prevalent than the in-person
| voting fraud that has attracted far more attention,
| election administrators say.
|
| Yes, the article says "voting by mail [...] increases the
| potential for fraud". However, how often is this an
| _important_ factor? How often does it affect election
| results? From what I understand, the overall fraud rate
| from in-person voting is so low, that even a doubling of
| that rate is negligible.*
|
| * Except, of course, in extremely close races.
| felipelemos wrote:
| What is the difference from a in person casted ballot?
| Isn't it also anonymous?
| h2odragon wrote:
| Many people look at these cases and see they were not allowed
| to be heard. How many of Gore's supporting court cases were
| tossed for lack of standing etc?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > How many of Gore's supporting court cases were tossed for
| lack of standing etc?
|
| Fewer (and similarly with Bush's -- both filed a number of
| lawsuits in the 2000 election), but then, the legal basis
| of the cases was different.
|
| Its not really anyone outside of the Trump campaign's (and
| their legal team's) fault that the Trump campaign filed an
| unusually large number of lawsuits making claims that were
| not justiciable, independently of whether the claimed facts
| were true.
| jMyles wrote:
| I haven't had confidence in most elections in a long time.
| Nothing seems worse about this election than, say, Ohio in
| 2004, but I like the idea of adopting a system where there is
| much more thorough verifiability and ease of auditing.
| slumdev wrote:
| Fraud occurred. That much is tautological. A single instance of
| a dead person voting proves the statement true. To say, "fraud
| didn't occur," is an outright lie.
|
| The debate is over (1) how much fraud occurred and (2) whether
| it affected the results.
|
| Someone else posted the "Here is the Evidence" link. Too many
| videos of (R) election judges being denied access to counts
| done in secret, organizers paying for votes, postal workers
| diverting ballots from their intended destinations, chain of
| custody violations, Dominion machines sending ballots to be
| "adjudicated" in foreign countries, etc.
|
| Thus far, the answer to the question of whether this mountain
| of fraud affected the results seems to depend entirely on the
| political views of the person examining said mountain.
| bentcorner wrote:
| Personally I'm of the opinion that there are likely voting
| inaccuracies just due to scale, and anything that is turned
| up is only found because we looked.
|
| If you looked anywhere else I'm positive you'll find similar
| problems but they don't matter as much because the buffer for
| correctness is so large.
| standardUser wrote:
| You just made a listen of unsubstantiated lies. Trump and his
| team had dozens of opportunities to provide ANY evidence of
| ANY of these lies to many different judges and they failed to
| every single time. If the full power of the Executive branch
| and an army of lawyers can't find evidence to show to judges,
| what makes you think any of the lies are true?
| slumdev wrote:
| Be civil and acknowledge your own misrepresentation,
| whether it was intentional or not.
|
| Trump and his "team" (and other people purportedly acting
| on his behalf) have been denied opportunities to present
| evidence due to lack of standing and other procedural
| hurdles. Our adversarial court system is a horrible place
| to litigate this problem.
| standardUser wrote:
| "denied opportunities to present evidence"
|
| What? They could present it to the media. They could leak
| it. Trump could make a nationally televised speech to the
| American people.
|
| How about you acknowledge that there is zero hard
| evidence of any of the lies coming out of the Trump
| administration.
| slumdev wrote:
| > They could present it to the media.
|
| If you think they'd get a fair shake in the American mass
| media, I have a bridge to sell you.
|
| Much of it has been leaked, and there are hours and hours
| of witness testimony about the evidence. Ignorance of it
| at this point is willful.
| standardUser wrote:
| "Ignorance of it at this point is willful."
|
| Very true.
| bumbada wrote:
| There is no argument here.
|
| The fact is that you should never let electronic voting
| machines ever in the first place. I went crazy the first time I
| saw them in the US long time ago and said: "this is the end of
| democracy"
|
| You should only count physical ballots in front of someone that
| represents all the parties.
|
| As an engineer I can not trust them. There are 20 different
| ways I can cheat using those machines, from network hacks to
| software that self modifies.
|
| The US election system is a joke, with no national ID card.
|
| The worst thing is that they are trying to import those
| defective systems into Europe.
| xpe wrote:
| Re: "There is no argument here." can you clarify what you
| mean? Are you making an argument that electronic voting
| machines resulted in an incorrect election outcome?
| driverdan wrote:
| Nothing you just stated is evidence.
| Shared404 wrote:
| > Are there people here on HN that believe the election was
| stolen?
|
| There are. One sent me to this [1] resource earlier. I do not
| endorse this source, and have not manually verified their
| claims myself.
|
| If anyone else would like to check the source, that would be
| good, I intend to manually check their claims myself later, but
| don't have time now.
|
| [1] https://hereistheevidence.com/
|
| Edit: I would ask anyone checking the source to not use the
| tool that the source provides, for obvious reasons.
|
| Also, we should probably see if the datasets provided are
| available elsewhere.
| eli wrote:
| The evidence is just laughably bad. But there is a lot of it
| and if you wanted to explain why each claim is either
| meaningless or outright false would take a lot of time. I
| guess that's the point.
| Shared404 wrote:
| I suspected that would be the case, but as you pointed out,
| they have many claims.
|
| At work currently, so haven't really looked at it. Probably
| will tonight, maybe make a post refuting it.
| eli wrote:
| I doubt it's worth your time. You can't refute a
| conspiracy theory with facts.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| A common response I've received when refuting part or all
| of various conspiracy theories, young Earth creationist,
| or flat Earth type logic: "It doesn't matter that _that
| 's_ not true, it still _could_ have been true. "
|
| Like the possibility of a truth is all they need to
| believe in it. And then shifting goal posts.
| eli wrote:
| I can only imagine how much worse this all would be if
| the Presidential election had actually been close. We
| should be thankful that only an incomprehensibly vast
| conspiracy could possibly have "stolen" the election.
| PenisBanana wrote:
| > ... then shifting goal posts.
|
| Exactly, exactly the same as dishonestly conflating
|
| (a) a serious real world (it exists) situation involving
| many features including vast election fraud - which, yes,
| may or may not have swung the result
|
| with
|
| (b) " young Earth creationist, or flat Earth "
|
| Here, on HN, let's try and stay on topic.
| [deleted]
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Do you have _real_ proof /evidence of this "vast election
| fraud"? So far none has been presented. And what "proof"
| is out there are either known falsehoods, crazy theories
| (zombie Hugo Chavez wants Biden and not Trump to win), or
| nonsensical (CIA/DOD/NSA radioactive isotope watermarks
| are applied to all legitimate ballots, any day now
| they'll show that x million ballots were fakes).
|
| Other than the dishonest (to themselves or others), few
| are claiming _no fraud_. There 's _always_ fraud (either
| intentional or not), but usually (and so far this
| election seems no different) in the tens to hundreds of
| cases. But there 's _no evidence_ of millions of faked
| votes.
| Shared404 wrote:
| You can't refute those deep in, but you can help protect
| those who could be swayed by lots of "data" and a fancy
| web page.
|
| I may or may not get around to it, but I could see it
| being worthwhile.
| eli wrote:
| Respectfully disagree. I don't think you can.
|
| People are reading a website like this because they are
| looking for confirmation of what they already feel must
| be true.
| Shared404 wrote:
| I agree mostly.
|
| I partially just want something to link to if I happen to
| see it linked in the wild again, it rubs me the wrong way
| to see it uncontested in a conversation.
|
| I figure that at least that way new people aren't getting
| sucked in when they click thinking "Well, I should check
| the other sides view."
| dhruvkar wrote:
| Thanks for sharing. While I agree with eli, this is an
| insight into what the other side is looking at. And the
| "other side" is definitely a spectrum of people -- ones
| who are open to reason and others that are absolutely
| not.
| PenisBanana wrote:
| > The evidence is just laughably bad.
|
| That's simply a straight-out lie.
|
| Review twenty examples, say - even the least intellectually
| curious can do that - yes, you can. It will take 20 minutes
| and a bit of thinking.
|
| Each item, classified, is linked to documentary evidence.
| Of the twenty that I checked to test if "The evidence is
| just laughably bad" was a lie or not (it was a lie):
|
| - most link to serious articles describing a single item of
| election impropriety
|
| - the links to twitter always include a photo of the
| evidence the tweet was supporting
|
| - the remainder went to independent sources
|
| - a valid criticism would be a reliance on secondary media,
| which are possibly as unreliable as MSM.
|
| - No Mainstream Media source are relied on, which is great
| plus.
| eli wrote:
| C'mon are you serious? I'm not getting trolled into fact-
| checking 20 bogus claims. Why don't you pick one. What's
| the single most convincing evidence of election fraud in
| that list?
| tartoran wrote:
| Don't bother, by the name of the account alone I can
| guess they aren't very serious. Keep the energy for non-
| trolls
| driverdan wrote:
| It's called the Gish gallop after a creationist who used
| this technique during debates:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop
| ascagnel_ wrote:
| I think it's also worth considering that none of this
| evidence has been through any sort of judicial review -- at
| no point in the Trump campaign's barrage of lawsuits did they
| litigate any election fraud, only procedural questions around
| the inclusion or exclusions of ballots.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| So, I am certain, _somewhere_ in this whole election
| _someone_ surely stole some votes. I can almost guarantee
| that on such a big number of people voting that at least some
| number of votes were stolen, probably by representatives from
| both parties. What I strongly doubt is the fact that this was
| widespread, organized or the numbers of these frauds were in
| any meaningful way impacting the election.
|
| The difference between parties was not insignificant. In
| other election cycles you had much lower differences but the
| other party conceded to the process ( looking at 2000).
|
| So this whole thing is, IMO, predicated on one side simply
| refusing to admit defeat.
| akiselev wrote:
| I clicked on one in the list randomly. #38 _8,000 voter
| application submitted by couple on behalf of homeless and the
| dead_ - https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/pair-
| charged-with-v...
|
| _A man who tried to run for mayor in Hawthorne is among two
| people charged in a voter fraud case in which thousands of
| fraudulent voter registration applications were allegedly
| submitted on behalf of homeless people, the Los Angeles
| County District Attorney 's Office announced Tuesday._
|
| It doesn't even allege that any votes were submitted, the
| article was published Nov 17 so the investigation must have
| been going on for months.
|
| Clicked on #237: _Posted confidential voter information on
| website_ - https://www.washoecounty.us/voters/elections/20_ge
| n_ab_ev_re...
|
| That's the official website for Washoe County and the page is
| a voter turnout report so yeah obviously it's evidence of
| fraud (/sarcasm).
|
| #356: _Count the fraudalent [sic] ballots_
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eH3FpIy3TE&feature=youtu.be
|
| It's just a youtube video of voting officials talking at a
| desk or something.
|
| That website is evidence of nothing more than someone with
| too much time on their hands and ideology to push.
| Shared404 wrote:
| Sounds about right. I didn't have time to get past the
| landing page when I pulled it up.
|
| I'm kinda regretting wasting everyone's time now.
| cyberlurker wrote:
| If it makes you feel better, I thought it was interesting
| to see how thin the "evidence" is. In some cases there
| appears to be no evidence, just the "possibility" that
| there could be some and that there should be an
| investigation to find it.
|
| I should point out there is a substantial amount of
| evidence that there is no notable voter fraud. This
| evidence helps justify not wasting more time and giving
| oxygen to this conspiracy.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Listen to the tape of the Trump call to Georgia, or better yet
| this Georgia election official's point-by-point takedown of
| Trump's claims:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/04/us/politics/trump-georgia...
|
| There simply is no _reality_ based reason to believe that the
| election was stolen, certainly not in any consistently logical
| belief system (e.g. the 2016 Electoral College results were
| almost exactly the same in the opposite direction).
| Const-me wrote:
| I do. https://hereistheevidence.com/ and many other sources.
|
| Congresses of some states had hearings, interviewed many
| testimonies. Independent journalists did tons of research, see
| e.g. https://www.theepochtimes.com/2020-election-investigation-
| wh...
|
| All courts so far declined to hear anything about the fraud,
| dismissing cases for contrived reasons. The riots are rather
| expected.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| You won't convince many people by citing the Epoch Times,
| which is a far-right Falun Gong mouthpiece that reports
| conspiracy theories incuding QAnon and antivax as news.
|
| That "list" of evidence suffers from similar problems with
| conspiracies being reported as fact:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25662891
| baby wrote:
| What does falun gong have to do with this?
| dwaltrip wrote:
| The Epoch Times is a Falun Gong controlled publication
| that has rabidly supported Trump for the past several
| years. It's widely known.
| Const-me wrote:
| Not trying to convince anyone, just answering the question.
| BTW I live in Europe, not a US citizen and not
| participating in US politics, only have a few friends who
| moved there.
|
| I generally don't care who writes or films stuff as long as
| the presented data is good, i.e. verifiable.
| plouffy wrote:
| Courts have not declined to hear anything about fraud,
| Trump's lawyers are the ones that have declined to call it
| fraud. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/18/us/politics/trump-
| giulian...
| Const-me wrote:
| Wikipedia lists 3 resolved cases:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-
| election_lawsuits_related...
|
| Texas v. Pennsylvania: dismissed due to lack of standing.
|
| Gohmert v. Pence: dismissed due to lack of standing and
| jurisdiction.
|
| Tyler Kistner v. Steve Simon: ruled without hearing any
| real evidence, on the grounds that petitioners should have
| filed suit earlier.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| There are climate change deniers and, I'd wager, holocaust
| deniers here, so why not? I don't understand why people have
| such a hard time believing that just because you're in tech
| you're not immune to the cognitive biases shared by the entire
| human race.
| scoot wrote:
| We might like to think that by virtue of of being technically
| minded, logical, and by following the scientific method that
| somehow biases can be eliminated. And yet, there are those
| here willing for example, to espouse a spiritual belief that
| has no basis in fact or science. That alone should put paid
| to any hope that any of us can truly shake biases and beliefs
| and operate solely on the basis of fact.
|
| Further, very few information sources are truly factual, and
| without bias?
| xpe wrote:
| > Further, very few information sources are truly factual,
| and without bias?
|
| This statement presents a false dichotomy. I could also say
| that no measurement of the temperature in Phoenix, AZ is
| "truly" accurate. However, they are accurate enough for our
| purposes.
|
| To take it a step further, we can combine sources. We can
| use reasoning _about_ the sources in how we combine them.
| These sort of study and technique is meta-analysis.
| bluedino wrote:
| I believe that allowing mail-in ballots was a mistake and
| resulted in inaccuracies.
| Shared404 wrote:
| How would mail-in ballots be a mistake this cycle, but not
| others?
| eli wrote:
| Oregon and Washington have been voting entirely by mail for
| decades without any apparent problems.
| eli wrote:
| Can you define "inaccuracy"? You mean like someone stole
| another person's ballot and fraudulently cast it?
| jandrese wrote:
| The inaccuracy is that people who normally had their vote
| suppressed were able to bypass the voter suppression
| efforts this year and turn out. This caused statistical
| anomalies like a lot of inner city people actually voting
| for a change. This is why you see many states with
| Republican legislatures racing to tighten mail in ballot
| restrictions before the next election.
|
| Who would have thought that people would vote if it didn't
| require you to stand in line for two to three hours during
| a workday?
| chillwaves wrote:
| Be specific. Which states had issues?
|
| What exactly are you claiming? The whole election is invalid?
|
| Why did R gain seats in the House? Can you explain that? A
| rigged election that only applies to the top line?
|
| You are pushing conspiracy theory, no matter how you try to
| dress it up.
| scarmig wrote:
| Arrest, try, convict, and punish these literal insurrectionists
| with the maximum penalty allowed by law, and remove any Senators
| and Representatives who support them.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Arguably this is the first successful assault on the capital
| building since 1814, when British troops took over Washington DC
| and burned the White House down.
| standardUser wrote:
| There was an shooting attack in the Capitol in 1954 that
| injured 5 members of congress:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_United_States_Capitol_sho...
| _whiteCaps_ wrote:
| I don't understand why there is so much time between the election
| and inauguration in the US system.
|
| When the Capitol is secured, they need to immediately impeach
| Trump and have the Senate confirm it.
| samch wrote:
| I think, for the safety of all involved, it may be time to enact
| section 4 of the 25th Amendment.
|
| Amendment 25 - Section 4: Whenever the Vice President and a
| majority of either the principal officers of the executive
| departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide,
| transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the
| Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration
| that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties
| of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the
| powers and duties of the office as Acting President.
| meragrin_ wrote:
| Congratulations! You have just escalated the conflict!
| mhh__ wrote:
| Would make it easier to pardon him, no?
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Or impeach & convict. He's a threat to the republic, and he has
| to go.
| threatofrain wrote:
| That's stupid. No impeachment process could ever finish on
| time.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| It can be done in 30min if they want. Impeachment goes how
| congress wants it to, the only part of the process set in
| stone is the voting requirements.
|
| Edit: oh and the 25th amendment would allow trump to object
| and be effectively tried in the senate. That amendment is
| really designed more for "the president is in a coma" than
| for "the president is currently trying to overthrow the
| government".
| threatofrain wrote:
| If you rush impeachment, you will obliterate any
| productivity you sought for impeachment. The same is true
| for elections in that these aren't just procedural
| events, they are soul-defining events for a democracy,
| and the loss of credibility would be losing what matters
| most.
|
| Another Mueller would take forever to prepare a case for
| the American people.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| The republic is at stake and armed rioters have broken
| into the capital. To let the president do this and do
| _nothing_ is to give up more credibility. It is to admit
| that the legislature is incapable of even providing for
| its own physical security, let alone the needs of their
| constituents.
| noelsusman wrote:
| There's no reason why it would need to take more than a few
| minutes.
|
| It's not going to happen, but not due to time constraints.
| tubbyjr wrote:
| wow, you should really become a policymaker. Pour gasoline on
| the fire, really wish I came up with that one
| dragontamer wrote:
| Can't impeach if the capital isn't secure.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| I am sure they can convene in a bunker somewhere
| jcranmer wrote:
| I wrote my Representative and Senators an hour ago to urge
| them to impeach/convict respectively.
|
| The bar for when incitement to violence loses its
| constitutionally-protected status is "incitement to imminent
| lawless act" (from Brandenburg v Ohio). Trump's speech
| earlier today probably qualifies as passing that bar. That is
| clearly an impeachable offense.
|
| Ilhan Omar is apparently already writing up Articles of
| Impeachment:
| https://twitter.com/IlhanMN/status/1346934098384793606
| aaron695 wrote:
| I wonder if historians will see Gamergate as the start of all
| this.
|
| It's a meme on 4chan right now that this is the case and I can
| see the lineage.
| standardUser wrote:
| At the very least this goes back to the Tea Party, but many
| would point to Nixon's Southern strategy.
| mhh__ wrote:
| Rick Santorum currently the voice of reason on CNN, jesus
| TheGrim-999 wrote:
| All I want to contribute to this is that if you think CNN is any
| different/better than Fox News you're part of the problem.
| They're both insanely biased echo chambers. It's so blatantly
| obvious too. After finding some propaganda to bash Trump with
| every single day for the past five years, they'll never once in
| the next four years ever report a negative story about Biden or
| his administration. Please, go ahead and count how many times it
| happens. This is something you can verify yourself! Of course the
| bias rabbit hole goes so much deeper than just that, but they're
| so blatantly, demonstrably, biased that the fact that anyone
| considers them relatively impartial journalism, any better than
| Fox News, makes me lose so much hope.
