Xenophobia and racial (or religious ) animus are hardly edge cases. On the contrary, they are the default setting for our species, as evidenced by (flips through history book) the last few millennia.
> Then you live next to them and let them borrow a cup of sugar or ask to borrow one from them and collect their mail while they’re away and thank them when they let you know you left a light on when you left for work the other day.
You would have liked my grandmother, who shared your opinion that kindness between neighbors can heal political rifts.
Unfortunately it didn't work out so well for her, as despite her kindness, the neighbors sent her to Dachau anyway.
Once again with the implication that conservatives are equivalent to Nazis and therefore should be treated with vitriol. The hyperbole isn’t unwarranted and the whole point.
That's not the implication. Read it again, stop playing the victim. The point is simply that hate is not rational, and that your proposal of kindness does nothing to assuage the rampant ignorance and xenophobia that animates evil ideology.
Would you prefer a Communist rather than Nazi parable? Either way works.
> Then you are uniquely placed to show them you're not the baddie they thought you were.
Great idea! If only we had thought of this sooner. We could have avoided Jim Crow and segregation if only black people had thought to be friendly to racist whites!
If you're in physical danger, then flee. I'm not talking about that. There's a bigger reality than your street - pay attention and be wise.
But at the same time, it is true than many white kids had racist parents but chose not to be racist themselves, largely because they rubbed shoulders with black kids and learned they had a lot in common with them. Don't underestimate the power of patience, kindness, generosity, and general personability to win, eventually. It took a generation of integration before racism disappeared from most US neighborhoods.
Nope. I haven’t seen any of those things personally. Have you?
I have personally seen family members disown their parents. Siblings not speak for decades. A friend call another racist and cut off communication not for any racist behavior, but because the friend (who has a multiracial family) didn’t support the same cause.
And likewise, maybe you should experience the real world instead of believing sensationalized things you read.
Jim Crow is slightly different than yelling slurs. I’ve also never lived during a time where it was the law of the land, but that was also not what you were originally referring to.
> Never heard a "conservative" call a protester a "libtard" right before rolling coal at them?
Then you said:
> Do you think the Jim Crow era was "sensationalized"?
Then you said:
> Your comment is utterly non sequitur.
While I like a good non sequitur, I don't like equating heckling protestors with racism, and think it's part of the problem of talking past one another. You jumped from several hypothetical social issues and one broad, non-specific racial issue in one comment to Jim Crow in the next.
I'm not denying the existence of profoundly racist people. I am saying I have personally been harmed by people who have jumped to the conclusion that people who don't believe exactly as they do are inherently evil.
> In fact, I’ve never heard of a conservative kid disowning their parents, family, or friends because of their liberal views.
Then when I confronted you with historical examples of conservatives behaving abominably (which you certainly had heard of) you pivoted to your own irrelevant personal experience, and you've been dwelling there since.
I never equated slurs to Jim Crow. I simply provided several examples, at different scales and degree, of conservative harming people who don't believe (or look) exactly as they do.
Oh I'm sure they're having conversations. Those conversations are about how evil immigrants are, how tariffs are not taxes, what color MAGA hat to buy, and why Trump is the most honest billionaire in history. Conversations not tethered to reality.
> it's a waste of time being a conservative on HN or Reddit.
But yet here you are.
> There is no room for discourse or nuance.
Try me!
> If you voted for Trump you are a fascist and a pedo and nobody wants to hear your thoughts.
On the contrary, there have been endless articles and discussion about Trump supporters' opinions, to the extent that "New York Times Interviews Twelve Trump Supporters" [1] [2] is a bit of a cliche. I think that your (collective) thoughts have been well expressed and understood by the other side, it's just that most people find those opinions unimpressive, mostly couched in a sort of hero-worship credulity or open hostility to people who are different from you.
> Some opinions that would have been demonstrably in the Clinton/Obama administration would be considered MAGA now.
Sure, public opinion shifts. For example, Republicans used to be the party of limited government and law-and-order. Then they elected a felon who flagrantly violates the Constitution (14th amendment, separation of powers, emoluments clause, etc) and has worked tirelessly to extend the power of the federal government, in the present case to intervene in the Constitutionally-mandated state right of operating elections. Of course "people used to feel differently" is not, on its own, an argument in support for the administration's policies, so I hope you can do better.
