At a fundamental level, we seem to have lost our sense of what Democracy means.
The rules are "I can think you are crass, wrong, bigoted, geriatric, etc., but if a majority of my countrymen think otherwise, we accept we are not successful in the battle of ideas, and fight another battle of ideas in 4 years". Unless this is a lone, unstable individual, it is more evidence that our system needs more balance.
This is a horrible thing, but sadly nothing new. Pardon the Wikipedia block quote:
> Four sitting presidents have been killed: Abraham Lincoln (1865, by John Wilkes Booth), James A. Garfield (1881, by Charles J. Guiteau), William McKinley (1901, by Leon Czolgosz), and John F. Kennedy (1963, by Lee Harvey Oswald). Additionally, two presidents have been injured in attempted assassinations: former president Theodore Roosevelt (1912, by John Schrank) and Ronald Reagan (1981, by John Hinckley Jr.)
Did you not see the insurrection on the capital just a few years ago? People chanting Hang Mike Pence? How about the person who blew up a small part of downtown Nashville one Christmas morning because lizard people? There's lots of lunatics out there, plenty to go around.
>The rules are "I can think you are crass, wrong, bigoted, geriatric, etc., but if a majority of my countrymen think otherwise, we accept we are not successful in the battle of ideas, and fight another battle of ideas in 4 years".
Trump was never supported, much less elected, by a majority of Americans. He didn't even get the majority of votes in the election he won. The American political system was explicitly designed not to empower the will of the majority, because that would have been an existential threat to the status quo (slavery) at the time.
And while it might be nice to claim that we should be civil participants in a battle of ideas, it would be naive to ignore the effect of centuries of gun culture and polarizing neo-reactionary rhetoric on American politics. Regardless of what the founding fathers may have intended (and notwithstanding that they disagreed on many things) a lot of Americans believe political violence is a necessity and a virtue. They lecture people on the virtues of guns after every school shooting, and speak wistfully about "watering the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants."
America has been edging itself with talk of a "cold civil war" for years now. It's like a morbid game of chicken.
I don't know if we can honestly ask how did we get here... January 6th was just one of many shining beacons to let us know that this issue was a powder keg.
Social Media has added a layer of deep disinformation & divisive ideological bubbles that are all largely going unchecked as well, where anyone can be anyone, and where it can be quite profitable for personalities to become incendiary... We're really not holding anyone, nor the bodies managing social media and news media accountable for their actions at all, which opens the doors to sensationalism, and even to embellishment on issues which are normally meant to be commonplace and handled professionally.
I think everyone has had fair warning that the rhetoric would lead to more drama, and the country has ignored it in a quest to line pockets. Politics are meant to be boring, and in order to serve Democracy, it simply can't ignore and even encroach on basic rights of others it represents. We have gone too far in political extremes, and this is the end result, slowly getting worse over time.
It's clear that we need to stop making personal servants celebrities, and to stop watching and pushing politics as if it's a TV drama or Football game, otherwise it's only going to get worse... That being said, there is a lot more organization and agendas involved in politics now than in the past.
Technology now is widely being used against everyone to achieve and monitor goals and progress in capturing profit... Sometimes as tech insiders, we have to be careful about what we implement and even say "no" as a response to being asked to do things that undermine people and the ethical balance of the world.
Profiting off of tech is not good if it makes the world we all live in deeply unstable. There's no castle, even in Maui, that anyone can build to survive political and economic collapse of the country nor the world. There is a better way to do all of this.
The assassination target promised loudly and repeatedly, it would not adhere to that. This a vote for him would be the last vote. Guy may as well have be another https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Elser if trump gets to power against the mummified establishment figure.
I think part of the answer is how you phrased the situation yourself, as a "battle of ideas."
The rhetoric by both "left" and "right" platforms pitches a divided America, and a "battle for the soul of the nation." Battle against whom? My own countrymen? For what?
For my vision for America? I was unsettled when I heard this (but maybe I'm just too sensitive.)