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| > All I want to contribute to this is that if you think CNN is
| any different/better than Fox News you're part of the problem.
| They're both insanely biased echo chambers. It's so blatantly
| obvious too. After finding some propaganda to bash Trump with
| every single day for the past five years, they'll never once in
| the next four years ever report a negative story about Biden or
| his administration. Please, go ahead and count how many times
| it happens. This is something you can verify yourself! Of
| course the bias rabbit hole goes so much deeper than just that,
| but they're so blatantly, demonstrably, biased that the fact
| that anyone considers them relatively impartial journalism, any
| better than Fox News, makes me lose so much hope.
|
| What does this have to do with the storming of the capital?
| gdubs wrote:
| This is an outrage, and an embarrassment. The world is watching.
| They need to stop this, now.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Tocqville observed that US elections are a time of extraordinary
| stress on the system that nonetheless eventually subsides. This
| last ditch effort is a little more than this.
|
| Yes, the ones currently storming the capitol are, likely, deluded
| they are fighting the good fight, but their stand at this point
| is little more than symbolic at this point.
|
| My beef, though not a surprised beef, is with the commander in
| chief, who sees it as a way to stay in the hearts and minds of
| the his base. In some ways, the guy is very smart. It just scary
| when he is playing with fire like that.
| titzer wrote:
| I've heard this every single day since November 3.
| lbrito wrote:
| I wonder how different this headline would be if the latitude of
| this event was just a few degrees to the south...
| christophilus wrote:
| Attempted Coup in Guatemala City; Freedom Fighters Say Aliens
| Stole the Election.
| daniel957 wrote:
| dang@: I still think you're wrong about the HN community. It's
| exactly what I said it was in my other comment.
| okprod wrote:
| America continues to be number one -- COVID, racists, hypocrisy,
| gun deaths, etc.
| f154hfds wrote:
| America is number one for imaginary racists as well. All of
| your other firsts are pretty easily verifiable though.
| hstan4 wrote:
| Salty European?
| 323454 wrote:
| Coup-o-meter is right on the line between "preparing for a coup"
| and "attempted coup" https://isthisacoup.com/
| lnwlebjel wrote:
| "Specifically, we are looking for whether protestors are
| successful in continuing their disruption and what actions
| members of the GOP take in response to these protests. Momentum
| has not shifted, but violence can create opportunities, and the
| question at this point is how will officials and other actors
| respond to this threat. "
| Dirlewanger wrote:
| How is a bunch of unarmed people a coup? Yeah, storming the
| Capitol is a little concerning, but nothing's going to happen.
| The people that run that side are sheltered urban liberals and
| don't have the slightest clue as to what it would take for a US
| coup.
| k__ wrote:
| While I saw that the police is clearly on the side of the maga
| protesters (making selfis with them etc.) I don't have the
| impression these are enough people for a coup. And the few
| people who are there don't seem to motivated to do much more
| than chanting and standing around.
| mhh__ wrote:
| > I don't have the impression these are enough people for a
| coup.
|
| Still, being saved by the ineptitude of the "protestors" is
| still a damning indictment of the country.
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| Now the right wingers are rioting. 2021 should be fun
| tosh wrote:
| A reminder how fragile democracy is
| jjcon wrote:
| I dunno - the us has a president doing everything he can to
| stay in power and has been blocked at every turn... that would
| not end the same way in most places
| ngngngng wrote:
| Exactly. I'm amazed how sturdy the US government is proving
| to be with such a large percentage of the people, including
| the most powerful man in the world, trying the wholeheartedly
| reject and overthrow it.
| d23 wrote:
| It's not hard to see that if only a few things were
| different, or if he had even an ounce of competence, this
| could have played out very differently. Let's also not forget
| there are still 14 days left.
| donaldtheduck wrote:
| Why did judges and politicians in a number of states violated the
| constitution by changing state law? Why this only happened in
| states that went for Biden? Why are these questions being ignored
| by most of the media and politicians?
| selimthegrim wrote:
| No it didn't just happen in Biden states, superior courts gave
| controlling precedents that state courts interpret election law
| deskamess wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNQRGohdW9Y
|
| Listening in to the stream it seems like a woman was shot in the
| neck once she went in/broke into the capitol building. Someone
| who was with her looked in and saw that. Again, this is as
| reported in the above stream - no visual or other verification
| provided.
|
| Edit: modified 'someone who was with her outside the window' to
| 'someone who was with her'. He did an interview on camera and
| stated that they did enter the building. Based on what he said I
| would categorize it as a 'forced' entry with warnings not to
| proceed further when the event happened.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| https://twitter.com/byaaroncdavis/status/1346908166030766080
|
| It looks like Defense Dept. denied DC's request for National
| Guard.
|
| Update: DoD denies the report, but says they haven't acted upon
| request.
| MrRiddle wrote:
| Trump was certainly cheated out of the elections, I hope it
| doesn't end with electoral college. The machinery behind Biden is
| astonishing, and they weren't even able to win fair and square.
| [deleted]
| umvi wrote:
| How did we arrive to this point where a huge chunk of the
| population is in one reality and another huge chunk of the
| population is in another reality? Segregation of information
| sources? Politicization of media outlets? Self-reinforcing social
| bubbles? A combination of all of them and more?
| vkou wrote:
| We got there with brazen falsehoods that don't get punished in
| the marketplace of ideas, or at the polls, or at the gallows.
|
| As it turns out, truth is a thing beyond price - which is to
| say, it is worthless.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I feel obligated to respond. Accurate information ( research,
| analysis and so on ) is out there though it usually you have
| to pay good money for it. "Free" news", as it were, is
| basically whatever brings attention ( which FB proved oh so
| very well ).
|
| Truth is not worthless. Quite the contrary. Truth is
| expensive. But a fair chunk of the population subsisted on a
| rather limited news diet.
| coryfklein wrote:
| It's the practical erosion of Free Speech. Liberal (small "l"
| liberal) democracy and liberal science thrives on members:
|
| 1. Being willing to admit they may be wrong
|
| 2. Having access to a diverse information diet
|
| But the past two decades have shown erosion of not only _legal_
| Free Speech, but practical free speech:
|
| * Whereas previously they were just ignored (or even rebutted),
| today employees, students, and professors are all punished
| administratively for saying something that contradicts the
| narrative of the predominant members, or that may be offensive
| to someone. "If the federal government won't do it, let's
| restrict free speech on the ground-level."
|
| * It is difficult to broaden your information diet, even
| intentionally. The platforms of yore that provided a place for
| free debate are empty, with everyone having migrated to social
| media where they can form disjoint sets defined by their
| ideology. Ever try having a dialectic on Twitter with someone
| of an opposing ideology? Haha, good luck.
|
| * Expanding on ^, folks that aren't actively seeking diversity
| of thought have no _natural_ avenue of exposure to information
| that contradicts their ideology. Whatever information delivery
| mechanism they choose today is, by default, going to agree with
| them.
|
| * All of the above results in: staunchly maintaining your
| correctness in the face of opposition is rewarded far more
| strongly than admitting the possibility of wrongness
|
| * Online radicalization makes in-person dialogue even harder;
| there are fewer and fewer opportunities for two moderates to
| debate when the possible participants are further across the
| spectrum than ever
|
| Although restricting offensive speech has the upfront benefit
| of not hurting our iddly-widdly-fweelings, this is the price we
| pay for abandoning free speech.
|
| For further reading, I recommend Kindly Inquisitors: The New
| Attacks on Free Thought [0]
|
| [0]
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/703086.Kindly_Inquisitor...
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| lmao it really takes a good amount of brainwashing to think
| that a _fascist militia invading your government 's
| headquarters_ is because of _political correctness_.
|
| Like, step outside your own little head bubble and take a
| fucking look around your country. Your police were entirely
| happy to shoot and injure black protestors in the summer; the
| same protestors you are maligning as "hurting free speech".
| There's a reason why the police aren't doing the same to this
| white militia, and it's not because they suddenly decided to
| stop being violent
| Rapzid wrote:
| If I had to pick just one reason, to just get really
| reductive about it and off the top of my head, it's because
| this group is armed. You didn't see the police giving the
| Black militia NFAC any beef.
| majormajor wrote:
| Speech aside, what about looking through a lens of personal
| responsibility?
|
| Some people don't take responsibility for offending others,
| they'd rather place the blame on the person who heard them.
| You think that's rather a minor problem, ok. Let's skip past
| the question of offensive speech for now...
|
| Let's talk about preserving a democracy. What happens when
| people no longer feel any responsibility for citizens having
| trust in that democracy? They use their speech to weaken it
| (this is a much broader group than just Trump) and now, with
| Trump, even to incite violence if they think it will benefit
| themselves. Fault and responsibility seems to clearly lie
| with _them_ and their choices, they shouldn 't be able to
| dodge that responsibility by redirecting to abstract
| discussion of the pros and cons of restrictions on speech.
|
| You are dodging the direct "how did we get here?" answer of
| "people are making blatant shortsighted power plays" by
| talking about people's "iddly-widdly-fweelings." That's
| ridiculous.
| triceratops wrote:
| > Although restricting offensive speech has the upfront
| benefit of not hurting our iddly-widdly-fweelings, this is
| the price we pay for abandoning free speech.
|
| Given that lies about the election, protected by free speech,
| have stoked these riots maybe you should consider whether
| it's really a problem of not enough free speech.
| gameswithgo wrote:
| I see things almost completely opposite to you. Twenty years
| ago we had far less diverse access to information. You would
| get things from your local newspaper, or tv networks.
| Professionals would work and filter what we see. Today anyone
| can fire up a blog, twitter, youtube, and start talking about
| anything. People today thus have been getting exposed to all
| kinds of ideas, and being taken in by them: the earth is
| flat, the election was stolen, etc, and believing it.
|
| I think a lot of HN readers who are fairly sophisticated
| forget that half of the world is not. Diverse information
| diets are not a good thing, because most people are not
| equipped to understand what is reasonable.
| jrockway wrote:
| A diverse information diet is a great thing, but you need
| the context and tools for understanding what you read. That
| means you need to understand math, science, history, social
| science, etc. at a somewhat advanced level to make sense of
| these things.
|
| America has been good at free speech, and we should never
| give that up. But for free speech to result in advancement
| of society, rather than goons storming the Capitol, a good
| education is an absolute requirement, and the government
| has not given all Americans the opportunity to get a good
| education. There will be pressure to censor speech because
| people aren't equipped to process it -- we should resist
| that and focus on education instead. This is where we
| should be spending our money; this is what the government
| exists to do. Give everyone an equal standing to understand
| these sources of information. We're not doing that, and the
| results are bad.
| milkytron wrote:
| Education is the root of the solution for all problems.
|
| It should always be one of the top priorities for any
| populace.
| xnx wrote:
| An educated populace is also the most dangerous thing to
| anyone in power (politicians, business operators, etc.).
| Even without being a coordinated conspiracy, that is a
| constant force working against improved education.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| You don't even have to postulate education being
| dangerous to people in power (something that I personally
| find to be more conspiracy than not).
|
| It's enough to notice that there's near zero economic
| incentives for providing actual education. The market
| settled on an equilibrium of baseline operational
| knowledge + filtering through standardized testing, and
| then advanced operational knowledge acquired through
| voluntary higher education and on the job. And it
| continued to optimize accordingly. The only thing that
| makes people try to teach beyond this minimum is
| humanistic values, belief in importance of education.
| _Against it works the entire economy_ , forcing
| individual teachers and schools alike to find savings,
| "cut out fat", make lean.
|
| Free market is enough to explain the disaster education
| is becoming worldwide (because it's not just an US
| phenomenon; we start to see the same problems over here
| in Europe).
| bhntr3 wrote:
| Yes. We had free speech but we weren't prepared for
| unedited, viral free speech. We weren't prepared for
| cameras in every ordinary person's hands. We also weren't
| prepared for our free speech to be archived and searchable
| forever.
|
| I think it's easy to blame the symptoms of social media for
| the issues we have. But the internet, video quality
| bandwidth, smartphones, and social media together have
| combined to dramatically change who publishes and who finds
| it over the last 10-15 years.
|
| In my mind, it is going to take us time to adapt, maybe a
| couple generations. Things will be difficult during that
| time but I hope we don't make regressive changes in our
| values based on what is fundamentally (in my opinion) an
| issue adapting our approach to free speech to the rapid
| advancement of publishing technology.
|
| EDIT: "most people are not equipped to understand what is
| reasonable" -> This is the kind of dramatic conclusion I
| don't think we should be drawing.
| notJim wrote:
| I agree with the first paragraph, but strongly disagree
| with the second.
|
| Those regimes that filtered information very narrowly
| constrained ideas to align with the status quo. That was
| sometimes good, but often held back people with minority
| views from finding and organizing with each other.
| Progressive social movements and positive new possibilities
| have come out of this, in addition to reactionary ones.
|
| What we do have to do is figure out how to have a shared
| view of the world that is less authoritarian than in the
| past. People now try to get the private platforms to
| enforce particular viewpoints through deplatforming and
| such. I am sympathetic to this as a practical matter, but
| don't think it is a viable long-term solution, as it will
| just lead us back to where we were, except with different
| people calling the shots.
| andromeduck wrote:
| We had more diverse access but less diverse consumption.
| jchrisa wrote:
| It's not that people are unable to understand, it's that
| understanding isn't part of the game. It's about group
| membership and a lot of that is about knowing the "phrases"
| that make you seem like a member.
|
| Easy bad ideas make for catchy phrases. The kinds of
| thoughts that are spreading across the US today would have
| been stopped by editorial accountability in an earlier era.
| I'm not sure education is the way to reduce the impact of
| easy bad ideas, because group members take on the catch
| phrases without thinking them through.
| NortySpock wrote:
| And back in the 1500s anyone could build a printer and rags
| for paper and crank out hundreds of broadsheets or
| pamphlets to be distributed all over town. Which lead to
| pulp fiction, the open exchange of ideas and the religious
| wars of the 1500s and onwards.
|
| Open exchange of ideas is not new. It's just faster and
| cheaper now.
| brobdingnagians wrote:
| If people are not equipped to deal with opposing viewpoints
| and critical thought, then perhaps the social organs of
| education have failed. Classical Western education prized
| dissent, debate, and dialectic for thousands of years, but
| education has changed dramatically in the decades since the
| 60s. Perhaps it is not for the better. Societies do not
| always progress upwards towards "more enlightened". Western
| education has stopped valuing objective truth, dissent,
| scientific method, and moral integrity. When those are
| gone, there is very little common ground between those who
| disagree, because even the method of discourse is gone.
| That is when force becomes valued by all sides, since they
| can no longer make any progress by words.
| 8note wrote:
| Im not sure the education has changed -- examples of
| previously not valuing truth include things like the
| south teaching that the civil war was about something
| other than slavery
|
| What has changed is the scale of information though. We
| used to have small amounts of information and opinions to
| evaluat, but now there's huge amounts of information to
| deal with, and those techniques haven't updated to match.
|
| Peer review of scientific publications is an example
| there - peer review used to involve things like visiting
| somebody's lab to try and disprove their new type of
| radiation theories, and now there's so many articles to
| review that nobody's reading them all, or putting the
| same level of review in
| coryfklein wrote:
| Education _has_ changed. Our educational institutions
| used to be a bastion of free speech where tolerance for
| disagreement was treasured. This is _not_ the case today,
| where merely speaking disagreement to the majority
| narrative gets your professorship cancelled and gets
| students disciplined.
| georgebcrawford wrote:
| I see this repeated constantly - how many cases have
| there been? I'm asking genuinely.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| I say batshit insane crazy stuff all the time that in
| hind-sight I didn't mean at all. Probably, I should work
| on thinking more before I speak. But - I like to speak my
| mind - even if it gets me in trouble some times.
|
| I do think it's a problem that a lot of employees can and
| do get fired over saying dumb stuff - a lot of times that
| they didn't mean to say. Does this include Trump's famous
| "Grab them by the p#$$y" comment? Maybe.
|
| However, there's this idea that people should basically
| be able to send out hate speech memos in a company and
| not be apprehended for "speaking their mind". These are
| completely different. One of them is premeditated
| idiocracy. The other is a mistake. We shouldn't confuse
| the two.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Now tell me which side destroyed education.
| sampo wrote:
| > Now tell me which side destroyed education.
|
| You are implicitly assuming it was only one side. What
| about if it was both sides?
| xnx wrote:
| I agree that education has changed for the worse in many
| ways, but might disagree with you on some of the
| specifics. Being direct, I see the republican party as
| having a very anti-science, anti-evidence, anti-facts
| disposition as evidenced by their attitudes toward
| evolution, gun-violence, COVID, etc.
| crazydoggers wrote:
| This is supposed to be why we have a republic rather than a
| radicle democracy.
|
| People forget, statistically half the population has an IQ
| below 100. And importantly, to be absolutely clear, that
| does not mean those people should not have a voice, or that
| they are "stupid", far from it. It does however mean that
| certain issues are overwhelming complex to assume every
| American can make competent decisions on. Many of these
| rioters I'm sure don't grasp how the very system they are
| protesting works on a fundamental level. If they believe
| the earth is flat, how can we expect them to understand the
| electoral college process, or the role of state versus
| federal government in our election process.
|
| Certainly everyone's voices need to be heard. When people
| and their families are struggling, many of them doing the
| jobs that make this country function, they are ignored. So
| when a savior seems to come before them, we need to be very
| vigilant.
|
| We've seen these things happen before in history with other
| demagogues.
|
| We expect in this country that all voices should be heard
| in order to elect people who's job it is to lead. That's
| the definition of a republic. That leadership should have
| killed the conspiracies and falsehoods from the start,
| protecting those of the democracy who are vulnerable, many
| of them suffering from the consequences of this pandemic.
|
| Instead they sat on their hands. We need to hold our
| leaders responsible. We need to ask, en masse, for those
| leaders to hold each other accountable.
|
| We also need to take ownership as a people. Us. We consume
| this media. We have created these social media companies,
| and allowed them to spread this stuff. Ultimately each and
| every one of us is responsible.
|
| Let's make sure going forward we ask more for those we ask
| to lead in our stead. Our vote isn't the only thing we have
| to do that. We also have our voice and our 1st amendment.
| Let's use it to the fullest.
| nostromo wrote:
| "because most people are not equipped to understand what is
| reasonable"
|
| I hear this all the time now. But let's be clear -- this is
| the talk of fascism.
|
| Democracy is built on trusting the populace to self govern.
| Saying that the populace is too dumb or uninformed to be
| trusted to self govern is inherently anti-democratic.
| ravi-delia wrote:
| This seems like an argument from 'my opponent believes
| something that could possibly be used to justify
| something bad'. People _are not_ equipped to understand
| what is reasonable. No one is. 90% of being reasonable is
| just following with the herd because the world is really
| really hard to understand. That is an argument against
| democracy, and also every other form of government
| involving people at any level. Such is life, at least
| until some kind of weird technical solution pops up.
| wvenable wrote:
| > I hear this all the time now. But let's be clear --
| this is the talk of fascism.
|
| No it's not. This is declaring a problem -- which I think
| is a very real problem -- but not suggesting a solution.
| I don't believe anyone is suggesting fascism is the
| solution to this problem -- except for you.
|
| But now that you've provided this unreasonable response,
| it's now much more difficult to discuss it. You've
| unintentionally provided an example of the very thing
| we're talking about.
| coryfklein wrote:
| He is suggesting a solution - self governance. Trust the
| people to make their own decisions, because there is no
| better alternative. What else can we do, have some
| committee that decides what the public is allowed to
| hear? That _is_ fascism.
| [deleted]
| wvenable wrote:
| Nobody is suggesting getting rid of democracy -- this is
| red herring. This is a bad faith argument about bad faith
| arguments. It's no wonder people can't decide which
| direction is up.
|
| In a conversation that is supposedly about how people are
| being mislead by media we're 2 seconds away of Godwin's
| law _again_. It 's exhausting.
| akiselev wrote:
| Seriousness aside, Godwin himself agreed that the law no
| longer applies after Charleston.
| baq wrote:
| Look at the story and tell me if that's proof of the
| population's ability to self govern or quite the
| contrary? I'm not really sure.
| Quarrelsome wrote:
| I think that's unfair. On this website specifically we're
| very tended towards college educated. If you follow the
| bright path you can end up being somewhat sheltered to
| the concerns and the motivations of much of the general
| population.
|
| This leads to people being blindsided by things like
| Trump or Brexit. Its important to register that we tend
| towards a slanted world view.
