I think the real truth of the matter is the majority of Americans know the sky isn't falling. Profit motivated media is blowing the political divide way out of the water, fear mongering to sell eyeballs to advertisers. I've got a few friends who are utterly convinced America is on the cusp of a civil war, but that's only a few. They're the ones who watch too much Fox News or CNN I think.

For the majority of Americans on HN or employed in tech or finance or some other salaried office work, the sky isn’t falling, we’re doing well. but we’re also a minority of Americans.

Walk through towns & small cities in Indiana, Kansas, Florida, Alabama. In a lot of these places the sky is falling, there are few jobs & high rates of opiate abuse. There isn’t much of a social safety net. Unfortunately many of these people vote against their own financial interests, and honestly the democrats also aren’t addressing the roots of inequality sufficiently. The United States is basically divided between those of us who are doing well and those of us for whom the sky is at least looking brittle. That’s the issue putting pressure on society today.

I'm not saying that times aren't rough. Obviously tines are rough. What I'm saying is that America is not on the cusp of a civil war and the overwhelming majority of Americans aren't itching to kill each other, they just want things to return to normal.

> What I’m saying is that America is not on the cusp of a civil war and the overwhelming majority of Americans aren’t itching to kill each other, they just want things to return to normal.

The second half is probably true, the first half is less clearly so. On the actual cusp of the actual civil war, the overwhelming majority of Americans weren’t itching to kill each other and most just wanted things to return to normal. Of course, there were broad camps with radically different views as to the barriers to normalcy and considerable propaganda effort expended to nurture some of those views by people who had already come to the conclusion that a fight was, if not desirable, a necessary risk to secure their political goals.

(Also broadly true of the Revolutionary War, for that matter, and, really, most other internal and international armed conflicts in history.)

Even during the American Civl War, or any other war, were the majority of the people in the nations involved itching to kill each other?

> Unfortunately many of these people vote against their own financial interests...

I get so tired of this poorly reasoned idea that continues to be spouted from the left as if it is gospel, and that the "rubes" are just not as enlightened as some journalist in New York or a javascript dev in Mountain View.

How exactly would voting for someone like Biden help the average working class voter in middle America?

* Tons more quota / diversity based help that will re-distribute the already small amount of aid to people who are NOT them.

* Medicare for all and similar schemas: Ask them how Obamacare has worked out. It's likely they now can't even use any health services since they're still paying premiums, but now have a $7K deductible for their family of four.

* Shoveling money from the right's corporate masters to the left's friends in the public unions, legal industry, big tech, etc. is not a net gain for these voters.

* Increased immigration and globalization that may very well increase the economy as a whole, but certainly won't be trickling the wealth down to them.

* changes in the tax code that may raise or lower rates by a few points here and there, but have absolutely no effect on average working class voters who don't pay much in federal taxes anyway.

* Green energy initiatives that will allow rich people who can afford it to virtue signal, but will raise the prices of gas, heating, electricity, etc. for everyone else.

Please let me know which actual policy changes that Biden and Co. can and will implement that would help these voters, but who are just too dumb to realize?

There are plenty of rubes on the left but I don’t bitch about them nearly as much because, at least in the current political climate, they aren’t active barriers to the changes I’d like to see in America. I’m not someone who believes left and right are intelligent & enlightened vs ignorant & foolish. Though I do believe the right to be more cynical and openly self interested.

You literally said the people on the right vote against their own self interest, now you’re saying that they vote against change you want... but isn’t necessarily better for them. If you’re wondering why ppl don’t take you seriously this is why.

So how to get some moderation back is the question. I guess state funded media like the BBC can help?

I don't see much difference between BBC and CNN

Still waiting for the "inevitable civil war Trump supporters will instigate, because they have guns", as mentioned to me by one of my friends.

I think the overwhelming majority of people who make claims like that are just full of hot air. If the shooting ever started, they'd be hiding indoors with the rest of us. This is one of the reasons I think the scenarios they propose is unlikely. This is nothing new of course, there have always been people willing to talk about extreme grandiose nonsense they'll never do. These people aren't hard to find if you go looking, making it easy for the media to broadcast their prattling to scare everybody else shitless. Scared, people stay tuned during the commercial break to hear the latest up to date news about what horrible things are surely imminent.

A few months ago I had a few friends of either political persuasion telling me there would be a revolution or coup the day after the election. That didn't happen, and I think most are starting to realize it won't happen. By this time next year, when Biden's presidency is well underway, I think many of the people feeling very concerned today will feel foolish in retrospect.

Trump and his enablers are literally leading an attempted coup right now and you think it's fear mongering?

There is no coup, just some sore losers who aren't going to do shit except get laughed at by a few judges.

> some sore losers

Just 126 congressmen and what is it now, 17 Republican Attorney Generals demanding the Supreme court vacate the election and hand it to the lame duck president?

They're free to make fools of themselves, it's not going to accomplish anything.

It's kinda something when 2/3rd of the minority party thinks making fools of themselves is okay.

Indeed, an attempted coup.

If that's a coup, then obviously not all coups are worth worrying about. They really are not going to do shit.

Except their attempted coup has successfully convinced a significant portion of the public that they are the appropriate winners.