When you combine this kind of inflammatory speech with blanket group classifications like "liberals" or "MAGA" or "democrats" or whatever, you've now identified an enemy in this "battle", and as I've seen lately, can completely lose sight that these people are our countrymen too.
We got here because both sides have for the last 8 years consistently failed to treat one another as human beings with opinions rather than the literal devil incarnate.
There are a substantial number of people on this forum who sincerely believe that if Trump is elected there will not be another election. If enough people sincerely believe that, one of them will eventually decide that it's worth it to sacrifice their own life to ensure the survival of democracy in America.
>How the hell did we get here?...Truly sad that we've descended to this level.
By the way, sorry that this comment is so long.
This level of violence isn't new. This has never been new. There's always been stuff like this. Yes, today's era of political polarization is bad, but the US seems to go through cycles of great polarization and regrettably frequent violence followed by fairly calm periods - at least by one metric (e.g, by 'civil wars' 1860-65 was the worst, but if you measured by violent labor strikes the late 1800s-early 1900s were). Thus you get the American Revolution, then a period of relative calm, then the years leading up to the Civil War and the Civil War itself. Then a period of relative quiet, followed by the much smaller strikes, which often turned violent, as well as pogroms against blacks. Then relative quiet, then Vietnam, Civil Rights, etc.
Summary of the data following: Proceeding in fifty-year intervals back from 2020-July 13,2024, ending at 1770-July 13, 1774, this era placed #2 in civil unrest, but #4 out of 6 - ie, below average - in a broader category, counting coups, massacres, civil unrest, rebellions, worker deaths due to labor disputes, and racial violence.
For a sense of the persistence of it, look at Wikipedia's page[1]. In fact, if anything, it seems to be slowing down; Wikipedia (thus far) lists 17 incidents from 2020-2024 (inclusive). Scrolling 50, 100, 150, 200, etc. years back shows the following:
50 years ago [1970-July 13,1974]: 28 (!)
100 years ago [1920-July 13,1924]: 9.
150 years ago [1870-July 13,1874]: 10. Again, possibly an underestimate.
200 years ago [1820-July 13,1824]: 0. This is almost certainly an underestimate, but it's how many Wikipedia lists.
250 years ago [1770-July 13, 1774]: 5[2]
So, we're the second-highest. However, Wikipedia also helpfully has lists of coup attempts, massacres, etc.
So! [Note that this includes things that partially include that time period, e.g., the American Revolution, and larger things, e.g., the Black Panthers. This is from Wikipedia; you can edit it if you want. The version I'm using is accurate as of when I'm writing this]
Combined number of coups[3], massacres[4], civil unrest[1][2], rebellions[5], worker deaths "from labor disputes"[counts incidents, not individual deaths] [6], and racial violence[7] [may have some double counting], moving in 50 year intervals back from 2020-July 13,2024:
Too many guns ? Too much interference of the CIA ?
> At a fundamental level, we seem to have lost our sense of what Democracy means.
What means democracy ? Rich people buying politicians to promote laws which will make them richer ? A bunch of "citizens" sending other "citizens" to die "for their country" so some assholes can increase profits ?
Since 2016 about half the country has been fed a steady stream of rhetoric that seeks to define Trump as a literal - not figurative or metaphorical - existential threat to "our democracy". A Hitler 2.0 or worse, and the mark of Fascism finally coming to the United States.
If you take those arguments at face value, and really and truly believe they are true, then it is unsurprising that someone took a shot at "New Hitler". Because why wouldn't someone do that if it was true?
Of course it isn't true, and even the people who say this stuff don't believe it[1].
Those are the stated rules, let’s be clear about that. The actual rules are that there are no rules.
Painting an election by popular vote as a “battle of ideas” is falling into the all-too-common trap of thinking that we are rational agents. I can’t even begin to expand on how incorrect that is.
Even a little bit of candid consideration would uncover the truth of this. Political ads aren’t logical arguments. They’re emotional appeals. Hell, “he should be in charge because he’s most popular” is itself an ad populum argument. It’s nonsense to begin with.
