I'm not seeing hatred towards people for arguing over correct levels of import taxes. I'm seeing it because they're backing politicians who are actively causing harm to real human beings.

Sure you are. You see someone vote for Trump and immediately assume it must be because they're an evil, ethically flawed person who inexplicably hates love, sunshine and puppies, whereas perhaps they mostly care about taxes. You even did it in this post. Your thinking is knee jerk and shallow, and it's people like you that are causing the problems in the first place.

Similarly, if I had spent much time in Libya, I might consider holding my nose and voting for the candidate who didn't work hard to create that situation. (Again, I will grant that situation was going wrong without our involvement, but we're good at making things worse.)

I voted for Clinton because I agree with most of her policies, and think she's immensely qualified, but I keep hearing "if you voted for Trump, that means you didn't consider his statements disqualifying" But it doesn't--it could just mean you think the other candidate had stuff that was more disqualifying.

It's not absurd to consider bombing people worse than saying sexist and racist shit. It seems like a lot of Trump voters thought Trump's worst aspects were "just talk".

There wasn't an option for "Clinton without the interventionism" on the ballot. Similarly, there's no "Trump without the sexism/racism" option.

I will grant that most of them didn't have "Clinton bombed Libya" as their justification for their Trump vote. Abortion, though, I think is a real reason for a lot of religious people.

I don't think my vote for Clinton should be taken to mean I'm okay with the positions she pushed for in North Africa and the Middle East, and that means also not declaring Trump voters were necessarily okay with his crap either.

I have a friend who grew up in a country that was the subject of a rather messy US intervention back when he lived there. He's socially liberal on almost every level, but voted without hesitation for Trump. His explicit reasoning was that he found Trump less likely to start lasting, Iraq/Libya style interventions, and believed the death toll of such an action would outweigh literally everything else.

There wasn't really much to argue there. It's not as though he considered Trump's comments acceptable, it's not like he didn't understand the importance of protections for trans people, he just saw everything else as smaller than tens (or hundreds) of thousands dead and millions displaced. I couldn't really disagree; honestly I'm frightened by the indifference of much of the left to our trail of destruction abroad.

The only question dividing our votes was what decisions we expected Trump and Clinton to make on foreign wars. It really was the biggest issue going for both of us.

I didn't vote for Trump, but I know a lot of people that did.

Abortion is actually a huge part of it. To the point that I'm wondering why Trump-voter-haters think the election was just about xenophobia or something.

There was also a non-trivial portion of the right who expected things like the Damore firing and voted for the person least likely to contribute to that future. They think that the Pope himself could easily become a persona non grata at Google or certain parts of the national bureaucracy.

That seems like a false dichotomy. There were third party candidates. Plus, you can always choose not to vote.

I've voted third-party a number of times, but that's because I've lived in unflippable states and I'm playing the long game. If you care about the short-term results that are this specific election and are in a state where it can change the results, voting third-party is the wrong choice. Not voting is an even more wrong choice--"both are bad and I'd like us to have better choices in the future" can best be achieved by voting third-party. "Both are bad, so I'll let other people decide" seems less likely to influence future elections, and it's obviously not the right way to effect this election. The one economic principle I always cite rings true here: Rational people think on the margin.

People who think abortion is infanticide saw an opportunity to fill the Supreme Court with justices who might ban abortion. Given their goals, not voting would have been a worse decision than voting for Trump was.

No?

But that was her policy - the "no fly zone" that could only be implemented by shooting down Russian jets, or perhaps people have forgotten.

In contrast Trump wanted to make peace with Russia.

So maybe I can assume anyone who didn't vote Trump has a racist hatred of Russians.

knock the crap out of them …. I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees

You didn't vote for Trump over the correct level of import taxes.

Or maybe you didn't vote for, but voted against (I hear some studies say this is the primary way people vote, btw.)?