You could easily test this by posting a thoughtful rebuttal.
I've been posting actively on this thread and I haven't yet seen a thoughtful rebuttal, although there have been several comments in favor of the current administration's approach to voter enforcement via the USPS. Unfortunately, literally all of those comments were based on misinformation or make sweeping assertions, unsupported by evidence, about voter fraud in the US.
In this thread you said "...they are doing this to inject chaos into the election results, giving them cover to claim any result they want or even to just throw out the results entirely. Catastrophic problems are the means to that end." Try to imagine how that would read to somebody who wasn't already sharply biased in the same direction as yourself. What would you assume?
It reads as the exact sort of evidence free, misinformation driven, conspiratorial and sweeping assertion that you're now complaining about. The reality is that most political discussion online has been trending towards sewer level content, and I think a huge part of it is the echo chamber issue. You don't get any pushback from stuff like this online when the only people engaging with you are themselves already heavily biased in a similar direction. Oh sorry, you actually did get several people pushing back, including one merely asking for evidence. Perhaps you didn't see that because those comments were all flagged and buried.
> It reads as the exact sort of evidence free misinformation driven conspiratorial sweeping assertion that you're now complaining about.
It reads that way only if you are intentionally ignoring evidence.
We're talking about an Executive Branch in the hands of a man who has shown historic contempt for election outcomes and little moral qualms with altering them to suit his agenda.
* Conspiracy after the 2020 election to float fake electors
* Massive and ongoing campaign of lies about the illegitimacy of the 2020 election, in absence of any evidence
* Demanding states perform mid-decade redistricting, in contravention of longstanding custom
* Repeated calls to "cancel" upcoming election
* Repeated allusions to running for a third presidential term, in violation of the Constitution
Needless to say, these kind of actions and pronouncements are unprecedented in this country. When a person tells you they don't care about accurate elections, believe them.
It's incredibly hard to think that this person is deeply concerned about election integrity when he has shown such little regard for existing election laws and customs. Your willingness to overlook this evidence speaks of your own partisan bias. Oh wait, are going to say he's "joking" and I don't have a sense of humor?
You certainly already know what you're doing or you wouldn't have added your joke disclaimer. Here [1] is a clip of Trump "alluding to a third presidential term." You 'not knowing' he's joking has nothing to do with not having a sense of humor, as any human alive would know he's joking. So your rather wild conspiracies are based on jokes and a very broad extrapolation from 2020.
So you have, in your own post - misinformation, sweeping assertations, and claims unsupported by evidence. Of course this is the contemporary state of political discourse and so I'm not at all implying there's anything particularly egregious about you in particular. This sort of stuff is ubiquitous, and I think echo chambers are a big part of the reason why. Who cares about making viable or relevant comments when it's largely just a mixture of a signaling circle jerk paired alongside bias confirmation.
You are perfectly demonstrating the lack of engagement I was referring to. You would have to ignore the entire history of his political career to think he is doing anything other than testing the waters here.
Furthermore, he has done more than a single joke about this. Over multiple interviews, he has laid out specific methods he could use to functionally seek a third term, including running as a VP to Vance and forcing him aside. Is it really a joke if you're talking about it over dozens of rallies and interviews, and how you would seriously do it?
Will it materialize in anything? He is so fickle and unfocused that he will float every possibility under the sun and then go with his gut. It depends more on how his base reacts
I think he genuinely believes that the 2020 election was likely stolen and that his extreme actions were a response to that. I also think he enjoys trolling the media, probably in part because its his personality but also probably because it's the best way to take on yellow journalism. By overtly feeding the media stuff that he knows will be taken out of context, he lets them destroy themselves. When the media run sensationalist stories framing jokes as legitimate positions, they make partisans rejoice, but they make everybody else look at the lot of the partisans and media alike and mostly just laugh. There's a reason confidence in the media is now in the 20s. 'Why aren't you taking these jokes seriously!?' isn't the most compelling call to action.