Stupid people believe stupid things. Their wishful thinking doesn't alter the reality of their loss.

an individual stupid person does not matter. A large enough mass of stupid people can overturn nearly anything. It seems likely that this time, the mass of people who've decided that Trump won won't be large enough to effect the coup that Trump is _attempting_, but it's larger than we've seen, and that's somewhat scary.

Replacing heads of military administration with stool pigeons sounds like the soft start of a coup to me.

This issue is not this set of clearly poor players - it's the groups on both sides watching and learning that are going to be much more professional about their efforts to gain power with any means necessary. This is the trial run set up, so the limits and weaknesses of our systems can be evaluated. The fact that this set of not even remotely qualified actors are occupying the White House shows how weak the controls have been. And these players have spent their time in power layering the judicial bureaucracy with their sycophants. No, there is reason to be concerned, very good reasons.

Saying Trump is more like Mussolini, this timeline is more interesting:

https://www.thoughtco.com/hitlers-rise-to-power-timeline-122...

And the more boring path:

https://www.softschools.com/viewTimeline.action?id=207

So one side is trying to stage a coup using the SCOTUS as a weapon, thereby defying the will of the citizenry, and the best you an come up with is "Both Sides"?

One side believes the last 4 years has seen multiple attempts to remove their elected president. Not to mention the Justice kavanaugh confirmation madness.

Correction: Elected criminal lying president.

Lol. I love when someone like you comments this without any irony. You truly believe this nonsense like it’s gospel.

What Trump has going for him, is picking up issues that need to be addressed, that have gone been neglected in a fast-evolving world, leading to unfairness. However, how these issues are treated and how people are treated, is important in a democracy.

https://theconversation.com/why-hard-core-trump-supporters-i...

If he's such a great leader and not just an opportunist populist, why do he need to instill a fear-culture where everybody who doesn't lick his boots get fired. People appointed by the same leader dare not speak up their own opinions. This isn't democracy. What type of leader do this? Hint: Communist leaders like Stalin, and fascist leaders like Mussolini.

If you're unable to spot a liar yourself, it is not too hard to form your own opinion on this:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/23/opinion/trump...

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/the-complete-listing-so-...

https://www.dailywire.com/news/trumps-101-lies-hank-berrien

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=trump+lies+list

Fortunately, a majority of the population see right through the lack of leadership and lies for what they truly are. The means are as important as the ends, and the ends are often obscured and full of misdirection, more like PR campaigns than anything of real and lasting value.

As someone who voted against Trump twice, I am horrified by his attempts to cling to office. At the same time, I am also reminded of the people in my social circle as well as in the Lefty media who in late 2016 talked about how Electoral College members had no legal obligation to cast a vote for Trump. (Except that many states have laws that say they do.)

What seems to be true of "both sides" is that both see their enemies as people who are set on their destruction and thereby justify "by whatever means necessary" thinking.

I too am one of those people thought a pinko socialist by some and a revanchist caveman by others.

Pundits questioning the electoral process is not the same as politicians actively trying to overturn election results.

True, and filing lawsuits is not the same as violent, armed insurrection.

True. And people filing lawsuits is not the same as armed insurrection.

As best I recall, the one faithless elector in 2016 was the John Kasich, a very conservative Republican, who threw away his vote on John McCain.

As a person who voted for Trump twice, I’m horrified by the blasé way the left ignores serious issues with the vote. If you were a Facebook moderator, I truly believe that you would censor me because of your own political beliefs, and allow hate speech by those you agree with. I’m not alarmed by his desire to hang on to power, I champion it.

Not sure how to take an incapable president seriously, other than he's very good at manipulating. Letting hundreds of thousands die while providing special treatment for himself and his cronies. However, there must be grave concerns that should be addressed politically, that shouldn't be ignored by either party. It seems both parties are hostage by the political system and dark background billionaires. Unfortunately, either is unable to break the stalemate into more constructive middle-grounds. This is the most serious concern, that this is exactly the intention.

Maybe go find someone who subscribes to the NYT or watches MSNBC to hurl your unfounded accusations at. Because you’re not replying to someone who’s trying to grind you into dust.

I think the left are blasé just now because:

a) Any irregularities are too small to effect the outcome

b) Most serious biases in the process are pro republican

Just wondering, do you think there were serious issues with the vote in 2016?

Quite a lot of republicans believe in democracy still. The POTUS has had to abandon Fox and advocate crankier outlets for his cause.

The problem is - both could be right!

Well again as someone who talks to both extremes very often, they’re honestly not. They both just be left alone but have been led to believe by their media consumption that if they don’t do something the other side will, a kind of reverse prisoners dilemma.

I don’t know - it seems to me that the left would ban guns if they could, and the right would ban abortion if they could.

Neither side is wrong to be afraid of the other doing these things.

You seem reasonable, so please help me understand the other side.

I’m a big fan of conservative thinkers like Milton Friedman and George Will. I’m against the left’s attack on free speech and find their obsession with identity, at best, perplexing. I prefer isolationist foreign policy and less military involvement from the US. I’m originally from a conservative area and have many conservative relatives I know to be good people.

And yet I cannot conceive of how anyone could support Trump or the boot licking republicans who enable him. He is incapable of telling the truth. He does not seem to believe in reality, science, or expertise of any kind. He does not believe in rule of law. He is an authoritarian and egomaniac. Even before the election he challenged the idea of a peaceful transition of power. How is this supportable?

