[bbor]

  democratic states like Iran

...whelp, this thread is gonna get shut down. Everyone was being reasonable, but all it takes is one person to say some out-of-pocket shit like "the country currently massacring protestors is the real democracy" for it to descend below HN's standards for political discourse.

  non-democratic states like north korea

And FWIW, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is ostensibly a democracy, too. AFAIR the list of openly non-democratic states is quite small: Saudi Arabia, some microstates like the Holy See, and ~6 non-micro "Executive constitutional monarchies" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_monarchy#List_o...)

[hearsathought]

> ...whelp, this thread is gonna get shut down.

No. It's about iran, so it'll get stuck on the frontpage for a while. If this was about israel, then you'd have point.

> but all it takes is one person to say some out-of-pocket shit like "the country currently massacring protestors is the real democracy" for it to descend below HN's standards for political discourse.

The US has massacred people, even protestors. Are you saying we are not a democracy?

> And FWIW, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is ostensibly a democracy, too.

There is a difference between one claiming to be a democracy and another that actually is. No?

[bbor]

It honestly blows my mind that some people read about a national government killing thousands of protestors in the span of a few days amid a backdrop of decades of authoritarian repression and think "meh, NBD, other countries have done bad things too".

Maybe you remember one of the most shameful, egregious acts of police violence against protestors in America, with 4 dead and 9 injured? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings

EDIT: But WAY more importantly, c'mon the HN admins are not super biased. I disagree with them on lots of policy decisions, but implying that they're a secret Zionist influence is goofy. They delete political threads of all kinds with gusto unless it's incredibly important or somewhat tech-related.