You're also, probably unintentionally, spreading misinformation here. Trump never laid out the idea of running as Vance's VP and forcing him aside. Rather, a journalist proposed that scenario (though it was "passing the baton" rather than forcing him out) and he said 'yeah that's one way [to have a third term]'. You can see the media tiptoe around this slightly inconvenient fact when running their stories. For instance here's [1] AP recently talking about third term stuff where they state "[Trump] acknowledged that one method was to be the running mate to Vice President JD Vance in 2028 — then have Vance step aside if the pair won."
That's accurate, but the implication to somebody who only relies on the media, instead of first party sources, is that Trump proposed it. Exactly like you're doing here. They feed you misinformation, you repeat it, and then believe other people who don't believe the same are themselves misinformed, because why would 'your' media lie to you. And that's a good question actually - it's not like there aren't endless completely genuine problems with Trump. The war with Iran is about as popular as AIDS, but for some reason the media didn't milk it anywhere near as much as they could have. How odd.
In any case, none of this would be news to you if you posted this in a place with more open discussion. Once again echo chambers are just so dumb, for everybody.
> I think he genuinely believes that the 2020 election was likely stolen
There are more-or-less two possibilities: either he believes that the election was stolen despite the total absence of evidence to that effect, in which case he is a fool; or he cynically pretends to believe that for the purpose of personal gain, in which case he is a liar and a con-man. Based on what we've all seen of his psychology, though, I think the more likely case is that he's simply unconnected to reality: he's spent his whole life in a billionaire bubble where everyone tells him what he wants to hear, and he's able to to convince himself that he won in 2020 because he wants to believe that.
> because it's the best way to take on yellow journalism.
What part of the reporting the fact that Biden won the 2020 election is "yellow journalism"?
> 'Why aren't you taking these jokes seriously!?' isn't the most compelling call to action.
Except, as I've already pointed out, people have been excusing behavior as a "joke" since 2016, and at every opportunity he proves that it's not a joke. People thought "Mexico will pay for a wall" was a joke; it wasn't, it was just a lie.
> Trump never laid out the idea of running as Vance's VP and forcing him aside.
I never he said he did. I did say that he said that he's "looking into ways that he can run," an idea supported by other people in Trump's orbit, such as Steven Bannon. It's not misinformation to say that Trump is considering running again, it's plainly stated in the record.
So your position is that: Trump said he's looking into running (but it's a joke), he's selling 2028 hats (but he's trolling), close advisers say he's running again (but that doesn't count). Do you understand why people think MAGA denies reality? Is there any possible evidence that would make you think he's thinking of running again? (For the record, I don't think he'll run again, because I think he will die or become gravely ill: were it not for that, he definitely would try.)
> That's accurate, but the implication to somebody who only relies on the media, instead of first party sources,
Oh, you have first party sources? Great, please tell me what Donald Trump has personally told you, that has not been publicly revealed.
> In any case, none of this would be news to you if you posted this in a place with more open discussion.
Nothing you've told me is new. I've heard all this before. The entire country has spent a decade hearing people like spout nonsense like "Trump isn't a politiician, he tells it like it is" and "Trump is already rich so he has no need to make money from the presidency" and "Trump may lack expertise, but he'll hire great advisers" and other provably incorrect statements. You mistakenly believe that we disagree because we haven't heard your side. The truth is that we've all heard your side incessantly and we just think you are dumb and/or crazy.
It's unclear to me whether you are incapable of following a thread, or are having trouble keeping your sock puppets in order. I'm not talking to you, or at least this account here - and you responded multiple times to another post under the same account, all while referring to yourself as we.
In any case, I'm not going to respond to poorly constructed straw men. If you want to speak like an adult I'll happily continue the discussion, if you want to keep ranting like a partisan - then perhaps it's genuinely impossible for you to discuss things outside of echo chambers.
> It's unclear to me whether you are incapable of following a thread, or are having trouble keeping your sock puppets in order.
I don't use sock puppets. Believe it or not, the structure of HN comments allows conversations between > 2 people. If you prefer a private conversation, use email. You've already responded to my comment [1]; I can respond to whatever comment I want. If you don't like what I say, you can write back appropriately or ignore it. Accusing me of not following the rules, however, is a very weird response.
> In any case, I'm not going to respond to poorly constructed straw men.
Please be specific: what straw man?
> if you want to keep ranting like a partisan -
Oh, the irony.
> then perhaps it's genuinely impossible for you to discuss things outside of echo chambers.