He has been compared to Hitler countless times, and was demonized by the media for years, meanwhile his supporters were dismissed as lunatics and conspiracy theorists when this is pointed out.
We literally almost had civil war or at least a real insurrection today.
Messaging from the democrat side has been that trump is a threat to democracy, he's a fascist nazi, etc etc. You've seen the vilification. Days prior Biden literally said to put Trump in the bullseye and 'elimination' is necessary. Biden has withdrawn all these ads.
Political polarization is primarily derived from the democrat side.
Echo chambers are mostly democrat sided. Reddit for example having banned r/thedonald for example. Each side now lives separately and aren't talking to each other except to dunk on each other's dumbest candidates. John Stewart's fault.
The fix here has to come from the democrat side, end the identity politics, and start preaching unity, democracy, and everyone is on the same team. It does seem that they have shifted their messaging, but to change your messaging strategy 3 months before the election is rather election ending.
I know it sounds awful, but I blame the media. If you looked at some of the leading liberal newspapers in America, the minutes and hours after the shooting, you could see how they try to minimize the event, instead of reporting it truthfully.
Someone should shoot "democracy" itself. It's 2024, why are we still driving a political system with training wheels that always takes us to places other than where 90%+ of people want to go?
Could it maybe be in part because we are immersed in pro-"democracy" propaganda from the day we are born, and are denied the educational curriculum (set by "democracy") that would give us the tools to think and engage in discourse at a level that would allow us to realize it, or at least consider the idea without everyone losing their cool?
Now, sticking with convention: has anyone any epistemically unsound memorized memes and catch phrases for me, to "prove" "democracy" is the ~best we can do, and that ideas like replacing it with a more sophisticated, non-deceptive implementation shan't be discussed among "the adults at the table"?
Inb4 "this isn't what HN is for".
Protip, fellow Humans: it is possible to think your way out of this simulation we are in, at least substantially (at which point you can rest, regroup, and plan for the next stage of ascent). And it isn't even very hard. It is little more than doing just what we Humans have proven ourselves excellent at, most of the time:
1. Identify a challenge.
2. Solve it.
Heck, this problem is actually mostly far more trivial[2] than things we do every day without thinking twice about it. It's mostly just not on our radar, and heavily psychologically protected territory[1]. But religion was this way once also, and science handed it an ass whooping, didn't it?
[1] Simple experiments can be run on social media or IRL to demonstrate this: specific prompts will produce highly predictable responses.
It's interesting that they avoid saying shot, while describing the consequences of being shot near the ear. Are they thinking he might've scratched the ear when his security jumped on him?
It might just be a bias from me, but it feels like a double standard that the media that are known for irresponsibly rushing stories out and issuing retractions after the fact might be trying to wait and see for the facts to come out this time.
Media profit from our outrage. And we go along with it. Politicians derive power from our outrage. And again we go along with it. We must befriend our political rivals. Consider their viewpoint long enough to appreciate it. See that the other, is really ourselves. If we aren't doing that, then we are part of the problem, and we are creating the atmosphere that moves people to take such horrible and drastic actions. We have noone to blame but ourselves.
Perhaps it was a good thing, because he’ll be more careful from now on. Many interviewers including Tucker Carlson saw this coming from a mile away. Pun intended. Hopefully further attempts will be less successful than otherwise. Look at how many were tried on a certain famous Cuban politician and how many were successful on Mexican presidential candidates every election cycle. The tallies of both will surprise you unless you already know your numbers. It’s a good thing that he’ll be more careful now, hopefully.
Maybe shock, maybe media savvy, but that decision to fist pump photo op just demonstrated how cognizant Trump is under fire... Everything Biden is not. Crazy how many different scenarios will play out depending on shooters race and affiliation, all of which bad.
