Trump saw the highest turnout among minorities for republicans in 60 years and it’s for a reason. I look back at Ben Franklin or Jefferson or Washington and feel inspired, I don’t think “oh, I’m not privileged I could never do what he did.” I can see people as products of their time and separate the good from the bad. As someone who grew up in an apartment shared between 2 families and worked my way up into college and the tech field I’m just shocked at how many people today have grown into learned helplessness and think that the system is so bad and irreparable that they need to vandalize and protest in cities for months.

The left has done so much more to insult me and my appreciation for this country than the right, and it’s just tragic that they think they’re the only good guys. I really do believe that foreign interference to agitate our society is real, as discussed by Tristan Harris in his interview by Joe Rogan, and it’s convinced millions of young Americans that they’re somehow resisting literal Nazis.

The fundamental problem of the entitled right is that they can't imagine that other people have had different experiences than they have, and therefore attribute their disadvantaged state to "victim mentality."

They can make their case just like everybody else and negotiate in good faith for a better position. If because of their situation they cannot do that, others typically do it for them.

But you coming here and diminishing someone's experience, just because there's someone somewhere who isn't successful is merely an attempt emotional blackmail. This kind of emotional blackmail seems to work a lot better recently than in the past, but let's not confuse it with good arguments.

I'm not diminishing anyone's experience. I'm just pointing out that he doesn't have the right to speak for everyone.

My understanding of other people's experiences is not based on imagination. I've been there. I've seen it. Have you?

"I've been there. I've seen it." Where have you been and what have you seen to feel the need to put down experiences of those in minority who have succeeded in life? What have you as a member of the compassionate party done to help the poor people since charities aren't you thing?

"Have you?" I have never ever once heard a migrant say: "I hope those nice social justice people succeed with their big ideas.". It was always: "Look what those nice people from the church down the road did for us.".

I hear a lot of Americans saying "I really wish we had socialized health care" and "I wish that women made as much money as men did."

It's quite right to be shocked so many people protested, because it's a strong signal that there's something drastically wrong with the system; something that nobody has any problem understanding and accepting when protests occur in other countries.

Is it all the swastikas? Maybe it’s all the swastikas.

It’s disingenuous to suggest that far-right extremists aren’t dominating the messaging from the right, and that Donald Trump isn’t amplifying them.

The extremes tend to dominate the messaging on both sides. And frankly, the internet being dominated by younger people, there is a good case to be made that the extreme left's voices are louder.

Except it's not disengenuous to say that at all. We can see that by the candidates each party has supported. Biden is considered a pretty centrist democrat by pretty much any metric. Trump, however, can't be considered a moderate. He's enabled fascist White nationalist supporters. Biden hasn't done the same.

Also, for the record, BLM and SJWs aren't equivalent extremist left compared to literal Nazis - the left wing extremist equivalent is Communism and the position to kill and eat the rich. That is the level of extremism that Trump has facilitated in office. If Biden also enabled people who explicitly call to overthrow the US government, I'd say you have a fairer point.

But I can't help but think this is a very asymmetrical horseshoe where the right side extends much further then the left side ever did. The problem is not even necessarily the particular ideology but rather that the right side is willing to be far more extreme in their views. That in itself is exceptionally dangerous no matter what the views are because it implies a very, very unpleasant life for those who don't share them.

It's the reason why today the US is so divided, there's no more overlap, the 2 sides each sit in their corner. The only possible response to increasing extremism on one side is increasing extremism on the other side until one has enough power to quash the other.

I think this statement is wrong. There are a lot of other possibilities. For example: "A minority that is agressively vocal for extremism in one aspect could be cushioned by a strong general consensus for a political culture of reasonable cooperation and discussion."

There are extremists on the right, Trump disavowed them publicly.

Nevertheless, media commentators on either side try to portrait these candidates as if they supported, or at least "enabled" extremists.

Can you be more specific on how either of these candidates "enable" or "do not enable" extremism? How would you falsify an accusation of "enabling" something?

This is probably a bad thing.

https://www.factcheck.org/2020/02/trump-has-condemned-white-...

https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-54381500

> I've seen him refuse to denounce white supremacy in the first debate...

That was clearly a missed opportunity to clear things up, but the counter-question "Who do you want me to condemn?" is a fair one. It's easy for Trump to condemn the KKK, not so easy to condemn militia groups in general. Similarly, it's easy for Biden to condemn rioters, not so easy to condemn Antifa in general. Effectively, both candidates dodged that question.

> ... I haven't seen him denounce anyone who might vote for him.

That's moving the goalpost a bit too far for my taste. Trump has condemned white supremacists, that at least is on the record.

I can indeed do this, but the question itself seems to be asked in bad faith. How on earth do you need me to report to you on Trump's behavior and words even into the final debate?

Let's focus on the falsifiability: What would a candidate have to do in order to disprove the accusation?

If there isn't a clear answer to that question, then how is this tactic materially different from name-calling?

Except they're not. Your country has drifted so far right, every opposing voice may look like "extreme left", but it's not. Nowhere close.

If you want to argue about the actual extreme left, go right ahead. I'm as left-leaning as they are, but I'll probably agree with you. There's some idiots.

But the extreme left isn't really that vocal at all in the US right now. It's the moderate leftists trying to restore some sense of normalcy.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/20/trump-says-coronavirus-masks...

Wearing a mask is just a simple precaution that everyone should take. Using pictures of you wearing a mask rather than not, is just leading by example.

Other famous leftists wearing masks:

https://img.etimg.com/thumb/msid-75093913,width-480,height-3...

Narendra Modi

https://s.abcnews.com/images/International/WireAP_3c4b927864...

Silvio Berlusconi

https://storage.googleapis.com/afs-prod/media/b201141e75ee4d...

Viktor Orban

Etc.

Not a mod, but I'll take an educated guess that this is what ires someone:

> What is called far right in USA is the same thing we call neo-fascism anywhere else

The rest of your post is spot on IMO but I hesitate to upvote because of that part, and not because there isn't a point but because it is a whole lot more nuanced:

Yes: a number of wackos exist on the "far right" (I hate that term as it frames conservatives with totalitarian ones.)

But there has also been a tendency by media to abuse the term as a rubber stamp for "anything conservative we don't like". It's either that or a large number of facists are the ones to defend the jews this year, and despite 2020 being odd I don't think that will ever happen.

(I collected a fair number of downvotes myself last election season, seemingly from both sides, which is why I feel somewhat qualified to explain ;-)

It was a simple question, I had the last 6-7 post immediately downvoted at zero points upon submission.

Seconds later.

Unless someone is tracking me , which would be rather incredible, I wanted to know if I triggered something.

Have you ever heard of people shadow banned without warnings?

A post among many to explain what I mean

It's ok if the moderators do their job the way they are told to, it's more of a problem if you don't know why and especially if it happened to you

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23681860

To be honest I don't care if someone is ired or not, being ired is a choice and usually doesn't depend to what other people do, but how we react to them

I haven't been here for a few years (green account again, yay), but at least back then, moderators weren't know for f...ng with anyone like that. Warning, maybe another warning, shadow ban and good bye.

At any rate, posting "@moderators" in the middle of a 4000 comment thread will get you nowhere. There is a contact email at the bottom if you want to ask for investigation.

It has been admitted I think that one is aware of certain bots (not affiliated with YC) that vote in certain directions.

I think I have even seen one popular HNer admit that he thought there was a bot who would upvote all his answer irregardless of who low quality they were.

Maybe someone has something like that and have pointed it at you.

More likely though you annoyed someone and they went in to your profile and looked at your other answers.

