The problem is what can be done? The usual arrangement of letter writing or donating and voting is just more of the same cycle.

I'm not by any means in favor of what's going on, but some steam has to be let out of the system. And the real problem is trust in our institutions. What can be done about that?

I have my causes to which I devote great time and personal effort, but if I stopped my life for every minor disaster I would spend my life shaking my fist at my computer.

I quite like my life and I don’t intend to spend it getting rage baited by never-ending news cycles.

Give me an action to take, not an emotion to feel.

That's not what is currently happening. It's not a minor disaster. It's something we'll take generations to recover from, if ever.

We can't do much, individually. Find people in your community working on stuff you care about and get out there and pitch in. Get involved. Make sure your local school district isn't banning books or being cruel to trans kids. Make sure you have good city councilors.

A friend of mine made this in the area where I live: https://deschutesgrassroots.com/

What this means to you personally and other tech workers is that many of the well-paying tech jobs will be going elsewhere.

Like, it can ALWAYS be worse.

We the liberal elite grew up with institutions making these kinds of decisions and we trust it to a certain extent.

There's a trust gap. Even the staunchest republican I know will gladly volunteer to help their local community for the most part. That's their priority.

It's hard to understand your adversary when you have so much contempt for them.

That is incredibly charitable. Kudos, I guess, but not at all in line with what I’ve seen.

It's an issue of tradeoffs, and the tradeoffs were never clearly articulated even to me the most staunch supporter of foreign aid. We've just accepted it and all such programs because we can see, because we trust, that the analysis was done and is valid.

Government does not currently have that level of trust with half the country, and worse has active distrust.

Then you can’t win an information war, when it’s free speech, and counter speech is too complicated.

On the other hand - you sure as hell can convert the blitz into trench warfare, and gum up the war machine.

Tech platforms censored a lot of right of center content, thinking it would mean those ideas would disappear.

Instead Musk took over Twitter, right leaning podcasts became far more popular than left leaning podcasts because they were willing to engage in controversial topics, and now Trump and Musk control everything.

But, you know, keep trying the same thing and hoping for different results.

A thought experiment for you: how do you think the audience of Hacker News compares to Joe Rogan? And your focus is seriously on censoring more content on Hacker News to move the needle in national politics?

No shame, fuck your karma count and technical expertise.

(And to be clear I'm not talking about the swearing, I'm talking about the totally off base assumptions made about OP's political stance and the level of aggression you're showing. It's time to log off and touch grass, dude.)

Here's a simple one that was just flagged recently:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43405402

So if it's not Dang that's doing this, then there is a MAGA contingent here as far as I'm concerned. Some of you don't have the appropriate level of vigor quite frankly and might need more of those T boost shots Rogan tells yall to always get.

No, you're saying "fuck you" to anyone and everyone who isn't waving their "I hate Trump" card right out of the gate. Near as I can tell reading through past comments, OP is in the sizable contingent that thinks that recent US politics has resembled nothing so much as an all-out war between toddlers and that left-wing hatred and bile like what you are manifesting bears at least some responsibility for getting us Trump in the first place.

It's possible to hate Trump, hate MAGA, and also think that the actions of liberals through the last decade directly contributed to the environment that led to his rise. Apparently that position counts as "the other side" to you, which is exactly what led us here: if there are only two sides then it's too easy to be a Trump supporter.

I'll concede that, that's a great point. However, the key to maintaining a balanced diet is first you must get to a target weight you would like to balance from. You can't just be 300lbs and begin eating a balanced diet. There is no time to sit here and argue about anything you mentioned. We are simply in crisis and this involves wiping the slate clean of the mindshare that is sitting right before us. We can discuss our old hatreds afterwards, which pale in comparison. Basically, we need to restart the game from the last save point, as much is it sucks. We can't take the balanced diet of all sides bad because we're extremely obese at the moment.

Some disagree, to which I generally just leave a Fuck You.

The only way that any of this makes any kind of sense is if you're proposing that we lean into the abolition of democracy, and if you were going to propose that then the time to do it was sometime before Jan 20 2025. The far right are the ones with the militias, so an armed revolt isn't going to go our way, and now that Trump is in office abolishing democracy from the top down would obviously not lead to the outcome you want.

Like it or not, we're stuck with white knuckling it and trying to persuade people to vote our way in the midterms, and this style of rhetoric is decidedly counterproductive towards that end.

We don't need to dismantle democracy. That's their game.

I don’t think history is a progression of superior morals or thinking, or that there are ethical “sides” to it.

Whatever, it's only month three, not too late.

Notice that your ability to label things with a strong moral charge refers to a handful of historical events from the past 200 years. Everything before that gets really fuzzy, is multi-faceted, and doesn’t evoke emotion.

Absolute monarchy was worse than systems that shared power with an aristocracy which in turn was worse than restricted democracy which was worse than universal suffrage.

Feudalism was worse than capitalism which in turn was worse than the results of the labor movement.

Forced conversion was worse than religious discrimination which in turn was worse than religious freedom.

That’s not true. In aristotle’s politics he explores the major forms of government of which demagoguery is a corruption of democracy. And he gives examples.

and what do you mean by better? Do you claim that Every democracy that’s ever existed functions better than every aristocracy in fulfilling its governing role? Better for who in and what regard?

