- Yes! Thank you! And now the same politicians and reporters who said that are pretending to care for the police hurt in this riot and talking about how important law enforcement is.
Forgive me for believing that law enforcement protecting family businesses is 1000x more important than law enforcement protecting politicians.
EDIT: love the downvotes from people who believe torching family businesses, often immigrant ones, is cool! I'm telling you guys keep downvoting. You really look like the good guys.
- > Because WaPo weren't encouraging people to go and "riot".
Maybe WaPo wasn't (although I doubt it). Other media certainly were: https://twitter.com/slate/status/1268415955937513473?lang=en
Or will we keep justifying direct justifications of violence, while ignoring the calls to peace spoken and written by Trump.
Honestly, I'm done at this point. I hope people like you keep saying what you're saying. You'll just convince more people, just like y'all have convinced me.
EDIT: more justifications of violence:
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/08/27/906642178...
Here's vice interviewing a man who just shot a trump supporter and killed him. They did this after he had done so, but before he was turned over to police. Harboring a criminal is illegal: https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7g8vb/man-linked-to-killing...
EDIT: and just like I thought, from the downvotes, people actually agree with the direct calls to violence issued by these mainstream outlets that led to over 30 deaths this summr]er, and $2billion in damages, mainly to small businesses all over america. The lack of moral convictions on this forum is pathetic.
- I'm the child of indian immigrants. My parents adored trump in 2016, I was meh because all my friends told me he was a white supremacist. I thought my parents had gone mad. But then I saw that nothing my friends claimed actually came true and in fact trump governed like any other republican but way better because he didn't exclude people due to culture war issues and he didn't warmonger and brought peace.
But what really redpilled me was the impeachment farce where he literally was impeached for investigating his predecessor for crimes we now know occurred. That sends a very chilling message.
- What part of Trump's policies are extremist? I ask this question honestly. None of his policies are extremist in the slightest. Even the mob on the sixth are just crazy supporters. Trump instructed them to be peaceful repeatedly, even while they were doing it. I understand that he is brusque and has a brash personality, but I cannot understand what it is about him that makes him more extreme than any other previous US president. I just do not understand.
This is an incredibly honest question. I typically ask it, people give me examples, and then I think back to previous presidents in my lifetime (none of whom I've supported, mind you), and can recall pretty much equivalent situations. Then the person I speak with gets angry and walks away really mad at me for what feels like simply remembering things that have happened in my life. I cannot understand it, and frankly, the simple refusal of people to actively engage has made me go from not liking Trump for his personality, to honestly finding him a hero. Please, will someone calmly explain to me what is extreme about Trump's policies?
I don't label Democrat policies as extreme despite no longer being part of that party and not agreeing with any of them. I don't understand the hyperbole.
- Wow okay.. Some people have too much time on their hands. Since I'm not giving them my money, I honestly don't really care what they do.
- Uh... I always thought it was! You're right though. It shares the philosophy though.
- I've been on parler for months. Stop exaggerating
- Speech should have limits, but calling anything that took place on parler automatically 'hate speech' so contemptible that it ought to result in banning along with everything else on that site is ridiculous. There have been few instances of truly censorship-worthy speech over the past year, from either left or right.
- It's not surprising, and it's disingenuous to accuse people of apathy. In several flu seasons, hospitals have been overwhelmed, tent beds set up, etc, and most people don't care because the flu is 'normal'. COVID is becoming 'normal', which is good, because it's not going away, so we all need to learn to deal with it.
This is like accusing those in the 50s for being apathetic about polio, because they didn't upend their entire life to protect their children from this incredibly deadly and disfiguring disease. When humans are confronted with a problem they simply cannot meaningfully prevent, they tend to ignore it and get on with their lives.
- I'm unsure if you think that I'm supposed to disagree with you. I really don't. YC is incredibly toxic. I let the scales fall off my eyes on that one. When I first graduated university and started reading hacker news, I had a dream to build a business with YC. I no longer have any interest in doing business with them (would rather bootstrap myself), and only remain on here because of the interesting tech articles.
VC as it is today is absolutely toxic.
- I have never said that speech should be fully free. I do have criteria that would be used to censor speech. However, neither the sixth riots or the summer riots had many actors whose speech I believe ought to have been banned.
For example, while I believe the democratic party spurred on or sat back in silence while BLM and Antifa rioted, most democratic politicians did not do anything that deserves censorship. Even Kamala Harris's financial support of those who looted and destroyed police stations in Minneapolis should not be censored -- the bail she asked for was a completely legal thing to provide.