Edit: I looked into your comments and here are two notes.

1. Your comments are a mixed bag. Saying Trump brought war to American soil for example isn't anywhere near true and also inflammatory.

2. Some of them are insightful but ires one side without delighting the other. The result is you get a downvote from those who are annoyed and no support from the other side.

I've been hit by this a lot. Don't care to much.

I believe that he was quoting the New Yorker there

He posted the link as well

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/how-trump-brou...

Anyway: Chicago, June 2020, 18 people killed in 24 hours

Worst event in 60 years

Los Angeles is gonna exceed 300 homicides in a year

Last time it happened was 20 years ago

These are war numbers to me, as Italian

Rome is the same size of Chicago and had 11 homicide in a year

Italy has 60 million citizens and there were "only" 276 homicides in a year, Los Angeles is a 5 million people city

The US far-right includes camps that don't exactly fit that definition (though there is plenty of overlap), like christian dominionists, corporatist right-libertarians, and the misogynistic PUA/incell/MRA crowd (which is more of a feeder system than a political philosophy per se).

It's a rather Big Tent™.

I would like to add that the Critical Race Theory (where DEI originates from) is only recently starting to get traction in for example The Netherlands, traditionally an already pretty left-leaning country.

[1] https://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/20...

No, it hasn't, meaningfully.

> The last 10 years the extreme left in the US has shifted left, passing even the European left

Whether or not it's true, the “extreme left” in the US that may or may not have shifted that way is politically irrelevant.

Meanwhile, of the major parties the Democratic Party has been stable for decades while the Republican Party has shot to the extremes, a process that has continued at a rapid pace over the last decade.

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/10/31/the-repu...

Biden can't pronounce the word "free healthcare" for fear of losing votes.

That's what I was contesting: far right is right at the centre of the political scene side by side with Trump, far left is not because it has no direct representation in the political system.

Unless you consider someone like Sanders a far left extremists, which is not.

Far left movements are mostly extra-parliamentary

Hacker News tends to be pretty good about people not just downvoting posts because they disagree with them. However, that goes out the window when the discussion gets political.

I'd be really interested in seeing the numbers for upvotes and downvotes on political topics vs other topics. I wouldn't be surprised if you could train a classifier to spot political articles based on this distribution.

including myself,an israeli jew

If somebody thinks that his nation is "gifted", while others are not, so government must support gifted people and punish other peoples, then it's National Socialism, regardless of country and nationality.

It could be anything: smart/dumb, peaceful/violent, weak/strong, poor/rich. And in any order. Today people seem to be fixated on race. I wonder if we’ll ever get past that.

to my understanding , national socialism is in principle a socialism that is tooled to deliver social policies within a ntaion-state , which is not a very controversial idea .

there is no intrinsic need to punish anybody for anything

and frankly , thinking that one's nation is "gifted" is not an illegitimate opinion, even if its probably wrong ,as long as it doesnt translate into any kind of racist or expansionary policy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazism

Here’s a direct quote from Trump’s press conference:

> “It’s fine, you’re changing history, you’re changing culture, and you had people – and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally – but you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists, okay?”

It’s an outright lie to claim otherwise and the media was complicit in allowing Biden to do so. Over and over.

All those other good people walked under those nazi flags. Why would I trust them either?

The first statement is in regards to people protesting to bring down monuments. There’s clearly two sides to that argument and there are many fine people, myself included, that do not want to see statues of Lincoln torn now.

> As a constant pattern of trumps presidency, he throws out a dog whistle and then walks it back 2 days later sayig he was taken out of context, misspoke, or was joking. You can claim he's fighting against antisemitism and racism, but I just straight up don't trust his good faith.

If your own biases interpret everything in some perverted negative light, then it’s an impossible standard to meet.

> My jewish eyes see him as supporting nazis and a supporter of those who walk with nazis.

And yet his grandchildren are Jewish and he’s had more success negotiating Middle East peace deals that benefit Israel than any other president.

If he’s Nazi supporter he’s doing a pretty crappy job at it.

> Him being a poor communicator is a lackluster excuse why I should trust him.

If you refuse to ever give the benefit of the doubt then why even argue about it?

> All those other good people walked under those nazi flags. Why would I trust them either?

Nobody says to trust them. But they’re not the only ones that wanted to preserve historic statues.

That’s like reducing all of recent racial / police protests to a bunch of looters robbing a Best Buy.

Who was trying to remove statues of Lincoln? In all the reporting I've seen on this issue I've only seen people trying to remove statues of Confederate generals and leaders. I, like many people, have no problem with these statues being moved into museums. They just shouldn't be public monuments.

Both Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt statues were torn down: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/portland-protesters-tea...

Sure, you could say, “oh but that was two years later”. That’s not a coincidence, it’s the slope of the line when the left encourages an insurrection.

> That’s not a coincidence, it’s the slope of the line when the left encourages an insurrection

I can see how you'd make a slippery slope argument here. However you're mixing it with some serious hyperbole that diminishes your argument. The left in the US isn't some homogenous, well organized group. You're taking millions of people, many of whom would not be consider "the left" in other countries, and lumping them all together. That's a huge oversimplification.

Can you show me where there are calls for insurrection? Most of the protests in the US in the last year that I'm aware of have been non-violent or were intended that way by their organizers. Some have had violence break out. While I'm sure some of the people involved have been on the far left wing you can't blame all of the violence on the left wing protesters[0][1].

[0] https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-race-and-ethnicity... [1] https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:bGtLQh...

Using the labeling of the opposition as Nazis as the proof that they are Nazis, is one hell of a circular argument.

That's a quote from August 15th. Trump had made statements about the murder in Charlottesville as early as August 12th, when he famously walked out of the interview after being asked to condemn white supremacists.

Please see my post here on HN about this incident[1]:

> You've linked to the second interview he gave about Charlottesville. In his first statements in an interview on August 12th, 2017, he famously didn't condemn white supremacists who murdered someone, saying instead that he condemns "egregious displays of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides".

> Then, several days later in the second interview on August 15th that you linked to, he equates the violent white nationalists that murdered someone with what he calls the "alt-left", the purported group that the murder victim belonged to, saying that he thinks there is blame on both sides. After asking for further clarification, he says that there were fine people on both sides. Only after further questioning, and in a separate statement, does he condemn white supremacists.

> People were criticizing him for his initial equivocation on August 12th, comparing the white supremacists who murdered a person to the victims of their violence, and the fact that he didn't name or condemn white supremacists. In fact, when journalists asked him to condemn them, he walked away from the interview. He refused to differentiate between the two.

> Then, on August 15th, he defends his initial comments through his continued equivocations in the second interview.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25019361

I agree that Israel the state does not have a victim mentality. Like the Hitler's Germany.

The only swastikas I've seen are on public bathroom stalls and I've seen them for many many years and they haven't increased in frequency in recent years. Increase in visibility isn't equivalent to increase in frequency.

Trump, for all his flaws, has disavowed white supremacy so many times it hurts to watch and even the most famous "very fine people" quote was [0] taken out of context (if you can call that anything but an outright lie, frankly).

The membership of racist organizations like the KKK is small, vanishingly small. It's not even .1% of Trumps base. [1] And, more importantly, it's shrinking. It has been for a very long time.

[1]Despite their diminishing numbers, there are still approximately 3,000 Klan members nationwide, as well an additional but unknown number of associates and supporters. Even with relatively small numbers, groups like the North Carolinabased Loyal White Knights (LWK), perhaps the most active Klan group in the United States today, have a fairly expansive geographical reach. In 2015, with just 150-200 members, they were able to draw attention to themselves in 15 different states (mostly in the south and east), typically through fliering, which requires only a single participant.