Edit: And to be clear I get that we live in a two-party country and that a vote for a candidate is not a wholesale endorsement. You look at the options you have and choose the "lesser of the evils," as it were. Hell, I would vote for Trump if the other candidate was Stalin.

Edit Edit: I know it’s bad form to make political rants like this on HN. I had a moment of weakness :/

A lot of my conservative relatives are too old to even know what Twitter is, so they completely ignore Trump on that front. They like that Trump doesn't kowtow to the media and they like his judge picks, his foreign policy, and executive orders. The media would zing Romney with little zingers and he would get all hang dog and apologize, but Trump punched back instead and his voter base loved that they finally had a candidate that would stand up to the media.

Trump also tried very hard to make good on his campaign promises. Can you imagine opening an embassy in Jerusalem under Hillary? I can't, and my conservative relatives love that he did that and that he stands up to China and acknowledged Taiwan's president. They also love that he fights back against identity politics (removing requirement for forced diversity trainings, etc). In short, from their perspective he goes to bat on a lot of their grievances.

So yeah, his Twitter is a dumpster fire, but half his voter base doesn't even see it because they don't use twitter.

Look I’ve had conversations like this a lot, it comes down to exactly what you said. Two parties ends up being the lesser of two evils, and trump to most conservatives absolutely was the lesser of two evils. As other commentators said, he fulfilled many of his campaign promises. He pushed foreign policy in a direction the whole world needed but didn’t want. He’s been drawing down foreign troops since his first day in office, so much so that apparently his generals were lying to him about how many ppl they had out there.

It’s perplexing to me that if what you say you believe is what you believe why a politician being a liar is a problem for you.

All politicians lie, none as brazenly as Trump sure; but every single one of them has been caught lying in the last 9 months, many have been pretty brazen in their hypocrisy.

My many conservative friends will point to 1000s of small white lies and 100s of big ones that Biden told, as proof that the other side is just as complicit.

I get there is policy to like, particularly regarding the Middle East. I mostly disagree with Trump on policy, but even if he ticked every policy box for me, I can't imagine wanting to end rule of law and just have an imperial president.

Our political institutions like elections, the courts, the Department of Justice, and the Federal Reserve are built mostly on norms that took decades and sometime centuries to build up. He seems ready to throw them all out.

Is it necessary to name the problem if we know a driver of it?

Except that only 50% is actually out to do it.

Most of the republicans I know are disappointed, but not so severely that they want to go killing people. That sort of extremism is very fringe. Also, even if you count the mellow majority, they're far from 50%.

> and take away their basic rights

Well I have some good news for you, they lost the election. A few of them may not like to admit that, but they lost nevertheless and any scenario where Biden or Harris isn't president a year from now is a delusion.

Well I have some bad news for you, they don't believe they lost the election.

Well the good news is that doesn't matter. They're sore losers but it won't amount to anything more than hot air, so take a deep breath and relax. Hit a blunt or something.

Do you really think that losing the election is going to make the Republicans go "huh, maybe we should stop trying to take away rights from millions of Americans? maybe we should stop treating millions of voters like trash?"

It's not.

It certainly didn't make Democrats reconsider taking the rights of millions of Americans away after they lost the midterms following the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban.

America has a pretty good history of peaceful transitions of power, and I expect that to continue. Republicans selected an asshole to represent them, and he's now lost the election. He can throw a fit with his lawyers, which will doubtlessly fail, and I fully expect Biden to take the presidency peacefully, as has happened in past American elections. That's the process at work.

People telling you that this time it's going to be a war or coup are trying to scare you. In retrospect, you will probably laugh at trump for being such a pathetically poor loser, and laugh at yourself for worrying about it.

I take your broader point, but I don't think it's 50/50 as much as it is a vocal 10% on either side with the majority remaining pretty moderate and reasonable. I don't personally cross the divide, I'm a political liberal (earning me the 'socialist' brand from the right) but I don't dabble in the tribalism and try to be charitable toward those I disagree with (thus I'm a nazi to the 10% on the far left) but there's still a huge swath of people in the middle.

Very interesting that the text of your entirely non-aggressive, non-partisan point of view was "more grey than black".

Keep up the charitable liberalism I say.

I think one of the issues (beyond media's propensity towards sensationalism to draw attention) is that the extremes at either end of a debate are very black and white. Black and white can be explained in a single sentence many times but everything in between is nuanced (or grey as you called it). The problem with nuanced positions is it requires more than a 280 character payload to explain...

I think the bigger problem is that nuanced positions don't sell as well as sensationalism. Outrage is a powerful drug and the media has us hooked on it.

Honest question, why do the liberals feel in danger?

I personally don't attribute myself to either side, nor did I vote for either. However...

I've seen rioting (been caught up in one and feared for my safety), noticed stuff being blocked by the left (1st amendment), going after firearm ownership (2nd amendment), and a constant attack on all conservatives & their ideals / objectives.

What exactly are the conservatives doing? I don't see anything necessarily being blocked / attacked? Am I missing something?

Corporations blocking content is not a first amendment violation. They're not the government. You can argue corporations are blocking content and have an agenda but it's not a first amendment issue. Forcing corporations to host content would be though.

