> How much did Putin pay you to gas light articles?

That is an egregious violation of the guidelines and a bannable offense on HN. If the rest of the internet is losing its mind, that makes following HN's rules more important, not less.

> Let's not forget about that one time you

This also crosses into personal attack, which is not ok. Heated political arguments are bad enough without users trying to take each other out like this. Please don't do it on HN, regardless of how strongly you disagree.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: your account history unfortunately contains many examples of personal abuse. You've also broken the guideline against using HN primarily for political or ideological battle. We ban accounts that do these things, so would you please re-read the guidelines and use HN as intended from now on?

Something I have been noticing for quite some time now is an increasing tendency for people to seemingly believe they can read other people's minds &/or the future, or that they somehow have an omniscient insight into the world. You might expect this on Facebook or Reddit, and I know this will not please most people here, but it is becoming rather common on HN as well.

To those of you who disagree with me, keep this idea in the back of your mind for a while and remember it as you read comments. Make a serious effort to notice how many people know what other people's motives are for their beliefs, how they know the real reason for certain policy decisions, how they know what Putin or Trump are thinking and what they are going to do in the future, how they know China is going to fail now that they've gone full-on communist dictatorship (because history "guarantees" it), etc.

I honestly don't think I am imagining this, I think something very historically significant is happening to the psychology of the public.

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."

Isaac Asimov, Column in Newsweek (21 January 1980)

True enough, but I believe what's different now is that there is significant it has taken serious root in the "informed" class as well, HN being no exception.