I just make myself apathetic towards these politics otherwise I end up too angry. Republicans are furious about reactions to this violent event, yet so many of them call for gays (like me) to be tortured, murdered and actively hunted down as jokes all the time?
Why can I no longer vouch for threads? Did I vouch too many things that other deemed flaggable or was it a deliberate choice by a mod to remove this ability from my account?
EDIT: I was wrong. Please see my reply further down in which I realise this.
----
IIRC, people have never been able to vouch for flagged articles, only for flagged comments. You gain your ability to vouch for flagged comments once your reputation hits a certain cutoff; rarely, you might lose it if dang feels you are abusing your vouching ability.
I believe the only way to vouch for flagged articles, is an informal vouching process in which you email dang and try to convince him to turn the flag off manually. Sometimes, that works.
Either the FBI is withholding information or the shooter didn't leave a trace. If it's the latter, there could be other parties (e.g. foreign governments) involved
The fact that they can't find a motive is very fishy. This isn't just something someone can do on a whim, the guy must've planned this out months in advance. He must have some documents somewhere
Odd. I posted this same essential news story on the day it occurred only to have it flagged for no apparent reason, despite being major news about a famous figure, on a site where notifications about famous figures and major non-tech news aren't uncommon.
Trump is truly capable of staging his own assassination attempt. They meaning Trump's inner circle found a young innocent guy who was bad at shooting we will never know what he got promised. Even the sniper who shot the boy said this must be an inside job otherwise with all the security how in God's way could he possibly made it to the rooftop??? Security inside the building security everywhere and the shooter walks by with an automatic rifle in his hand or on his back???? The only one who wins is Donald Trump if president elected he wipes out all his felonies puts all his enemies in jail etc.etc.etc. Think about it .
Trump is truly capable of staging his own assassination attempt. They meaning Trump's inner circle found a young innocent guy who was bad at shooting we will never know what he got promised. Even the sniper who shot the boy said this must be an inside job otherwise with all the security how in God's way could he possibly made it to the rooftop??? Security inside the building security everywhere and the shooter walks by with an automatic rifle in his hand or on his back???? The only one who wins is Donald Trump if president elected he wipes out all his felonies puts all his enemies in jail etc.etc.etc. Think about it .
I would love to read an analysis of the bias on HN. I see that depending on which side of politics the topic is, it is flagged much more. This is not a pro-Trump statement but an opportunity to improve the flagging system.
A simpler solution would be to ban political news no matter where they came from, even if they are historical. I prefer the first choice about innovation.
It's easy to see that past articles about "JFK Assasination" are not flagged at all [1]. Is the present the problem?
The original HN thread is littered with people calling to kill all liberals and talking about taking specific people's heads.
The reporting that followed that post suggests the shooter donated $15 to Act Blue when he was 17 and registered as a Republican at 18. All of this within the context that this young man is from a very rural town in Pennsylvania that Trump easily won. The whole situation is just odd.
The best thing for everyone to do is to do nothing, because nothing good comes from this point. No point in making things worse.
It’s what happens when you erode the rule of law - even as a democracy - and push a simplistic narrative of good guys and bad guys. Us versus them, the left versus the right - and of course we are the good ones.
As a democracy we must hold ourselves to the highest standards, anything else is a slippery slope. Look at the assassination of the Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in 2020, ordered by president Trump. Or the numerous innocent victims of long distance drone strikes in Afghanistan during Obama’s presidency. Or the current strikes on refugees in Gaza. I really don’t like the Taliban or Hamas; Soleimani was a horrible person, an oppressor and war criminal.
However, as a democracy, we just can’t just go and kill people we don’t like. Taking "collateral" victims for granted. We can’t ignore international law and human rights. We didn’t really care because, meh, bad guys in foreign countries.
But at some point, this mindset comes home and erodes our moral thinking: "It’s okay to eliminate someone I consider to be a bad guy. It’s okay to insult, harass and attack someone who doesn’t share my righteous values and beliefs. Who needs (international) laws, a juridical system and human rights when you can do it yourself?" It’s poisonous and it’s getting worse. I wish I could see a light at the end of the tunnel, but I really don’t see one at the moment.