We can build a society where free speech isn't technically dead because you won't go to prison for saying stuff, but it sort of is dead because your speech is auto-censored by algorithms to make sure you adhere to approved speech. Is this a healthy society?

Far right brownshirt groups like the Proud Boys are regularly attacking people who they don't like or disagree with.

Do you have links?

Wikipedia has a good overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proud_Boys

I also recommend searching for "proud boys arrested". You'll get plenty of news articles about many of their members being arrested for assault, violent threats, and attempted murder.

Plotting assassinations of governors.

Yes, there were 3 domestic terrorists (with 2 FBI agents effectively suggesting it...).

My concern is more at the government level - are there any threats from conservative republicans in office?

From the rights perspective, it appears they are concerned about a lot of amendment issues; which seem far larger than the isolated incidents of domestic terrorists.

I see some indications that the Michigan assassination plot was not planned by people holding typically right-wing views. For example https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2020/1....

Well, let's go with a Washington elected Republican, that the Republican party refused to cut ties, who published a manifesto that stated:

> the enemy must "surrender on terms" of no abortions, no same-sex marriage, no communism and "must obey Biblical law", then continued: "If they do not yield — kill all males".

Michigan?

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

https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/0...

Literally armed people swarming government buildings to protest masks, bomb threats and plans, kidnapping.

https://www.reddit.com/r/InsaneParler/

gives more insights.

Washington?

You have Matt Shea, an elected Republican:

"In late October 2018, Shea acknowledged that he had distributed a document described as a "four-page manifesto" titled Biblical Basis for War that listed strategies that a "Holy Army" could employ. The document, consisting of 14 sections divided into bullet points, had a section on "rules of war" that stated "make an offer of peace before declaring war", which within stated that the enemy must "surrender on terms" of no abortions, no same-sex marriage, no communism and "must obey Biblical law", then continued: "If they do not yield — kill all males"."

"In April 2019, The Guardian published records from a right-wing chat group of four people that Shea participated in, where Shea used an alias of ‘True Warrior’ in Latin. Other members in the chat group discussed carrying out surveillance, intimidation and violent attacks on political enemies, including Antifa activists and "communists." Shea himself volunteered to conduct background checks on residents of Spokane, resulting in Shea naming three individuals. One of the chat group's members forwarded the information to The Guardian, while another confirmed the existence of the chats and acknowledged the discussion on conducting surveillance on "Antifa" people."

"An investigation commissioned by Washington House of Representatives reported, on December 1, 2019, that Shea had planned and participated in domestic terrorism on at least three occasions. This included his participation, organizing, planning, and promotion of the 2014 Bundy standoff in Nevada, the 2015 armed standoff in Priest River, Idaho, and the 2016 armed seizure of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Harney County, Oregon. Shea led a delegation of right-wing legislators from Oregon, Washington and Idaho that met with law enforcement on January 9, 2016, in Burns, Oregon and were appraised of confidential intended law enforcement strategies for dealing with the refuge occupiers. Shea then disclosed those details to Bundy, according to the report."

The right wing has always had its fringe nutjobs and even terrorists; these seem (or seemed, until recently) to be trending down in severity and frequency, and everyone across the spectrum has typically condemned right-wing political violence. We're pretty good at marginalizing right-wing groups and mitigating their violence to the point where the odds of being impacted by right-wing violence were super low.

That feels less scary to me than watching hundreds of people descend on my neighborhood or a nearby neighborhood and set it alight or otherwise destroy it followed by the media and cultural elites (never mind colleagues, bosses, etc) tacitly approving of the violence (if not outright celebrating it--memorably a former ESPN reporter tweeted "Burn it all down!" and then when the violence approached his own neighborhood, "Get these animals TF out of my neighborhood"). This isn't to invalidate anyone's fear of right-wing violence; we all have different experiences and perspectives; I'm only sharing mine.

Note that we don't have to choose between left and right wing violence. We can and should condemn all kinds of political violence--indeed, it seems like every spike in the popularity of right-wing identity politics lags some much larger spike in left-wing identity politics, and every spike in right wing violence follows some spike in left wing violence and so on (e.g., you don't have proud boys without antifa). If I'm right, then it's kind of good news, because it means we can curb right wing violence and extremism simply by holding the left to the same standard.

None of those are the government, sure there are radical citizens (domestic terrorists), admittedly. Everyone universally thinks this is bad.

That being said, the right appears to be concerned about all their constitutional rights taken away. To me, that seems far more of a direct and far larger attack on millions of people than these random domestic terrorists.

> That being said, the right appears to be concerned about all their constitutional rights taken away. To me, that seems far more of a direct and far larger attack on millions of people than these random domestic terrorists.

You can be concerned about something without it being a legitimate threat. The right was concerned about Obama "coming for the guns", and before that, with Clinton "coming for your guns". Yet Obama got an "F" rating for his efforts in "controlling guns" from the gun control/reform lobby.

Theorizing that Operation Jade Helm was an effort to repeal the Second Amendment by force doesn't make it so, and elements of the right can be concerned by it all they like, it just doesn't make it something the left is responsible for.

You picked a terrible example, as he did restrict guns on a number of occasions during the terms. The fact that the gun control lobby gave him an "F" rating is because the fact that they want too much and are never happy with just a little.