| drenvuk wrote:
| Have you seen the crap that people believe and the shitty
| sources that they're accepting the information from? The
| _Facts_ AKA barely plausible bullshit is being served to
| anyone who wants to believe in an alternate yet more
| interesting reality fitting their own beliefs.
|
| Social media has given everyone a soap box, a megaphone
| and a repeater and the ability to piggyback on other
| people's shouting directly into people's ears and eyes.
| Do you think this is a good thing? No one is vetting
| anyone seriously, no one is being consistently judged on
| their honesty, accuracy, track record or motives.
|
| It's not entirely about being dumb, more and more it's
| turning out to be about how much time people are able to
| commit to understanding what they're reading. This is why
| people are known as experts in the first place. Do you
| really think everyone is capable enough to handle the
| highly nuanced planning and decision making necessary for
| governing millions of people on the balance of thousands
| of existing laws and regulations?
|
| Sometimes you can't boil information down into something
| that everyone can understand in a short enough amount of
| time which would be what is necessary for each person to
| play a role in democracy. Just like we pay someone to fix
| our plumbing we should be paying our politicians to
| figure this stuff out for us.
|
| We don't have the time or attention span. It's
| impossible.
| eloff wrote:
| "because most people are not equipped to understand what
| is reasonable"
|
| > I hear this all the time now. But let's be clear --
| this is the talk of fascism.
|
| Nonetheless it seems objectively true to me. This may
| just be my biased perspective being substantially smarter
| than average, but I'm continually surprised by how
| gullible, uneducated, and uninformed the average person
| is. In the USA especially - stop skimping on your
| education system there!
|
| I'm also surprised pleasantly by what humans in the
| aggregate accomplish, so it's not all doom and gloom.
| yrimaxi wrote:
| > Democracy is built on trusting the populace to self
| govern. Saying that the populace is too dumb or
| uninformed to be trusted to self govern is inherently
| anti-democratic.
|
| It's also fascistic to presuppose that democracy is some
| kiddy experiment that the powers that be (the grownups?)
| can and will pull the plug on if it turns out that "the
| populace" cannot be "trusted". And if that is indeed the
| case instead of just your own fascistic thoughts, then
| one would have to question whether there really is a
| democracy to begin with.
| slg wrote:
| We are a representative republic. Part of that reason is
| because it is too burdensome to expect the general public
| to have the information and expertise to be fully
| involved in governance. We delegate that responsibility
| to our representatives.
|
| EDIT: I removed a line that was superfluous to my point
| and was drawing attention away from my actual point.
| welterde wrote:
| This gets repeated again and again, but is just wrong.
|
| The USA is both a representative democracy and a republic
| - the same as most other democracies on this planet.
|
| Republic just means that the government is a public
| affair - there is no monarch. It's the opposite of a
| monarchy.
| slg wrote:
| You are missing the point of my comment. The main focus
| is not the distinction between democracy and republic. It
| was that we do not govern ourselves directly. We elect
| people to do that for us because most of us aren't
| equipped to do it ourselves. The comment I was replying
| to called that fascism.
|
| I removed the "We are not a democracy." line in my
| previous comment to refocus it on what I was really
| trying to say.
| yrimaxi wrote:
| These kind of comments always get downvoted but it is
| pretty accurate. Certainly people like Madison didn't
| want a thriving, egalitarian, democratic, civic culture
| and nation.
| SurfingInVR wrote:
| If it really is fascism vs. fascism (it isn't), why _not_
| choose the side where less people die?
| WatchDog wrote:
| Which side is that?
| SurfingInVR wrote:
| Just a thought, but the party closer to the ruling
| parties of nearly every other country where average life
| expectancy hasn't been on the decline, unlike the US.
| hardwaregeek wrote:
| Well I think the fascism comes with the conclusion, i.e.
| "because most people are not equipped to understand what
| is reasonable, therefore we must control them"
|
| Whereas something like "because most people are not
| equipped to understand what is reasonable, therefore we
| must provide them with the tools to understand what is
| reasonable" isn't necessarily fascist.
| bduerst wrote:
| Fascism calls out the problem but has the wrong
| solutions. It's tied to race, nationalism,
| authoritarianism, and other tribal aspects that are easy
| for some to grab onto but really do not have any place
| being part of the solution.
|
| If you talk to anyone defending the anti-democractic
| occupation of the nation's capital today, you'll see that
| their response is typically is pro-fascist in this
| regard.
| baybal2 wrote:
| Fascism does not see the problem, it is the problem.
|
| The grandiose, arrogant, and blind social elites calling
| out the popular masses to be socially alienated.
|
| Whose social alienation it would be?
|
| Of course such masses will be of service to any any much
| significant opportunist group.
|
| People will vote even for a devil himself if one promises
| to get rid them off such elites.
|
| Just like that, 20 years ago, in a country far, far away,
| the destitute populace decided, in its sane mind, to vote
| into power not for anybody, but an ex-officer from a
| mafia-like intelligence organisation people worked so
| hard to remove from power just 10 years prior.
| core-questions wrote:
| > Fascism does not see the problem, it is the problem.
|
| Nobody is even close to implementing a fascist system in
| America. This is the kind of thing people who don't
| actually know anything about Fascism say. Trump was not a
| Fascist or even close to it.
|
| Stop falling into the tired rhetoric of the 20th century.
| New words are needed to name the problem.
|
| The name for the system that you need to start using is
| "Totalitarian Liberalism". The leader is less important
| than the sum total bureaucratic control that slowly and
| "rationally" usurps freedom, flexibility, and leisure
| time from society for the benefit of the people who have
| the most influence over policy.
|
| It is not a populist system that benefits the aristocracy
| and the working class by aligning corporate and state
| power in the national interest (fascism) nor a system
| that purports to benefit the working class by giving them
| the means of production (communism) - it is a system that
| works to benefit the existing rich by exploiting and
| undermining social divides, papering over them with rules
| and laws that marginalize the entire working class while
| setting it against itself.
| bduerst wrote:
| When I say calls out the problem, I mean fascism speaks
| to the class rift, and tells them all the wrong ideas and
| solutions. We agree that this is creating even worse
| problems.
|
| The wealth divide in the U.S. has been steadily
| increasing, and the solution for the working class
| (higher education) isn't working like it used to, even
| making it worse for young people. This has lead to an
| angry working class who feel justified in blaming their
| problems on other out-groups, whether that's BLM,
| democrats, China, Mexicans, tech companies, doctors,
| lgtbq, etc.
|
| This is what fascism is feeding on in America, and it has
| to stop.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > When I say calls out the problem, I mean fascism speaks
| to the class rift, and tells them all the wrong ideas and
| solutions. We agree that this is creating even worse
| problems.
|
| There, we are on the same page.
|
| A good historical example I brought up few weeks ago
| somewhere on HN.
|
| A shameful truth from NSDAP days Germans did not come to
| admit even to this day is why Kristallnacht has happened.
|
| The prime majority of Germans were not antisemites in
| thirties, and not even in forties. The image of the
| schizophrenoid--paranoid antisemite was completely
| uncharacteristic for anybody, but for single digit
| percentage of fanatics not unlike the current rightist
| crowd in America.
|
| So, if most Germans did not drink the NSDAP coolaid, why
| did Kristallnacht happen?
|
| It happened not because of Jewish people being Jewish as
| such. It happened because of Jewish people being rich,
| and NSDAP effectively promising complete impunity for
| looting.
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| Those two are the exact same thing with merely different
| wording, since "we" are defining what is "reasonable",
| "we" are exerting control.
| jariel wrote:
| No - they are not.
|
| 'The News' - which is mostly credible, is mostly not a
| form of state propaganda.
|
| 'The News' in the US, is a 'reasonable' form of credible
| information.
|
| 'Facebook' is generally not a good source of truthful
| information. It's a very open and free place to
| communicate, which is wonderful, but it's just not a good
| truthiness signal.
|
| Enough with this idea that anything but 'everyone on a
| soapbox' is somehow fascist. Every community has sources
| that are more legitimately authoritative than others.
| wolfgang42 wrote:
| "provide them with the tools to understand what is
| reasonable" [?] "defining what is "reasonable"".
|
| You can help people reach reasoned conclusions without
| telling them what conclusions to reach.
| mistermann wrote:
| > You can help people reach reasoned conclusions without
| telling them what conclusions to reach.
|
| _In theory_ , &/or _to some degree_.
|
| It's also worth noting that "reasoned conclusions" are
| not necessarily _what is True_. Rather than desiring that
| humanity strives for Rationality, wouldn 't it make more
| sense to aim higher? To instead desire that humanity
| pursues Truth? This way, we can improve all people: the
| members of our outgroups _and_ our ingroups.
| omgwtfbyobbq wrote:
| We are exerting control, but not complete control, and
| it's certainly not fascism.
|
| Ideally, yes, everyone could understand every concept
| from the ground up and be able to engage in reasonable
| discourse about anything.
|
| At this point, the complexity of the world precludes the
| majority of people from doing that, which is why we have
| specialization.
|
| Practically speaking, people rely on authoritative
| sources to gain information about something so they can
| form opinions and make decisions. Those authorities do
| define what's reasonable based on different attributes,
| and in doing so exert control, but that doesn't make what
| they're doing fascist. It's done because the amount of
| complexity present in the world requires it.
| rayiner wrote:
| > "we must provide them with the tools to understand what
| is reasonable"
|
| There is just the same as "control them" and in practice
| is how fascism works. The DDR didn't rely primarily on
| stasi breaking kneecaps to enforce order.
| subpixel wrote:
| More accurately put, "more people than you'd ever imagine
| are susceptible to unreasonable arguments".
|
| Too dumb, no. But definitely too gullible - and the is
| made worse by the profit that is to be made manipulating
| such people.
| DSingularity wrote:
| Benevolent dictators is what we all need.
| mlthoughts2018 wrote:
| I think you are wrong. While the cost of authoring and
| distributing content are cheaper than ever and anyone can
| broadcast to the planet trivially, the ability to actually
| bring attention to your content has never been more scarce.
| It is deeply controlled and manipulated by huge
| confirmation-bias-as-service platforms in every recommender
| system, personalized ad system, and content feed across the
| mainstream internet.
|
| Your fellow citizens deserve more credit. They have brains.
| They really can and almost always do form adequate
| understanding of reasonable takes on new information.
|
| But when their eyeballs are subjected to consumerist
| bidding wars and ranking algorithms to inflame, to stoke
| fear and insecurity, to render feelings of inadequacy, and
| they are so thoroughly manipulated, then you get
| information monoculture.
|
| We need information diversity and information vitamins.
| Instead we're allowing ourselves to be spoonfed information
| junk food.
| ravi-delia wrote:
| I don't think that's true either. Before, bringing
| attention to your content required first getting the
| attention of some huge media organization, then
| piggybacking off. At the end of the day there's still
| only as much attention as there are people attending, but
| the barriers to entry are far lower today.
|
| Meanwhile, our fellow citizens deserve no credit at all,
| and neither do we. No one has any real idea what's going
| on, we just either follow the herd or totally gamble.
| Even if someone was actually able to be correct about
| complex systems, it would be unverifiable.
| closeparen wrote:
| The stolen election claim is put forward by the President
| of the United States, not some random people with blogs.
| anfilt wrote:
| What? "Diverse information diets are not a good thing,
| because most people are not equipped to understand what is
| reasonable." Do you realize how elitist and even
| authoritarian that statement is.
| bduerst wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| With every new communication medium comes new
| responsibility.
|
| When radio was first introduced, it was rife with
| misinformation and false advertising. One Dr. Brinkly made
| a fortune selling fake goat testicle transplants (for
| treating ED) over the radio, only to relocate it to the
| Mexican border when he was shut down. He made so much money
| that he ran for Governor and received 30% of the vote.
|
| We're kind of in the same place right now, but with a much
| broader medium. How we move forward is anyone's guess.
| chrononaut wrote:
| Wouldn't the points you make also describe the limitations of
| free speech in society at any point prior to, say, 1980?
| Except in that case they would be limitations imposed by the
| lack of technology.
| vkou wrote:
| Strong disagreement.
|
| 1. In the past, the wrong speech would result in both
| government, and private sector censure. You're selectively
| omitting the civil rights struggle, the communist witch
| hunts, the german witch hunts that preceeded them, the
| history of internment and concentration camps in this
| country, the suffrage struggle...
|
| We didn't somehow magically arrive at the world of 2020,
| without a lot of people being punished for their speech.
|
| 2. Our information diet was never as diverse as it is now.
| Media, prior to the age of the internet, was much more of a
| monoculture of ideas than it is now. New, radicalizing
| information arose in university halls and books and rallies,
| not on the television.
|
| 3. People are no more, and no less willing to admit that they
| were wrong today, as they were in the age of, say,
| segregation-forever Jim Crow south.
|
| This coup is not the result of offensive speech being
| restricted, or hurt feelings. It's the direct result of a few
| people with media and political influence actively directing
| their followers to undermine our democracy.
|
| This could have happened in any decade - but it happened
| today because of the particular personalities involved. You
| elect a president that is very vocal about his lack of
| respect for the law, the election process, the presidency, or
| democratic institutions, and this is what you get. The only
| reason it is happening in 2020, and not 1920, 1960, or 2020
| was because the personalities on the ballot in those years
| had respect for those things - or at least, were adults who
| managed to check their worst impulses.
| Avshalom wrote:
| These are the same people and ideologies that made up the
| white supremacist dominionist militia movements in the 80s
| that were only treated as a threat after the OKC bombing and
| have been purposefully allowed free rein under Trump. This
| aint cause of fucking "cancel culture"
| mlindner wrote:
| Thank you for putting into words my exact thoughts on this
| matter. This is indeed exactly what's occurring and I'm not
| sure of what a good solution may be. Perhaps extending
| freedom from retaliation by employers to freedom of speech
| guarantees would be enough, especially educators.
| TeaDrunk wrote:
| > today employees, students, and professors are all punished
| administratively for saying something that contradicts the
| narrative of the predominant members, or that may be
| offensive to someone
|
| Didn't we already go through this during McCarthyist red
| scares?
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| This is absolute nonsense. You are trying your damndest to
| espouse the HN screed of "Free Speech" but it's got nothing
| to do with why conservatives have raided the Capitol.
| Conservatives have raided the capitol for the same they
| raided Wilmington in 1898, the courthouse in Colfax and why
| they attacked Ellenton. And that reason is because they feel
| that white hegemony is under attack, and since democracy
| can't be used to secure it, it has to go.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilmington_insurrection_of_189.
| ..
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellenton_riot
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colfax_massacre
| backWardz00 wrote:
| Respectfully, this is wrong. I'm afraid you are artificially
| constraining the argument to symptoms, not a cause.
|
| We've seen headlines on this site showing how we have access
| to more kinds of information than ever.
|
| Society HAD been pressured to toe the line even harder back
| in the day. Internet has no TV censors.
|
| It's ridiculous to suggest we've become more protective given
| book burnings, anti-Dungeons and Dragons, anti-comic book,
| Bible thumping paranoia that used to exist.
|
| What we're seeing is American incompetence to comprehend more
| than just their speech is wrong. Their entire agency is
| wrong.
|
| When political forces beat us over the head with economic
| correctness, which has lead to decades of growing inequality,
| and the Fed relied on a policy of worker insecurity to keep
| people in their jobs, this has little to do with mainstreams
| tolerance for alternative ideas (they're everywhere) and
| everything to do with tried and true human nature to maintain
| economic power in the hands of a minority.
|
| Humans evolved quite a bit before language. What is language
| anyway except muscle agency generate random sound forms? Then
| of course we normalize on them, effectively constraining our
| syntax systems organically. Even linguists agree.
|
| This has little to do with suppression of speech and
| everything to do with top down control of agency altogether.
|
| The undermining of agency for the masses, sequestered in the
| hands of a minority has nothing to do with speech. We say a
| lot of diverse shit. But spend our time securing the wealth
| of oligarchs.
| sagichmal wrote:
| It is both ludicrous and offensive to suggest that the things
| we're seeing now are in any way a consequence of curtailing
| hateful speech.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > 2. Having access to a diverse information diet
|
| I am fully for it, but I believe the ones who need to change
| the informational diet are not ones who you think they need.
|
| If today's events make any surprise to HN readers. I will
| tell them they spent not last 4 years, but like 20 years
| under a rock, and have no idea whatsoever what moves the
| political pendulum to the right with such force. And they
| don't want to hear why it is so.
|
| Here on HN, 3 years ago I said that US is inching ever closer
| to the second civil war, and the point of no returns gets
| gets more, and more visible.
|
| Then, I was told that such talks are not welcome on HN, and
| it's below the esteemed patrons of our establishment to think
| of such lowly matters.
|
| Voila, sealed ears, what they lead to. Not only on HN, but
| across the elites of entire Western world.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| The last U.S. civil war had the politicians from the
| southern states seceding.
|
| Is that what you were predicting 3 years ago, still
| predicting?
|
| Because all I see are rioting by people who have lost any
| upward mobility they might have once had.
|
| They'll be burning Teslas next but that doesn't make it a
| civil war.
| cmorgan31 wrote:
| You had rioting people who lost any upward mobility at
| exactly the same time the sitting Vice President and
| Congress were explicitly voting on the certification of
| the result of the election. They were backed by 150+
| Politicians who were going to refuse to certify their
| results. These rioting people then committed several
| felonies of much greater legal concern than anything in
| the BLM protests and subsequent rioting.
| xienze wrote:
| > These rioting people then committed several felonies of
| much greater legal concern than anything in the BLM
| protests and subsequent rioting.
|
| Come again? The BLM riots went on for months, multiple
| people died, a section of a major city was occupied for
| weeks (two people murdered by the self appointed security
| force), a police precinct was burned down (as well as
| many building in several cities), etc. And you're talking
| about the the grave felonies involved in a single day of
| occupying a public building...
| baybal2 wrote:
| > Is that what you were predicting 3 years ago, still
| predicting?
|
| What is the biggest social crisis there now, for every
| opportunistic force to take advantage off?
|
| One need to be very, very blind not to see it coming,
| especially living in a major US city.
| andromeduck wrote:
| Gun control or land use causing inequality and social
| calcification?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I think s/he might be referring to COVID but it is pretty
| unclear.
| baybal2 wrote:
| COVID epidemic is not a social crisis, but you certainly
| can spin it as one.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I still don't see how you are connecting the dots. A lot
| more needs to be in place for civil war.
|
| Pretty sure the monied interests have no desire for civil
| war -- the opposite was the case in the mid 19th Century.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > A lot more needs to be in place for civil war.
|
| True, really a lot. In needs a nation on the edge for it
| to decide to turn on itself. And a nation on the edge it
| is.
|
| > Pretty sure the monied interests have no desire for
| civil war -- the opposite was the case in the mid 19th
| Century.
|
| And so thought monied interests of the Old World when a
| wave of civil wars sped through the continent, and the
| Spring of Nations happened after few decades of turmoil.
|
| And historians err here, taking desirable, for
| believable. "The Two Terrible Decades," aren't called
| that for nothing. They were devastating for both of
| Europe's Old, and New Money. It were the same upper
| classes socialites who wrote the term in the history
| books after all.
| taurath wrote:
| They're gonna have to link up with the left to go burning
| teslas, but instead they'll fight the other people
| without upward mobility.
| taurath wrote:
| But you can't listen to them now. Any underlying reasonable
| argument, policy or beliefs are now turned into monsters
| after they've turned all their opposition into monsters.
| They've become everything they claim to be protecting
| against. They must be fought before they can be heard.
| MrMan wrote:
| This diversity of thought stuff is poison, but a lot of these
| people here seem to lap it up.
| wonnage wrote:
| This is stupid
| gwright wrote:
| I would add
|
| 3. The anonymity of online identity.
|
| People behave very differently when they perceive they are
| anonymous.
|
| Perhaps this is a version of mob psychology/dynamics where
| the anonymity of the collective causes people to act in ways
| that they normally wouldn't.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > People behave very differently when they perceive they
| are anonymous.