Or maybe you had some other reason? I could invent plenty more. The point being, judging someone by the sole data point of their choice in the voting booth, without knowing reasons for it, is one of the most stupid kind of thinking imaginable. In fact, in less emotionally charged contexts, people generally don't show that kind of stupidity.

I'd call that holding them accountable and I only know how they voted because they told me. Also, I'd put hating people for the color of their skin, the sexuality, their religion, ... as much much stupider.

You only get to do that after you understand their reasons, which you can then judge.

> and I only know how they voted because they told me

It doesn't work like that. People don't generally run around, telling everyone who they voted for. It usually comes up in conversations, where the person who divulges their choice don't expect to get hated for it.

> Also, I'd put hating people for the color of their skin, the sexuality, their religion, ... as much much stupider.

I agree with that (maybe not with the much much part, because to me it seems to be a similar kind of stupidity; different flavours of the same bug in thinking). This doesn't invalidate my point though. People should not do either of those things.

Your conversation example is basically saying that even understanding your reasons that I'm supposed to give you a pass because ... because what?

As for stupider, the color of your skin or your sexuality aren't choices. Whether you voted for Trump is. Holding someone accountable for their choices isn't stupid. Hating them for their race, sexuality, ... is.

Your equivocation isn't getting anywhere.

I judge actions, in context, but I avoid doing even that if I don't know a lot about the actions and the context.

Yes, you do. This is equivocation.

This has always piqued my curiosity -- would you mind explaining? Why is this such a deep tenet that I hear it so often as justification for shunning people? Apparently, there is something egregious about "treating people differently" because of "how they were born." What is wrong about this? Can you make this statement more concrete? How are the following "treatments" egregious?

* Someone is born deaf, so his parents give him care related to his disability, which is different compared to what they would have done otherwise.

* Someone was born with a great vocal range, so people encourage them to become a singer.

* Someone is born with great mathematical abilities, so later in life they are top-pick by quantitative companies, which pay them extra for the value they are expected to deliver.

* Someone has many insecurities and a history of nervous breakdowns and psychological damage, so we don't give them a high-stress job (for instance, the military doesn't hire them).

To go over your examples - the singing case is rather clear-cut, so is the math one (barring the Tiger Mother meme). Psychological damage starts entering into "neurodiversity" sphere. And about deaf people - there are many deaf communities which don't consider this as a disability, but as a different type of experience. In fact, the right for deaf parents to purposefully create a deaf child (when normally it would have working hearing) is a topic that's sometimes discussed.

It's not a very detailed explanation, but the rule of thumb is - when there's a vocal group of people who tie some quality X into their identities, talking about discriminating on X gets off-limits in the current culture.

I agree with your rule of thumb, but that seems like a positive description of the situation, not the normative one I'm looking for. You're giving me the conditions under which there will be outrage for discrimination (i.e., there exists a socially vocal/outspoken group that identifies with the quality being discriminated on). However, I was trying to tease out what the moral rule purported by such groups could be, since I see the "don't discriminate for how I was born" claim so often (and so forcefully put). I would suppose there should be some deep moral law being broken.

Would you advocate for the systematic mistreatment of group X if you didn't know whether or not you yourself would be born as part of that group?

For example, suppose I beleive in the systematic rejection of blind people from bus driving positions. I can see myself getting behind this even if I wouldn't know whether I'd be blind or not because I imagine behind the veil I'd put greater moral value associated with the safety of bus passengers than blind people's rights to the bus driving job. In other words, I've exposed the "driving" moral valuation behind my stance.

Second, I work in tax policy. There is absolutely hate between many people who disagree on taxation.

I would love to hear from some third-party voters about how they were treated by the left after the 2016 election.

I don't like religion for example and would like organized religion to be illegal in my country. If I went on TV and said this I bet this would be a very unpopular opinion and people would most likely send me tons of death threats. I think this mentality is stupid and if you are upset the correct assement is not being a child about it but actually proving me wrong by arguments and facts.