These random domestic terrorists are a part of a disparate and loosely affiliated network of religious extremists ranging from white power prison gangs to the federalist society whom control the supreme court of the United states of America. Underestimating the threat of radicalized religions is a mistake.

>> ... You have Matt Shea, an elected Republican: ...

> None of those are the government, sure there are radical citizens (domestic terrorists), admittedly. Everyone universally thinks this is bad. ...

Is someone who is part of a state legislature not part of some level of government?

What on earth is a congressman if not "the government", if you're going to point to Bernie Sanders and AOC?

> [Matt Shea], A Republican, he represents the 4th Legislative District in the Washington House of Representatives.

> None of those are the government, sure there are radical citizens (domestic terrorists),

“Radical citizens (domestic terrorists)” and “the government” are overlapping groups. For instance, most people would agree that armed public law enforcement agencies are very much “the government”, but:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/27/white-suprem...

> noticed stuff being blocked by the left (1st amendment)

Like? (And before you answer, remember that the 1st amendment applies to businesses, too.)

> going after firearm ownership (2nd amendment)

When has either political party "gone after firearm ownership" in any way?

> and a constant attack on all conservatives & their ideals / objectives

That's because their ideals include: - Take away other people's basic rights - Enforce their version of Christianity on everyone - Encourage murder and vigilantism - Overthrow the government

Dems will say conservatives are trying to take away healthcare, abortion, kill immigrants, etc.

"will say"?

They ARE trying to remove abortion, in many states including no exemption for rape/incest/threat to mother's life.

You have militia groups patrolling the southern border.

Aren't democrats trying to swing to the other extreme and allow full term abortions? Even if it only happens rarely, the only difference between a viable fetus abortion and murdering a newborn in a NICU is a layer of skin surrounding one of them.

> What exactly are the conservatives doing?

Much of the rioting has been conducted/instigated by right-wing provocateurs (several specific ones have been identified), and much of the most severe lawless violence independent of origin of violence-in-general has been conducted by organized right-wing groups with the tacit, and sometimes active, collaboration of law enforcement (the police giving praise, thanks, and supplies to right-wing armed vigilantes, including Rittenhouse, just prior to the shooting he did — and doing so when they were out after curfew — while then turning around and publicly blaming Rittenhouse’s victims for being out after curfew is a fairly graphic illustration of this trend; as is the Trump Administration directive to DHS personnel on talking points supporting Rittenhouse after the incident.)

This seems like a particularly inflammatory characterization of events. I'll just say that I think Kenosha was a tragedy, ideally Rittenhouse shouldn't have been there. Ideally there wouldn't have been riots in the first place, and failing that, the government should have effectively marshaled the police and national guard to keep the peace so (largely untrained) private citizens didn't have to do the job. I can understand why police viewed those private citizens as "help" in keeping the peace, but obviously that's problematic (bringing us back around to the rioters creating the situation and the government failing to adequately manage it). And of course everything Trump says tends to do more harm than good.

As for Rittenhouse's "victims", by all appearances Rittenhouse was acting in self defense--maybe he was instigating the conflicts before the cameras started filming, but there's no evidence to support that; on the other hand, the footage does show Rittenhouse being chased and physically attacked before firing. I'm inclined toward the presumption of innocence, but I also understand that this is very controversial.

Disappointed you're being downvoted. Everybody seems to have taken an "if you're not with us you're against us" approach. The left appeals to your sense of morality ("you're evil if you support this president") and the right appeals to your sense of intelligence ("you're an idiot if you support socialism").

My only issue is that it's become impossible to even talk about your opinions without being given a label. How does anyone grow in this environment?

>My only issue is that it's become impossible to even talk about your opinions without being given a label. How does anyone grow in this environment?

I've heard this argument often.

What I'm about to say is not directed at you personally but your argument.

Maybe you, general you, are the one who needs to grow. It's possible that your knowledge of the subject is dated, judgement clouded by any number of things, that you underestimate the severity of the problem, that you're conflating a dislike of a person, movement, idea with groups of people, or other things.

I say this because most of the time when people make this comment they follow it up or precede it with some very questionable statements. Generally these inappropriate statements are rooted in ignorance of the topic though sometimes your argument is used in bad faith to justify hateful or discriminatory ideals, speech, and action.

Again, I'm not suggesting anything against you idrios, merely adding my experience with this argument.

Not offended. In fact your response like this is exactly what I was asking for in my comment.

You are right, the "at least hear me out" argument is often used as defense to say something very questionable. The reason I phrased it that way though is because I am very close to one person who is as far right leaning as you could expect any reasonable person to be, and very close to another who is as far left as possible. I'm kind of forced to be in the middle if I want to maintain both of these relationships.

So to myself, I was using those 2 people as stand-ins for everyone else who might share their views. Both are very smart, both have very strong opinions that have been reached through a longstanding evolution of very small differences core values, and both are so deeply vested in their views that they wouldn't even be able to talk to each other.

So my comment was an appeal to anyone who feels that way about the other side, because I see no other way to fix the extreme polarization of ideals in the US.

I've flip flopped on issues and can see why people hold many of the problematic beliefs they do.

It seems to me that many lack the nuance and human experience to understand different people. It's the mindset of the raging homophobes that get caught with same sex partner(s). If you want to look to see how to deal with that issue in particular then look to media created by the people who've lived these experiences.