As for the sixth, Trump's posts were entirely peaceful. He consistently asked for a peaceful demonstration. There are those claiming that using phrasing like 'fight' or 'take your country back', etc, incite violence. I do not believe that for one minute. Banning the opposition from saying they should 'fight' the incumbents or 'take the country back' from them seems incredibly dangerous. Even such colorful language as asking for politicians heads on a platter should not be banned (I recall several incidences of twitter accounts depicting Trump's beheading).
Politics in general leads to strong emotions. People have strong emotions over politicians. English has lots of colorful language for people we don't like. I believe the standards for 'violence' against politicians ought to be much lower than for calling for violence against people, especially non-governmental agents. For example, I do believe some of the BLM incitement of anger that instructed people to burn or loot local businesses (especially when that anger and mob then led to deaths), ought to have been soundly condemned, and I believe twitter should have flagged it and taken some measures to punish the account (although I still think outright censorship for one post would be overkill).
This is because these posts direct anger indiscriminately at people of a certain class, not one specific person who may actually have power. I find those kinds of posts highly problematic, and those would be the first I would censor, but again, I think we have seen only a handful of those over the past year. Certainly, I don't think any major politician has reached that bar.
So no, I do not believe in no censorship ever, I just have very open standards as to what speech to allow that would mainly have me allowing the vast majority of speech. I am not going to tighten my standards simply because left-wingers find them distasteful or want to accuse me of being a free speech zealot. I've stood on these same principles since when I was a democrat, and I'll stand on them now.
- I am a brown man who has been subject to many racist attacks. After 9/11 my elementary school classmates called me a terrorist. My father and I (when I was a young boy) was chased out of a car dealership by a mad salesman yelling strawberry picker at us. Walking through the downtown of my city with my white wife, I have been harassed by people who don't like we are in an interracial marriage.
I still do not believe that racism or incidents of racism, including the ones I described above, are 'objectively' human rights issues. They are clearly quite subjective, since they only really exist in my experience. My religion (which most would also describe as subjective) tells me that these experiences have absolute moral character, but barring my reference to that, I cannot say for sure whether or not such discourse is objectively wrong.
I especially have trouble labeling the discourse as 'objectively' a human rights violation when none of the behavior I described above has come from anyone in any position to have power over my life or my rights.
Honestly, to continue to harp on those individuals that have mistreated me would be incredibly childish.
- Fascism is quite literally the merger of corporations with government (see corporatism [1]). In non-Nazi Fascist countries, such as proto-fascist pre-Anschluss Austria and Mussolini's Italy, the government was organized such that individuals and 'stakeholders' (i.e., companies, unions, and guilds) were given a say in government. In interviews with NYT journalists, this is the eventual structure that even Adolf Hitler also had in mind after the revolution was through [3].
Yesterday, we saw the American corporate board take actions that used to be the sole purview of a government. They did this at a time while the current administration (the one they harmed) pursues anti-trust lawsuits against them. This is a clear blurring in the distinction between the incoming administration's government and corporations. The incoming administration would do best to criticize the banning of their opposition. Not only would it make them look like they're taking the 'higher road', it would put them in line with other major liberal western powers, such as Germany, France, etc, all of whom have condemned what happened yesterday. However, instead, we have seen the embrace of these corporate actions by the new congress. It is especially concerning when the incoming president took more donations than his opposition from large corporations [2].
This is very concerning, and -- unlike the constant doom-predictions of 'fasciscm' of the last four years, which have been made without any attention paid to the history of fascism -- brings us closer to actual fascism -- that is to say, the merger of corporations, unions, and government -- than any action of the last four years. That is not to say we're Nazi Germany by any means (for that we'd have to start injecting the language of racial superiority into the picture), but I just want to point this out. The number of people cheering uncritically (especially those in government) is incredibly concerning.
References:
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism#Corporatist_economic_s... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/20/us/politics/joe-biden-don... [3] https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1933/07/10/119...
Exact quote since it's behind a paywall:
"Asked if, after four years or twenty years of dictator ship, he foresaw the resumption of parliamentary government in Germany, the Chancellor [Hitler] paused: 'Yes,' he said finally, 'but with a Parliament of another and better type, in which representation will be on a technical basis. Such a development is the Italian corporative State.' (this is what I reference above on Wikipedia)
- So, what's the end game here? Can I not ever talk about my opinion to anybody? Can I share it with my wife? Can my wife look at what's going on in the world and disapprove, or is that not allowed? Are people who believe as I do simply to not exist? Should we be exterminated? Should our lives simply be made so miserable that we'd rather we were killed in Gulags? Exactly what are you attempting to accomplish here, because right now, I am not allowed to talk with people on facebook (group bans); I can't talk on reddit (subreddit bans); I can't talk in church (lockdowns). As we saw with Parler (which we were promised was safe, because now the central authority was not someone who didn't like me), I also can't make my own app or service with my tech skills, because they'll be banned too. I can talk with my wife and family, so I guess I'll just keep on breeding to make more people to talk to, until you decide that the school system ought to be used to take my children, nieces, and nephews away, as we've seen in other western countries already, or until we're not allowed to have kids, as has been proposed by some journals and implemented in other countries (to much applause, mind you).