[+] [-] jkic47|1 year ago|reply
At a fundamental level, we seem to have lost our sense of what Democracy means.
The rules are "I can think you are crass, wrong, bigoted, geriatric, etc., but if a majority of my countrymen think otherwise, we accept we are not successful in the battle of ideas, and fight another battle of ideas in 4 years". Unless this is a lone, unstable individual, it is more evidence that our system needs more balance.
Truly sad that we've descended to this level
[+] [-] daseiner1|1 year ago|reply
> Four sitting presidents have been killed: Abraham Lincoln (1865, by John Wilkes Booth), James A. Garfield (1881, by Charles J. Guiteau), William McKinley (1901, by Leon Czolgosz), and John F. Kennedy (1963, by Lee Harvey Oswald). Additionally, two presidents have been injured in attempted assassinations: former president Theodore Roosevelt (1912, by John Schrank) and Ronald Reagan (1981, by John Hinckley Jr.)
If anything we’ve been “overdue”.
[+] [-] poikroequ|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] krapp|1 year ago|reply
Trump was never supported, much less elected, by a majority of Americans. He didn't even get the majority of votes in the election he won. The American political system was explicitly designed not to empower the will of the majority, because that would have been an existential threat to the status quo (slavery) at the time.
And while it might be nice to claim that we should be civil participants in a battle of ideas, it would be naive to ignore the effect of centuries of gun culture and polarizing neo-reactionary rhetoric on American politics. Regardless of what the founding fathers may have intended (and notwithstanding that they disagreed on many things) a lot of Americans believe political violence is a necessity and a virtue. They lecture people on the virtues of guns after every school shooting, and speak wistfully about "watering the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants."
America has been edging itself with talk of a "cold civil war" for years now. It's like a morbid game of chicken.
[+] [-] winternett|1 year ago|reply
Social Media has added a layer of deep disinformation & divisive ideological bubbles that are all largely going unchecked as well, where anyone can be anyone, and where it can be quite profitable for personalities to become incendiary... We're really not holding anyone, nor the bodies managing social media and news media accountable for their actions at all, which opens the doors to sensationalism, and even to embellishment on issues which are normally meant to be commonplace and handled professionally.
I think everyone has had fair warning that the rhetoric would lead to more drama, and the country has ignored it in a quest to line pockets. Politics are meant to be boring, and in order to serve Democracy, it simply can't ignore and even encroach on basic rights of others it represents. We have gone too far in political extremes, and this is the end result, slowly getting worse over time.
It's clear that we need to stop making personal servants celebrities, and to stop watching and pushing politics as if it's a TV drama or Football game, otherwise it's only going to get worse... That being said, there is a lot more organization and agendas involved in politics now than in the past.
Technology now is widely being used against everyone to achieve and monitor goals and progress in capturing profit... Sometimes as tech insiders, we have to be careful about what we implement and even say "no" as a response to being asked to do things that undermine people and the ethical balance of the world.
Profiting off of tech is not good if it makes the world we all live in deeply unstable. There's no castle, even in Maui, that anyone can build to survive political and economic collapse of the country nor the world. There is a better way to do all of this.
[+] [-] PicassoCTs|1 year ago|reply
The assassination target promised loudly and repeatedly, it would not adhere to that. This a vote for him would be the last vote. Guy may as well have be another https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Elser if trump gets to power against the mummified establishment figure.
[+] [-] tithe|1 year ago|reply
The rhetoric by both "left" and "right" platforms pitches a divided America, and a "battle for the soul of the nation." Battle against whom? My own countrymen? For what? For my vision for America? I was unsettled when I heard this (but maybe I'm just too sensitive.)
When you combine this kind of inflammatory speech with blanket group classifications like "liberals" or "MAGA" or "democrats" or whatever, you've now identified an enemy in this "battle", and as I've seen lately, can completely lose sight that these people are our countrymen too.