What's helped me the most is putting myself in uncomfortable situations and finding ways to cope. Don't like LGBTQIA+? Go to a gay bar, talk to the people there. Maybe find a way to get Fox to air humanizing stories about MPoCs, LGBTQIA+, abortion, addicts, and poor people.

It's harder to be close minded in typically blue urban areas where you'll regularly be confronted with norm defying people from all classes, colors, religions, and orientations. So the best way would be to find ways to bring these groups to the same haunts without them even knowing they're being funneled.

What do you yourself believe?

Personally, much more left leaning than right. My biggest concern about the future right now is the economy. I think we've made great progress in the last several decades breaking glass ceilings for women and minorities in the workforce and made some fantastic, huge technological breakthroughs. But I think a side effect of this is fewer jobs (from automation) and increased competition for those jobs. So I lean left on this issue -- I think we need an increase to minimum wage or a basic income or anything that gives more support for the unemployed. Worst case in my mind, they take advantage of this system and remove themselves from the labor pool making job applicants more competitive. I'll also add, with a bit of incredulity, that my conservative friend doesn't see a gap between wealthy and poor as an issue.

But I'm not 100% left. I'm not for socialized healthcare -- I worry about doctor visits becoming like the DMV (though even that would be an improvement to what we have now) and I worry about hospitals charging whatever they can because it's on the government's paycheck (even if that is an improvement to them doing it because it's on the insurer's paycheck) -- because I think there are better fixes to healthcare that don't require it being provided by the government.

On a more meta-level, I think there are far more political ideologies than just left and right, that progressive democrats have forced themselves to align with establishment democrats, as how Christian conservatives have forced themselves to align with anti-establishment conservatives (there might be a better label for it). So in that light it's ridiculous to me how, say, a progressive democrat can denounce a Christian conservative while supporting an establishment democrat when they have nearly as little in common with both.

Also, thank you for asking me this outright. Nobody on the internet ever has. What do you believe?

Thank you for such an honest and thoughtful response, and forgive my delay.

We probably agree on a lot of politics. I do believe in a national healthcare system (socialized medicine?), because our current approach is so unjust, and because I fundamentally believe that a democratic government is the tool that people use to collectively better themselves. I also believe in free higher education for the same reason. I think both would pay for themselves.

That said, I know actually doing those things (especially healthcare) in the U.S. would be quite tricky and that the practical implementation of something matters as much as what should ideally be.

In general I believe in intellectual honesty, integrity in public services, treating everyone with the same level of respect, and that people generally do better when they work together. Which is why I think the Trump Administration and the current crop of Republicans enabling him (note that I'm not saying all!) are such pieces of shit. I didn’t used to be so crude but at some point you have to make clear what’s not acceptable in the kind of society I believe in.

I'm also a huge fan of the arts, the liberal arts, and so a big believer in freedom of expression.

So I can be a bit of a political idealist. At the same time I've read a lot of history and think I understand that the world is a rough place and that people in power often have to make shitty choices between bad and worse.

TBH I think one of the biggest positive changes, both in this country and in the world, could be in the field of mental health. Consider how revolutionary modern medicine has been in terms of the physical health of the individual and all the positive good and realization of human potential that has come from that.

Mental health is (at least in Western science) still a very young field and only beginning to be socially accepted. Also consider just how much damage a troubled individual - especially someone in a position of power - can do. Even just a shitty manager can really fuck up other people's lives.

We also have to acknowledge that no one can have good mental health when they have constant economic insecurity, or lack a way to meaningfully contribute to their community/to society.

I believe that if we keep fucking over our planet, it's gonna be real shitty for the human race. Pollution plays a big role in mental health as well (nature is actually critical for good mental health, plus pollution causes myriad physical and mental health issues in the population).

So I tend to be a pretty strong critic of capitalism as it is today, and how it just makes things like polluting the environment "externalities". I see markets as a financial tool and not inherently good or bad (and definitely not magical!), and, I think regulated capitalism can have it's role, but, the system we see today sucks. The national and global wealth disparity as it exists today is unjust, unethical, and, even if it's legal, criminal. It's shameful that the richest country in the world is so poor (poor civic infrastructure, poor citizens, poor quality of life, etc).

That said , while there are so many positive reforms we can make, I don't know what's out there to replace capitalism as a whole. We've yet to see some other sort of economic system really be tried (I don't count the USSR and most 'socialist' countries; tbh most of those governments were fucked up or, undermined by the US). So who knows what a better system is.

I do like the United States; what I like about it is that criticizing it is part of our civic duty.

Lastly I believe people really don't like to be uncomfortable, or change, or question themselves, which is why we see so much resistance to acknwoledging things like the patriarchy or white supremacy; no one likes to think that maybe their own friends, family, or themselves, have behaved in ways which have been harmful to other people. No one likes to question the unspoken assumptions of their world. Which goes back to my point about mental health.

And I think this discomfort with change has been a big part of the terrible response to the pandemic; people would rather stay comfortable with what they know and die, or play a role in the deaths of others, than deal with the discomfort of change.

This in part comes from my own perspective from having done a lot of therapy and dealing with mental health issues.

