We never really addressed the issues of the Civil War. Desegregation caused white men to destroy the social fabric of the nation. We used to have municipal pools that were free to use. Ambulances used to be free as well as trash collection. The idea of communities running services ended with desegregation and white flight from the cities. Now we have become an “i’ve got mine, fuck you” nation.

They want your money. Nothing to do with MAGA. They “cut” federal spending and fire people from their jobs while MElon makes $100b since December.

how does canceling a meeting to pick a flu strain for development of a flu vaccine help them to acquire money?

If a bunch of old people on Social Security die several years early due to influenza... Yay! They saved money and extended Social Security! Or can raid it for other things...

It seems like the bigger win financially would be back room deals with pharmaceutical companies selling the next vaccine.

Saving money on social security because more unhealthy people died doesn't directly make anyone in charge any more rich. Unless I missed something you can't short Social Security liabilities.

It reduces life expectancies, which reduces social security obligation.

musks been getting more federal contracts during all this, so it's probably just cutting any spending he can to free up money for him

That doesn't make any sense

Depends who was in the meeting.

It’s a collusion to create chaos and dismantle the system that can track what they are doing. You think “flu vaccine”, they steal elsewhere. Today a vaccine, last week an email to justify jobs, earlier USAID, next week something else. It’s a distraction.

Its interesting to see so many conspiracy theories pop up on a more left-leaning site.

The last 6-8 years has largely seen democrats deriding republicans (or MAGA specifically) for sharing unproven claims of a deep state, pedophile rings, etc. Now we're seeing a growing list of conspiracy theories related to what and why the Trump administration is up to.

The theories may even be right in the end, that does happen. They're just currently based on speculation and presumed intent.

I’m not from the US. I’m just an outside spectator.

Sorry I should have been more clear there.

I didn't actually mean to imply that I was calling you out as a conspiracy theorist here. I replied here because it seemed to fit well with the comment thread, but was more trying to comment on the general ethos I've seen here in the US and how many conspiracy theories now seem to be talked about in the media from the other side of the aisle as it were (Democratic leaning media instead of Republican leaning).

It's not exactly a conspiracy when they're literally outright saying this is what they're doing. Like Elon Musk is out there regurgitating every single stupid reason you can think of for dismantling the government, you can spend like an hour trawling his feed and realize that all of these conspiracies are just things he's outright admitting.

> It’s a collusion to create chaos and dismantle the system that can track what they are doing. You think “flu vaccine”, they steal elsewhere. Today a vaccine, last week an email to justify jobs, earlier USAID, next week something else. It’s a distraction.

This is the comment I was replying to. I at least haven't seen any direct acknowledgements if this being the goal, and the comment or even refers to it as collusion with predictions of what comes next. That seems squarely in the conspiracy theory realm to me, in line with all the theories thrown around while Biden was in office or Hillary was running.

> The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.”

Steve bannon, part of the first trump presidency

Sure, I saw that interview clip and raised it elsewhere on HN. That still doesn't move this from conspiracy to confirmed plan as described in the earlier comment.

There's nothing wrong with a conspiracy theory. They're just often backed by anecdotal or circumstantial evidence and aren't yet really proven. This still falls into that bucket.

Interestingly enough, plenty of conspiracy theories turn out to be at least partially true, the same could happen here.

I've had the same thought. I've literally watched the conspiracy theorists change among my friends. Strange times.

Don't have to pay for flu vaccines for medicare/medicaid, because they are "unsafe"

Hurt people hurt people.

Tom Nichols made a good point about this - he is from a very Trump-supporting demographic (white working class, baby boomer), and his observation was that all of his Trump-supporting friends and family are doing much better off now then when they were growing up. In terms of housing, food, access to healthcare, stress about money - they are a huge step above where they were in the 60s and 70s.

So whatever hurt these people suffered wasn't material. It's just resentment about other people (minorities, the "urban elite") having status or power.

I think various parties have managed to frame political discourse in America as an us vs. them, ingroup vs. outgroup, purely partisan sport. All that matters to people is that their team scores points and the other team loses points. There are no real principles or foundational beliefs, evidenced by how easily people flip their opinions on issues depending on who's acting on them. Biden using Executive Orders? Bad. Trump using Executive Orders? Good.

It's just a game, and winning the game feels good.

Because the ad tech is one helluva drug!

The people who voted Trump and don't wear the paraphernalia occasionally check news and from what I can tell aren't regularly doomscrolling. They'll probably get disagreeable if you talk politics with them. But in general daily interactions, they are polite and helpful. (Not to say I agree with their vote-- you're just asking about their temperament.)

But to a person the diehards I've met seem to be plugged in for a good portion of the day to their devices for outrage porn doomscrolling and posting incrementally angrier content.

Digression-- One time I looked up a Bill Burr bit about sandwiches on Youtube. For weeks it recommended manosphere bullshit and white-supremacist-adjacent conspiracy theory content.

MAGA is just one of the set of social media users who, for various reasons, clicked their way down those recommendation rabbitholes.

I'd bet there are at least a dozen devs reading this who could find the exact commit that Youtube began sending a predictable portion of their userbase down radicalization rabbit holes like these. Perhaps some time in the future there will be a memorial where that diff is etched in a large slab of stone.

I live in a very red state and mostly know Trump voters. I disagree with them on plenty of political topics (though that was true with Biden voters as well).

I don't consider many of them hateful though, and they are helpful to neighbors.

The last 2-8 years has felt very strange to me comparing what I experience day to day and how I often see our society more broadly described.