[+] [-] lolinder|1 year ago|reply
There are a substantial number of people on this forum who sincerely believe that if Trump is elected there will not be another election. If enough people sincerely believe that, one of them will eventually decide that it's worth it to sacrifice their own life to ensure the survival of democracy in America.
[+] [-] Yawrehto|1 year ago|reply
By the way, sorry that this comment is so long.
This level of violence isn't new. This has never been new. There's always been stuff like this. Yes, today's era of political polarization is bad, but the US seems to go through cycles of great polarization and regrettably frequent violence followed by fairly calm periods - at least by one metric (e.g, by 'civil wars' 1860-65 was the worst, but if you measured by violent labor strikes the late 1800s-early 1900s were). Thus you get the American Revolution, then a period of relative calm, then the years leading up to the Civil War and the Civil War itself. Then a period of relative quiet, followed by the much smaller strikes, which often turned violent, as well as pogroms against blacks. Then relative quiet, then Vietnam, Civil Rights, etc.
Summary of the data following: Proceeding in fifty-year intervals back from 2020-July 13,2024, ending at 1770-July 13, 1774, this era placed #2 in civil unrest, but #4 out of 6 - ie, below average - in a broader category, counting coups, massacres, civil unrest, rebellions, worker deaths due to labor disputes, and racial violence.
For a sense of the persistence of it, look at Wikipedia's page[1]. In fact, if anything, it seems to be slowing down; Wikipedia (thus far) lists 17 incidents from 2020-2024 (inclusive). Scrolling 50, 100, 150, 200, etc. years back shows the following:
50 years ago [1970-July 13,1974]: 28 (!)
100 years ago [1920-July 13,1924]: 9.
150 years ago [1870-July 13,1874]: 10. Again, possibly an underestimate.
200 years ago [1820-July 13,1824]: 0. This is almost certainly an underestimate, but it's how many Wikipedia lists.
250 years ago [1770-July 13, 1774]: 5[2]
So, we're the second-highest. However, Wikipedia also helpfully has lists of coup attempts, massacres, etc. So! [Note that this includes things that partially include that time period, e.g., the American Revolution, and larger things, e.g., the Black Panthers. This is from Wikipedia; you can edit it if you want. The version I'm using is accurate as of when I'm writing this]
Combined number of coups[3], massacres[4], civil unrest[1][2], rebellions[5], worker deaths "from labor disputes"[counts incidents, not individual deaths] [6], and racial violence[7] [may have some double counting], moving in 50 year intervals back from 2020-July 13,2024:
2020-July 13,2024: Coup attempts: 2, massacres: 3, civil unrest: 17, rebellions: 2, worker deaths: 0, racial violence: 1 [it lumps police brutality together; you're welcome to object]. Total: 25.
1970-July 13,1974: coups: 0, massacres: 1, civil unrest: 28, rebellions: 5, worker deaths: 0, racial violence: 15. Total: 49.
1920-July 13,1924: Coups: 0, Massacres: 6, Civil unrest: 9, rebellions: 1 [Coal Wars], worker deaths: 14, racial violence: 7 [doesn't count KKK as overarching thing]. Total: 37
1870-July 13,1874: Coups: 1 [state], Massacres: 3, Civil unrest: 10, rebellions: 0, worker deaths: 1, racial violence: 12, Total: 27
1820-July 13,1824: Coups: 0, Massacres: 0, Civil unrest: 0 [somehow], rebellions: 0, worker deaths: 0, racial violence: 1, not including slavery. Total: 1
1770-July 13,1774: Coups: 0, Massacres: 1, Civil unrest: 5, rebellions: 2 [includes American revolution], worker deaths: 0, racial violence: 0, not counting slavery. Total: 8.
So we come in at position #4 out of 6. A reasonable argument could be made that we're actually BELOW average currently.
[1] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_incidents_of_civil_unrest_in_the_United_States.