This is the exact same thing as applying a label. Even if someone who disagrees with you does "need to grow," telling them that is a pretty surefire way to get them to write you off. If you actually want to convince and persuade people, you have to meet them where they are. That's the hard work in a democracy, and it can be frustrating and infuriating to see the pain that some people suffer because of the ignorance of others, but that's the way this country is supposed to work—through persuasion and conversation. We've tried lots of other methods of government and social structure throughout history and none of them has done better.

>meet them where they are.

That's the problem. This is why inclusive laws are so important. We don't have many now, and they're under constant threat.

People in the democratic party are beginning to come to terms with the fact they've had a cancerous brand issue since Bill Clinton, which Hillary further damaged. I don't know what to say of the Republican party who've fallen into lockstep with trumps criminal behavior.

Either we live in a country with laws and punishments for the criminals or we don't. Trump's made it unequivocally clear, on the world stage, that our law enforcement is prohibited from doing much besides abuse the human rights of immigrants (to his bases celebrations no less), round up junkies or put the occasional symbolic head on a spike. In a situation like this I don't believe it's going to be rational discourse that solves these problems. While I'd love to sit down and have rational conversations about politics with people from the other side, I'm afraid that many people are incapable of admitting that they're wrong, at least not before they've tried everything else. It's a movie trope and a saying for a reason.

People don't seem to want to defend their positions anymore. They want to say what they feel and face no challenge or debate. Even this "key" data scientist won't talk to the media, won't be identified. Sorry then, I don't give his opinion a lot of weight. It's easy to throw stones from inside a safe space.

Both seem giddy about abridging individual rights and liberal values.

Invite debate, look for commonality and move forward.

Let's not fall into the "whataboutism". Only one "side" has the President of the United States and other key leaders actively advocating for violence.

Lol. I have the other side telling me that this all misunderstood and then they’ll point you to the AOCs, Sanders talking about “make lists, lock them up”. They’ll say one side is only talking, but look at Portland, Seattle, DC, etc. there was actual violence. Then the other side will point to Kenosha, which the Trump side will point to as well as proof for them. And they’ll tack on Portland.

The truth is very much in the middle.

One faction is actively doing everything they can to undermine our system of government, everyone else is not.

That is the divide.

Actually both sides fervently believe the other side is doing everything they can to undermine our system of government, and both sides have valid points.

Please do elaborate.

If you identify with the left:

Why was election integrity highly questionable in 2016 (Russia, etc.), but not in 2020 after 4 years of Trump? Did something change in those 4 years to make election integrity unquestionable? In fact, election integrity is so unquestionable in 2020 that all the big tech companies are banding together to censor anything that questions election integrity.

If you identify with the right:

If there is a massive conspiracy to change the outcome of the election, why are not more whistleblowers coming forward? How was it coordinated across states?

The truth is that questionable things probably did happen in the 2020 election. The left needs to acknowledge this. The truth is that there isn't enough evidence that these questionable things probably didn't change the outcome of the election. The right needs to acknowledge this. Both sides need to agree on how to improve the 2024 election.

The claim by the left about 2016 is that there was foreign influence (and potential illegal collusion) in the election. There are fringe elements who claim that there was direct modification of votes, but the mainstream accusations are and were limited to things like advertisement targeting, funding, and potentially sharing of information between foreign actors and campaigns etc.

The mainstream claim by the right in 2020 is that there was widespread voter or election fraud (e.g. people voting multiple times, or people's votes being changed or vote counters not counting votes for a candidate).

There's a reasonable amount of evidence to support the assertions in 2016, including official government sources. There's reasonable amounts of evidence to conclude that many of the same tactics in 2016 were tried in 2020, including official government statements, but may have been less effective (due to awareness by the government, and policy changes by companies like Facebook and Google), and a lack of things like the DNC hack to make a big splash.

There's was no evidence of widespread voter or election fraud in 2016 or in 2020.

I would love for you to provide citations and references for your claims that people questioned the validity of the 2016 election. Many claimed Russian interference, many claimed that James Comey put his thumb on the scale, many claimed that the media provided Trump with a great deal of free media and that the mainstream media were easily whipped up with anti-Clinton stories, many claimed that the sitting administration erred in not publicizing known associations between high-level Trump campaign operatives and Russian agents.

NO ONE claimed that the vote was illegitimate. NO ONE claimed that the ballot boxes had been stuffed. The 2016 vote was much closer than 2020 and still the party that lost accepted the result and even if they mumbled about 'not my President' there was no one claiming that the election was stolen.

Please stop with the bullshit both-sides claims, it is pathetic.

> even if they mumbled about 'not my President'

more like shouted it at the top of their lungs for 4 years straight

> I would love for you to provide citations and references for your claims that people questioned the validity of the 2016 election

> there was no one claiming that the election was stolen.

I mean, I lived the 2016 election I remember the response of my left leaning friends, and some of them absolutely believed the election was rigged. Some quick googling can dig up lots of articles from 2016:

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/hillary-clinton-sugg...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/opinions/wp/2016/12/16/t...

https://www.lwv.org/newsroom/press-releases/2016-presidentia...

None of those articles contain claims that votes were changed (election fraud) or that voters voted repeatedly or illegally (voter fraud).

They do contain claims of voter suppression, which I'll note continue to be made by those on the left this year (and in 2018 and in pretty much every election, disenfranchisement is an ongoing concern on the left).

> provide citations and references for your claims that people questioned the validity of the 2016 election

A 2018 YouGov poll said that 66% of democrats polled believe the claim that Russia tampered with vote tallies on Election Day to help the President.

