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Re:Warren Buffett's Annual Letter to Berkshire Hathaway Shar... by wokky on Saturday February 25, 2017 @10:52AM (#13732037)
I don't often see this sort of pride in America. Normally the flavors I do observe are hyper-nationalistic and filled with bravado...

I'd go even further: our current presidential administration spends a lot of energy telling us that America sucks because the people in it suck, the government they built sucks, and the ideals they aspire to suck, and that the solution is to deal out cruelty to the right kinds of people.

I don't understand how anyone can listen to that bilge and interpret it as any kind of patriotism at all, but they do. The hyper-nationalism and bravado are a natural result of an underlying emotional condition apparently shared by about a quarter of the populace: an inability to feel pride in anything but the capacity to dominate.

This is why a few sentences by Warren Buffet feel like such a breath of fresh air. It wasn't always like this, Buffet's far more constructive and positive sentiment is perfectly normal.

Re:Warren Buffett's Annual Letter to Berkshire Hathaway Shar... by anjc on Saturday February 25, 2017 @11:26AM (#13732220)
> I'd go even further: our current presidential administration spends a lot of energy telling us that America sucks because the people in it suck

Wtf are you talking about? This has never happened.

Re:Warren Buffett's Annual Letter to Berkshire Hathaway Shar... by BatFastard on Saturday February 25, 2017 @01:02PM (#13732823)
While he didn't use the words "suck", he did say it was a "mess". http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2016/01/10/donald-trump-the-st...
Re:Warren Buffett's Annual Letter to Berkshire Hathaway Shar... by wire9 on Saturday February 25, 2017 @01:16PM (#13732909)
That is magnitudes different than saying the american people suck. Lets try not to put words in peoples mouth, thats how we divide people.
Re:Warren Buffett's Annual Letter to Berkshire Hathaway Shar... by lostlogin on Saturday February 25, 2017 @01:25PM (#13732957)
I don't think you could cause more division than the current administration has.
Re:Warren Buffett's Annual Letter to Berkshire Hathaway Shar... by mythrwy on Saturday February 25, 2017 @01:54PM (#13733093)
That's your opinion but mine is that division requires minimum two parts.
Re:Warren Buffett's Annual Letter to Berkshire Hathaway Shar... by ajmurmann on Saturday February 25, 2017 @03:04PM (#13733537)
In this situation you are probably right. However, it's very problematic as a general statement. There are too many atrocities committed by violent majorities against powerless minorities that come to mind. This blanket statement gets into victim shaming really quick.
Re:Warren Buffett's Annual Letter to Berkshire Hathaway Shar... by mythrwy on Saturday February 25, 2017 @03:26PM (#13733639)
Agreed. Atrocities have happened and will most likely happen again with innocent victims.

But even with violent majorities there is usually a justification of the behavior that somehow involves something the minority party is doing (or not doing) that justifies the action. Not that this makes it any more morally palatable (or true) from an objective viewpoint but the division may exist to be seized upon.

I'd also argue that Trump isn't the cause of division so much as the result of existing divisions some of which are quite old and have been festering.

My last point is I really grow weary of hearing Trump slams. We get it. You don't like Trump. But some people do. Is there any way we could keep this repetitive bleating on Facebook or something? No offense to poster lastlogin. His comment history seems pretty solid, I'm just sick of the Trump slams every third forum.

Re:Warren Buffett's Annual Letter to Berkshire Hathaway Shar... by ajmurmann on Monday February 27, 2017 @01:27AM (#13742319)
My remark was not about Trump. That's why I started out saying that the parent is probably right in this particular case. My concern was with the statement being applied as a general statement. Had the parent made a statement exclusively about Trump I would have been totally fine with it.

It's somewhat concerning that there political situation has reached a point where many statements are assumed to be about Trump.