|
| I don't know about that. I see people on FB who are
| accurately identified by their real name who have no
| problem whatsoever expressing "F*ck your feelings" to
| people who are ostensibly their friends. Lack of anonymity
| doesn't seem to have helped.
| gwright wrote:
| I purposely used the word "perceive". I think people,
| even with their real names on the account, view
| themselves as more "anonymous" online.
| slg wrote:
| These people who are storming the capital are doing it on the
| back of a lie, that Trump won the election. That is a lie
| that is perpetuated by numerous forms of alternative media.
| How is this the result of an erosion of free speech? If free
| speech was eroded, these alternative media sources wouldn't
| be able to incite violence with their lies. Your analysis
| doesn't make any sense.
| salawat wrote:
| It's a symptom.
|
| You're not seeing the connection because you aren't
| thinking at a high enough level of abstraction. The entire
| social media and entertainment edifice is built on the
| objective of telling you what you want to hear. This
| basically generates a rapidly polarizing schism with a
| tendency toward radicalization, anda natural aversion
| toward established info sources on course correction,
| because if they didn't get it right the first time, or
| second, or third time, then why give the benefit of a
| doubt?
|
| You can argue these people weren't looking for truth in
| thefirst place, but you're missing out on that the "Truth"
| is not the same to all people, and as it turns out, you
| rely on the fluid nature of non-bubbled organization and
| communication to ground disruptive social energy and
| disharmony.
| slg wrote:
| > The entire social media and entertainment edifice is
| built on the objective of telling you what you want to
| hear.
|
| I agree. See my comment here[1]. I simply don't see how
| that is the result or evidence of too little free speech.
| The opposite seems true. The problem isn't that people
| can't say what they believe. It is that people have the
| freedom to knowingly lie in order to corrupt the beliefs
| of others.
|
| [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25662297
| devmunchies wrote:
| they were forced into echo chambers because mainstream
| channels are their own echo chambers.
|
| thus the 2 realities the top post is referring to.
| Retric wrote:
| I think your underestimating how much of this is on
| mainstream news channels. Watching CNN arguably part of
| the liberal media you can hear people question the
| validity of the election an put forth conspiracy
| theories.
|
| "Sudden discovery of 50 thousand votes", and suggestions
| that "Democratic counties reporting last" means they can
| arbitrarily add votes as needed.
|
| This isn't some extreme view it's being endorsed by both
| elected officials and pundits. I am genuinely concerned
| that people have forgotten just how fragile democracy is
| and are trying to score political points at the expense
| of critical institutions.
| klipt wrote:
| > I am genuinely concerned that people have forgotten
| just how fragile democracy is and are trying to score
| political points at the expense of critical institutions.
|
| That's assuming the losing minority still _wants_
| democracy. Maybe they just want King-for-Life Trump.
| esoterica wrote:
| Just because you don't like the truth doesn't mean you
| were "forced" into believing falsehoods.
| devmunchies wrote:
| News outlets act like they have a monopoly on truth,
| which you even believe, yet it's the truth about useless
| facts. Get CNN or Breitbart to report on Apple child
| labor, expose wall street, or expose the impact of
| consumer products on the environment and then I'll
| listen.
|
| political news is a waste of time and probably a net
| negative for an individual. That's MY truth which you
| won't find on CNN or breitbart's twitter feed.
|
| I actively avoid political news (it sucks it is showing
| up here on HN).
| TeaDrunk wrote:
| CNN does cover apple child labor:
| https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/17/tech/apple-microsoft-
| tesla-de... and consumder products on environment:
| https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/23/world/plastic-
| pollution-2040-...
|
| EDIT: I don't like CNN fwiw.
| devmunchies wrote:
| CNN Business and CNN World are different than the main
| CNN Politics tv channel, right?
|
| I was mainly talking about political news, I do
| occasionally browse some mainstream business news.
| hooande wrote:
| an alternative hypothesis is that they voluntarily
| isolated themselves into echo chambers because they
| didn't like the reality that the mainstream news was
| reporting
| slg wrote:
| They didn't leave the mainstream channels because they
| weren't allowed to speak. They left the mainstream
| channels because truth was not compatible with their
| worldview.
| coryfklein wrote:
| Ah, but is there any avenue for _you_ to speak _to them_?
| slg wrote:
| No, because they left the mainstream channels. I am still
| watching the same basic channels, following the same
| basic reporters, and reading the same basic news that I
| did 5 or 10 years ago. They are the ones who left for
| alternatives. Just look at the recent moves from Fox News
| to OAN or Newsmax. They will go wherever they hear what
| they want to hear. If I went to those places to talk to
| them, they would go somewhere else.
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| The current nature of information flow made it easy for
| them to lie to each other. It isolated them from opposing
| viewpoints, so they went into an echo chamber of their own.
|
| This is always the problem with suppressed speech. Nonsense
| will still be spewed, but no one reasonable gets a chance
| to counter it with analysis and cool it down.
|
| _Zeitgeist_ is broken.
| slg wrote:
| Their speech wasn't suppressed. It was simply that they
| didn't want to hear reality. CNN almost never turns away
| national politicians. The Sunday politics shows
| constantly have balanced or right leaning panels. They
| aren't being silenced. They just want to go somewhere
| that tells them what they want to hear.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| It's the practical erosion of Free Speech
|
| It's more like the _result_ of free speech.
|
| Or at least it is, in a woefully undereducated country with
| large segments of the population that reject science and
| value ignorance.
|
| Careful, vetted, fact-based reporting is incredibly
| laborious.
|
| It takes orders of magnitude more time, money, and effort
| than it takes your uncle Steve to fire off a group text
| message with a bunch of conspiracy theories or share his
| anti-vax opinions in yet another wonderfully insightful all-
| caps Facebook screed. And yet, they are treated with the same
| level of respect in a country like this.
|
| Further restriction of free speech at the government level is
| not the answer. That would be even worse than what we have
| now.
|
| The problem is, there is no answer. This is simply where our
| values and our ignorance has taken us.
| esoterica wrote:
| What kind of backwards logic is this? The fact that insane
| falsehood-spewing nutters can find a wide and exclusive
| audience (who have the freedom to choose not to listen to the
| non-nutters) is proof of the lack of practical restrictions
| on free speech, not proof of the erosion of free speech.
| MrStonedOne wrote:
| In a race to get better test scores schools stopped
| implicitly teaching critical thought. Its easier to teach
| kids how to follow a set of steps to achieve a goal (math
| equations) rather then teach them the logic behind the steps
| such that they can independently come up with those same
| steps on their own. Yet the latter increases critical thought
| miles more.
|
| In middle school I had a week long course on how to identify
| the trustworthiness of online sources that talked over topics
| like what does the site gain by pushing one narrative over
| another, are they selling anything that might make them
| artificially favor a view point over another, checking
| multiple sources but identifying common trends in arguments
| or even common site themes that might suggest the sites are
| ran by the same entity.
|
| In highschool in another district all I got on the topic was
| "wikipedia bad because it can be edited by anyone".
| amaccuish wrote:
| And all of us in quieter nations, who have been laughed at
| for not having "real" free speech, are wondering what you are
| on about...
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| I would heartily agree and go a bit further.
|
| Over the last three decades, news organizations have traded
| in their neutrality and integrity for political and
| "narrative" influence. It is exceedingly difficult to find
| information presented without some attempt to mislead.
|
| The short version: There are no more Walter Cronkites or
| Edward R. Murrows the nation trusts to present the news
| without filter or spin.
|
| That coupled with the algorithmically enhanced echo-chambers
| of social media you mention, multiplied by two decades of
| teaching outrage and protest instead of critical thinking and
| history, gets you this.
| shadowprofile77 wrote:
| > Over the last three decades, news organizations have
| traded in their neutrality and integrity for political and
| "narrative" influence.
|
| Have you ever actually read examples of newspapers and news
| reporting from the earlier parts of the 20th century? The
| dishonest, mendacious bias in favor of any media source's
| ideological preference was extreme to a degree that even
| today isn't readily visible. Certain media empires were
| absolutely ruled by their owners and even major papers like
| the New York Times were often loaded in slant towards
| certain ideological narratives. Just to name one example:
| Read about Walter Duranty. Things were even more vicious in
| the 19th century.... I have no idea where this notion of
| once fair, objective news sources comes from but it's
| certainly not rooted in the practical reality (referring in
| all of this to U.S media and politics, regarding other
| countries things get more ambiguous and complciated
| probably).
| iguy wrote:
| I think you and GP are talking about different time
| periods. Walter Cronkite is 50s to 70s, the postwar
| figurehead when there were like 3 TV channels. That's
| where the notion of a shared reality comes from. And I
| guess this was still pretty strong into the 90s, everyone
| watched gulf war I on CNN right?
|
| Whereas Walter Duranty was a big deal in the 20s & 30s,
| in much more fragmented & volatile times. Although how
| much their fragmentation resembles ours I don't know.
| They had many far-out newspapers but still only a few
| radio shows, and perhaps a larger role for shared
| institutions like churches & public schools?
| georgebcrawford wrote:
| > That's where the notion of a shared reality comes from.
|
| Sure, but that reality was a top-down creation. How much
| airtime did dissidents get? Socialists? Women?
| Marginalised people? And I don't mean reporting _on_
| them, but stories _by_ them.
| heroprotagonist wrote:
| Fox News was specifically designed and built to be the
| media arm of the Republican party. This was by design,
| created from the ground up as a long term play. In its
| case, it was not a natural shift of narrative influence or
| a trade-in for the viewer numbers.
|
| Rupert Murdock called on Republican political strategist
| Roger Ailes in 1996 when creating Fox News. Ailes launched
| and then ran Fox News as its CEO for decades.
|
| This is the same guy who worked as a media adviser to
| basically every successful Republican presidential
| campaign.. Nixon, Reagan, Bush.. and even Trump (before
| Ailes died, and after a sexual misconduct scandal finally
| got him canned at Fox).
|
| Ailes was so influential as a strategist that he was even
| credited for one of Bush senior's wins back in the day. And
| he built and reigned at Fox News for 20+ years.
|
| So we had a major republican political operator put in
| charge of a news network by a global political operator
| (Murdoch) who only got US citizenship as it was a
| requirement for US television station ownership. And who
| had a history of using his media empire to shape political
| narrative for influence.
|
| The frustrating thing is that Murdoch's influence shaping
| has always been more about accumulating power than towards
| spreading specific ideology. In Australia in the 60s and
| 70s, he backed the faction pushing for universal free
| health care, free college education for all Australians,
| and public ownership of Australia's oil, gas and mineral
| resources.
|
| Sounds very un-Fox-like, doesn't it? It was the in-road to
| political power, the faction that would get him the most
| influence by supporting. There was a write-up some years
| ago in the UK that delves a bit more into his history (as
| he has also been peddling influence in the UK for decades
| as well):
|
| https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/a-man-of-selfish-
| lo...
|
| But tying this back to Fox News.. he came to the US, built
| a TV network and used that foundation to build a news
| station. This was a push to become a major political
| controller by building and embedding Fox News as the media
| arm of the Republican party.
|
| They used this to condition their base. The lead-up to
| today is decades of people turning on FOX to watch Geraldo,
| sticking around for the news, then wandering off with
| talking points stuffed into their heads by influencers with
| an agenda who were presenting the news.
|
| And the strategy was so successful that it generates mimics
| to the model. The most evil I see is Sinclair Media buying
| up local news stations and putting the same talking points
| into the mouths of local pundits across the nation. There's
| a creepy video compilation that highlights the tactics of
| this influence machinery by showing clips from each of
| these local news outlets with different talking heads each
| repeating the same points.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I completely agree. To be a bit more explicit, the extent
| to which institutions abandon objectivity is the extent to
| which we lose an agreed upon set of facts. It's really
| tragic that the hard-earned credibility of these
| institutions are being hollowed out for relatively little
| short-term political capital to the great detriment of our
| whole country and indeed the world.
| xnx wrote:
| A root cause behind this is a shift from news as a public
| service (something closer to the modern-day BBC) to an
| info-tainment business that must turn a quarterly profit.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Over the last three decades, news organizations have
| traded in their neutrality and integrity for political and
| "narrative" influence.
|
| No, they haven't. News organizations have always had strong
| political and narrative-driven tendencies, what has changed
| is that the media is more diverse in bias and thus the
| illusion of neutrality that came from the period where the
| major national media spoke with nearly uniform bias and
| agenda is lost.
| [deleted]
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| When major news outlets take orders from the DNC on what
| to cover and what not to, that isn't the same as having
| ordinary bias.
|
| When other outlets shill for the RNC, that isn't the same
| as having "political tendencies."
|
| In the past, these maneuvers would have been considered
| conflicts of interest and a violation journalistic
| ethics. Today, we don't have many practicing journalists.
| We have "here's a lefty and here's a righty, let's watch
| 'em argue on screen" passed off as news.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Until the early 20th century, most newspapers were openly
| owned by political parties. And it was ad driven tabloids
| that ended that system, not strong examples of
| journalistic ethics. The strong connection between the
| two never vanished though, the media companies just got
| more powerful.
| throwaway9870 wrote:
| Strong disagree. During the tenure of GW Bush, I saw the
| mainstream media attack him daily in a way I had never
| witnessed before. It seemed to transform from debate to
| contempt and hate.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Perhaps because it was deserved? If the leader of the
| world insists on taking abhorrent actions, what's the
| neutral position?
| happytoexplain wrote:
| You haven't addressed why you think it was largely unjust
| criticism.
| throwaway9870 wrote:
| I don't think "News" should include criticism. There is a
| very important place for it along with news, but I think
| it is important to keep them as separate concepts.
| Honestly, right now what is presented as mainstream
| "news" is probably best described as entertainment.
| georgebcrawford wrote:
| What should "News" consist of?
| throwaway9870 wrote:
| What has happened. Is this really that hard of concept?
| pjc50 wrote:
| Would that have anything to do with the disaster of the
| Iraq War, by any chance?
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| No. Reporting the news doesn't require weighing in or
| attacking anyone. Moreover, the "attacks" began well in
| advance of GW's inauguration never mind the Iraq War.
| treeman79 wrote:
| For second Bush. News were posting. Daily death counts In
| Middle East.
|
| The moment Obama was elected those counts stopped.
|
| We all want to believe that nice guy on TV. Is honest and
| neutral.
|
| This is almost never the case.
| Rapzid wrote:
| Perhaps that was just fatigue coinciding with a new
| admin.
|
| Notice how in the first few months of the pandemic the
| daily stats were front page? Like, every day and multiple
| times per day. Now we just occasionally get the "USA
| breaks single day record" second or third level heading
| with no specific numbers.
|
| But, I promise you in 4 years people will be remember
| this as "Remember when the media was reporting the
| pandemic deaths non-stop when Trump was in office but it
| _suddenly_ stopped when Biden was in office?"
|
| Just like people seem to remember when "Mitch Mcconnell"
| overrode Obama's veto. The veto both houses and both
| parties overrode. 97-1 in the senate.
| elmomle wrote:
| Don't forget the repealing of the fairness doctrine in 1987
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine)!
| People act like it's some big coincidence that polarized
| news really emerged in the US in the 90s....
| xnx wrote:
| "Information diet" is a useful analogy. Imagine you eat a
| diverse diet of candy, ice cream, potato chips, cookies,
| doughnuts, and fruits and vegetables. You can make your own
| analogies about what news sources are junk food, but you can
| see how trying a little bit of everything in an environment
| that is full of bad choices is detrimental. We all have
| limited stomach space and attention.
| brightball wrote:
| The biggest thing that I've seen in the news haven't come
| from lies but from removal of context.
|
| Anything can be made more inflammatory if you remove key
| details while still remaining factually correct.
|
| - Tim punched Bob
|
| - Bob punched Tim
|
| - Bob and Tim shake hands
|
| Reported as...
|
| - Bob punched Tim
|
| Factually correct but lacking context. Unless the reader
| knows the entire story be putting it together from multiple
| reports, this will create a skewed view of any report. This
| happens all the time with headline circulation where nobody
| reads the article.
|
| If you've ever seen reporting or articles on something where
| you have deep expertise, you'll spot it immediately because
| you know exactly what's been left out. Nobody else does
| though.
|
| And honestly, I have no idea what to do about it unless
| somebody can create a site to aggregate news from multiple
| sources to highlight what's missing from each one.
| AlexTWithBeard wrote:
| CNN: And here are the results of the golf tournament
| between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Biden took the second
| place. Trump was just one row above the looser.
|
| Reflecting the same joke for Fox News is left as an
| exercise to the reader.
| majormajor wrote:
| You're trying to blame something you don't like on something
| else you don't like, but it doesn't fit.
|
| The censorship and punishment you claim as new is plainly and
| obviously not a recent development, look at how socialist and
| capitalist ideas have been treated for the last century. Or
| how American evangelism has treated "dangerous" ideas for
| even longer than that. https://www.amazon.com/Scandal-
| Evangelical-Mind-Mark-Noll/dp... , for instance. Never have
| we been a country full of people willing to admit we're
| wrong. But we're increasingly a country of people being
| pandered to by those who want to make a buck telling us we're
| not actually wrong.
|
| I think you'd more easily make the OPPOSITE argument, that
| our norms about what is acceptable speech have eroded too
| far, that we've taken free speech to an unhealthy extreme
| (such as how our tech platforms will happily amplify the
| speech of extremists - in fact, they PREFER to do this,
| because their algorithms have figured out that it gets more
| ad views).
|
| If it's acceptable for politicians to respond to losing
| popularity by claiming fraud - as Trump has been doing for
| months - then you are on the path that leads here. If the
| resulting violence _is not_ acceptable, but you ALSO don 't
| want to restrict Trump's speech with stronger norms, what do
| you propose instead?
|
| How many previous presidents would be inciting this sort of
| thing? How is that the result of _less_ free speech?
| breatheoften wrote:
| Maybe the problem is more an unequal distribution of
| "freeness" of speech across the society; grouped as the
| ruling political class, the opposition political class, and
| the distribution of thought in the populace.
|
| The ruling class says whatever it wants with belief that
| there can never be any negative results for any action they
| take (max "freeness"),
|
| the opposition can't talk about anything in a substantive
| way because all they do is react to the inane and random
| political grenades thrown by the ruling party (very
| constrained "freeness" really. Being forced to respond to
| propaganda-maximizing controversy after propaganda-
| effectiveness-maximizing controversy is a record that sucks
| to play and is definitely forced onto the air more than
| everyone wants -- and the targets of the propaganda blame
| the wrong people for why they have to keep listening to it
| ... )
|
| the people are left with no meaningful political voice (0
| freeness of speech) because there's virtually 0 correlation
| between anything being talked about in the political dances
| and anything that is actually sufficiently practical to
| talk about as to be worth the cognitive attention required
| to talk about it ... You can't have free political speech
| when there are no political engagements worth talking about
| ...
|
| The "team sport" that is the current political landscape is
| not at all a fun or useful game -- some amount of fun and
| usefulness is gonna need to be found and introduced to the
| process of defining government to help move out of this ...
| hooande wrote:
| People express themselves politically through voting.
| These people in particular had every form of expression
| available to them. They discussed whatever they wanted,
| and I can provide you with links where you can see those
| discussions
| breatheoften wrote:
| I clarified in my other comment -- I wasn't trying to
| imply that the violence here was a consequence of the
| extremists involved having any legitimate claim that
| their free speech has been curtailed.
|
| I think this riot is best understood as being actively
| organized by the current ruling party.
|
| I think there is a clear free speech issue in the current
| politics though -- systematically devaluing the potential
| for productive political talk is a form of free speech
| restriction -- it's a ddos attack against rational
| discourse - which has the effect of reducing the value of
| political discourse in general.
| majormajor wrote:
| I don't really think so - because I don't see the splits
| that way, as many of the people angry about "reduced
| speech" are people with extremely high levels of speech
| as members of the ruling political class, like Ted Cruz -
| but this is somewhat similar to one of the theories about
| the modern American Right's appeal in the South -
| increased opportunity for minorities is seen as a threat
| to the folks used to having it all their way. Increased
| speech for previously-censored groups is interpreted as
| censorship of themselves.
| breatheoften wrote:
| Sorry I didn't mean to imply that the anger component
| here was related to any specific party complaining about
| loss of political speech in a disingenuous way -- I was
| more attempting to diagnose the current overall bad state
| of the politics as being a result of the way that
| pressure is put onto "freeness" of speech when an
| authoritarian regime actively creates an engine that
| makes reasonable discourse difficult or impossible ...
| onli wrote:
| A good example for your point would be McCarthyism. The
| idea of a more ideal free speech society we had in the past
| is probably naive, and that's likely true in the US and
| elsewhere.
|
| I doubt that this is a technical issue. Sure, the internet,
| social media and filter bubbles will have an influence. But
| there are so many political forces at play, so many angles
| under which the situation could be explained.
|
| > _How many previous presidents would be inciting this sort
| of thing? How is that the result of less free speech?_
|
| That's an old debate in history - are specific events
| caused by specific people, or are the political currents so
| strong that no matter who would've been in a specific
| position, history would have likely taken the same course?
|
| But here it is for certain that this specific coup hinges
| on the absolute leader figure Trump is for his followers.
| And it follows what he says all the time.
| majormajor wrote:
| > That's an old debate in history - are specific events
| caused by specific people, or are the political currents
| so strong that no matter who would've been in a specific
| position, history would have likely taken the same
| course?
|
| > But here it is for certain that this specific coup
| hings on the absolute leader figure Trump is for his
| followers. And what he says all the time.
|
| Even there it's both, I think. Trump is part of a trend
| towards valuing immediate power over everything else, and
| being willing to play dirty to keep that power. His
| followers listen to him in large part because they've
| been primed by the media for decades to distrust the
| "mainstream" (where "mainstream" apparently doesn't
| include some of the people with the largest audiences,
| but actually just means "people who disagree with you").
|
| The mystery is just how those people maintain the
| cognitive dissonance of being "pro speech" and "pro
| democracy" when they've tuned out everything else and are
| just focused on power in what they perceive as a war...