[2][3] It is a matter of public record that Biden supported segregationists, voted against integration-supporting policies like bussing (which Kamala Harris roasted him for repeatedly), and pushed legislation that disproportionately harmed black folks.

Ultimately, there's plenty of good reasons to dislike Trump that are completely and unarguably valid. Covid, John Bolton, numerous conflicts of interest (like using personal assets for the military and government functions) are a small piece of that. But calling Trump racist or a nazi is just taking the bait that his political opponents have set out.

In my personal opinion, Biden is the worse choice for president purely on the basis of his likelihood of supporting additional war efforts (whereas Trump is the first president in 40 years not to start a new war - AND has helped bring about a series of peace treaties in the middle east.)

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZfzJATDmXs

[1] https://www.adl.org/education/resources/reports/state-of-the...

[2] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/03/joe-biden-record-on-...

[3] https://www.npr.org/2020/10/14/920385802/biden-vows-to-ease-...

However, his treatment of Israel and Saudi Arabia were perhaps 100 times worse than any previous president.

He moved the US embassy to Jerusalem, which was incredibly inflammatory to both the Palestinians and the wider world, and will make it very, very difficult for any peace deal to be signed there (as the Palestinians want it as their capital).

His support of Saudi Arabia, regardless of their extra-judicial killings was another low point in the US relations in the middle east.

The other "peace" deals he signed were more caving to particular factions rather than bringing them together.

> Although Trump has talked of withdrawing completely from Iraq, Pentagon officials have cautioned that a U.S. troop presence remains necessary to guard against an IS resurgence and to help the Iraqi government limit the political and military influence of Iran, which supports militias operating inside Iraq. [1]

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-54554286

[1] https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2020/09/09/...

He has supported Saudi Arabia with weapons to help their slaughter in Yemen.

He has reneged on the Iran nuclear deal, proving for the second and probably last time that making deals with the USA is a fools errand (it's the second time the US has reneged on a deal with Iran; I doubt there will be a third).

He has publicly assassinated a high dignitary of Iran, during an official visit to a different country, an act of war by any measure.

He has moved the US embassy to Jerusalem, an extremely inflammatory decision that further stops any remaining chance that the USA can ever be seen as a negotiator in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Overall, while maybe not as bad as Bush and Obama in direct deaths, his legacy has shut down any hope of peace in the region with America's involvement. So I wouldn't rank him too highly on this area.

Let's also not forget that he has unilaterally cancelled the USA's nuclear disarmament deal with Russia, another extremely anti-peace move, one that will have far-reaching consequences.

The only truly decent external policy that he has shown is his handling of the North Korea crisis - that was a true diplomatic success by any measure, which I gladly admit.

And of course, we shouldn't forget that all of his other horrible decisions pale in the face of his anti-climate moves, which have likely helped push the world over the brink.

In that light the bar is set so appallingly low that even Trump managed to get across it. Presidential candidates in the US are almost universally pro-war and pro-military escalation, even while pretending otherwise.

Go visit r/The_donald (or wherever they find themselves these days), 4Chan, or just go to any small town in the South. Violent racism is a badge proudly worn.

I think you need to reassess how your feeds are being filtered because they appear to have zeroed in on ultra extreme pockets. Either your clicks or the algorithms have put your feeds in a skewed place. It sounds like you’re being shown the right wing caricature of the left. Of course that makes them look insane.

Despite this, I am rarely shown anything conservative on Twitter. If the algo gods have decided I'm extreme left, then they are broken beyond repair. It seems more likely to me that Twitter simply de-prioritizes conservative media.

Meanwhile, stuff like this is pretty mainstream.

WAPO opinion writer and MSNBC contributor - https://twitter.com/JRubinBlogger/status/1324792225260253184

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1324807776510595078

The Trump Accountability Project (There are two, the original has now distanced themselves from this one) - https://www.trumpaccountability.net/

MSNBC Host Chris Hayes - Tweet deleted, found this instead https://twitter.com/VoteMarsha/status/1325477249697673217

One thing I am curious about – what sorts of people do you see posting things like "We need to make lists of every trump supporter"?

WAPO opinion writer and MSNBC contributor - https://twitter.com/JRubinBlogger/status/1324792225260253184

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1324807776510595078

The Trump Accountability Project (There are two, the original has now distanced themselves from this one) - https://www.trumpaccountability.net/

MSNBC Host Chris Hayes - Tweet deleted, found this instead https://twitter.com/VoteMarsha/status/1325477249697673217

Rhetoric that I've seen is essentially that "anyone who voted for, donated to, or promoted Trump's policies should be on a list which should be used to remove them from 'polite' society."

Use of the words polite society has popped up quite a few times as well. I'm sure you can find substantially more by googling around.

What I meant to ask, though, was whether you saw liberal or conservative folks sharing these?

Personally I'd only seen them shared in conservative circles... Wondering if it's more an example of "one side taking an extreme comment and applying it to everyone on the other side" (like many on the left have done with racism etc) or an actual movement of mccarthyism.

Of course the conservative leaning people are responding more along the lines of "And you called US fascists?!"

I think having mainstream media writers and hosts, as well as an elected representative promote this message is enough to suggest that it's spread too far already. Hopefully this sort of rhetoric dies down and the legal claims about the election are resolved through fair evidence-based examination. If not, I think we might be headed towards yet more unrest.

I totally agree - it's really, really important that conservatives don't feel attacked (let alone hunted) and that concerns about election integrity are taken seriously and investigated thoroughly.

Here's hoping...

You point this out as if it is some moral failing on the right. In fact, this is a personal failing. It should be simple enough to recognize that for any ideology that is large enough there almost certainly exists coherent and constructive thoughts within it. If you have yet to discover them, this is not because they do not exist, it is because you're not actually looking for them. I think this is done by people on both the left and the right all the time. They fail to deeply investigate the ideas of the other side, and then criticize the other side for having no good ideas.

It’s not a comment on conservative politics as a whole, it’s a reflection on my own past immaturity, and how I recognize it in others when I see it. And I’ve had 4 years to observe Trump’s tweets, Breitbart, alt-right, Qanon, Proud Boys, so if you want to convince me that there’s constructive, long-term thinking behind any of that, you’ll have to be a little more specific than “look harder”.

I see no end of this, and that is why I choose to think about actually constructive policies: e.g. free, prevalent, effective birth control for both men and women.

If You Are Not a Liberal at 25, You Have No Heart. If You Are Not a Conservative at 35 You Have No Brain

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/02/24/heart-head/

Note: I'm not conservative and I don't necessarily agree with the quote. The point is not that the quote is correct, the point is someone (not me) thought it was the unthinking young person that thought alone liberal lines and the experienced wise person that thought along conservative lines.

Again, not agreeing, just pointing out some feel the opposite, that more experience and exposure to the world leads to more conservative thinking for some people.

Given that the age at which people tend to switch is increasing, I wonder if there may be something to it.

I think it's inevitable when majority of people that surround you have conservative views. Don't feel bad about that.

My god, the sense of moral superiority.

What in the world are you talking about?

It seems you had a bad experience with what you felt were 'right wing' ideals but probably had little to do with that, as it would be a pretty intellectually shallow description of any kind of Conservatism (although understandable if one were to equate 'Trump' with 'Conservative' and I don't think many people would in the intellectual sense) and also oddly experientially 'upside down'.

Most 'young people' are progressive, people tend to get more conservative as they get older.