Let me get this straight: we have differing views, we're in an environment where we can freely discuss them, and yet you call it an "echo chamber" in the same breath that you refuse to continue a conversation. No one here is being censored, the only obstacle to communication is your attitude. Maybe you would feel more comfortable in /r/conservative (i.e. an actual echo chamber that aggressively censors opposing views)?
On the contrary, I know that he's not joking. He doesn't think he's joking. This isn't a one-off comment: he's selling hats about running in 2028. He wasn't joking about "building the wall," about mass deportations, about tear-gassing peaceful protesters [1], or about trying to steal the 2020 election. Every time his supporters downplay his ridiculous rhetoric as "trolling," he doubles down. Trump's followers certainly think he's serious about running again, including Steve Bannon. When has he ever admitted to joking?
> So you have, in your own post - misinformation, sweeping assertations, and claims unsupported by evidence.
I've given you evidence of Trump being utterly serious in his utterly ridiculous claims and plenty of historical evidence of contempt for elections in my previous comment, which you have failed to address. So I don't take your accusation of "claimed unsupported by evidence" to be accurate.
When has he ever admitted to joking? More or less always if we speak of implicitness, but quite often explicitly as well. He knows that part will get snipped out by partisans which makes them look even more absurd. In the context I linked above he says, "I'm only kidding" literally immediately following his joke about a third term.
You haven't given any evidence. You've instead spread misinformation, relied heavily on broad sweeping assertions based primarily on such, and then combined that all into elaborate conspiracy theories. And then you complain about the quality of others' posts.
Partisanship just blinds people, and is something that should be avoided like the plague.
> When has he ever admitted to joking? More or less always if we speak of implicitness,
Sorry, but I have to laugh at the idea of an "implicit admission." Also known as "not an admission." I feel like you have a parasocial relationship with the man, and that you are projecting your own emotions on him.
> You haven't given any evidence.
The evidence I've given is the man's own words. But you don't want to believe that, because you're too deep in the cult. You're at a point where no amount of evidence could possibly reach you because your emotional defense systems won't allow you to accept that you've been conned.
> Partisanship just blinds people, and is something that should be avoided like the plague.
The thread is about general echo chamber / liberal bias though, not specifically on USPS/voter fraud.
Any/Every discussion that makes the top page on HN about politics will flood out most of the conservative discussion, further most of the comments are echo chamber 'me too, Trump fascist' that adds very little to the conversation.
> Any/Every discussion that makes the top page on HN about politics will flood out most of the conservative discussion, further most of the comments are echo chamber 'me too,
I keep waiting for all these well-thought-out, factually-based, good-faith arguments offered by conservatives but for some reason they never appear. It seems that the only comments written by conservatives are knee-jerk, xenophobic, semi-literate arguments based in half-truths and GOP talking points. Maybe we scared off all the "good" conservatives?
> Trump fascist' that adds very little to the conversation.
I agree that it adds little to the conversation, but it's not clear to me what else you'd like to hear. If you think that a federal takeover of state elections in absence of any real election crisis is not fascist behavior, feel free to make that argument here and I will respond in a temperate and measured tone.
> Are you able to say one positive change current administration has purposefully done?
Not sure what kind of test this is supposed to be, but okay, I'll bite. He's done some things that could be good, but because of his unique pathology, he makes even good things bad. Look at the Trump Accounts. Creating a savings account for children is potentially a good thing. Here are the problems with it: during his presidency, he has single-handedly doubled the national debt, so this isn't a great opportunity to give away money; the move is ideological incoherent, coming from a guy who thinks that wealth redistribution is un-American; and of course he's a narcissist, so he's incapable of doing anything with stamping his name on it. It's hilarious that MAGAs decry "partisanship" but for some reason love obviously partisan, and likely Hatch Act-violating, nonense like this.
> Do you think those comments should be flagged and [deleted] or they add value here and should be kept around?
Some of those comments are flagged because they express non-constructive, hyper-partisan, anti-immigrant sentiment. They deserve to be flagged. Some are flagged because they are just unpopular on HN; those should not be flagged. I'd never claim that HN doesn't lean left, and it's always hard to be a minority in a community. The appropriate response from conservatives like you, in order to prevent your comments from being flagged, is to comment better: use factual evidence, logical arguments, and non-partisan language. Unfortunately, the few HN conservatives around here aren't doing that.