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| From _War and Peace_ by Leo Tolstoy:
|
| > Equally right or wrong is he who says that Napolean
| went to Moscow because he wanted to, and perished because
| Alexander desired his destruction, and he who says that
| an undermined hill weighing a million tons fell because
| the last labourer struck it for the last time with his
| pickaxe. In historic events the so-called great men are
| labels giving names to events, and like labels they have
| but the smallest connection with the event itself.
| onli wrote:
| Has been a few years, but War and Peace takes indeed one
| extreme position in that debate. That's in the whole
| book, including the chaos of the battles. It's a great
| perspective, thanks for citing it here.
| onli wrote:
| Sure, that follows. In an environment where the US-
| american public would be immune to someone who can rack
| up 100 lies in 5 minutes, someone like Trump would not
| have followers. So an individual can influence history as
| much as the environment permits. On the other hand,
| people are forming that environment and again and again
| there are specific situations where a single person
| seemed to change the course of history. Does that count
| as paradox? I always found that part of historical
| perspectives fascinating.
|
| > _The mystery is just how those people maintain the
| cognitive dissonance of being "pro speech" and "pro
| democracy" when they've tuned out everything else and are
| just focused on power in what they perceive as a war..._
|
| Yes, that is a fascinating mystery. But one has to keep
| in mind: Many of the people that just tried a coup today
| and effectively tried to dismantle the democratic system
| in the US by installing a dictator will think of
| themselves as defenders of democracy. There will be of
| course hard right wing nationalist terrorists in that
| crowd - the last pro-trump protests have shown that - but
| there can only be so many of those.
| dkdk8283 wrote:
| I'm really glad to see this as the top comment: I think your
| analysis is spot on.
|
| Anecdotally I've been reading a lot of old news (60s-90s) and
| it's amazing to read as a retrospective. It has given me
| context for how we arrived to present day and it's funny to
| see some of the same social phenomenons repeating themselves.
| andromeduck wrote:
| Same, I'd highly recommend Hayek's Road to Serfdom and
| Constitution of Liberty if you haven't read it already,
| along with Cato's letters and the the Federalist papers.
| It's honestly amazing and depressing how accurate they were
| but I suppose human nature is timeless.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| >hurting our iddly-widdly-fweelings
|
| This is irrational and hostile. Regardless, what's unfolding
| is not a result of people more frequently experiencing normal
| social reactions to their public statements and actions, nor
| a result of the exceptional and justly criticized cases where
| those reactions are based on error. That line of criticism is
| usually just a dishonest way to excuse other behaviors, like
| we are witnessing here, that are dangerous to society and
| poisonous to discourse.
| coryfklein wrote:
| The practical power of "that's offensive" is so much
| stronger than "we should allow free speech". I'd love for a
| better and more succint method of conveying the threat that
| putting "offensiveness" on a pedestal puts to science and
| democracy. Do you have one?
|
| It needs to be made clear that the path of progress is
| littered with hurt feelings, and that the importance of our
| _feelings_ is significantly dwarfed by the collective good
| of science and democracy.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| It needs to be made clear that the path of
| progress is littered with hurt feelings, and
| that the importance of our feelings is
| significantly dwarfed by the collective good of
| science and democracy.
|
| This is a false dichotomy.
|
| The human race is not a zero-sum game with "feelings" on
| one side and "progress" on the other!
|
| Don't lose sight of why we're making all of this progress
| in the first place.
|
| We are not building more highways and inventing more
| computers just for the heck of it. We are -- or _should_
| be -- doing it to improve the happiness of ourselves and
| those who come after us.
|
| Y'know, _happiness?_ One of those pesky feelings you
| mentioned?
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| He did not present a dichotomy. He said one is more
| important than the other, and that is correct.
|
| We used to teach our children to "have a thick skin."
| "Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words _can
| never hurt me_. " When someone took offense we told them
| to "grow up."
|
| Being offended, especially on behalf of someone else, is
| useless. Teach people not to take offense. They'll be
| happier.
| watwut wrote:
| Buy that saying is lie. It is simply not true. It is just
| something said to kids when adults don't want to deal
| with situation. It is good for adults to say that,
| because then they can continue to watch tv unbothered.
|
| Words to affect people and if you don't respond to
| insult, you will be bullied and insulted more and more.
| You will not have respect and you will lose ability to
| influence what is going on with and around you.
|
| In addition, men used to hold duels over words, so it was
| not even historical standards.
|
| > When someone took offense we told them to "grow up."
|
| Yes, some adults were enabling bullies like that.
| Especially if they themselves did not like the target.
| But it still was exactly that - enabling.
|
| Just letting it go or being submissive is not functional
| strategy to deal with these issues.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| Teach people not to take offense. They'll be happier.
|
| Nonsense. Again, not a dichotomy. You can have "thick
| skin", a strong sense of self, not easily be harmed by
| others' words _and not be an asshole._
| grahamburger wrote:
| We also teach children (still, I hope?) to not say
| anything if you don't have anything nice to say, and to
| walk a mile in someone's shoes before judging them, and
| to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. So
| yes, teach people not to take offense, and _also_ teach
| people not to be offensive. Being offended on someone
| else behalf helped us get rid of slavery, helped end the
| holocaust, gave us many of our social programs that
| support the poor - it 's not wrong to see injustice and
| call it out, even if it's not happening to you.
| mlindner wrote:
| Except not everyone has the same type of happiness. This
| is why the declaration of independence does not say
| "life, liberty, and happiness", it says "life, liberty,
| and _the_ _pursuit_ _of_ happiness". There's an implied
| statement there that not everyone, or even most will be
| happy, but we should be free to be able to seek what
| makes us happy. You don't have a right to happiness, but
| you have a right to be able to try to make yourself
| happy.
| andromeduck wrote:
| Would you really rather live a pleasing fiction than face
| a sad or uncomfortable reality? Would you be okay if we
| just pumped you up on some concoction or other and called
| it a day of it caused you to be happier?
| JohnBooty wrote:
| Sorry, _what?_ Nothing I said had anything to do with
| denying reality, achieving happiness at all costs, or
| anything like that. I 'm certainly not in favor of that.
|
| I am expressing my belief that progress and happiness
| pair pretty well -- they should not be at odds with each
| other.
|
| In addition to earning a living, it's why I got into this
| industry. Is that not why most of us are here? Aren't we
| here to write code that makes things better for people?
| Perhaps not on world changing levels, but hopefully on
| some level even if it's just making the file upload box
| on some fourth-rate social media site a little easier to
| use?
| majormajor wrote:
| Your whole post here could be applied to the folks
| storming the capitol with equal ease as it could be
| applied to the stereotypical "triggered" university
| student.
|
| So it doesn't seem to have much explanatory power as to
| how we got to the point where the President is inciting
| those rioters... the President is literally telling them
| to be offended, and to be angry. Speech promoting
| violence. How is _that_ speech not itself a threat to
| democracy?
| dschuler wrote:
| The supreme court has ruled that speech presenting
| "imminent public danger" is not protected (i.e. free)
| speech.
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| Aren't you inadvertently proving their point here?
|
| The fact that it applies to both perhaps suggests
| validity, no?
| majormajor wrote:
| But we don't see an anti-Trump politician encouraging a
| set of counter-insurrectionists... so we're looking for
| what's DIFFERENT about the Trump side here, not something
| that applies everywhere.
| travisoneill1 wrote:
| Getting angry when a stranger makes a statement that you
| disagree with is not a normal social reaction, or at least
| it wasn't until recently. The possibility of error is just
| one reason that it shouldn't be.
| bawolff wrote:
| Yes it is. Heck if you look in the history books there
| are plenty of examples of people not just being
| criticized but actually being murdered over the
| statements they make. Which statements draw social ire
| may change over time, but you can't seriously be
| suggesting that until recently nobody got offended ever.
| pjc50 wrote:
| People used to fight duels.
| old-gregg wrote:
| > This is irrational and hostile.
|
| The way I interpret this argument is this: the world wasn't
| meant to be pleasing all the time. Excluding unpleasant
| facts from one's information diet because it hurts their
| feelings is what the OP is arguing against. It is
| absolutely possible to present hostile/offensive statements
| that are also true. Feel free to agree/disagree, but it's
| quite rational line of thinking.
| xnx wrote:
| DC is filled with a violent mob that feels uncomfortable
| with the truth that Trump lost. They are lashing out
| because they do not have the emotional fortitude to deal
| with their hurt feelings.
| Lammy wrote:
| Corollary to #1: Being willing to understand that two
| conflicting views on the same topic doesn't mean one of them
| has to be wrong
| the-pigeon wrote:
| And sometimes they are both misleading.
|
| I used to think if I read through media with opposing
| biases then I'd understand the real story. But in most
| cases there's just a huge amount of relevant context
| missing even if the articles are factually correct.
|
| In the same way that you can present statistical data in a
| way to support a view when the data doesn't actually
| support it despite being factually accurate.
| jariel wrote:
| " this is the price we pay for abandoning free speech."
|
| This is completely upside down.
|
| This is not the 'erosion of free speech' - it's actually the
| 'explosion' of it.
|
| Free from any regular credible filters, people are now free
| to promote whatever fictions they want to promote.
|
| When fictions are emboldened by those in positions of
| legitimate authority, aka the President, the truth falls by
| the side.
|
| The ratio of 'noise to truth' has blown up, and it's mostly a
| result of our ability to communicate in a more direct manner.
|
| The voices of mostly uninformed individuals, free to express
| themselves on the soap box, are now much louder. That's not a
| slight: we're all busy and have different roles in life. We
| can't be experts in everything, ergo, most of us are not
| legitimate sources of truth on that much. We allocate those
| responsibilities to people within whom we entrust a certain
| degree of trust. Like the free press as one example.
|
| Far from 'restrictions' on speech, the internet itself,
| Facebook, Twitter - whatever their policies provide for 100x
| more communication than existed before.
|
| We used to get information from news, politicians,
| bureaucrats, teachers - and some gossip from the neighbours.
| Now the 'gossip, youtube and TikTok information' factor is
| 10x greater - and that's mostly a function of free
| expression.
|
| 'Good or Bad?' - that's a more complicated issue - but what
| we are seeing now is 'much more expression' not 'limited
| expression'.
| simonbarker87 wrote:
| Can't believe I had to scroll so far to find a comment like
| this. This is absolutely nothing to do with a limit on free
| speech but a failing of education and the explosion of free
| speech on social media.
|
| To be flippant, there are more village idiots than ever
| before and they are all talking to each other on the
| internet.
|
| The solution to this, in my opinion, is a massive
| investment in public education and a shift of American
| politics to the left. America doesn't have a left and a
| right, it has a far right and a right. In the UK American
| democrats would be very comfortable in the UK Conservative
| party.
| xapata wrote:
| That all sounds plausible, but I am skeptical that today is
| significantly different from other historical periods or
| nations that had/have similar tribalism. Look back far enough
| and you'll find rich stories of senators murdering each
| other. Sure, ancient Roman history, but relevant today. Many
| societies of the past have had our same divisions.
|
| Rather than making conjectures about why today is different,
| it might be more helpful to investigate why some time periods
| _weren 't_ rife with tribalism.
| hpoe wrote:
| You don't need to go that far back in the mid 1800's one
| Senator beat another Senator almost to death on the Senate
| floor.
| xapata wrote:
| Anecdotes (US History) are useful for building
| hypotheses, but I like statistical evidence for testing
| those theories. Unfortunately, our best source of
| democracy data (Rome, at least 52 Greek city-states,
| Greek leagues, etc.) may be 2k years old. Obviously, we
| don't know much about the media of the day, so it'll be
| hard to test some of the modern social media theories.
| Maybe we could compare the behavior of different
| municipalities.
| oblio wrote:
| The tribalism part is easy: prosperity. Just like a fed
| snake is calm, so an extremely prosperous society is
| peaceful.
|
| A simple example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automotive_
| industry#/media/Fil...
|
| In 1950 the US produced 80% of the world's cars. Similar
| story for appliances and many other products. That wasn't a
| normal state. So slowly it went down.
|
| So the US is slowly reversing to its mean. Remember, robber
| barons, the Great Depression, the New Deal.
| chillwaves wrote:
| This is not the time for "both sides"ing.
| codingprograms wrote:
| Nobody trusts the media. So people will believe what they want.
| There's no source of truth
| exclusiv wrote:
| I started watching news from overseas as they seem to be more
| objective and professional.
|
| Both sides have "news" outlets which are agenda based and
| profit motivated. And truth doesn't usually sell as well.
| That's a problem. You can't even trust the fact checker
| sources as they say "out of context" or "partially true" when
| it's a fact against their agenda/team. Even the fact checking
| sites are super biased.
|
| If you align with a side, you attach your identity to it like
| Paul Graham wrote about with Keep Your Identity Small [1].
| People don't like their identity criticized, or want to
| believe they may be wrong, so they believe what they want and
| create their own distorted bubble.
|
| My buddy always said "we're told to not talk about religion
| or politics. Probably the 2 most powerful and influential
| topics that exist". Now people have started talking about
| them, but not in a productive fashion.
|
| If you believe someone on the other side is bad based on
| their views, you can't have a dialogue. This is the greatest
| tragedy. Disowning family members and friends over their
| views because you concluded they must be bad people?
|
| Very few people on either side are actually bad. They just
| have a different experience, they've aligned their identity
| and team, and there's a ton of forces at play (ex: media,
| special interests, etc) to keep that divisiveness going.
|
| [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html
| majormajor wrote:
| Everybody there has been fed bullshit by the media - talk
| radio, Fox News commentators, etc - for decades. They eat it
| up.
|
| Big chunks of the media decided a long time ago that they
| could make money by just pandering to angry people, and here
| we are.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| > _Big chunks of the media decided a long time ago that
| they could make money by just pandering to angry people_
|
| And then social media decided to cut out the cost of
| producing content, and just put angry people in a cage
| together.
| jandrese wrote:
| In the news it turns out that lies are more profitable than
| the truth, and the market has spoken.
| codingprograms wrote:
| The left is just as guilty
| cweagans wrote:
| "the left" didn't just storm the capitol because of a
| conspiracy theory.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| You are right. Both 'sides',however, were incited to act
| on emotion.
| razius wrote:
| One of the problems, yes. I've witness too many times where
| they blatantly lied.
| razius wrote:
| To add to this, lies with easily proven evidence if they
| wanted to investigate. Eg. Check report on something from a
| hearing or court document, checked the hearing or the court
| document itself and it's completely opposite to what the
| media is reporting.
| starfallg wrote:
| No. People chose their own truth because they didn't like
| what the media was saying even though it is much closer to
| reality than whatever crap they were fed through
| "alternative" media.
| polka_haunts_us wrote:
| This is the answer, I don't have the source in front of me
| but I remember reading some surveys about American trust in
| institutions circa 2015 and people who identified as
| Republican trusted "Media" at a rate of 8%. I can't imagine
| that number particularly improved since then.
| jandrese wrote:
| I'm guessing they don't count Fox News, OAN, Breitbart,
| etc... as part of "the Media" in that?
|
| To be fair, they probably shouldn't be counted in that
| regard, but it is how they have branded themselves.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| For one, policing them completely differently?
| chrischen wrote:
| Modern social media and the internet is a big part of enabling
| masses of people to hear what they want to hear, which begets
| more seeking out and hearing what they want to hear, which
| reinforces what they've already been hearing. The root of all
| evil? Unfortunately enough, it seems to be the act of giving
| everyone an equal voice. Giving a platform for any idea to take
| hold really means anything ideas can take hold.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| As this is HN, I really believe that this lack of a shared
| reality is only possible with the Internet. Before the
| Internet, there were more conservative sources and more liberal
| sources, but never before could you completely surround
| yourself with your own version of reality. And more
| importantly, your version of reality is constantly reinforced
| by algorithms that are specifically designed to raise your
| level of rage (aka "engagement").
|
| I certainly don't know what the right answer here is, or even
| if there is one. The flip side of this polarization is the
| Internet has allowed discriminated groups to organize (e.g. see
| the "It Gets Better Project")
| majormajor wrote:
| You could do a pretty good job of bubbling yourself up
| starting in the 90s with talk radio + Fox News... tons of fun
| vitriol towards Clinton... my parents have been on that train
| for a while now.
| ChrisKnott wrote:
| I think people listening to talk radio on long commutes was
| a major early driving factor.
|
| A pretty good doc about it;
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brainwashing_of_My_Dad
| jml7c5 wrote:
| That explanation doesn't quite fit with historical opinion
| polls. It wasn't until 2000 that strong dislike of the
| opposing party shot up, and dislike had been slowly growing
| before that. But it is possible that the sudden change in
| trajectory was delayed by the 4 year election cycle, which
| puts politics in the fore of people's minds for durations
| that are too short for contempt to really snowball.
|
| https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2016/06/22/1-feelings-
| a...