Cynically, one could say it's due to age and myopia, but more likely it has to do with responsibility, perspective, maturity and frankly living through decades and seeing how the world adapts.

Believing in the institutions of family (and monogamy as a commitment to that institution), the objective rule of law, moral obligation through duty of various kinds of community service, prudence, faith as an integral part of worldview, a sense of community that can possibly be expressed through nationalism, the notion that people must act responsibly to the extent they are able and assume responsibility for their actions - these are not ideals of 'entitlement' frankly.

Barack Obama, for example, is a 'Progressive Conservative', and he is in many ways in his own personal life a model 'cultural conservative': religious, church going, mild mannered, straight forward marriage, traditional formal education. He speaks formally and graciously, and is literally a living embodiment of many cultural historical artefacts. He didn't serve in the military but he very well could have, it's totally within his character.

He's not at all that far away from Mitt Romney for example.

Donald Trump is not a 'Conservative' or even 'right wing' really, he's just a jerk who found a 'following' in appealing to the worst qualities of 'bad right wing tropes'.

"In 1999, Trump described himself as "very pro-choice" and said "I believe in choice." (Wikipedia)

Donald Trump was a tough-guy New York 'kind of Democrat' most of his life. He always supported gay marriage. The Clintons were literally at his wedding to Melania.

He's a serial scammer, effectively a polygamist who marries woman purely on the basis of their attractiveness and then dumps them later, cavorts with prostitutes, lies, cheats, steals.

He changes his political views to suit the day, because they don't matter to him - he's just about being rich and popular.

He's managed to convince a lot of people that he is something that he is not, and that's sad, and it's brought out the worst in so many people, and that's what we are seeing today.

Have a look at this Charlie Rose interview with Senator Jeff Flake who's a much more traditional conservative, and FYI detests Donald Trump and 'fell on his sword' rather than go along with the toxicity. [1]

[1] https://charlierose.com/videos/30822

As near as I can tell, Conservatism is deader than disco.

Here on HN if is almost funny to watch the different flavours of Trumpkin try to explain and justify themselves. You have the hard-core believers who only barely manage to keep the racism and xenophobia in check but can still throw out a dog whistle all the way to the ones who probably once thought of themselves as principled conservatives but who are reduced to simple projection when presented with facts ('no, we are not the ones driven by fear and anger, it is the left...') As unpleasant as the Trump experience has been, one of its few benefits has been to let the truly cretinous among us feel like they have permission to drop the mask and show us who they really are.

I was on the right most of my life and hated Trump. Yet he seemed to be the least worst for many single issue voters. Thankfully forums like this helped challenge my worldview enough to overcome the indoctrination of my youth. Now my entire perspective had flipped.

Everyone has the capacity to change. And that's much more likely to happen in a welcoming and curiosity friendly environment than an echo chamber.

The rabid cult of personality that popped up around him has been highly disturbing to watch. Decking everything out in shirts, hats, flying his name as a flag, painting your house with his name, covering your vehicle with flags. The non-stop rallies and campaigning even after he was elected.

And no, before someone trys to compare, it was not like that with Obama. People were excited about him but it did not become an everyday identity alongside a never-ending campaign.

I'm not saying the Democrats should, but they should try harder not to be painted as Socialists, if they are not. Or be socialist. I don't think the latter is a winning strategy in America, but at least they would lose for what they stand for, not for what they don't stand for.

If you ignore the last 4 years of analysis of what motivates Trump voters, why he's popular despite his personality issues and so on, then sure, you can "only" reach one conclusion. But it's the wrong one.

Still, it's great fun believing half of America is filled with racist hatred isn't it?

As near as I can tell, Conservatism is deader than disco.

It just drew basically level with the left despite Biden being far more presidential than Trump, and despite nearly the entire media and tech industry pulling every lever they could for Biden. That seems very far from dead.

Bill Clinton banged a very young intern in the Oval Office.

Bill Clinton lied, deceived, distorted, mislead - and then very 'point blank' lied about that directly to the Justice system, which is illegal.

Do you remember that? I do.

Bill Clinton has legitimate accusations of sexual assault hanging out there against him - just like Trump.

Why did Democrats (and others) 'forgive him'? And 'look the other way'?

How was the Democrat Brand not 'destroyed forever' by a 'Serial Abuser in Chief' in Office?

Democrats (and others) forgave him, because they think it was not so bad, that ultimately he was a good person, the act was ostensibly consensual, the Republicans were making to much of it - etc etc..

Some people simply don't see a 55 year married old man, banging a 22 year old intern in a prestigious office as hugely relevant. Others do.

I think most Donald Trump supporters believe that he 'Loves America' that he's a 'Business Genius' who just 'Speaks Plainly' and sometimes says aggressive things, but that it doesn't mean much.

I personally don't think any of those things are true, but it's not hard to see how people watching Fox News might be 'believers'.

To some people 'they are sending us their rapists' is like an inappropriate Chines accent or an off colour joke - inappropriate and little bit offensive, but not existentially so.

"I guess what a lot of us are struggling with is how anyone cannot see these truths for themselves in Trump. "

I don't think they do see 'Traditional Conservative' in him - I think they see mostly something else and that's my point.

If the GOP base wanted a 'Traditional Conservative' there are a dozen other, more obvious choices.

But it's all moot: Trump really isn't much of a 'Conservative' in any way, it's a 'Bully Nationalist' which unfortunately 1/2 of Republicans will vote for because they want to, the rest will vote reluctantly.

Both traditional Conservatism and 'American Socialism' (i.e. Centre Left) are not 'dead' - they are everywhere but it's that populism is having it's time, and supported in the press.

The Intersectionalist Reactionaries on the Left are very close to taking over the Democratic party, much as Trump 'barn stormed' the GOP.

I try to look past Trump's character flaws but they are so embarrassing and cringe inducing, and when you add the poor foreign policy, bungled COVID response and really very serious incitement of hatred, violence, and division he's created its really still quite perplexing but I appreciate your thoughts on it.

Not only is he a brutal narcissist who cares only about himself, he's willing to throw a democracy away for his vanity and power.

My articulation is more about 'mass perception' not so much what he actually is.

Clearly Bill Clinton is a good man, so are McCain, Romney, Obama, even Bush etc..

'Understanding Trump Support' is hard because what 'smart people see' is something completely different than what the plebes see. They think he's a genius, brilliant businessman, and probably don't realize how powerful his negative language about migrants etc. really is, they just don't understand what statesmanship actually is or how important that it is that he is a role model as well. I guess it's one of the more obvious problems of raw populism.

I kind of agree with you. However - maybe I am wrong - but you seem to equate these values with "conservatism" and believe other people think these are ideals of "entitlement". I don't think non-conservatives, myself included think that way or don't believe in these values. But feel free to correct me if I misunderstood you.

A lot of classical left/liberal and conservative values are not 'opposite' so much as 'orthogonal' and it's a matter of relative importance, focus etc..

Thank you for saying this. It's hard to admit an error.

This isn't always the case with politics, or any kind of view for that matter. It's important to empathize with people you disagree with, but it's just as important that we start with a foundation of agreed upon facts.

In other words, reality isn't a point of view.

I don't think these two things are as strongly related as you suggest. Two reasonable people can look at the same problem with the same facts, make reasonable guesses on what the best course is, and yet reach two completely different, reasonable approaches to the problem. Otherwise, we would have already decided which programming language is the best one.

Some situations are more clear cut than others, and I agree that we need to separate facts from opinion better. But for situations as complex as the present and future of a country there might very well not be a "right" way.

"Reality" is not a point of view, but we only experience it through the lens of our personal experiences. No one experiences "true" reality.