[2] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_incidents_of_civil_unrest_in_Colonial_North_America
[3] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_coups_and_coup_attempts_by_country#United_States [this counts state-level attempts]
[4] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_the_United_States. Erratic about which mass shootings it includes.
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rebellions_in_the_Unit...
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_worker_deaths_in_Unite...
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_racial_violence_in_the_Un...
[+] [-] matrix87|1 year ago|reply
When is it ever not? A lot easier to believe than a bunch of handwavey "across the aisle" garbage
[+] [-] tibbydudeza|1 year ago|reply
Journalists: We are Americans.
Soldier: What kind of American are you ???.
[+] [-] hulitu|1 year ago|reply
Too many guns ? Too much interference of the CIA ?
> At a fundamental level, we seem to have lost our sense of what Democracy means.
What means democracy ? Rich people buying politicians to promote laws which will make them richer ? A bunch of "citizens" sending other "citizens" to die "for their country" so some assholes can increase profits ?
[+] [-] remarkEon|1 year ago|reply
Since 2016 about half the country has been fed a steady stream of rhetoric that seeks to define Trump as a literal - not figurative or metaphorical - existential threat to "our democracy". A Hitler 2.0 or worse, and the mark of Fascism finally coming to the United States.
If you take those arguments at face value, and really and truly believe they are true, then it is unsurprising that someone took a shot at "New Hitler". Because why wouldn't someone do that if it was true?
Of course it isn't true, and even the people who say this stuff don't believe it[1].
[1] https://x.com/Timodc/status/1811136469911711877
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
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[+] [-] zarathustreal|1 year ago|reply
Painting an election by popular vote as a “battle of ideas” is falling into the all-too-common trap of thinking that we are rational agents. I can’t even begin to expand on how incorrect that is.
Even a little bit of candid consideration would uncover the truth of this. Political ads aren’t logical arguments. They’re emotional appeals. Hell, “he should be in charge because he’s most popular” is itself an ad populum argument. It’s nonsense to begin with.
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] stefantalpalaru|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] proc0|1 year ago|reply
We literally almost had civil war or at least a real insurrection today.
[+] [-] klyrs|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] beaglesss|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] iJohnDoe|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mattbillenstein|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] hanniabu|1 year ago|reply
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[+] [-] incomingpain|1 year ago|reply
Lets go backwards.
Messaging from the democrat side has been that trump is a threat to democracy, he's a fascist nazi, etc etc. You've seen the vilification. Days prior Biden literally said to put Trump in the bullseye and 'elimination' is necessary. Biden has withdrawn all these ads.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-polarization-of-politic...
Political polarization is primarily derived from the democrat side.
Echo chambers are mostly democrat sided. Reddit for example having banned r/thedonald for example. Each side now lives separately and aren't talking to each other except to dunk on each other's dumbest candidates. John Stewart's fault.
The fix here has to come from the democrat side, end the identity politics, and start preaching unity, democracy, and everyone is on the same team. It does seem that they have shifted their messaging, but to change your messaging strategy 3 months before the election is rather election ending.
[+] [-] JamesAdir|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] mistermann|1 year ago|reply
Someone should shoot "democracy" itself. It's 2024, why are we still driving a political system with training wheels that always takes us to places other than where 90%+ of people want to go?
Could it maybe be in part because we are immersed in pro-"democracy" propaganda from the day we are born, and are denied the educational curriculum (set by "democracy") that would give us the tools to think and engage in discourse at a level that would allow us to realize it, or at least consider the idea without everyone losing their cool?
Now, sticking with convention: has anyone any epistemically unsound memorized memes and catch phrases for me, to "prove" "democracy" is the ~best we can do, and that ideas like replacing it with a more sophisticated, non-deceptive implementation shan't be discussed among "the adults at the table"?
Inb4 "this isn't what HN is for".