> https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/20...

Election integrity was not questionable in either 2016 or 2020. There were massive amounts of disinformation - both from foreign actors and from Trump - in both elections. But there was not significant fraud in either election.

I think a large part of the issue is that people that lean slightly one way are getting lumped in with the extremes of that direction where they don't see themselves like that.

Someone that questions immigration laws isn't necessarily a white supremacist for example, but that narrative isn't as interesting (doesn't sell as much advertising) as the white supremacist one.

If you were to truly believe fraud and impropriety occurred in the election you could rephrase your comment like this.

One faction actively did everything they could to undermine an election through fraud and impropriety, everyone else didn’t.

That is the divide.

This is what gp is talking about, both sides believing they are righteously just while they consume media in their bubbles.

Except that the facts only support one side.

"Disband the police" is such a pro-government slogan

Do you find it helpful to misrepresent other people's arguments, or do you simply not understand their arguments in the first place?

"Defund the police" was the slogan. Admittedly, still a brain-dead choice of a name for what the movement actually wanted.

Defund AND/OR disband. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2020/06/09/the-moveme...

The police are not part of a system of government. Removing the police would leave the US a democracy.

You removed the words "system of" which changes the phrase from a democratic to a nationalistic one. Blind support for the government isn't healthy for a democracy.

Oh, wow. You're right. Talking about "make lists, lock them up" is TOTALLY equivalent to "when the looting starts the shooting starts". Totally.

Do you have a reference to the make lists/lock them up?

I think this is what they’re referring to: https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1324807776510595078

I don’t know though, this was in a WhatsApp group, I remember seeing the conversation about something she said but idk if this was it

That sounds like take screenshots so we can call them out later, not make lists/lock them up.

I'll second this.

Neither side really instances the other side and many buy into the headline narrative that the other half aee basically all extremist nutjobs.

Third! This is such a weird moment in America history. In one side you have a rag-tag group of: classical conservatives, flyover working class white people,cuban-americans, evangelicals and in the other you have hollywood, the media, the tech companies, their employees, and the colleges. This is not a right/left split, not even a liberal/conservative split, this is a power split (on which the regular people are just cannon-fodder soldiers) between old money and new money.

Let's make some concrete claims then

On partisanship: "The extremist-related murders of 2019 [in the US] were overwhelmingly (90%) linked to right-wing extremists. All but one of the incidents had ties to right-wing extremism...Almost all of the 2019 extremist-related murders were committed by white supremacists"

On weapons: "In the past 10 years, 315 of the 435 people (72%) killed in the U.S. by domestic extremists were shot to death."

Source: ADL Report on Murder and Extremism in the United States in 2019 (https://www.adl.org/murder-and-extremism-2019)

> then they’ll point you to the AOCs, Sanders talking about “make lists, lock them up”

I don't see an equivalancy with "find problem people and lock them up", which inherently implies judicial process, and the other side, with Trump saying:

"After repeatedly being interrupted by protesters at a campaign rally in Miami, Trump warned he’ll “be a little more violent” next time when addressing protesters. “See the first group, I was nice. ‘Oh, take your time.’ The second group, I was pretty nice. The third group, I’ll be a little more violent. And the fourth group, I’ll say get the hell out of here!”"

"Trump told Fox News the next day, “Maybe he should have been roughed up, because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing. I have a lot of fans, and they were not happy about it. And this was a very obnoxious guy who was a troublemaker who was looking to make trouble.”"

"“If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you? Seriously. Just knock the hell out of them. I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees. I promise. There won’t be so much of them because the courts agree with us,” he said."

Complaints about "whataboutism" are a pretty poor way to excuse the set of problems that you are actually positioned to help solve.

Hey, could you please stop posting flamewar comments to HN? We ban accounts that do that, and I don't want to ban you (especially a 10-year-old account!) but you've been breaking the site guidelines repeatedly, and we need you to stop.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules, we'd be grateful.

That kind of hyperbole is both a huge part of the problem and, to me, impossible to espouse without being willfully obtuse.

> Even after obvious election tampering

That's the problem. The only tampering that seems obvious to me is the years-long efforts to limit voting rights, and at the moment the desperate attempts to invalidate mail-in ballots.

We can't agree on basic facts; how can we agree on remediations?

If the election tampering were obvious, the Trump appointed judges would have accepted the cases and ruled that way.

This election was roughly the same as any other us election in terms of fairness and all the rest. Probably better.

Granted, I haven't seen the data the people leaving FB are using to make their arguments, but at least they are saying that misinformation and posts arguing for assault or killing of individuals are much more prevalent among "conservative" groups:

> We have a very good idea which actors in the US drive the largest volumes of this kind of content. In the last 14 days, the 10 pages responsible for the largest concentrated volume of likely violating Hate Speech comments have been:

Breitbart

Fox News

The Daily Caller

USA Patriots for Donald Trump

Donald Trump for President

Donald J. Trump

Ben Shapiro

Conservative Tribune by WJ

US Chronicle

The Western Journal

These pages, and a few perennial others that didn’t happen to make the top 10 in the last two weeks, but that you can find by browsing the dashboard, are filling our platform with violent and hateful content at a rate and concentration that is simply overwhelming…