My local supermarket has precisely no empathy for me and the only thing I expect to agree on with the local store manager is price. Yet it is by far the most effective conduit for getting me cheap food. Effective systems simply are not very good at empathy and agreement on non-core issues is unimportant. Empathy in particular recommended at a personal level but not especially useful in politics. The critical tool is the ability to comprehend, negotiate, compromise and articulate why things are necessary.

Having "empathy" for "the left"/"the right" isn't possible. The groups are too large and diverse. Ditto for major components of the left or right like "the black vote", "the evangelicals", "people in cities", "people from Detroit", "the wealthy", etc, etc. Entities that you can have empathy for or agree on facts with are too small to be politically important like individuals or families. Politics is done by large groups who's beliefs are too nebulous to align.

The more facts we get, the more likely our views diverge and become more strongly held.

But for those who are genuinely interested in the truth and vigorously fighting biases, more facts can only help construct a "more complete" truth.

Various factions within the US left have been trying to convince everyone for decades that subjective truth is more important than objective facts; that "lived experience" is what really matters.

Then those same people pull a surprised Pikachu face when Orange Man comes swinging out of right field with the same argument, just in the opposite direction with "fake news" etc.

So, it's quite possible to have 2 truths - factually accurate - arise from the same physical reality because the observers are different.

It's also possible that people substitute falsities in exchange for truth based on bad intent or erroneous reasoning (and maybe there are other reasons but these would seem to be the most prevalent of the bad sort).

Since all these are possibilities, would you agree that it's best to apply some charity[1] to those you disagree with before deciding that they are not only wrong, but malign and should be tarred as lunatic?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity

Let’s not forget that the phrase “Alternative facts” was coined on day 3 of the Trump presidency to defend the lie that he had the biggest inauguration crowd ever.

This wasn’t a glass half full situation, this was someone saying it’s up to the brim when it’s under a half. That in itself to me reflects bad intent: lying from the seat of government about something so easily disproved at the start of your presidency, then spending days trying to back it up, is pure gaslighting.

The Trump administration deserves most of the blame here, but it’s very hard to treat with charity the subset of his supporters who repeat blatant lies like the above, because they are being willfully ignorant at best and acting in bad faith otherwise.

The response to "there can be more than one view of reality that is valid and true" isn't to respond with "lies are lies and using lies in place of truth is lunacy", (to paraphrase the parent comments, perhaps more fairly than the latter deserves) so to remain focused on "Alternative facts" is to be led astray by what amounts to a straw man. That whole debacle was a petty response by a narcissist to a petty narrative line by a media that isn't focused on what matters anyway and anyone repeating the White House line was more than likely acting tribally - as was anyone criticising the numbers. The proverbial storm in a teacup.

Regardless, who is arguing for "Alternative facts" here?

There is a clear line of behavior that began with lying about crowd size and extended throughout the presidency, and yes a lot of it is driven by narcissism. It’s mostly not harmless though. A recent deadly example is how Trump supporters (speaking generally again) act concerning COVID. The president and his cohorts said “masks don’t matter, it’ll disappear soon anyway” for months and months, and his supporters believed it despite factual evidence, which has worsened the pandemic.

Tribalism is the word I was seeking, thank you.

Reading the thread again, I think you may be putting more weight on the use of “complete lunacy” than the poster intended. That was a reference to its parent post, which used the same words while taking “reality isn’t a point of view” out of context to mean “there is only one way to think about reality.” If there’s a straw man here, it’s all the way up there.

It might be a fact that two people can have greatly different kinds of opinions from the same facts, but they both still deserve to know the facts.

Whether you consider the glass to be half full or half empty is not a fact. It's an opinion.

The glass is at 50% capacity. Was it more convenient for you to change the fact of the statement?

You’ve simply substituted one kind of measure for another without providing a distinction between them.

The key point is that a fact has a different effect on different observers that can be discerned from the way the express it. The state of affairs being described is not a belief or an opinion or will magically find less millimetres (as in your comment) by being stated differently.

When one says that it is "half full" or "half empty" one is already making it into a statement of belief or opinion that reflects one's inner workings and beliefs.

I want to get this straight. You’re saying that a glass that exists hypothetically, posited by the speaker, may only be known to be half full as a belief by that very speaker?

> or opinion

Or that it’s their opinion that it’s half full? Even if it wasn’t hypothetical, would you find it at 50% capacity or not?

> that reflects one’s inner workings and beliefs

I can’t tell if that means you read what I wrote or if you didn’t. Regardless, using a relative measure does not turn a factual statement into a belief or an opinion of the explicitly stated fact. That which may be inferred from the way of stating a fact may well be beliefs and opinions but that does not change the fact any more than it would by being stated in English rather than in French. Relative measures are no less factual - or valid, sound, precise or accurate - than absolute measures. Just try restating using absolute measures of pints and millilitres and tell me that makes the statements less factual or that beliefs and opinions cannot also be inferred from them.

It can be controversial and felt by all sure, but it shouldn't be a lifestyle or ideological platform that the general public use to divide themselves.

It's backoffice stuff, for the most part, and I am too busy being friends to really mind what someone's political views are, if they even think about it much at all themselves.

Now more than ever the US needs democracy, and the government needs to work harder than ever on protecting it.

But I argue that the people of America, the general public, need to give it a bloody rest with the politics. Be humans again and meet your neighbors as you are, part of the same cohort as citizens. Your vote is just as powerful, no matter how many flags, banners, or yard signs you have. Your vote is what decides the direction of your country, not the chest thumping and rallies and flag brigades.

The hyper-polarization of the political landscape means you either get care or you don't. If one side will help you and one side wont, you're going to have a tough time holding on to your rights regardless of one election win.

A more unified America with a strong middle class wouldn't need to undermine one group to bolster another, and you would have more moderate political candidates rather than having to choose between two distant evils every election.

I get to not care because years of moderate politics in my country has seen a general trend toward humanitarianism regardless of which "side" wins. Recently the "right-wing" political group of my country protected same-sex marriage, even though it doesn't align with their ideology, because they're only moderate-right, and so their priorities still lie in pleasing the majority and not extreme political interests.

Obviously the US would have a long way to go before it could ever take any of this advice seriously, I was just trying to point out that the divided nature of your population drives the politics too.

If I bought a family health plan, I'd be paying at least 15 times those rates on the individual market.

Meanwhile, other first world nations are able to insure all of their citizens with better health outcomes than outcomes in the US, and at half of the cost the US pays for its inferior levels of care[1].

[1] https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/quality...

Which countries are those? Because the US are insane, but politics is heartfelt in all countries I'm familiar with.

Which doesn't mean we have to reach such levels of infighting of course.

Basically, for myself and most people I know, we vote for the party whose platform most closely matches our own priorities and beliefs, but it's not part of our identities in the same way. The parties themselves are also far less polarized than in the US. And because it's a multi-party system, you can have minority government that actually functions by garnering support of opposition parties. (We also effectively don't have multiple veto points though, so generally the governing party is able to govern; I think that also helps keep things from getting overheated.) Of course, the system isn't perfect. For instance by virtue of being both multi-party and first past the post, the winning party usually has the vote of a minority of the population, and still generally holds a majority of seats in parliament. But I've really come to appreciate it in comparison over the past few years.

Compare this to the US where aside from being a two party system, the majority can vote for a candidate in a federal election and that party can lose and get nothing. (Of course, votes for members of congress don't function like this, but clearly not as much weight as placed on these.)