Re:Warren Buffett's Annual Letter to Berkshire Hathaway Shar... by lostlogin on Sunday February 26, 2017 @01:03AM (#13735928)
I was probably treading over the line into HN no go territory, which isn't right. However I really do think that ignoring the elephant on the room isn't helpful either. How do you balance these two factors? Likely by keeping threads on topic would by my thought...
Re:Warren Buffett's Annual Letter to Berkshire Hathaway Shar... by beams_of_light on Saturday February 25, 2017 @08:47PM (#13735154)
As much as I despise Trump, I agree. I'd prefer HN remain relatively non-political. The minute it starts to resemble anything like the default front page of reddit, I'm going to be looking for the next HN.
Re:Warren Buffett's Annual Letter to Berkshire Hathaway Shar... by dforrestwilson on Saturday February 25, 2017 @02:55PM (#13733486)
The politically motivated down-votes here make me sad..
Re:Warren Buffett's Annual Letter to Berkshire Hathaway Shar... by akhilcacharya on Saturday February 25, 2017 @06:16PM (#13734469)
> we divide people.

Can someone please explain what this even means? I've seen this used as a thought terminating cliche for far too long for it to make sense anymore.

Re:Warren Buffett's Annual Letter to Berkshire Hathaway Shar... by wokky on Tuesday February 28, 2017 @10:53AM (#13754619)
This has never happened.

You know he's been a public loudmouth for ~30 years, right? Consider the encyclopedic familiarity with his massive corpus of blabbering you claim when you make a flat statement like this.

I could point out a bunch of his statements and attitudes, none of which would be news to you. The issue is: You haven't recognized those statements for what they are. They apply to classes of Other, so you haven't recognized them as being applicable to full-fledged equals, to human citizens.

When the president says something like "you have to treat [women] like shit" or when he claims that women are untrustworthy because they're all gold-digging bimbos, he's dissing half the nation as fundamentally deplorable.

When the president says things like "laziness is a trait in blacks," he's dissing ~40 million Americans - virtually all of whom are natural citizens, and who are consistently over-represented in the armed forces - as fundamentally less valuable as human beings.

The fact that he's also being a sexist/racist asshole at the same time shouldn't let him off the hook for statements like these. The fact that you haven't already recognized these attitudes (and many others like them) as fundamentally anti-patriotic attacks on your fellow citizens - that's on you.

[dead]
Re:Warren Buffett's Annual Letter to Berkshire Hathaway Shar... by curun1r on Saturday February 25, 2017 @01:48PM (#13733066)
> He has said politicians and the political class suck. Not 'Americans'.

Well, not all Americans. Not white or Christian Americans. But he has demonized a lot of minority groups, many of them American.

Re:Warren Buffett's Annual Letter to Berkshire Hathaway Shar... by nugator on Saturday February 25, 2017 @01:46PM (#13733059)
"... America sucks because the people in it suck..." ≠ Americans I believe Trump has said a lot about non Americans in the US (Mexicans for ex.). But he has also said a lot about Americans (American muslims for ex.).
Re:Warren Buffett's Annual Letter to Berkshire Hathaway Shar... by ftlio on Saturday February 25, 2017 @01:43PM (#13733043)
He doesn't think America is great, aye? Hence the imperative that it must be made great... again.
Re:Warren Buffett's Annual Letter to Berkshire Hathaway Shar... by jgallag8 on Saturday February 25, 2017 @02:47PM (#13733433)
I think its fairly common for people to believe both that the US is the greatest, and it isn't what it used to be. There's obviously some tension between those ideas, noted humorously by Stephen Colbert's book entitled 'America Again: Re-becoming the Greatness We Never Weren't'.
Re:Warren Buffett's Annual Letter to Berkshire Hathaway Shar... by Spooky23 on Saturday February 25, 2017 @04:10PM (#13733840)
You're just a loser listening to a bunch of bunk. Trump is about business. Business is about winning. Trump likes winners. Losers suck. Winners make America great. Trump is a winner, Trump is for America, so America will be great again.

Clinton and her gang accurately tagged the collection of treasonous fascists, racists and conservative losers surrounding Trump as deplorable. Unfortunately for everyone, she was incapable of understanding how and why Trump appealed to otherwise reasonably intelligent people.

Re:Warren Buffett's Annual Letter to Berkshire Hathaway Shar... by omarchowdhury on Tuesday February 28, 2017 @02:56AM (#13752115)
If business is about winning, then during one of the chief components of business; sales, the business is making the customer into a loser when they transact.

Is that the kind of business you're engaged in?