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I heard the argument that US used to more homogeneous ( which
| was reinforced by the media forcing the same values ). Now
| that the franchise increased with more groups trying to grab
| a slice, the values clashed. In other words, the people were
| always there, but were either not visible, ignored or
| marginalized.
|
| I am willing to buy this argument.
| asdff wrote:
| All the stuff you hear about today has been around before the
| internet too. AM radio was the home of these lunatics before
| (still is).
| arrosenberg wrote:
| Nah, any form of mass communication works. Newspapers (and
| other written publications) started plenty of wars after the
| printing press was invented, radio caused a few social
| experiments starting in the 1930s, and TV starting in the
| 60s.
| nostrademons wrote:
| Historically, lack of a shared reality has been the _rule_.
| The idea that we all inhabit one reality is a construct of
| modernity, with the rise of mass production, mass media, and
| mass culture. Before the printing press there was no way for
| ideas to spread far enough to create a shared reality across
| a whole nation; indeed, the concept of a nation dates from
| this time. The closest you got was religion, but religions
| had a knack for splitting into sects and then bitterly
| fighting each other - witness the Protestant Reformation and
| the Wars of Religion that followed. Those wars were
| specifically fought over whose version of reality (both of
| which seem very quaint today) was true: each believed that
| the other was an existential threat to eternity.
|
| The Internet just ushered in post-modernism on a global
| scale, which undoes a lot of the thought-unification (some
| would say thought-control) that came with modernity.
| karmelapple wrote:
| There were gatekeepers before, who generally acted
| responsibly.
|
| Now that anyone can publish anything, and make it appear
| reasonably professional, there's much more competition for
| everyone's attention.
|
| And the media outlets who cater to specific biases, and are
| outspoken and over-the-top, seem to win the attention.
| ImaCake wrote:
| Building on the history theme here; plenty of modern
| revolutions have been preceeded by a rise in polarising
| media. The french revolution had the pulp paper of Jean-
| Paul Marat [0], the soviets had Lenin's writings [1], and
| the Nazis had Julius Streicher's _Der Sturmer_ [2]. It 's
| not difficult to draw comparisons to Bannon's Breitbart
| here.
|
| 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Paul_Marat 1.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iskra 2.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_St%C3%BCrmer
| esoterica wrote:
| The reflexive "both-sides"-ism needs to stop. One chunk of the
| population is (mostly) tethered to reality and the other chunk
| has descended into insane, delusional, conspiratorial rabbit
| holes. The two "realities" are not equally valid.
| gorbachev wrote:
| Decades and decades of making politics about wedge issues.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| Single member districts coupled with todays media and social
| media.
|
| This naturally leads to the natural balance being two parties,
| which has to oppose each other to the extreme in all topics,
| which then diverges further and further creating the US today.
|
| Different variants of multi member districts or proportional
| representation allows for the both the progressive left and far
| right which today feel left out to form their own groups. They
| can then get into congress and slowly let the steam out while
| likely enacting some change which all can accept.
| sugarpile wrote:
| The internet allows for mass influence of the population by
| third party actors. This is largely China vs Russia. I have
| trouble not playing this out at scale and drawing the
| conclusion the internet inherently invalidates a lot of the
| assumptions democracy (as in the American Experiment(tm)
| version of it) requires to function. I hope I'm wrong and
| overly pessimistic.
| g42gregory wrote:
| > This is largely China vs Russia.
|
| I would like to question this a bit. If this were true,
| wouldn't this mean that China won this time since Biden is
| the President (vs Russia won in 2016 since Trump was the
| President)?
|
| I think there are a lot more internal actors, such as special
| interest groups, PACs, activist groups, etc..., that may
| dwarf the external influence. There is so much money involved
| in politics and elections. I wonder how can we curtail the
| flow of money to make things more civil in politics?
| mhh__ wrote:
| > wouldn't this mean that China won this time since Biden
| is the President
|
| Only if there was interaction between the Biden campaign
| and the Chinese state, which there was in the case of the
| Trump campaign
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Links_between_Trump_associate
| s...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2
| 0...
| lookdangerous wrote:
| Maybe it was precipitated by a breakdown in the shared
| understanding of what constitutes reality somewhere earlier
| down the line.
| mhh__ wrote:
| The defining characteristic of Trump and Brexit is the gradual
| realisation that you can basically say or do _anything_ and if
| you go far enough it 'll stick.
| odiroot wrote:
| Not an American, living in EU.
|
| It somehow reminds me of Weimar Germany, with two very fringe
| (sometimes militant) opposing groups radicalising the rest of
| the society -- or the rest just ignoring the whole mess and
| going about their lives.
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| Who are the two fringe groups? By citing Weimar Germany, and
| then going into "two fringe groups", you are putting Anti-
| Nazi organizations on the same moral level as Nazis. You do
| see the problem with that right?
| [deleted]
| mlindner wrote:
| When both extremes are saying that the other side should
| face death or life imprisonment as well as anyone that
| defends that extremist, what those groups actually stand
| for becomes irrelevant.
| bjoli wrote:
| The left he/she is referring were not anti-nazi, they were
| pro-communist, and almost uniformly pro-soviet groups that
| argued that the ruling social democratic government had
| betrayed the working class.
|
| The Nazis weren't the nice guys, but neither were their
| opposition, at least not the one referred to by the parent.
| iguy wrote:
| IIRC the final score was a bit over 10 million dead bodies
| each, in round numbers. It's not crazy to place commies and
| nazis on the same level of hell.
| dnissley wrote:
| The two fringe groups were not Nazis and anti-nazis. They
| were Nazis and communists. The communists had their own
| agenda, they were not simply anti-nazi.
| lapcatsoftware wrote:
| The people do it to themselves. They believe what they want to
| believe, hear what they want to hear, see what they want to
| see. This is still largely a free country where there are
| multiple independent sources of "news", and individuals
| voluntarily expose themselves or not to whatever they choose.
| As far as I know, nobody is tied down in a chair and forced to
| watch certain TV shows or listen to certain radio shows for
| hours, days, weeks, months at a time, to the exclusion of all
| else. Maybe in airport terminals, but again, travel is also
| voluntary.
|
| I find the "How did we arrive to this point" question
| interesting, because for most of recorded history, the masses
| of humanity have not been so different than they are today. If
| anything, "enlightenment" is a relatively rare occurrence.
| danaris wrote:
| But when media organizations peddling outright lies are
| allowed to call it "news", and are treated as being just as
| valid as genuine journalistic organizations by the various
| institutions of our country, it is, for want of a better
| term, no longer a "free market" of news.
| giantg2 wrote:
| The genuine sources have issues like bias or sloppy
| investigating, that leads to outright lies too. For years
| the media was representing the gender wage gap as being a
| man and women in the same job with all attributes other
| than gender being equal (even Obama said this during a
| state of the union). That clearly isn't what the BLS study
| says (difference in occupations, in part, drive the wage
| gap on an aggregate level).
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/karlynborysenko/2020/03/31/gre
| a...
| bitwize wrote:
| Yes, _all_ other things being equal including level of
| experience, a woman makes about 98% as a man.
|
| But how many women are afforded the opportunities to
| attain the job and life experience it takes to make as
| much as a man at the same job?
|
| Once again -- stop thinking equality and start thinking
| equity.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Considering women obtain degrees at a higher rate than
| men, I'd say there's just as much opportunity.
|
| If you are alluding to family constraints, having a
| family is a choice. I'm a man with a family and I have
| seen many opportunities disappear as a result of my
| decision to have a family.
| katbyte wrote:
| People should be held accountable for what they say on
| media platforms, and lies shouldn't be allowed.. but i
| can't see that even happening.
| artificialLimbs wrote:
| "lies shouldn't be allowed" Uh huh, and who decides what
| is a lie? There is a term called "slippery slope" and
| free speech may have been its founding issue.
| lapcatsoftware wrote:
| Held accountable by whom? The government? Which is
| controlled roughly half the time by a party which you
| probably disagree with vehemently?
| Barrin92 wrote:
| In countries in which the truth is defended as OP demands
| clowns don't tend it to make it into government in the
| first place, but I see your point it's hard to see how
| the US gets out of this cycle
| salawat wrote:
| Didn't Iceland literally have a clown for a mayor or
| something?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%B3n_Gnarr
|
| Comedian technically, but eh.
| nsajko wrote:
| This is an interesting point and my sibling comments are
| wrong: I'm sure the judiciary could provide that
| accountability, given new law. Even though I think
| Wikipedia is a failed project (because of it's own
| guidelines not being followed), it's actually got pretty
| good guidelines regarding verifiability and due weight:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_
| vie...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability
|
| I'm imagining the media could be structured upon some
| sort of protocol codified in law that would ensure those
| guidelines would be respected.
|
| However the main thing that's necessary is probably
| instilling some sense of duty, honor and integrity in a
| large number of individuals. No idea how to go about
| that.
|
| EDIT: in the USA the FCC actually had regulation with a
| similar intent in the near past:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine
| mistermann wrote:
| > People should be held accountable for what they say on
| media platforms, and lies shouldn't be allowed.. but i
| can't see that even happening.
|
| I've suggested to @dang that he tries implementing a kind
| of experimental discussion mode like that right here on
| HN, where for certain types of topics he could enable
| this mode and see what the effect would be on the human
| mind.
|
| I don't know all the particulars of what changes should
| be included in such a mode (would be a good topic for a
| discussion), but the main one I would include is an
| additional guideline something along the lines of "Please
| exert some effort in restricting your statements to the
| discussion of reasonably conclusive _true_ facts about
| physical reality. "
|
| This way, when people inevitably succumb to mistaking the
| virtual reality in their mind (where one has supernatural
| powers like omniscience, the ability to read minds at
| scale, predict the future with precise accuracy,
| completely understand infinitely complex
| indeterminate/chaotic systems, etc) for physical reality
| (where we do not have these powers), such comments could
| be flagged and reviewed a few days later (when cooler
| heads prevail) in a group Post Incident Review process of
| some sort (maybe a zoom meeting), where we could examine
| our behavior from a more metaphysical perspective, the
| goal being to increase awareness of the fact that
| inaccurate beliefs about reality are not something that
| only members of our personal outgroups suffer from, but
| rather something we all suffer from. It is simply a
| consequence of the same base software we all run in our
| minds.
|
| Unfortunately, this idea seems to be rather unpopular
| (shocking!) - so, the beatings will continue until morale
| improves (or some variation of that), or until this never
| ending process comes to its natural conclusion. Mother
| Nature is a cruel mistress.
|
| https://humorinamerica.wordpress.com/2014/05/19/the-
| morpholo...
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MHExbJGIQs
|
| https://youtu.be/smX2UtdJFq8 ( _not recommended for
| filthy casuals_ )
| salawat wrote:
| >But when media organizations peddling outright lies are
| allowed to call it "news", and are treated as being just as
| valid as genuine journalistic organizations
|
| Where are these "genuine journalistic organizations"
| defined except in our own minds?
|
| There is no journalist licence. There is no license to
| publish. You have a printer, and someone to buy what you
| print out? Congratulations! You're a journalist! In the
| U.S. anyway.
| lapcatsoftware wrote:
| I would argue that this is the result of a free market of
| news. These media organizations only exist because they
| tell people what they want to hear. There's a huge market
| for that. In order to peddle anything, you have to get
| people to listen first, and you can't take listeners for
| granted in a society where the media is not controlled by
| the government.
| T-hawk wrote:
| It is the result of the free market of news. Bad news
| drives out good, just as bad money drives out good.
|
| (Bad as in quality, not as in pessimistic. Bad meaning
| emotional and inciteful rather than informative and
| constructive. Humans have proven they respond more to the
| former.)
| danaris wrote:
| A true free market requires _full information_ --in this
| case, that means the ability to determine how trustworthy
| the "news" being provided by a particular organization
| is. And there's a big, big difference between an
| organization that presents genuine facts with a slant
| (though that can be problematic enough), or one that
| tries in good faith to provide genuine facts but
| sometimes fails, either due to bad actors within or
| simple incompetence, and one that knowingly presents
| _verifiably false information_.
|
| "Free market" does _not_ just mean "everyone (with
| enough money) gets to provide whatever they want, and
| call it whatever they want, and it's up to ordinary
| people to figure out what's reliable and what's not."
| jmfldn wrote:
| If only it were that simple, that it's just serving
| people what they want. Running with that idea for a
| second, isn't what people want partly a function of
| propaganda, brainwashing and so on. The narratives that
| we're fed are largely those of the rich and powerful or,
| in the case of fringe views on social media, those of
| often unqualified people at best (and lunatics at worst).
| The metaphor of a market of people autonomously choosing
| news obfuscates a much more complex reality about why so
| many people want to hear nonsense or views that undermine
| their own interests?
| lapcatsoftware wrote:
| You're correct that the reality is much more complex. To
| expand, I would say that people are indeed susceptible to
| propaganda, but only propaganda of a certain kind. It has
| to reinforce their preexisting biases. You can't just
| force any propaganda on any arbitrary person, that's not
| going to work. That's why I say people do it to
| themselves. They come to trust the public figures who
| tell them specifically what they specifically want to
| hear, and then this trust and good feeling can be
| exploited for other purposes.
|
| That's not unique to any one political party. All
| political partisans are susceptible to propaganda, but
| only party-specific propaganda. There are different forms
| of propaganda on different sides that would never work on
| the other side.
| danaris wrote:
| Mm, I think that's true in some circumstances.
|
| However, if people are put in a situation where the only
| information they have access to--or the only information
| given an official sanction--is the propaganda, then
| whether or not it conflicts with their existing biases,
| they're pretty unlikely to be able to refute it.
| Especially not over a long period of time.
|
| Also worth noting that saying people "do it to
| themselves" only applies to adults: the adults who are
| "doing it to themselves" are, in fact, doing exactly what
| I described above to their children: providing an
| "official sanction" to only the propaganda that agrees
| with _their_ biases, thus ensuring that their children
| grow up molded in the same way, with no easy way to make
| an informed choice for themselves.
| lapcatsoftware wrote:
| > the adults who are "doing it to themselves" are, in
| fact, doing exactly what I described above to their
| children
|
| To an extent, yes. However, there are a number of
| mitigating factors. (1) Individual parents vary widely in
| their persuasive skill. (2) If there are 2 parents, those
| 2 don't necessarily agree in their beliefs, which means
| mixed messages for the children. (3) The child's friends,
| neighbors, schools, and community are also important
| influences on the child. (4) Genetics guarantees
| individual differences regardless. (5) Kids have a
| natural tendency to rebel against their parents,
| regardless of the parent's beliefs.
|
| A lot of kids turn out a lot like their parents. And a
| lot of kids don't. Some even become the opposite of their
| parents. So the parental influence is definitely a
| factor, but it's not inescapable.
|
| In any case, most kids pay very little attention to
| politics or "hard news" before they reach voting age (or
| even after). The news consumption itself tends to occur
| mainly in adulthood.
| dageshi wrote:
| News is basically a cheap form of entertainment nowadays.
| The clue really is in the name, it's just "new stuff" and
| humans seem hardwired to always want to be consuming "new
| stuff".
| ako wrote:
| Agree that this is nothing new. Manipulation of people
| through misinformation has been the rule for a long time.
| What do you think religion is? Manipulation of people through
| misinformation to coerce people into behavior which benefits
| society.
| thisismyswamp wrote:
| *Benefits a very small part of society, you mean
| [deleted]
| elliekelly wrote:
| Facebook and twitter allow the manipulation and coercion to
| happen faster and more efficiently. We weren't ready for
| that massive shift in media.
| camhart wrote:
| Yes, horrible things have, at times, been done in the name
| of religion. But to claim that religion, generally
| speaking, is all about manipulation through misinformation
| is wrong.
| ako wrote:
| I'm not even stating horrible things were done. Religion
| is just a management tool to align people's actions in a
| way that benefits the society they live in, and help it
| succeed in competition with other societies.
|
| A lot of the effects of religion have been mostly
| positive, but in its core it's based on misinformation.
| camhart wrote:
| I take issue with the generalization that all religions
| are based on misinformation.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| > all religions
|
| Who said _all_?
|
| Is it a true statement that "people dislike pain"? If you
| find one exception, can we no longer say things like
| "people dislike pain"? I think there's an implied _most_
| in there. _Most_ religions are tools for influencing
| people (synonym: manipulation), and _most_ are based on
| misinformation; if you find one religion that is 100%
| true, then all that differ must be at least partially
| based on incorrect information ( _mis_ information),
| right? Again, _most_ religions.
| saul_goodman wrote:
| Regardless of what view point you have, it's become painful to
| watch/consume news on either side if you don't subscribe to
| their same left/right view point as what is being presented.
| The MSM has overplayed its hand over the past several years to
| the point they've been written off by their opposing sides. So
| that forces a dividing line so you don't even bother looking at
| the opposing news sources, and when ever you do it's so biased
| it makes your head spin. But hey, ratings are through the roof!
|
| That has allowed traditionally marginalized news sources that
| embrace less-vetted news to shine. Say what you want about Alex
| Jones, but he was covering Jeffery Epstein's lolita
| express/island in 2008 and no one would touch that story back
| then. So now we have the marginalized news sources ending up
| larger viewerships than the national evening news. So while you
| do get real news which is less skewed left or right than in the
| MSM, it is wrapped with plenty of crap and is less vetted.
|
| The news industry, politicians, and big tech censorship has
| made this problem. Now they get to lay in their beds. It sucks,
| I'm not a fan of what's going on in DC right now, but I also
| don't blame those doing what they feel they must for their
| country. They are merely products of the system that made them.
| Until the MSM and politicians decide to stop twisting
| everything for market share or political gain this will
| continue to escalate. And we know that won't happen sadly.
| watwut wrote:
| No matter what is happening, it is important to remember that
| both sides are to blame. Always, no matter where the truth is
| relative to the sides.
| miedpo wrote:
| As much as I'd like to blame the news (they are partially
| responsible, especially for keeping contention going), I
| think we as a people are also to blame. How often do we point
| to people with different points of view from us and say 'How
| Dare You!'. We could all cool it a bit, or at least be a
| little more generous, and I think people wouldn't be quite as
| alarmed, and this situation might be less likely. We've
| stoked the fires of emnity and now we're reaping the rewards.
|
| Just my two cents. Hope your having a good day.
| umvi wrote:
| This strongly resonates with me. Somewhere along the way we
| allowed ourselves to lose more and more empathy and
| kindness toward people who think differently than us.
| akiselev wrote:
| Please stop equating the "MSM" with the right wing propaganda
| machine like FOX. This hyperpolarization is happening in
| every country that has a sizable Murdoch media machine.
| zepto wrote:
| It really isn't just Fox. They don't have a lot of shame
| about their partisanship or desire to hide it, but there is
| ideological distortion going on everywhere.
| root_axis wrote:
| Yes, everyone is biased, this is not a deep insight, it's
| the common denominator we can subtract from a meaningful
| discussion about specific events.
| zepto wrote:
| It actually is a deep insight if it's true.
|
| It doesn't matter very much if one side is more crass, or
| tells more obvious lies.
|
| It matters a lot if _everybody_ has derelicted the
| attempt to represent views and understandings across the
| spectrum, and it's important that we be able to
| distinguish that situation from just blaming a particular
| actor.
|
| Perhaps you have something deeper to offer though?
| root_axis wrote:
| Dishonest reporting is not a quality inherent to
| arbitrary political labels, there is no "spectrum", there
| are only "particular actors" and people decide in real
| time which particular actors they prefer to focus their
| attention on.
| zepto wrote:
| > Dishonest reporting is not a quality inherent to
| arbitrary political label
|
| Agreed.
|
| > there is no "spectrum"
|
| Only true in a pedantic and useless sense.
|
| It certainly is possible to cluster and organize
| political preferences.
|
| > there are only "particular actors" and people decide in
| real time which particular actors they prefer to focus
| their attention on.
|
| Without further explanation this is just a frame which
| doesn't add meaning on its own.
|
| Overall it's not clear what you have added here.
| root_axis wrote:
| > _Only true in a pedantic and useless sense._
|
| No. It's true in the sense that you cannot impugn a
| particular part of the spectrum for the actions of
| individuals because there is no way to reliably quantify
| dishonesty much less attribute its distribution across a
| poorly defined political continuum.
|
| > _Without further explanation this is just a frame which
| doesn't add meaning on its own._
|
| In other words, dishonesty is everywhere and it's trivial
| to collate a mountain of cherry-picked evidence from a
| particular part of the continuum to support the
| conclusion that a certain part of the continuum is
| dishonest.
|
| > _Overall it's not clear what you have added here._
|
| Your pretentious snark is bad form and unnecessary.
| andrewstuart2 wrote:
| I don't know that I'd associate it with the right wing,
| though. All parties are currently guilty of what you might
| call overfitting, where medium-term profits are directly
| measured against the content generating those profits,
| which understandably eventually segments the population and
| fits content to what keeps them engaged.
| core-questions wrote:
| Unfortunately, you've fallen into the trap, friend. FOX may
| be to the right of MSNBC, but on a larger scale
| historically-informed left-right spectrum, the two are not
| actually that far apart ideologically. Most "conservative
| principles" these days are just the modern liberal status
| quo delayed by ~20 years; for example, anti-homosexual
| rhetoric is dead and dying on that side in a way that lines
| up well with what I remember from the Democrats in the late
| 90s.
|
| The hyperpolarization is not to do with the right vs left
| dichotomy so much as it is a deliberate, encouraged-by-
| both-sides establishment of a false dichotomy designed to
| pen people into a small range of discourse. Some call this
| the Overton window; the deliberate establishment of
| contrasting narratives in a 2-pronged strategy was
| perfected in America by Arthur Finkelstein in the mid-20th
| century and is becoming an art form today.
|
| If you can see FOX as a "right wing propaganda machine" but
| can't see the other MSM networks as being equally
| polarizing machines aimed at a different half of the
| audience, you're missing the shot.
|
| The solution is to see the false dichotomy for what it is,
| look at who is pushing it, and look at what direction both
| "sides" actually push for. If you're on the right, they
| want you to have your attention and energy soaked up in
| this useless Stop the Steal push for Trump, who actually
| didn't accomplish any of the things his populist base asked
| for (immigration control, really bringing back American
| jobs, giving a shit about the working class). If you're on
| the Left, they want to soak you up with Biden instead of
| the more progressive policies that someone like Bernie or
| Tulsi Gabbard espoused. Either way, you're being played if
| you allow your energy to go toward supporting one of these
| useless figureheads instead of critiquing the system
| itself.
| akiselev wrote:
| You've fallen for the trap of the 2d political spectrum.
| It isn't about bias, it is about intent. MSNBC, CNN, etc
| are capitalist enterprises biased towards revenue and
| clicks - it's in their DNA.
|
| FOX was created explicitly by Ailes and Murdoch to
| prevent a second Nixon style teardown of the GOP. It's
| the reason Disney wanted absolutely nothing to do with
| the news arm when it acquired the rest of the Fox media
| empire - it's a capitalist enterprise only in the sense
| that it's profitable as a side effect of their main goal.
| souprock wrote:
| Right before the virus hit, unemployment was hitting
| record lows. (various unemployment records being about
| half a century old) The pay, adjusted for inflation, was
| starting to creep upward in a way that it hadn't for many
| years. If that isn't "really bringing back American
| jobs", how else would you judge it?