I think the reason for this here is because we have preferences in our voting, and we have compulsory voting. I can say, "First the communist, then the gun people, and if neither of those, finally go for a major party." if that suits me. That means our voices get heard, and the major parties listen.

In NSW government for example we had an unpopular law put in place that killed our nightlife, so an entire political party was created just to fight that one law. They got lots of first preference votes, and the votes for all who did that were routed back to candidates that actually won because of the preferences. Being able to allocate our votes back to major parties with our voices being heard is important. Liberal then realised this wasn't a hill they were particularly keen to die on, so they repealed the law. (https://www.timeout.com/sydney/nightlife/keep-sydney-opens-o...)

Also, compulsory voting means that everyone is going to vote. They have to by law. So there's no need to stoke the base to get turnout. Stoking the base makes you scary to everyone else and you get the smack down at the polls for it.

We currently have Greens members in our house of reps, and many many 3rd party candidates in the senate. It's nowhere near perfect, but having your voice heard clearly, having that reflected in law, and ensuring there's no apathetic middle that lets the extremes dictate policy cuts the crazy right down.

Similarly as the comment above mentions, Australia has preferential voting which helps in reducing the overall divisivness of the two party system most democracies end up with.

The USA seems to have devolved into a system where elections are like votes on those huge omnibus bills that rightly get so much flak - if you want to see action on the environment, you have to also support increased welfare spending, increased gun control, gay rights and any number of issues that have nothing to do with environmental policy.

Similarly, if you want fiscal conservatism, you have to support people who want to ban abortion, oppose any climate action, use the state to prop up religion in society and so on and on.

This is nuts. The two-party system seems to make it impossible to tackle political issues on their merits, and I hope the people start to organize around specific issues instead of around the current parties. Pick an issue important to you, maybe starting on the less controversial end, and I think you will find that if you don't mix it up with every issue under the sky, people across the blue-red divide will support it. Organize those people outside the party system, and maybe you can get some change going.

That being said, I think it is possible to care very deeply about certain issues, and act on those concerns, in a way that largely avoids the political sphere. Trying to fix the problems we are concerned about by means of influencing the power games of elected officials is often very crude and ineffective. Sometimes influencing politics is necessary, but if we let ourselves believe that the only way to effect change is "shake the vending machine" of governmental power we will generally end up frustrated.

- Residents of DC, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, and Guam

- People who have had their names removed from voter roles with no warning, as in Georgia, Wisconsin, and North Carolina, in the last few years.

- People who can't get US citizenship despite having lived here most or all of their lives.

- Vulnerable individuals who couldn't get an absentee ballot in Texas despite the pandemic

And so on. They're smaller, more specific minorities now. But there's a lot of them

- Felony convictions: Black and latino men are convicted of felonies at much higher rates than any other population. In 2016, 7.44% of black people had their voting rights stripped for felony convictions.[1] Over 1% of all black people in the United States are currently incarcerated, compared with about .2% for white people.[2]

- DC in majority minority, with 46% black residents.[3] Puerto Rico in 98.9% hispanic.[4]

- Citizenship: Over 800,000 people have enrolled in DACA, mostly of Latin American and East Asian origin. [5] They are ineligible for citizenship. Among those eligible to apply for Citizenship, many are from Canada or Europe.[6] Our immigration laws are setup to favor high school immigrants, who are far more likely to be white than the immigrant population as a whole. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it means our voting population is far more white than our resident population.

- Disenfranchisement: This is far more piecemeal, but southern states routinely take actions that just so happen to make it more difficult for minorities to vote rather than white people. I recommend listening to [7] if you're interested, which covers a specific recent circumstance in Florida, with a few examples from other states. It's no coincidence when eliminated polling places and dropboxes just so happen to always be in Black neighborhoods.

Remember, the voting rights marches of the 1960s weren't about giving black people the right to vote, that happened in 1870. They were about how certain states had made it so difficult for black people to vote that it was essentially impossible. Sure, many black people vote in these states today, but that doesn't mean that they have an equal ability to vote. The measures aren't as strong as they once were, but they still exist.

[1] https://www.sentencingproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08... [2] https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p19.pdf [3] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/DC [4] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/PR [5] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/09/25/key-facts-a... [6] https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/lpr_pop... [7] https://www.npr.org/2020/10/26/927846676/who-gets-to-vote-in...

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/smartphone-data-s...

I guess my reply would also be that in a well functioning democratic government people get to trust that those issues will get addressed in time, though that is also not universally true.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jrj3n0j2Q2w

For example, during Bill Clinton's impeachment trial for sexual harassment of his woman intern, I thought that his behavior was no big deal, that we accept that powerful men like to play around with women, and that the intern knew what she was getting into when she got the job working for him. Later, I realized that I was wrong. Those beliefs enable sexual harassment of women across society. We must reject those beliefs so women can have equal opportunity and good quality of life.

Other wrong ideas that I had:

- Poor people are poor because they are lazy.

- Violent criminals are violent because they don't want to control themselves.

- Unlucky people failed to prepare properly or were careless.

- Gay people are bad for society.

- Men should be breadwinners. Women should be housewives.

- USA is powerful because God is rewarding its Christian citizens for following His rules.

All of these ideas are wrong. These ideas harm people and make our society poorer.

Yes, I can remember my previous thought processes and see the dancer spin the other way, but the dancer is carrying a single-edged sword and spinning the other way way hurts people.

Trump was even a Democrat 20 years ago.

Got lots more attention as a Republican now, since 2009.

Isn't this an oversimplification of politics, though--that our political opinions are nothing more than preferences around which we form tribes, and that there is not one single tribe that is objectively correct when it comes to matter of policy when, in fact, there are correct ways of deciding on policy.

Take vaccines, for example, or the matter of wearing masks. If I am for vaccines and for wearing masks during the pandemic, am I simply in some kind of "spell" and am I not, objectively speaking, correct, because my opinion on those matters are backed by science?

There are conclusions that are more true than others, but it gets messy when people start talking policy. Ground level facts have regularly led to horrible policy decisions despite being 'correct' according to the science.

> am I not, objectively speaking, correct, because my opinion on those matters are backed by science?

It is true that shutdowns, distancing, masking are all evidence based methods to contain the pandemic. However, politics is not only about selecting what methods work, but where they are applied, and who bears the cost. There is rarely an objective 'backed by the science' answer across the board.

Moving the trenches such that the main problem was trying to decide what the implementation of the shared science-based policy should be would be such a seismic shift in political discourse that I don't think I can visualise what that world would actually look like.

You can't get any clearer messaging on anti/pro science.

Surely you can get clearer messaging than an out-of-context misinterpreted quote.

Yes but that's because of lack of specificity, isn't it? That is, exactly the science in the lab is what is deployed on a grand scale outside the lab in terms of policy, when the specificities of the real world should have been taken into account.

In any case, with the real-world peculiarities taken into consideration, the underlying science would be the same nonetheless. It would be preposterous to say that just because vaccines and masks work in the lab doesn't mean they won't work in the real world.

The first two are self explanatory and certainly cross party lines.

Cult of Trump is to merely accept his say so that mask wearing has no efficacy and is merely political correctness. And really believe he knows better than scientists (anyone really).

From many conversations, it's just to piss off liberals. What I call vindictive politics. Literally many conversations, why do you like Trump and agree with him on things like fighting over masks? Schadenfreude. Making liberals scoff and angry makes them happy.

Ok why so much annoyance with liberal? A common example, is gay marriage which many Trump supporters consider completely immoral on religious grounds. It's so heinous to them they use oral rape metaphor to describe it: you liberals jammed gay marriage down our throats. We support Trump because he makes you angry.