I've lived in Seattle, Europe, and the southern US over that time. Everywhere I've been I found people in the area to be friendly and helpful. Watch TV though and it sure seems like whoever the "other side" for a particular context are a bunch of horrible, hateful, angry people that just don't get it.

With regards to MAGA specifically. I don't find most of the ideas I hear floated as more hateful than the overtone coming from the democratic side of the aisle during the pandemic response. Anyone who chose not to get vaccinated was demonized and painted as a murder who hates old people. Anyone who disagreed with the main narrative was generally ostracized and slapped with labels like "anti-vaxxer" or "anti-science".

It's very common for people who do or support terrible things to also be nice to their neighbors, or more generally to be nice to the people they can identify with and know on a personal level. They just don't see the people that they can't identify with as fully human and worthy of the same dignity.

This is not to say that your neighbors are evil people - I'm just saying that you can't just judge people by how they interact with people in their in-group.

I don't actually think I would have fallen into the "in-group" for most of my neighbors over the years.

In most cases I've had pretty wildly different political and religious views, and for a period was myself an immigrant that could hardly speak the local language.

My honest view is that people individually and in small groups are surprisingly friendly, helpful, and welcoming. Its only when the community or group gets too big and people start defining teams that things get nasty.

"The true measure of a man is most evident in how he treats those who can do him neither good nor ill."

>With regards to MAGA specifically. I don't find most of the ideas I hear floated as more hateful than the overtone coming from the democratic side

This is eyebrow-raising. I have no defense for any political party for all the un-subtle criticisms they inevitably put out, Democrats or otherwise. But to suggest that MAGA are, on par, less hateful than Democrats, begs expounding. In other words, you can certainly make that argument, but it flies in the face of common understanding - which doesn't mean it's not true! It just means you have to give a little more than just stating it. It's like saying, "Actually, Genghis Khan didn't conquer very much", and leaving it at that instead of presenting some kind of insight.

Of course, there is always simply the bubble explanation (my bubble is not representative, or your bubble is not representative), however... regarding the degree of MAGA's hatred for liberals and the people liberals defend? I hate being curt but: Come on.

I didn't get vaccinated for Covid after spending months reading whitepapers and listening to vaccine experts discuss the pandemic as it played out through 2020.

I experienced plenty of hate thrown my way for 2 or 3 years after that decision, including in speeches from the president.

I don't know how to quantify hatefulness, especially in a large group, well enough to absolutely compare the two. I do strongly stand behind the fact that plenty of hate was thrown towards anyone who disagreed with the narrative during the pandemic response though. More than MAGA? No clue, but a relative comparison doesn't make it better in absolute terms.

I think part of why the shots became so controversial, is because the disease adapted anyway. You're basically having to decide on "less bad" vs "roll the dice" when you inevitably get COVID. People were already needing encouragement to get a flu shot; now you need two every 6-12 months? And then you had the whole sidebar discussion of getting Ivermectin, or snake oil silver supplements, or whatever else that was suggested as a cure; you don't get that with discussions over flu. So yeah, it all got uglier than it needed to be.

We in the US still haven't fully come to grips with the loss of over a million people to COVID. And now we're going to kick the can on proven public health measures, that have nothing to do with COVID, because of the off chance someone will become socially isolated / "less cool" to take care of their "freak" neurodivergent child.

I can only speak to my experience in the US and Europe during the pandemic, but I didn't feel singled out because people were aware that the virus kept adapting.

That was actually one of the key lessons I heard from virologists early on in 2020 - viruses like this tend to mutate quickly and escape vaccine-induced immunity. It wasn't until the vaccines were announced that the story changed and we were being told that the vaccines were effective and would only require one or two shots for permanent protection.

It got ugly because scientific study, and more importantly the limits of scientific understanding, was thrown out in favor of a more religious take on the whole field. Media organizations, late night talk shows, and even comedians were doing segments shaming anyone that was attempting to do their ow research (aka learn, consider the trade offs for themselves, and practice informed consent).

I think your experience may be different than others. A lot of people are skeptical of, or can't afford, medical interventions in chronic issues and serious illness. You had anti-vaxxers posting stuff like how the shot was going to make you sterile, or even kill you disproportionately to the virus itself. Your research sounds higher-quality than what most folks even bothered with, and that makes room for the mockery you pointed out.

Oh there was absolutely crazy information being shared around, we definitely agree there.

I had a coworker try to explain how 5G caused covid. Granted there is no technical reason why an EMF couldn't cause similar symptoms, there just wasn't any well founded research showing that and a much more simple explanation already had better scientific support (the novel virus).

Mockery is a tricky one though. Mocking any particular idea seems reasonable enough. Most people at the time were lumping in anyone that chose not to get the vaccine as an anti-vaxxer, wacko, conspiracy theorist, etc.

This sort of rhetoric might've worked pre-Presidency but you would have to be either deliberately ignorant or outright agree with some of the hateful rhetoric of the president. Things like depriving transgender individuals of their basic rights, moving to denaturalize citizens, the white house posting illegal immigration deportation ASMR [1] and many, many more.

[1] https://x.com/WhiteHouse/status/1891922058415603980

Oh I don't agree with any of the examples you raised. I also don't know how to compare levels of hate, though.

I took issue with Obama-era ICE raids, Biden's speeches regarding anyone that decided not to get vaccinated, Bush's description of really most of the middle east. Hell, even how many have talked about Russians as though every single Russian citizen supports the Ukraine war is hateful.

Hate is almost a given when groups are given a name and we begin othering people. That's nothing new to human history and has seemed to be more and more common over the last decade or two.