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| Apologies if I'm misrepresenting your point of view here;
| it sounds to me like you feel Trump was behind these
| improvements in the metrics.
|
| What changes which he implemented do you feel where
| behind these improvements?
|
| If I posited the idea that he was simply riding a wave of
| positive economic progress established under the Obama
| administration, how would you counter that?
| souprock wrote:
| 1. Regulations were severely cut. Those choke the life
| out of American business, making it uncompetitive. Maybe
| you like some of the regulations, but they have costs.
| Those costs aren't very visible to most people, because
| most people aren't trying to run a business, but they are
| huge.
|
| 2. Imports from less-regulated low-cost places like China
| were impacted by tariffs, favoring American workers.
| Retaliatory tariffs were largely unsuccessful.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| After Trump was elected, I started checking Fox News
| regularly (my go-to's are the BBC and NPR). On the whole, I
| think it's been informative as to how others perceive the
| world. It was definitely interesting _when_ their tone
| shifted on the election outcome.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| > It was definitely interesting when their tone shifted on
| the election outcome.
|
| This was pretty intriguing to me, because I do believe Fox
| had a lot to do with the radicalization of their side of
| things. It drove their support, and the moment they backed
| off from the crazy train, people abandoned them in droves
| for whatever agreed with the direction they were heading,
| be it Newsmax or OAN. Fox brought on it's own downfall
| here.
| jhallenworld wrote:
| I tune in the AM radio for this- the rhetoric on it now was
| only available on shortwave in the 90s. TYT and friends on
| youtube for the left's view- I can't stand MSNBC.
| Technically wrote:
| Corporate media allows both the incentive of manipulating
| people to increase views and the prospective of buying good
| press.
| lazyjones wrote:
| Having a trustworthy election process might go a long way
| (voter ID, regular verification when doubts arise etc.).
|
| As a European I find the images from Georgia's vote counting
| absolutely astonishing.
| AsyncAwait wrote:
| I am sure there'd be plenty of pundits soon enough blaming
| China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Syria....anything but a deep
| reflection upon Americans themselves.
| hertzrat wrote:
| All the social media sites did the research and learned that
| filter bubbles and outrage drives engagement more than anything
| else. If you tune your systems to maximize engagement and
| ignore the side effects, the side effects still happen, whether
| it's deliberate or not
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Indeed, Facebook and YouTube for a conservative and for a
| liberal are each completely different experiences.
|
| This is what blaming the algorithm gets us. It's well past
| time to start shutting down platforms with algorithmic
| content systems.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| Doesn't matter, assuming you allow people to pick who they
| follow. Try to look at the twitter feed of somebody who
| disagrees with you on a topic you find important - most the
| posts will be insults towards those who disagree with that
| persons POV.
| andrewstuart2 wrote:
| Or, hear me out, requiring certain levels of transparency
| from content systems that have started to augment such
| fundamental constructs as human-to-human communication and
| information sharing.
|
| There's nothing inherently wrong with automating content
| discovery; it's the cost function being optimized that I
| think we would almost all take issue with.
| hertzrat wrote:
| That is a good point, but it would be nice if the
| automated systems had more places for human input and
| preferences. I would love to be able to move some sliders
| around to decide what the algorithm should prioritize for
| me. I hear a lot of the big tech companies simply don't
| do tech support because of scale also, which worries me
| in case I ever have an account issue from a mistake in
| the automation
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Agreed. Much of the problem I see is that people can fall
| down a rabbit hole of polarization without realizing it;
| no matter how far into the fringes the recommendation
| algorithm gets, it'll always feel like "oh everyone's
| saying this" to you as a viewer.
| andrewstuart2 wrote:
| "What happens when you take a creature with a strong
| confirmation bias and feed it content specifically chosen
| for congruence with its particular bias?"
|
| Or rather, they knew the answer, but knew that it was the
| best way to maximize engagement and thus profit.
| goguy wrote:
| There still needs to be scope for personal responsibility
| though. Blaming your own behaviours on the recommendation
| algorithm of youtube etc is just a cop out.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| It's a copout on an individual level, but the question of
| who's responsible is a lot less important than the
| question of what we're going to do about the problem. In
| the absence of a plan to make millions upon millions of
| partisans more individually responsible, we've gotta do
| something about the recommendation algorithms.
| zmmmmm wrote:
| Reminds me after the GFC how some of the rules that were
| brought in were around banning automated real time trading
| systems. This was in some similar ways recognizing that
| automated algorithmic treatment can have extremely harmful
| side effects - even when it successfully executes the goals
| of its owner (for the stock market - once a certain
| threshold is breached, get me out of the market as quickly
| as possible - as an individual, its exactly what I want,
| for the overall market it is a disaster if everyone does it
| suddenly).
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Indeed. Generally along with blaming the algorithm, as we
| start using AI, the problem is the algorithm is no longer
| even understandable in many cases.
|
| Tech companies should be able to explain and demonstrate
| the logic their systems use. These algorithms should
| probably be _public_. And any system which cannot be
| transparently explained should be shut down.
| polotics wrote:
| I would so love to have sliders on Youtube to be able to
| adjust bias filtering, and watch the suggested videos
| switch sides in real time. This would probably get me to
| pay for the subscription.
| slg wrote:
| Most media companies under capitalism end up acting like a
| paperclip maximizing AI[1]. They will eat the entire planet
| to get a few more eyeballs because no one taught them not to.
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_convergence#
| Paper...
| jandrese wrote:
| In communism anyone who opposes the state is disappeared.
|
| In capitalism anyone who opposes the corporation is
| disappeared.
|
| You end up needing a mix of both. An independent news media
| with an explicit obligation to the truth, one that they can
| get in trouble for violating. We had that obligation for a
| long time through the middle of the 20th century. News
| organizations were well regarded even if they didn't always
| make the right calls they tried their best.
|
| But then Rhupert Murdock realized that you could simply
| pretend to be one of those respected parties and lie to the
| viewers constantly and there would be no consequences. The
| obligation to the truth turned out to be a gentleman's
| agreement and there were no truth police breaking down your
| door when you told lies. That's when we discovered that the
| media is like the Prisoner's Dilemma. Fox news discovered
| that as long as everybody else was beholden to the facts
| they could lie repeatedly and constantly win the game.
| They've only fallen from the very tippy top of the ratings
| in recent years as other news organizations like OAN have
| discovered that the bigger the lie the bigger the ratings.
|
| Fast forward to today and respect for the independent media
| (the all important 4th branch of government) is at an all
| time low and we have completely indoctrinated delusional
| people storming the Capitol building.
| slg wrote:
| Well said. You answered that sibling comment that I
| refused to answer.
|
| I am not a fan of the specifics of the fairness doctrine,
| but I believe the current state in which media companies
| can freely and knowingly lie as long as they don't stray
| too far into defamation is not tenable.
| seamyb88 wrote:
| > In communism anyone who opposes the state is
| disappeared.
|
| Which chapter of the Communist manifesto is this from?
| [deleted]
| mixedCase wrote:
| None, as you well know. But it has been the result when
| self-proclaimed communists succeed in taking control of a
| state.
|
| The well-known phrase "it wasn't real communism" comes to
| mind because it applies and is true, since of course
| these results have never followed to the letter Marx's
| doctrine and intentions. But given the pattern of
| authoritarian states that follow every attempt at
| communism it is logical to conclude that the plan as
| stated simply does not survive in any desirable fashion
| once it starts being followed by real people to organize
| real people.
|
| Capitalism and Republicanism (and no, for some people in
| the US that need the clarification: I certainly don't
| mean the party) as perfect plans also fail allowing a lot
| of evil to flourish, but their failure modes have
| performed much better in the long run than everything
| else so far. You can pinpoint any flaws you want, but you
| can't argue the results as there is no real
| counterexample with universally better ones.
| 8note wrote:
| I would say constitutional monarchy has done better than
| republicanism for those failure modes.
|
| Economically, light socialism has also done better? Eg.
| Sweden or Canada.
| qart wrote:
| In contrast to what? Under communism, anyone who opposes
| the state narrative is disappeared.
| slg wrote:
| It doesn't sound like you want to engage in this
| discussion in good faith if you are treating it as a
| binary choice between capitalism and communism. Any
| radical extreme is going to bad.
|
| EDIT: My views largely align with what jandrese said
| here[1].
|
| [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25662487
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| We blame algorithms and optimization a lot here but that
| analysis always glosses over the fact that people pick their
| own sources and form their own bubbles.
|
| Everyone's Youtube subscriptions are an echo chamber of views
| they mostly agree with because people only click subscribe on
| such channels.
|
| A recommendation engine working perfectly is going to show
| you lateral channels that might be more or less extreme of
| the last one. But that's not the root of the problem.
| zepto wrote:
| This really isn't true.
|
| My (logged out) YouTube feed has mostly cooking shows,
| programming videos, stuff about crafts and watchmaking etc,
| because those are mostly what I like to watch.
|
| I'm also interested in guns. The moment I watch a gun
| video, I immediately get shown Ben Shapiro, Jordan
| Peterson, and The Blaze instead of all the cooking videos
| etc.
|
| And yet none of the gun videos I watch are remotely
| political. They are exclusively about sports and history,
| and don't even talk about gun politics, let alone politics
| in general.
| ggreer wrote:
| > The moment I watch a gun video, I immediately get shown
| Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, and The Blaze instead of
| all the cooking videos etc.
|
| I know recommendations are based on many factors that
| differ between us (such as location), but I can't
| reproduce that behavior. If I watch hickok45 or Paul
| Harrell in an incognito window, I get recommendations for
| more of their videos along with a few from Demolition
| Ranch, Forgotten Weapons, and other gun channels. I see
| no political videos in the recommendations.
| zepto wrote:
| Interesting - well those are are the kinds of people I
| watch.
|
| I'm using AppleTV, but not logged in. It's possible that
| it takes some time for that to happen.
|
| Also, I watched a Jerry Miculek Video yesterday, and got
| no political stuff, so it's also possible that the
| algorithm has been improved or they have specifically
| acted to break this association.
| dx87 wrote:
| I've had mostly the same experience with youtube. I
| wanted to get into woodworking during COVID lockdowns, so
| I was watching a lot of popular woodworking channels that
| had nothing to do with politics, and was frequently shown
| Trump ads. Then once I realised how expensive woodworking
| would be, I started watching videos about game
| development. After ~1 week, all the Trump ads
| disappeared, and I started getting Biden ads.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| I watch lots of videos on guns, cars, metalworking and
| history with the former two mostly geared toward history
| and manufacturing.
|
| I _never_ see (amateur) political talking heads
| recommended. It 's all trash pop-history talking heads,
| semi-trash documentaries and low brow entertainment
| related to cars and guns (e.g. demo ranch and whistlin
| diesel).
|
| I recently (like yesterday) watched a semi-political
| talking head discuss the economics of OnlyFans after a
| friend linked to that particular person's analysis so
| it'll be interesting to see if the algo tries to drag my
| content toward more talking heads.
| zepto wrote:
| Interesting. I imagine there is more to it than just the
| videos.
|
| E.g. if you live in a generally pro-gun area I think they
| be algorithm would probably be less likely to assume that
| it's worth showing you political content.
| hertzrat wrote:
| During elections, before I stopped using facebook, I used
| to try to follow everybody I could from every side of the
| political spectrum to try to get a more balanced feed. My
| goodness, my feed was immediately full of insane conspiracy
| theories, white nationalist group posts, communist posts,
| nothing but stories of subjugation and oppression of
| everybody from every side. The choice I made was to try to
| broaden my bubble, but what I got was insane
| hertzrat wrote:
| Its worth noting that the companies that decided to not do
| this are not huge megacorps, so there is an argument to be
| made that anybody who isn't aggressively chasing engagement
| just can't get a seat at the table anymore. Am I mistaken
| about that? This sort of makes it a systemic problem, not
| necessarily a problem that a company leader can solve. Eg,
| not even Google+ with all its resources was able to dislodge
| Facebook.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| There's no evidence that heavy social media users are in any
| more of a bubble or echo chamber than non-users.[1]
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/degenrolf/status/913067759612973057
| hertzrat wrote:
| Interesting if true. Do you have a non-twitter source?
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Ah, we've reached the self-awareness in the face of doom part
| of the Michael Crichton novel.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > How did we arrive to this point where a huge chunk of the
| population is in one reality and another huge chunk of the
| population is in another reality? Segregation of information
| sources? Politicization of media outlets? Self-reinforcing
| social bubbles? A combination of all of them and more?
|
| No, that has nothing to do with it.
|
| Take a look on wide base social polls across Western countries.
|
| The seemingly "extreme" right turn in Europe at around the
| refugee crisis wasn't one unexpected if you count that.
|
| It's just that huge social mass was very latent, and quiet as
| nobody wanted to be stigmatized as a nazi. Now, it isn't.
|
| You cannot "deaf it out," and expect the problem to disappear.
|
| Terrible social rifts can last centuries in silence. Example:
| Greek independence war was more than a century ago, and
| seemingly forgotten before it gave Ottomans the last blow, and
| then 50 years later, Turkey. And it seems it never really ended
| given what is going on in the Mediterranean now.
|
| In the "peaceful" Western Europe, Schleswig war has ended 150
| years ago, nations of Europe embraced in brotherly love, and
| the legacy of the conflict was ceremonially buried 10 times
| over, but people of Schleswig still tell of icy silence.
| g42gregory wrote:
| I think it's social media amplifying the divisions through
| targeting. I also wonder if it's culture of corruption by both
| political parties that is beginning to come to light? In the
| old days, you wouldn't read about it in the New York Times or
| Wall Street Journal, but now, on Twitter and other places,
| could could see just about anything. There is a difficult task
| of separating the truth from the fake news, but there is more
| information available, which was not available before the
| Internet explosion. Just my guess, though.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| simpleguitar wrote:
| Maybe Trump can swear in at Mar-a-Lago as government/president
| in exile.
| skissane wrote:
| > How did we arrive to this point where a huge chunk of the
| population is in one reality and another huge chunk of the
| population is in another reality?
|
| My own impression is that this is far worse in the US than in
| most other first world countries. If I'm right about that, then
| explanations based on social media algorithms etc don't really
| work, because the same algorithms apply in other countries too.
| It really then needs a US-specific explanation.
|
| Maybe, the US has just got too big and too diverse - I am
| talking here about political/ideological/worldview diversity,
| not ethnic/racial/etc diversity - to hold itself together in
| the long-run. Countries don't last forever, and the US isn't
| going to last forever either. Of course, it isn't breaking up
| this year, and I think other countries are likely to break up
| before the US does (such as the UK, Spain, Belgium, Canada).
| But maybe these current events are bringing that eventuality
| closer to us.
| CivBase wrote:
| The US has a uniquely strong distrust in government compared
| to other nations to which you are referring. I think as a
| result, the social media algorithms are particularly potent
| in the US.
| [deleted]
| tomjen3 wrote:
| All of the above, but also politicians who have promised change
| forever and not much seems to change when one side takes over.
|
| Add to that a pandemic lockdown championed by one side who can
| mostly sit safely behind a screen while the other side loses
| their livelyhood in small businesses.
|
| Something had to give. I hope this will be the limit.
| smoyer wrote:
| I think that one facet is implied by Dang's post above ... if
| we're not careful to have a respectful debate, then we'll end
| up having a shouting match instead.
|
| I used to appreciate grid-lock in DC under the idea that the
| less they got done, the less they'd do to me. Now I recognize
| that the best outcomes are a) when the lawmakers reach across
| the aisle and forge what both sides would consider a compromise
| and more importantly b) when the lawmakers we elect actually
| enact laws and run the country in a way that benefits the
| people they represent.
|
| I suspect that our best way forward as a nation is to resume
| carefully growing the middle class. This will by nature mean
| that the financial elites (some of whom are clearly moral
| despots) will lose a small portion of their wealth. But it's
| amazingly analogous to the reforms at the beginning of the last
| century that started to protect labor from the robber barons.
|
| I think the second step is to (yes, at a cost) restore at least
| some manufacturing capability to the US. This provides jobs to
| many who are NOT going to be talking tech on HN and also
| protects us (and the world) against there being potentially a
| single-source supplier of any given resource.