I've asked for clarification: this is pay back for things like gay marriage and protecting abortion rights? "You betcha its payback! We don't care what crazy things he does or says. The more it pisses off liberals the better job he's doing." Their words. They have grievances. Trump soothes it by helping them get payback.

He grew his base by 7 million in this election. He gained almost as many votes as Bernie Sanders total vote count in the 2020 primary.

A lot of people think this is about Trump. And it's gone once he's gone. I don't.

This is such a ridiculous spin on “jammed down our throats” that none of them would have even considered that as a possible interpretation until you said it. Gay marriage is definitely not an issue that is top of mind for many Trump supporters.

The most common argument I've heard isn't about the mask itself, it's about the government acting like a parent that knows better than you. Lots of anti-mask people have said they would wear a mask if the government simply treated people like adults and asked instead of mandated it.

There are objectively correct matters of policy when your goals, values, and assumptions have been specified. But it is these goals, values, and assumptions that separate the population into different factions. It is not simply a matter of we're right and they're wrong when it comes to settling these foundational issues.

> I simply in some kind of "spell" and am I not, objectively speaking, correct, because my opinion on those matters are backed by science?

You are under a spell that maximizing lives saved from the virus is the obviously correct goal, which is why its never even stated out loud. But your policy choices given that goal are objectively correct. The issue is whether maximizing lives saved from the virus is the correct goal. Lockdowns have a cost which is mostly borne by those who do not have the means to go for weeks or months without work or cannot work from home. There's also the mental health costs of extended social distancing. These questions are not answered by simply referencing the science behind controlling pandemics. There are very contentious foundational issues that that must be settled before we can make factual determinations about policy.

I think Trump and his administration lie somewhere between just being misunderstood by "the other side" and 100% depraved. I tend to think they're actually quite far to the depraved side of that spectrum, but that doesn't mean we can't still pay attention to making sure we see things from other perspectives (within reason).

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2013-04-07

This is what often happens in politics. There are a small subset of extremist on either side, and when people argue, they're pointing out the worst things the other side's extremists did. Calling each other KKK and Antifa and racist and SJW. Realistically, between those two extremes, the majority of people are good well meaning people who just don't know what the truth is anymore due to all the lies and disinformation on the web. All the clickbait shoving the most rage inducing stories about the other side all day long.

It's like people don't recognize what they truly think and do, but instead imagine themselves as a reflection of some ideological group they associate with and apply that image to their ultimately selfish motivations.

[0] opinion

I firmly disagree. Not all political climates and discourses are as poisoned as they are in the US.

That said, not all political disagreements are created equally. We can have a rousing polite disagreement about immigration levels, national financial priorities, cultural values and so on, but if the discussion is premised in a fundamental disagreement about whether or not certain people deserve dignity as human beings then there's very little common ground to build off of.

That's utter nonsense, political spectrums aren't all or nothing, take it or leave it, all inclusive things. A person is capable of having a range of views on different issues that may fall on either side and it's perfectly acceptable for this to be the case.

Politics like everything in life isn't black and white all or nothing, take it or leave it, it'a a bunch of shades of grey like everything else and as with most things the average person, when asked about issues without the context of left or right involved, will likely express views that fall across both sides of the political spectrum.

Just like most religious people are the religion that their parents were, most people don't really choose their political beliefs. It's not to say we don't learn justifications for what we believe, but it means that the fact that we believe in one thing over another is somewhat random imo.

Somewhere out there in the US is someone who's pretty similar to me in most ways, they were just born in a part of the country where their default beliefs are different.

And for consistency, I do put more stake in someone's beliefs when they change from their "defaults".

But then I always remember that in the United States, there is only one major political party that believes Climate Change is real. The other party believes the phenomenon is some sort of gigantic ruse.

I consider Climate Change the most pressing issue of our time, and myself a single-issue voter. Not because everything else is unimportant, but because Climate Change is even more important. We have to get this right, and we have to start immediately!

If the two parties disagreed on how to address Climate Change—say, with a carbon tax versus renewable energy subsidies—that would be one thing. But that's not the world we live in. As long as one of the parties insists that Climate Change is a complete fabrication, I don't see how I can possibly take anything they say seriously.

This feels a lot like GP/OP — Orwell’s politics and the English language, let’s metaphor away values and principles to the relativity of sounds from our meat flaps and we will all be free of this human condition

No, it wasn’t, obviously. What a disgusting thing to say.

It is indeed a disgusting thing to be true.

Easy, just look at who is in favour of censorship, "deplatforming", violence against people with the "wrong" opinions. Words don't hurt, Tweets are overrated. But silencing people, causing them to lose their jobs, or just assaulting them, that hurts.

I don't believe it's the case that Biden or anyone in the leadership of the Democratic party has advocated for violence against people with wrong opinions, or indeed anyone.

He explicitly said there are good people on both sides.

The thing people are upset about is that Trump walked the line between condemnation and support.

I think you're right that people were upset with Trump for focusing on that and drawing a moral equivalence between the counter-protestors and even those willing to march with white supremacists. One could even reasonably argue that no 'good' person would choose to join a march largely inhabited by white supremacists, or even that their support of the General Lee statue was itself a racist act. But those are the points that should have been made, rather than stretching it to say Trump literally called white supremacists good people, which he didn't. There's plenty you could criticise without resorting to taking him out of context.

One word for this is "tradition". If I've piqued your interest, please read Alasdair MacIntyre's book "After Virtue," and also it's sequel with a more provocative title, "Whose Justice? Which Rationality?"

In this case, one side is provably crazy, and the evidence from our intelligence agencies shows they are dangerous lunatics. The other side wants empathy, equality, science, and truth to rule the day.

I'm not sure how you can just hand-wave that away. Your comment is the same old "both sides" fallacy.

Like, if you believe that all humans have rights and dignity, then you shouldn't be saying crap like that.

If you don't then how are you different from your enemies?

I'd humbly add that at least to my eyes, most of the time the discussions on disagreements between two political parties are simply ineffective at trying to solve the disagreement, and rather irrational or badly arranged. In other words: most political discourse you hear these days seems useless.

I can disagree with you on economic ideologies, I can disagree with you on military spending, how to treat the drug epidemic, how to solve the incarceration problem, etc. However when one side literally empowers those that executed my family in WW2, it is no longer a disagreement, but a fight for my life.

That's part of the problem. There's such focus by the left on Nazis and by the right on Communists that the overall capacity to form a consensus and negotiate between the two groups is significantly hindered.

The majority of both sides is not extremist, but ignoring each other is amplifying those extreme groups.

In Germany he would be a boring conservative.

This insinuation that the Democratic Party makes the world in some sense safer for Communists is blatant absurdity.

The reverse – the Republican Party and especially Trump making the world a safer place for Nazis – is very true. Nazis can feel encouraged and supported in what they do by Trump.

Obviously even Trump, however shambolic, manages to build up some level of plausible deniability there.

(All of this says someone who, yeah, is totally up for some Marxist ideas. Don’t worry, I’m not an American.)

Unfortunately, if McConnell is still in the driving seat in the Senate, form says we should expect political logjams, which won't help win anyone over either, and contrition isn't a trait I'd expect to magic itself into being purely on the basis of the presidential result.

Unfortunately Nazis can do their work retail, they don’t need to take over government to do real harm individually.

It is long considered a fundamental human right to be able to flee danger. Because otherwise wars start and atrocities happen.

Trump consistently blocks their rightful entry into the US, vilifies them as invaders, denies that they have rights to entry, and tries to scare people into thinking they are a threat.