> Trump supporters used to speak up on this site. Surely they still exist but all I hear is crickets
They are here. But their contributions are, let's say, not motivated by fact-based reasoning. Not surprising: it's very hard to defend what's going on in this country right now.
1 was not yet flagged at the time that I wrote that. Nevertheless, you can reconstruct what was written from the quotes in its responses.
> Which "side" has been fighting tooth and nail for unverifiable mail-in ballots
> resisting all investigations of voting integrity?
Basically, the comment asserted that Democrats are "pushing" for mail-in ballots, despite the fact that many Republican-controlled states (notably Mississippi, which recently defended its mail-in voting law) also allow mail-in voting. The comment cast aspersions on the accuracy of mail-in voting, citing no evidence. The comment was apparently informed solely by partisan bias without any basis in the reality of the situation.
In short, it was not a good comment. Did it deserve to be flagged? Probably not. But it was certainly not a thoughtful, well-reasoned defense of the current administration's flagrantly illegal overreach. If this is the kind of comment that you want to see more of on HN, then we'll have to agree to disagree.
> Do I want to see more of them, probably not. Does it deserved to be flagged, absolutely not.
That's fine, but please don't play the martyr. You're supporting a president who is deporting people for constitutionally protected free speech. I think you'll survive a little flag here on HN.
#2 isn't really addressing the argument being made.
> The fact that reputable sources were not provided to justify the need for fixes has been reputable source enough.
The the question wasn't "what do people prefer" it was "what's the evidence this is a problem."
People wanting a thing doesn't necessarily mean the thing is is a problem. But further, what the Trump admin is doing isn't the thing being polled.
What's wrong with it is that it's a non-sequitur to the conversation at hand.
What's happening is new restrictions on mail in voting. A federal registry of citizens which the post office uses to decide who does and does not get a ballot and who's ballot is allowed to arrive to the elections office.
A more responsive link would be one that shows evidence of a large amount of mail in voting fraud or even a poll that shows the majority of people support federal checks and restrictions on mail in voting (though, I'd think that's not a good reply because it isn't actually evidence).
It's clearly a nuanced topic that requires debate in good-faith, no?
So why is it flagged and not debated? If all counter points are flagged, then there is no discourse. The only discourse is all the people who agree with each other.
It's not good faith to mott and baily, gish-gallop, and non-sequitur.
I've not seen a comment yet that is actually responsive to points being raised about why this action by the administration is a bad idea. Instead it's "Well, people want voter ID" and "Well because there's unlimited fraud in mail in voting and early voting".
What a lot of the flagged comments are (but I don't speak for all the flagging, I personally avoid downvoting or flagging myself unless something is very egregious) are bad faith.
It's not one sided, I've gotten into arguments about Biden/Harris when throwing critiques their way with diehard supporters. But frankly, from what I've observed it's a lot worse when it comes to Trump's actions. When he does something indefensible, like this incomplete citizen registration 2 months before an election, instead of addressing the action he just did, his supporters try and change subjects rather than justify this action.
The most charitable reading I have from one of his supporters is that this will stop non-citizens from voting in federal elections. But the issues with this they don't address, like the fact that a citizenship list doesn't currently exist and that the process of creating such a list is completely opaque, are simply never addressed. And even when "Ok, if it's such a problem, where's the evidence?" is asked, the only response is to change subjects.
That's not a good faith argument. That's not nuance. That's "I have an unfounded belief and rather than defend it, when questions get uncomfortable I'll rely on bad faith debate tactics to try and win the argument".
How does that contradict my point? 10 percent of Americans do not have acceptable ID and would be disenfranchised by Republican voter ID laws. Even free ID doesn't make the operation frictionless, as you still have to provide a birth cert or citizenship doc.
Don't tell me I'm "unfactual" while presenting this kind of weak sauce non sequitur.
> Your conservative neighbor is no more evil than someone who thinks their conservative neighbor is evil because they are conservative.
In response this:
> This is just sentimental nonsense. You are not obligated to patronize or be friendly to evil people.
Why do you assume that "evil" == "conservative" here?
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