Besides, at the end of the day, how different are the two sides? One party wants to prosecute a reporter who found a site vulnerability, and the other party wants to prosecute the man who exposed the world to the dragnet surveillance being conducted by the NSA.

I'm pretty sure both parties want that. Any successful system will work to perpetuate itself.

Democrats and Republican leadership *want* the "good v evil" dichotomy of their party versus the other.

One side is trying to prosecute a journalist who clicked view source and embarrassed an incompetent IT department. There was never any law broken under any remotely plausible legal theory.

The other side is trying to prosecute someone who violated their NDA to not disclose classified info. Now, you might think what he did was a net positive (I certainly do), but on the other hand it is objectively illegal. The DOJ could use their discretion and drop it, but they don't have to.

FTFY, unless you think Rs have any interest in dropping charges against Snowden. So even in your own examples, one party clearly has the upper hand, and it's not R.

A two party system has basically set this up to occur.

I can’t see that it could ever be changed, but it’s utterly toxic.

There are a hell of a lot of computer scientists and engineers who vote republican, certainty not a majority but definitely a large enough minority you can't discount them. They just don't broadcast it for reasons that should be obvious to anyone reading these comments.

Up until about 5 years ago I would agree that being even-handed on political matters is appropriate. But when one political party has gone completely mad with lust for power and has given up on science and rationality, how you vote is no longer just a political matter. The threat the Republican Party poses to the country and the world is existential.

And yes, there are crazies on the left, but no, they are nowhere near the threat posed by the GOP. The difference is several orders of magnitude.

There needs to be another Forum that somewhere between Hacker News and reddit, moderated but with a relatively open set of subjects that include the impact technology has on society

Even now, the few who voted to impeach over Jan 6 are cowed and quiet. Mitt Romney just voted against the Manchin-approved compromise voting rights bill.

These cowards are all afraid of their shadows. It's an incredible, once-per-century show of absolute cowardice and submission to a strongman.

The US has a decent shot of going the way of Turkey, Hungary, and Venezuela. The elected GOP senators and congresspeople are 100% to blame. They are sad, sorry, craven and ineffectual people.

Conservatives tend to not speak up because the hyperbolic vitriol has gotten out of hand.

OTOH, tech conservatives tend to be more libertarian than socially conservative, so (massive generalization here) tend to prefer to work at work and do politics elsewhere.

"Celebrating" political positions is such a foreign concept to me that I dont even know where to begin with that. Left or right, I would probably avoid it.

Of course I have found that when pressed, those who hold this philosophy seem to picture themselves as the lords in this fantasy utopia. Maybe these are just power fantasies, but some of them seem very serious about it (Curtis Yarvin is probably the most notable of the bunch)

I would have called myself a libertarian back then but that was back when words meant things, or at least more than they do now. I stopped using the term when the fascists took it over.

It’s popular in some left leaning circles and particularly among people who did not live through that era to claim that libertarianism and cyberculture was always like this. It wasn’t. There was a mass conversion event around the early 20-teens that sort of coincided with Gamergate (not sure how important GG was but that was the era). I’d say a large proportion of an entire generation of younger “hacker” types were mass converted to fascism or neoreaction. Racism also made a massive comeback.

I still don’t fully understand it. The LessWrong orbit seems to be a major factor. I never found that whole circle particularly interesting, but a lot of people sure did.

See Peter Thiel: "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible."

The freedom he desires is the freedom to use his privilege to oppress others.

Which includes Republicans: https://twitter.com/tonylovasco/status/1448672694065668105

If you want to make scientific ignorance a political issue, we can discuss nuclear power, GMOs, unreasonable COVID restrictions, and plenty more.

If you want to discuss those things, it's worth first pointing out that the US had the worst Covid death toll of the G7 countries[0] and that red states had higher case and death rates than blue states[1].

Also, it's possible to accept the science of nuclear power and GMOs while still not trusting large corporations to exercise sufficient care and restraint when given control over nuclear material and life itself, especially when the government agencies ultimately responsible for regulating those technologies are half the time appointed by a party that doesn't believe in regulations or government.

[0] https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/us-death-rate-worse-brita...

[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2021/03/10/politics/covid-cases-deat...

Kansas City native here.

I vote democratic and agree with the comment you are replying to.

there is one data point that this isnt a partisan issue, but a rather non-partisan one involving an elected official.

Go Tom Brady, give the Buccs another win and put some dirt in Maholmes' eye.