The child separation from parents policy, and there are hundreds that have still not been reunited with their parents today, has been admitted publicly without shame. Vindictiveness. It is to scare immigrant and refugee alike so they don't come here. It is to bully them in order to make American liberals angry, because making liberals angry is an inherent good in right-wing ideology.

Meanwhile Europe is having its own problems with refugees, and right-wing movements who hate them. So no we do not have freedom of movement, at least not everywhere and not for everyone who needs it. And that means we haven't learned a few important lessons - all of which are relatively well contained and explained in the 1951 Convention documents.

They are still able to flee danger, but they now need to wait in a detainment center while awaiting their hearing. This exists because only a tiny fraction of those released would actually go to their hearings, and most would stay here illegally.

Meanwhile Europe is having its own problems with refugees

You admit here that mass immigration causes issues. Well mass immigration has been occurring in the US for decades. We have over 10 _million_ illegal immigrants today. This is why trump's anti-immigration statements gained traction, because it was/is an issue here too, especially in the southern region of the US.

I know you went for hyperbole, but ... refuges are not exactly wanted. Have a look at what life in refuge camps is, the issues and destabilization it brings.

There are genocides and atrocities going on now and last years. And it was not easy or possible for those people to leave. It was even less possible for many of those who left to actually build new lives.

And in any case, by the time of WWII Hitler was firmly in power. The time to prevent his atrocities was years before and atrocities happened because his party was not stopped 1918-1932.

Oddly, Trump is the most staunchly Zionist / Pro-Jewish President in American history (of course, all for his own benefit, I don't think he actually cares about any of it.)

Literally his daughter, and most trusted advisor converted to Judaism.

Paradoxically, it's now the 'global left', particularly in Europe who have faced real and serious problems of anti-semitism. In the UK, the Labour Party has had to eject several members for anti-semitic views (not just anti-Israel) and had to embark on programs to remedy the situation.

"In October 2020, the UK's human rights watchdog found Labour to be "responsible for unlawful acts of harassment and discrimination"." [1] From the BBC no less!

Most of my childhood friends grew up behind the Iron Curtain (Ukraine, Poland, Czech) or in Communist nations like Vietnam, Cambodia, China. Many family members murdered, starved. My Uncle fled with his mother through a forest across the border, chased by soldiers to escape. Many Serbian/Croatian friends who's parents lived through a very special kind of hell.

Perhaps you can ask one of your workmates from Hong Kong what he thinks about 'Socialism With Chinese Characteristics'? [2]

Please don't let us assume that one person's history or clan's mortal enemies represent the 'big picture' of anything.

Trump is a 'thuggish businessman with authoritarian tendencies' - not actually an ideologue. The extreme views on either side are toxic and have quit a history of mass murder. If we want to compare 'Deaths Caused by Stalin/Mao vs. Hitler' that would be a futile effort I think.

Mitt Romney and Barack Obama are both fairly good representations of either side and they're both fine men, if you're having trouble grasping why most people would be ok with that statement, maybe spend some time in another part of the country (Utah?) and make some friends there.

[1] In October 2020, the UK's human rights watchdog found Labour to be "responsible for unlawful acts of harassment and discrimination".

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism_with_Chinese_charact...

To be more clear, the Jewish ethnic identity and the Israeli national identity aren't the same identity, and while there is overlap conflating them isn't insightful. OP was conflating them.

Especially when neither party has much to offer the average citizen any more, they have built their strength traditionally on low voter turnout where extreme factions loudly broadcasting gradually become over-represented in the most polarizing way.

As cycles continue only the most polarizing issues drive the turnout, and for turnout to grow beyond a certain point the majority of the potential voters must perceive the other party as a more serious threat, when compared to any security offered by their own party which they (might) have chosen because they found it less offensive (maybe only in past cycles too).

The parties no longer need to have as much to offer the average citizen as cycles go on, when they can get contending turnout from their own extremists combined with orders of magnitude more sympathizers who can be convinced to strongly fear what the _other side_ could take away.

Seems like after a party has been around for longer than any living person, they will not get support by having more to offer average citizens than in previous cycles, only by taking less away from them.

So the average citizen hasn't had a positive outcome within reach for a while.

Now it's too late, these top candidates are realistically as youthful as you can get compared to the grand old parties themselves, and regardless of personal integrity or leadership style can not offer anything above that from the parties alone.

Even in the case of Trump's extreme personality, which the Democrats did not even try to nominate a candidate having that feature, so this element was as one-sided as you can get.

I saw agreement from both sides that a wet dishrag could defeat Trump if only 270 electors represent voters who just plain dislike or hate him. Conversely it was recognized Trump would win if he had merely 270 electors of voters who dislike or hate one or more of the current items on the Democratic party platform.

Neither strategy can offer anything to the majority of the citizens in the political middle, the true average citizen, since turnout has been driven by fear not opportunity.

Building a coalition from a carefully-crafted extreme attention-getting position, and pushing hard from there so the other side ends up below the 50 percent needed to be in power, has turned out to prevail over representing even the middle 50 percent of voters which is how it was supposed to be at a minimum.

So once the issues and/or personalities representing them have reached full polarity, 50 becomes more of a constant to be converged upon from afar rather than a starting point to build a majority from in both directions.

Resulting in half the voters who turn out, and half the politically centrist citizens (which is a much larger group by a variable multiple of active voters) who will always be dissatisfied and these are two different groups (but having significant overlap), the latter of which is the core of the majority that all parties are supposed to be treating as constituents.

But the core of the majority in the middle doesn't have a voice because they don't have any party which represents them any more, the parties are doing other things with the money and the concerns of centrist citizens are given lowest priority.

The party gets more votes over the long run by fear-mongering against the other side regardless of who the candidates are at the time, and only declining resources can be justified which might actually benefit the majority of citizens.

Problem is, the majority are voting against their own best interest because their own best interest has not been available for a number of cycles. Rather each side votes against what's perveived as the other's best interest instead, since that's the only thing at stake anyway.

So the majority of voters end up speaking for the entire population as designed, but all votes are cast against someone's best interest because the minority party is voting exactly the same as the majority in this regard.

So it's unanimous by both parties that as few of the average citizens as possible should have their best interest be served, and to redefine democracy in that direction can not be accomplished during a single cycle or maybe not even a single generation.

Ending up with the choice between a trustworthy Joe and a dishonest Don the thing that doesn't really matter to half the voters as much as it should.

It would probably help if there were parties which were younger than the candidates.

In my country where there isn't a two party only system, but a plethora of positions ranging from the most extreme to the most moderate, for decades the left Vs right battle created a gradient of opinions

There are lunatics on the left and on the right, sometimes they have been violent, sometimes they put our democracy at risk, but in the end both left and right rejected them

We had our momentary lapse of reason when we (not me, but still...) elected Berlusconi, it seemed we lost our mind (we probably did) and nothing worse could ever happen to any other country politically speaking

Trump is on a new level of tribalism, divide and polarization though

How a real lunatic, with evident sever mental health issues ended up at the white house is gonna be a big black spot on American history (the greatest democracy in the World, the greatest country in the world, etc. etc.)

Generally speaking my echo chambers leaned anti-trump. The one thing I failed to find in the last 2 months is any actual discourse. There is absolutely no neutral viewpoints. There is absolutely no discussions between the 2 camps. The political divide in the USA is worse than I have ever seen it.

The perception I have, that wasn't a free and fair election. What's even more curious is that nobody seems to care. Ends justify the means. Which hey, I personally very much prefer Trump to lose. However, if healing the political divide is a goal, that's basically impossible now.