> capitalism and fuedalism

There are absolutely no tradeoffs between feudalism and capitalism? Capitalism is an absolute good in comparison?

And you’re only highlighting the major movements it the progressive narrative and ignored all the twists and turns. Was Catholicism better than Protestantism? What about agrarian hunter/gatherer vs capitalism?

Put a bow on this for me.

1) are they on the wrong or right side of history? 2) would anyone in 2025 have their moral sensibilities hurt?

Your rules:

1) I cannot use my sensibility to look at the last 200 years (huh? okay.)

2) I need to now make sense of geopolitical beef between England and France around 1300.

3) Then I need to tie this all back to how this all leads to not be being able to determine, morally, what's going on today.

Are these the rules to becoming the pokemon master in your gym? I'll continue if I have all the rules down. I'm excited to attend your world class mental gym and get the greatest of all mental gymnastics training.

Or stated another way, the premise implied by your question is incorrect. Its perfectly possible that both England and France were on the wrong side of history.

And once again, not me the absence of emotion. Saying “they’re both right” or “they’re both wrong” elicits nothing.

Instead the whole country funds programs that half of them don't trust, regardless of who is in charge.

It's a really interesting phenomenon. And I'm kind of surprised the community allows it.

Not discussing and/or allowing bots to overrun any such discussion and drown out dissent has never in the history of man left to immediately better times in STEM.

It's sure hard to ignore. IDK, maybe some enterprising person should start a "hackers for democracy" web site where we can share ideas or something.

This is already happening. I'm finding myself visiting the site less and less and enjoying my time here less and less because every single thread is getting hijacked by people who just want to talk politics.

That I largely agree with the general mood is exactly the problem: I don't need HN to work me up into even greater despair, I come here to engage my mind on useful things and talk about complex ideas with interesting people. But the interesting people are increasingly retreating from the nonstop anger cycle that's been feeding this site's engagement this year.

People here build global companies that change the world. It would be disgusting to know they turn off their ears to the world's troubles. Maybe a lot of people do need to leave, including me, including you.

There are out-sized minds that cannot stop talking about the world's troubles (Chomksy comes to mind). We do a pretty good job not talking about Palestine which should be here daily because it has a ton of data behind it. Now we have to eat shit from the government and not talk about that.

An exodus is fine.

We can't talk about science anymore because all the people working on it are worried about their jobs and lives instead of... well... doing science.

I appreciate wanting to come on HN and read about all the cool science-related articles without being troubled by politics too much. That stuff is weighty. It's nice to to just chill out and learn about cool things.

But we can't have those nice things anymore. Because faculty meetings are now spent talking about which words researchers have to avoid in our proposals because we don't want to be rejected by the government censors.

We used to talk about the cool things we would do for our students and our research plans. But now we are more worried about if we're even going to have jobs in 12 months. We are worried about our already-allocated funds being pulled.

We aren't talking about science anymore, because we have to talk about how to avoid being the next "transgender mice". We are dodging death threats if we trend on social media. We are losing our jobs. We are being detained at airports and denied entry to the US for holding anti Trump views. We are being deported from the country.

So I think your read on the situation is off; the interesting people are not retreating from nonstop anger cycles, they are under attack and not engaging in their typical behavior you find interesting. Instead of disengaging entirely, they need your support, so they can get back to doing cool things you find interesting.

HN is dying, and it's not dying to Trump. It's dying to the undirected rage that has infused every subthread, and that is something that's within our control even if Trump and his actions aren't. It's not useful, it's just an emotional drain that serves to further exhaust those who are best positioned to help and further polarize an already dangerously polarized world.

When you see the corruption allowing, greedy tax obsessed Republican, when you see their true face, it's the greatest rallying call for a blowout midterms.

Just cut the tall grass to see the critters in the field.

Something has shifted dramatically in the discourse the last two months, and HN isn't working the way it used to.

I think one thing that has shifted dramatically in the last two months is that it's become clear many people who had a more moderated outlook on the current administration have turned out to be flat wrong about who these people are and what their intended course of action is. A "mask drop" moment. That's going to cause people to disengage, stick their hands, and even become irrationally angry.

Nonetheless I find this is still a place where you can talk to people on the "other side" in a rational way.

This whole topic has been done to death on HN, and this post doesn't contribute much that hasn't already been discussed extensively. Science underpins technology, but we've had 2-3 DOGE-related topics pinned to the front page at a time nonstop since the inauguration and the subject is bleeding incessantly into every other submission on the site.

Rest assured you'll have another 500+ comment rage fest in the near future, probably this week. This one just doesn't have enough going to feed the rage spiral—it's pretty blase compared to the dosage we've worked ourselves up to.

Too late, unless DOGE is stopped now and Trump is impeached, the US will lose its lead in tech and health (pharma) and many other industries. Pure and simple. Already the smartest of the smart are leaving the US for Europe and probably China.

If this is allowed to continue, in 6 months to a year, the US will be isolated and a third rate economy. All it will have is a first class war machine, which will not bode well for the world.

And that won't last for much longer after losing those other sectors, either, as military dominance is a function of economic and technological superiority.