Given where those arguments have lead before -- the holocaust -- is allowing people to advocate for those viewpoints truly harmless?

And keep in mind, all the people who profited off that war: IBM who made the punch cards to track those interned, Ford motors who built the rail tracks for concentration camps, Ford himself who had his employees hand out anti-semetic propaganda, Prescot Bush/American Standard Oil who sold oil to both sides .. all these companies funded and benefited greatly from the results of that conflict.

By focusing on the Nazis you ignore the fact that wars needs funding. Few of those who funded and profited from that conflict were ever held accountable.

Modern neo-Nazis are the modern boogieman. They make us afraid, but unless they are funded, their reach is quite limited. They are loud, but easily ignored. Those who give them a voice, news and media outlets, do so to profit from the readership.

I'm not saying I agree with it, but when trying to feel out the contours of an issue like this, it's important to start at the edges.

The issue of when ideology and ideas become actively "harmful" or "dangerous" is an extremely complex one with a ton of grey area. It makes sense to start with the extreme cases where some of that grey area is removed. Those who argue that it makes sense to actively work to silence certain ideas argue it on the basis that those ideas represent a real and present danger to their lives and safety.

This certainly goes for Jewish people, like me, arguing against an ideology that promotes genocide of us based on our heritage -- I'm not even religious nor do I identify that strongly with jewish tradition, but based on the Nazi's accounting I'd have been sent to the concentration camps. People voicing support for those ideas are essentially saying I should be murdered for no good reason.

I hold it's reasonable to feel threatened by that and even to react to that with violence. Though it's not the strategy I adopt or recommend, it's one I feel a reasonable case can be made for.

Move in towards (ever so slightly) greyer cases. Take for instance people of color arguing against ideas that they feel would marginalize them for the color of their skin. What's the history, how much do those ideas represent a clear and present threat to these people's safety? In the case of those arguing in favor of, say, more militarized and aggressive police -- you could make a decent argument that this represents a real and present threat to black people's safety, given the prevalence of police shootings. Similarly, support of more profiling of brown people or requiring papers for immigration status. That represents a certain threat to the safety of perfectly legal brown people in the case that they are profiled and detained because they can't produce their papers.

All I'm saying that this is a huge grey area and that it is important to recognize that some ideas, beliefs, and ideologies are not harmless and do on their own represent varying levels of threat to other people.

Words are not harmless. The pen can be mightier than the sword and it can cut both ways.

Could I maybe inquire why Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and Che who wiped out a lot more people than Hitler and whose images ( especially Che ) show up quite prominently on T-shirts worn by people on the coasts do not trigger the same kind of hysteria?

We can't just ignore the fact that there is a well reasoned argument there in favor of treating certain ideas and ideology as active violent threats.

It's also a real and present issue to many people in the current climate.

It's almost like you are purposely trying to rile people up

I sure am. I think import taxes should be raised so that workers in the western world aren't competing in a race to the bottom with the third world. Somehow over the last few years this has come to mean that I'm a racist, uneducated redneck. The left have abandoned the working class.

I've seen strong feeling (but relatively civil discussion) about topics like handling North Korea or immigration. Things like taxes tend to be far more civil as GP pointed out.

There was absolutely no need to call GP a bigot.

Go look at political conversation in the UK and you'll find large numbers of left wingers / liberals foaming at the mouth about how the government trying to balance its budget is the same thing as hating people, killing them, that austerity is unthinkable evil, that any solution which isn't vast taxes on the rich is evidence of a defective moral compass, etc.

I see you've listened closely to them and engaged with their arguments.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/may/15/recessions-h...

"Recessions can hurt, but austerity kills"

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jun/20/engels...

"The victims of Grenfell Tower didn’t just die. Austerity, outsourcing and deregulation killed them"

https://www.theguardian.com/membership/commentisfree/2017/ap...