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| What does anything you've said have to do with why the
| Capitol was rushed and occupied by conservatives?
| hgsgshs88383 wrote:
| The same way any cult-like phenomenon divorces its followers
| from reality.
|
| In this case a charismatic demagogue (Donald Trump) has built a
| cult of personality around himself. He and his enablers employ
| many of the tactics used by other cult-like organizations, such
| religious organizations (e.g. scientology), or otherwise (i.e.
| multilevel marketing schemes). These organizations offer the
| opportunity to be apart of something "great" and "historic", to
| teach you how to be strong, to transform yourself from "zero to
| hero", and have fellowship with other like minded individuals
| who have the will and desire to improve their lives too. In
| return they demand absolute, unquestioning, and unwavering
| fealty.
|
| This has little to do with political orientation (left vs
| right) and everything to do with Donald Trump. There is
| currently a "civil war" going on inside the GOP, and the most
| vicious attacks from the cult-of-MAGA tend to be aimed at
| members of the political right who voice even the slightest
| dissent and are thus deemed "insufficiently loyal" (i.e.
| counterrevolutionaries).
| ksk wrote:
| Its happening everywhere, in every political arena. I'm hearing
| very similar things happening in other countries as well. The
| hilarious part is every political side believing they are the
| only ones with facts. It sort of reminds me of how
| civilizations collapse - esp. the 'barbarians' overpowering
| 'civilized' Europe. All current mainstream political parties
| have these barbarians within them. They don't all take violent
| forms, but they infect people with memes and thoughts that go
| counter to facts and logic. In general though, I think its the
| slow decline of hard news with a corresponding amplification of
| emotional porn/entertainment/opinion/drama. The massive amount
| of noise that is generated makes it hard to find the signal,
| and social media isn't helping because they make money when
| "news" is more entertainment/drama than boring facts. In short,
| we're f?ked, and we're going to say f?ked for a while.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| jMyles wrote:
| I don't think we are in that situation at all. I think that
| everybody - regardless of their politics or candidates of
| choice - is frequently inundated with the _notion_ that we 're
| very different.
|
| But having visited 43 states in the past five years, and making
| it my business to talk politics and religion everywhere I have
| gone (especially in the aftermath of the 2016 election), I have
| repeatedly been surprised by the simple commonness of people's
| hopes: for peace, justice, security, prosperity.
|
| Most people with whom I spend my time seem to think that Trump
| voters are all just like Trump. But I have not found that to be
| so whatsoever. I have repeatedly been surprised and sometimes
| even confused by the reasonableness and sophistication of Trump
| supporters, especially in the South.
|
| And rage at America's institutions - including surely dreams of
| raiding the Capitol and wrecking havok - is surely not limited
| to one party of political view. It's not a tactic I favor,
| though I do certainly hope to see this silly building fade into
| the irrelevance of the failed state.
|
| The incentives of social media algorithms are influential in
| the way we think about each other.
|
| We are constantly shown Trump supporters who can't form a
| coherent and fact-based narrative. We're shown 'antifa' who
| seem to prefer roving destruction and mayhem rather than an
| equitable society.
|
| But neither of these tropes reflect anything close to the
| reality of 2020 America. We are a society of peaceful,
| educated, hopeful people. Travel. Ask. You'll see.
| mimog wrote:
| Its not two realities. Its one population chunk living in
| reality and one chunk living in a misinformation fueled
| delusion. Special interests have managed to weaponize social
| media and misinformation. It started with allowing blatant
| lying and partisan propoganda to be framed as impartial news
| because deliberate mass misinformation is apparently free
| speech. Now the cat is out of the bag and the only way back is
| strong regulation of social and news media.
| baby wrote:
| Education and media consumed
| bcherny wrote:
| I just finished Lippmann's 1922 classic Public Opinion. In it
| he argues that different people may draw completely different
| conclusions from the same facts due to three things:
|
| 1. Sampling. There's a big universe of facts, and each media
| outlet reports on a tiny piece of this universe.
|
| 2. Stereotypes. When you read a news story, you unconsciously
| pattern match and associate it to related examples you have in
| your mind.
|
| 3. Context. When you read a news story, you subconsciously have
| some fascet of your own identity in mind (as a Republican, as a
| pro-choice person, etc.).
|
| All three are in effect when stories are reported on and
| consumed. It's a series of lenses that samples, then distorts,
| the truth in a way that given the same real-world event,
| different people may come to completely different conclusions
| about what happened.
|
| I'd add a #4: fake news. This amplifies #1 significantly. It
| was less of a problem in Lippmann's time since the News world
| was much smaller. He might have called this "rumor", not news.
| vulcan01 wrote:
| I'll posit an additional factor: people who are disenfranchised
| and desperate are more likely to believe conspiracy theories
| and act on them. Andrew Yang talked about this a lot during +
| after his campaign, and also this paper:
|
| https://www.jstor.org/stable/3791630 (sorry to those who don't
| have jstor... I'll try to find stuff)
| tomp wrote:
| The mainstream media did this to themselves. They actively
| promoted outright lies, conspiracy theories, politically
| convenient fake facts ("masks don't work") and
| misinterpretations of truth.
|
| The end result is, nobody trusts anyone. We're seeing one side
| of the story, but I suspect if Trump narrowly won, it would be
| the same.
| DanBC wrote:
| > politically convenient fake facts ("masks don't work")
|
| As I keep asking you, every time you post this, please can
| you point to the published studies showing that masks work.
| These studies should have been published before the WHO / CDC
| / etc made their recommendations.
|
| If you're unable to find those studies you should conclude
| that WHO were telling you what they knew at the time and this
| was being accurately reported by the media.
| CuriousSkeptic wrote:
| A long, but interesting, take on the issue. Apparently on its
| way as a book soon
|
| https://waitbutwhy.com/2020/01/sick-giant.html
| fhrow4484 wrote:
| > How did we arrive to this point where a huge chunk of the
| population is in one reality and another huge chunk of the
| population is in another reality
|
| This isn't an accurate representation of the US. There are 4
| sides:
|
| - extreme left
|
| - left
|
| - right
|
| - extreme right
|
| The proportion of each is probably around: 5%/45%/45%/5% (maybe
| 10/40/40/10)
|
| The 5% on each extreme are the one making the news on the other
| side to instill fear from the "other side" (fox news depiction
| of far left Portland, cnn depiction of far right, etc)
|
| And logically, the people who consume news the most have the
| most distorted view of the other side:
| https://twitter.com/HiddenTribesUS/status/114314670369397555...
|
| Since media get money from more viewers, and since fear sells,
| unfortunately they have no incentive to make this better.
| Finding neutral sources while staying informed is a hard
| problem.
| taurath wrote:
| Politics being a single bar is one of the problems. People
| have values that do not fit in any one place on the bar.
| torsday wrote:
| There aren't two realities, I would start there.
| arminiusreturns wrote:
| The research done on manipulation of the mind based on the post
| ww1/2 which most know as artichoke/mkultra/monarch and it's
| variants in other five eyes have been condensed into a science
| later solidified and tested in modern wars across the globe
| (not just GWOT psyops) that is now being exploited on a massive
| scale via consolidation of power via mergers, aquisitions, and
| more subtle extension of control over all forms of media
| (print, tv, radio, and now the internet, as the oligarchs
| finally recognized it as a primary threat vector), academia,
| and politics (largely via a progressively worse bribery,
| coercion, blackmail (Epstein goes here), threats system) that
| is being used as part of a _divide and conquer strategy_ that
| enables the hegellian dialectic mostly via limited hangouts and
| false opositions to create whatever state of reality the
| supranational elite want.
|
| The reality is there is a conspiracy/are conspiracies that are
| coordinated by various disparate secret and not secret
| organizations whose goals sometimes don't but most often do
| overlap, and occurences like Q-anon and these protests are
| likely psyop techniques to distract potential genuine movements
| that might respond or create desired counter-responses in order
| to limit the fallout while the oligarchs catch up in the race
| against the internet as the last bastion of freedom of speech
| that could cause a neo-peasants revolt if the people found out
| the truth.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Well both sides won't admit that they're not totally right,
| including you. Your question implies that you're 100% right and
| the opposition is 100% wrong.
|
| I've seen compelling evidence on 4chan to make me believe that
| there was some shadiness going on in this election, perhaps
| moreso than normal. However, even I can admit that it does not
| appear to rise to the level of systemic voter fraud that I
| would need to call this election a "sham", nor does it appear
| systemic by any measure.
|
| Can you see the difference between "everyone I don't agree with
| is 100% incorrect and racist" and my statement? Can you see how
| claiming intelligent working people are "in another reality"
| might be divisive to the people you're (falsely) claiming to
| want to meet halfway?
|
| It goes both ways too - the right still won't admit that
| climate change is a thing to be combated even though that it is
| facially obvious to anyone that climate change has at least
| _some_ negative effects.
| Simulacra wrote:
| Political manipulation of the people with the acquiescence and
| support of corporate-dominated mass media, all driven by
| profit.
| diogenescynic wrote:
| All goes back to Reagan's repeal of the Fairness Doctrine which
| gave rise to biased political based news coverage a la Fox
| News. Since then, political polarization has increased each
| year until we got to the point we're at where both sides see
| the other as dangerous and lacking legitimacy. It's a lose-lose
| downward spiral.
| watwut wrote:
| Isnt Fairness Doctrine in direct opposition against free
| speech?
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| Yes, but because the radio used public airways, the courts
| found that the FCC can regulate them. It's why you can't
| swear on the radio (the FCC says so) despite free speech
| allowing swearing.
| dsr_ wrote:
| Hardly. The Fairness Doctrine is exactly "the cure for bad
| speech is more speech".
|
| https://www.britannica.com/topic/Fairness-Doctrine might be
| useful.
| watwut wrote:
| Compelled speech is not free speech.
| hansthehorse wrote:
| The Fairness Doctrine only applied to broadcast media. I
| guess if it still existed it could be amended to include
| cable but that would be a tough thing to do since cable
| companies don't lease the public airwaves.
| titzer wrote:
| I would suggest watching Adam Curtis' Hypernormalisation
| (British spelling). It's mostly about Putin/Gaddafi-style mass
| confusion as a means to power.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUiqaFIONPQ
| mushbino wrote:
| This was made before Trump was elected and it's amazing how
| accurate it is in hindsight.
| xyst wrote:
| It starts with the deregulation of cable news in the 1990s, and
| creation of mainstream media networks like Fox and CNN. The
| explosive use of the internet and later social media in the mid
| to late 2000s only amplified an existing problem of
| polarization.
| maayank wrote:
| Really liked Hypernormalization by Adam Curtis on the
| phenomena: https://youtu.be/fh2cDKyFdyU
| yrimaxi wrote:
| Why is conflict and differences of opinions in itself a bad
| thing? Of course, say, Black Lives Matter protesters sort of
| "live in another reality" compared to white suburbanites; the
| protests were sparked because of the fact that black people
| live in a completely different reality due in part to racist
| police violence, and just continuing to exist in that reality
| without anyone else knowing about it wouldn't have made things
| better for them.
| mistermann wrote:
| Evolution. We each run a VR inside our minds. When they are
| synchronized by an external force, the media, very interesting
| things can happen.
|
| If you would like more of this, continue to ignore non-virtual
| reality.
| dyeje wrote:
| Social media.
| [deleted]
| hyko wrote:
| The President of the United States can't admit that he lost,
| and is evidently willing to throw an entire country and
| political system under the bus in the service of his ego.
|
| One side effect of this personality type seizing power is that
| the Overton window has been inflated into a vast, festering
| portal through which our worst nightmares can crawl out. I
| doubt it was his intent, but it is the result.
|
| You've almost got to admire the raw primitive energy and
| boundlessness of that level of id. How very sad that it has
| been employed to such feeble ends; it will ultimately have to
| be crushed for democracy to prevail.
| [deleted]
| mam2 wrote:
| People mistaking reality for what they want it to be, false
| sense of morality, opposed to the basic survival interest of
| the other group.
|
| Done. You tell me which is which.
| wesleywt wrote:
| Sometimes it's almost as if the people I speak to are from a
| different planet. I have to explain what Facebook did to their
| brain.
| staticman2 wrote:
| My take:
|
| 1) On web sites like this I've noticed a rule "Assume good
| faith". But in real life there are lots of people who say
| things in bad faith. In the case of PR people and trial lawyers
| and partisan politicians it seems to be in the job description
| to say things in bad faith. I have no solutions on how to fix
| this- I don't believe in God but I can imagine a deity
| punishing people who choose to exercise their free speech to
| profit on bad faith lies- but I have no theory of government to
| stop this behavior on earth.
|
| 2) We have a society based around money. People in this site
| like to whine about what Zuckerberg or whomever is doing but
| the guiding principle of society seems to be "he who has the
| money makes the rules". So if Zukerberg wants to weaponize
| Facebook against society the full power of the financial system
| will help him do it as long as he has the money/ property to
| control Facebook. I think in theory we could transition to a
| society where CEO and board members have their shares and/ or
| control of companies confiscated if they act in ways which
| harms society. (Perhaps putting things to a vote, i.e. a
| universal ballet: should Zuckerberg have his shares of Facebook
| seized and auctioned off under the theory he is harming society
| y/n)). Since this has never been tried as far as I know I don't
| know if my solution could even work.
| Havoc wrote:
| >Self-reinforcing social bubbles?
|
| This mostly I think. It's always been a case of birds of a
| feather flock together. But internet communication has bridged
| distance and recommendation engines created echo chambers
| heymijo wrote:
| I think these three books offer a solid framework for providing
| an answer to your question:
|
| 1) The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It by Robert Reich [0]
|
| - Reich drops the buzzword neoliberalism in favor of the word
| power. I like that as neoliberalism is a terrible phrase for
| the concept it describes, but make no mistake, it's the
| insidious, invisible nature of neoliberalism that put our
| country in a position where neither party served the people
| well. That is what Reich describes here.
|
| 2) The Loudest Voice in the Room: How the Brilliant, Bombastic
| Roger Ailes Built Fox News-and Divided a Country by Gabriel
| Sherman [1]
|
| - There is also a Showtime miniseries based on the book you
| could watch. Pair with the movie Bombshell
|
| 3) Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind
| the Rise of the Radical Right by Jane Mayer [2]
|
| [0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52118381-the-system
|
| [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15981705-the-loudest-
| voi...
|
| [2] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27833494-dark-money
| willcipriano wrote:
| Are they different realities or different people with different
| wants and needs?
| dontbeevil1992 wrote:
| Hmmm idk... anyway, time to get back to grinding leetcode so I
| can go work at Facebook and make 200k instead of a paltry 150k
| somewhere else!!
| staplers wrote:
| The Social Dilemma should be watched by all tech developers
| and designers. The dramatic scenes are a bit campy but the
| interviews are incredible and biting.
| friendlybus wrote:
| Death of god
| CivBase wrote:
| Social media algorithms are designed to maximize engagement by
| spoon feeding you content you like. Everyone likes being right,
| so these algorithms actively create and reinforce echo
| chambers.
|
| Things were going bad enough as they were... then the pandemic
| hit and people turned to social media as their primary means
| for safe socialization. The breakdown of social discourse over
| the last year has been disheartening at best and horrifying at
| worst.
| zmmmmm wrote:
| I think it's been a long time in the making but the real spark
| that lit the fire was the media's (and general population's)
| passive treatment of Trump's lying in the 2016 election period.
| During that time he was already telling whoppers, and the media
| sort of humoured it. You can see now four year's later that his
| version of reality is deeply embedded in a way that is nearly
| impossible to correct for - this make take a generation now to
| pass. Simply calmly stating that his words are "without
| evidence" or "unsupported by facts" etc etc isn't enough. When
| figures of authority depart from objective reality you have to
| stop it right there. He should never have been given another
| interview question other than to question his lies. But that
| was perceived as partisan at the time so they just let these
| things slide by.
| jandrese wrote:
| Depending on what media you consume they didn't just "humor
| it", they actively reinforced whatever he was saying, and
| vice versa.
|
| Many organizations were fact checking and calling out the
| President, but they were part of the "lamestream media" and
| his supporters were explicitly told not to listen to or trust
| them.
| Zamicol wrote:
| Many Boomers weren't taught empiricism.
|
| They don't know how to do basic fact checking.
| dang wrote:
| Good grief, let's not turn this into a generational flamewar
| of all things--the most arbitrary kind of flamewar and the
| easiest to avoid.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| Zamicol wrote:
| There are very large demographic differences on the lines
| of age.
|
| https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/10/26/what-
| the-20...
|
| Could I be more diplomatic? Sure.
|
| We have a large number of older people that have no idea
| how to use the Internet, something my generation, the
| Internet natives, sometimes take for granted.
| Zamicol wrote:
| I'm sorry for my snarky remark.
|
| I'm tired of what seems to be fake news coming only form
| the parents of my friends (60+ group) and that group being
| unable to reconcile basic, foundational facts. This
| includes my own father.
|
| I'm at a lost how, what seems to be, a generation is so
| brainwashed they won't believe the sky isn't green because
| they can Google search and find one wacko that tells them
| it's green or a "Green Sky" Facebook group has 500,000
| members.
| Lammy wrote:
| The US' ruling entity (in the collective egregore sense) would
| cease to exist and would be replaced by another if all of us
| regular humans weren't fed constant new ways to divide and hate
| each other.
| JoshTko wrote:
| 1st amendment did envision the mass personalized misinformation
| that social networks have enabled. We need to remove all
| emotion based advertisement in political ads ASAP. No music, no
| personalities, no scary adjectives.
| dleslie wrote:
| Your news is just flat out awful and has been for a long time.
|
| From OANN to Fox to MSNBC; it's all us-vs-them, fear the
| others, be afraid, be angry, and stay tuned in for more.
|
| Every time I visit your country I'm apalled and horrified by
| your news media. It's blatantly exploiting basic animal
| instinct and core emotions to hook viewers in order to sell
| ads.
|
| You are a product of your media.
|
| And then there's the network effects of Facebook, Twitter and
| Parlor...
| knodi wrote:
| This has been America from the beginning. The few have carried
| the many. Before this was not a major issue because the
| selection of people on radio or TV to curated to some degree.
| Now with Social Media, every idiot has a voice and idiots are
| drowned to other idiots.
| watwut wrote:
| A lot of lies and intentional attempts to build exactly this
| situation.
|
| Also, issue is not polarization itself. Issue is that chunk of
| Americans wants to revert election.
| simpleguitar wrote:
| It's a prelude to a "Two State Solution".
|
| Probably not a bad idea to keep the peace.
|
| Or more practically, greater freedom for the states, and less
| federal power.
| clarkmoody wrote:
| A peaceful separation is the only tenable long-term solution.
| valuearb wrote:
| Lincoln lived most of his life as a Whig but aligned with the
| new Republican Party in the 1850s during a transitional era in
| American politics. Northern opinion was turning against
| slavery, and enslaved people's efforts to resist and escape
| bondage kept the issue center stage.
|
| Rather than accede to the changing political landscape,
| Southern Democrats maligned the new Republican Party as an
| existential threat because it opposed the expansion of slavery
| in the Western territories. Promoters of secession, called
| "fire-eaters," knew they did not command majority support even
| within the South, so they deployed a rhetoric of fear and anger
| that condemned Republicans as "fanatics" and encouraged fellow
| Southerners to regard Lincoln's election as "an open
| declaration of war" upon the region.
|
| This hyperbolic language left no room for compromise or middle
| ground; it was intended to terrify voters into opposing
| Lincoln. The result was that Lincoln was not listed as a
| candidate in many Southern precincts, and his election, thus,
| surprised even moderate Southerners who believed he could not
| command an electoral college majority. By perverting the
| electoral process, fire-eaters swayed moderates to adopt their
| conspiratorial approach to politics.
|
| Lincoln believed in the protection of minority rights, but he
| also believed in majority rule. Secession was, in his words, an
| appeal from the "ballot to the bullet." That is, because
| Southern Democrats could not persuade a majority of voters to
| their standard (as they had for decades), they abandoned the
| political process altogether. This action, Lincoln felt, made
| self-government impossible. If the losing side in an election
| could always walk away, how could a nation ever remain intact?
| katbyte wrote:
| freedom of speech to say anything and everything regardless of
| if it's true or not?
| asebold wrote:
| America will feel the detrimental effects of Trump for years to
| come. These people and their special brand of crazy aren't going
| away, even if he does.
| hedora wrote:
| Pence should invoke the 25th amendment and remove Trump from
| office. That would end this constitutional crisis.
|
| (Some Democrats are calling for an impeachment, which wouldn't
| help.)
| triceratops wrote:
| > (Some Democrats are calling for an impeachment, which
| wouldn't help.)
|
| I think it would help tremendously. If nothing else, it's
| important for the history books.
| scarmig wrote:
| The DC Mayor's request for the National Guard to restore order
| has been denied by the DoD.
| 01100011 wrote:
| Trump could stop this in minutes, but he won't, yet. He wants you
| to know how much power he has. He wants you to remember that,
| even though you voted him out, he can still spoil the party. This
| is about his ego and his power. He has an army, and that army can
| shutdown the government.
|
| It's sad to see people enabling him. He won't win. The nation is
| stronger. He probably thinks he's winning right now though.
| JosephHatfield wrote:
| Capital Police opened the security line, encouraged the
| "protesters" inside, and were even shown having selfies taken
| with them. What other conclusion can you reach than that this was
| supported if not organized by someone with authority over the
| security forces sworn to protect the Capital? If true, this is
| Sedition.
| codingprograms wrote:
| Funny to hear the difference in press coverage between this and
| BLM
| bananabiscuit wrote:
| If the media didn't have double standards, it wouldn't have any
| standards at all.
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