Protip, fellow Humans: it is possible to think your way out of this simulation we are in, at least substantially (at which point you can rest, regroup, and plan for the next stage of ascent). And it isn't even very hard. It is little more than doing just what we Humans have proven ourselves excellent at, most of the time:
1. Identify a challenge.
2. Solve it.
Heck, this problem is actually mostly far more trivial[2] than things we do every day without thinking twice about it. It's mostly just not on our radar, and heavily psychologically protected territory[1]. But religion was this way once also, and science handed it an ass whooping, didn't it?
[1] Simple experiments can be run on social media or IRL to demonstrate this: specific prompts will produce highly predictable responses.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_language_model
[2] Irony noted lol
[+] [-] dotnet00|1 year ago|reply
It might just be a bias from me, but it feels like a double standard that the media that are known for irresponsibly rushing stories out and issuing retractions after the fact might be trying to wait and see for the facts to come out this time.
[+] [-] HaZeust|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] pc2g4d|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] steakscience|1 year ago|reply
I don't know why people are trying to make this a sign of a big societal trend about media outrage, etc.
[+] [-] replwoacause|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] webninja|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] seattle_spring|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] skissane|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] maxglute|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Ylpertnodi|1 year ago|reply
How can you compare? Biden hasn't been shot in the ear...
[I'm an EU person. No skin in this game.]
[+] [-] fennecbutt|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] sergiotapia|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] skissane|1 year ago|reply
----
IIRC, people have never been able to vouch for flagged articles, only for flagged comments. You gain your ability to vouch for flagged comments once your reputation hits a certain cutoff; rarely, you might lose it if dang feels you are abusing your vouching ability.
I believe the only way to vouch for flagged articles, is an informal vouching process in which you email dang and try to convince him to turn the flag off manually. Sometimes, that works.
[+] [-] krapp|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] matrix87|1 year ago|reply
Either the FBI is withholding information or the shooter didn't leave a trace. If it's the latter, there could be other parties (e.g. foreign governments) involved
The fact that they can't find a motive is very fishy. This isn't just something someone can do on a whim, the guy must've planned this out months in advance. He must have some documents somewhere
[+] [-] southernplaces7|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] wiesel2024|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] wiesel59|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] wslh|1 year ago|reply
A simpler solution would be to ban political news no matter where they came from, even if they are historical. I prefer the first choice about innovation.
It's easy to see that past articles about "JFK Assasination" are not flagged at all [1]. Is the present the problem?
BTW, I tested ChatGPT time accuracy for news [2].
[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=jfk+assasination+site%3Anews...
[2] https://chatgpt.com/share/6f918b0a-7d28-4405-8826-87becf5079...
[+] [-] oooyay|1 year ago|reply
The reporting that followed that post suggests the shooter donated $15 to Act Blue when he was 17 and registered as a Republican at 18. All of this within the context that this young man is from a very rural town in Pennsylvania that Trump easily won. The whole situation is just odd.
The best thing for everyone to do is to do nothing, because nothing good comes from this point. No point in making things worse.
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
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[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
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[+] [-] yabatopia|1 year ago|reply
As a democracy we must hold ourselves to the highest standards, anything else is a slippery slope. Look at the assassination of the Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in 2020, ordered by president Trump. Or the numerous innocent victims of long distance drone strikes in Afghanistan during Obama’s presidency. Or the current strikes on refugees in Gaza. I really don’t like the Taliban or Hamas; Soleimani was a horrible person, an oppressor and war criminal.
However, as a democracy, we just can’t just go and kill people we don’t like. Taking "collateral" victims for granted. We can’t ignore international law and human rights. We didn’t really care because, meh, bad guys in foreign countries.
But at some point, this mindset comes home and erodes our moral thinking: "It’s okay to eliminate someone I consider to be a bad guy. It’s okay to insult, harass and attack someone who doesn’t share my righteous values and beliefs. Who needs (international) laws, a juridical system and human rights when you can do it yourself?" It’s poisonous and it’s getting worse. I wish I could see a light at the end of the tunnel, but I really don’t see one at the moment.
[+] [-] mensetmanusman|1 year ago|reply