"The cause of death that dare not speak its name: austerity"

Politicians that aim for a balanced budget without raising taxes = murderers is an exceptionally common refrain from the extreme end of the British left. It's hard to engage with their arguments because I don't share their basic axioms, namely, that they tend to assume there are no tradeoffs in life, and in particular, they tend to assume that tax revenues can be set to more or less any level without any negative side effects.

Of course, if you argued that the Guardian is no longer really representative of mainstream left-wing opinion in the UK I'd support you on that, but I pointed out the extremism of the Guardian on HN a week or so ago and got downvoted a lot ... lots of Guardian readers here I think!

My original assertion was that there's nothing magic about taxes that makes them unusually civil, it's simply that austerity is not an issue in US politics because the government has never tried to balance its budget. I cited the UK as a counter example.

You suggested I had never engaged with their arguments because I described them as based in hatred.

I proved that my description of these opinions was entirely accurate. You can find endless articles like that in the left wing press, or banners at protests that say exactly the same thing. This resolved the point you raised.

Whether these articles have merit or not is irrelevant to my original point.

"I proved that my description of these opinions was entirely accurate. You can find endless articles like that in the left wing press, or banners at protests that say exactly the same thing. This resolved the point you raised." Sure you did.

You conclusively proved that the mere existence of these arguments is offensive to you because you seem to believe that a policy such as austerity (or "tax policy"), which directly cuts the benefits that portions of the population rely on to survive, apparently has no effects and is a mere mathematical debate.

You also consistently proved that you see yourself as eminently rational and arrogantly above engaging with the arguments which are made against your world view. Given this, I'd say that your statement "Whether these articles have merit or not is irrelevant to my original point." is incorrect.

No. I realise it may seem this way to someone in the part of the political spectrum you inhabit, where offence is so central to so much, but I never argued or even implied that these views are offensive to me. I do say they're extreme, but extreme views are not inherently offensive. You've picked a fight with a straw man there.

And I'm afraid arguments about austerity are about tax levels. The alternative is tax is borrowing, which is no alternative at all, as eventually that money must be paid back via even higher taxes (to pay the borrowed amount + the interest). You can also do money printing, but that's simply a tax on cash savings by another name.

All arguments about austerity are ultimately arguments about tax incidence.

You also consistently proved that you see yourself as eminently rational

I didn't discuss my own rationality either. Again, you're setting up a straw man and then attacking it. I said I don't share the same axioms as these people without commenting on the rationality of that position (it's possible for two people to disagree on basic axioms without either being irrational).

You keep trying to drag me into an argument about austerity. I have no interest in such an argument. It's much more relevant that Americans realise that the list of 'dangerous topics' that can get people branded evil/kiddie killer/etc is not restricted to race, sex or religion. Tax policy can certainly be included if the Republicans ever actually reach the point of trying to cut government spending.

That's certainly rarely the case, and next to never the intention.

All i say, and ask is that you think to yourself, is this really racist? or do i just want to vote democrat now?

Where on Earth did you read that into his post? He said those are the kinds of opinions that tend to elicit those responses, not anything about the OP.

This is a very, very poorly thought out thing to say. Nothing we're experiencing right now in the US compares in terms of vitriol and danger to McCarthyism, the first red scare, the civil rights era, or abolitionism. We're not even close.

Cheer up! Things can get a whole lot worse.

It's been worse in the past: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism

After all, these are boomers' children.

That said, with the polarization of political debate, people rabidly defend viewpoints they don't even understand or never thought about rationally. It means you cannot have interesting arguments because you don't share any axioms with the other party, and you have different opinions on basic stuff such as "do poor people deserve to die" or "should gay people be reeducated" or "do we put immigrants in concentration camps", at which point you can only give up and break contact with resignation. Sure, I can interact with people like that on trivial stuff if I have to, but don’t ask me to be overly nice to someone who would rather see me or people I like dead.