That sounds like a really great world you have planned for us. I am so glad my parents fled a third world country where our ethnic group made us be treated like trash to escape to this! This is exactly what they had in mind when they left :)
I guess I just don't really get it. I've accepted that my ideology has lost; all I ask is to be left alone to work, garden, own my home, have my children, raise my children, and let them do the same. I have already unregistered to vote, and have no more interest in politics, other than to complain about it online. Am I allowed to do this? What more must I do to not be considered an evil monster? Honestly, my treatment on Hacker News over the past year has been worse than the combined effect of racism growing up brown in a mostly white neighborhood during 9/11. This is insanity at every level.
- The 1st amendment does not apply to private entities. The first amendment is a law restricting only Congress.
'Freedom of speech', however, is not the 1st amendment. It is an ethical precept, not a law. It's like how 'don't cheat on your wife' doesn't mean you get thrown in jail, but you'll generally be seen as a 'bad guy'.
- I am glad Poland is doing something, but I'm not sure I like this bill either. This is just censorship by another name.
I think we need to make a distinction -- as the US Supreme Court did -- between large, publicly held corporations and small closely held corporations. In Hobby Lobby, the Supreme Court said that only closely held corporations (those held by a small, definable number of people) had freedom of religion and association. That is their justification for why Hobby Lobby did not need to provide BC coverage. Because it was owned only by one small family, forcing them to take the revenue (which they own) to pay would directly violate the religious beliefs of that small number of people.
On the other hand, Amazon does not have freedom of religion, because Amazon has thousands of shareholders with no universal religious inclination. A fundamentalist christian owner of Amazon stock cannot reasonably ask Amazon to stop paying for birth control.
But, I've only thought about this for a few hours. I'm interested in what other policies can be implemented to serve both the rights of hosts and the rights of content creators.
- We actually see Trump/Sanders directly overlap in Tulsi Gabbard, a democrat who supported Sanders, but who often disagrees with Trump (and indeed, was the sole democrat to not vote for impeachment). Many Trumpers like her too. I like that she is honest personally. She has both criticized the antifa/blm riots and the riots on the sixth. Brought up concerns of both police brutality (concerns I share, BTW), and election integrity (which I also am concerned with).
I actually have supported with many actions of Antifa / BLM (probably wouldn't guess that from my post history), including the protests at Pelosi's and McConnell's houses, and the disruption of the globalist meetings you mention. I don't agree with them in their destruction of property, especially that of small mom-and-pop businesses, or even big business if it affects small businesses (by raising insurance rates for example). And obviously, I disagree with anything actually threatening lives.
- > Based on your logic, if both parties rejected Stalin then you'd be in favor of him.
Yes, I'd rather have a social democrat that rejects Stalin than a fiscal conservative that embraced him.
Unlike the various 'what-ifs' of policy issues, anyone can examine the actual record of Stalin and his policies. And, in my opinion, anyone who finds him a source of inspiration, regardless of their stated policy preferences, has a severe lack of judgement.
- Yes, you're right. The casting out of Ron Paul made me really mad. Thanks for reminding me.
No, no party is better really. The GOP is the same. It's run by the same kinds of old farts. My main source of good feelings towards the GOP is that I tend to agree with their unelected members. But more and more I'm seeing those members also hate the GOP establishment. I wouldn't be surprised to see the party fracture heavily soon. I hope the democrat party also has the same split. There are good, decent democrats that share common principles and who I'm sure cannot stand their party leadership. I mean, the DNC is so bad, that I actually feel sorry for my left-leaning friends who also seem unable to get any representation.
When they started destroying local businesses, I didn't support them. I posted once on my next door to please let's all remain peaceful and stop the destruction of local small businesses, and was met with immediate condemnations of being racist. I got so many hate messages, despite being brown myself, that I eventually left next door, out of fear of doxxing.
When BLM then went and tagged Pelosi and McConnell's homes, I cheered them on. I don't mind seeing people harass politicians. I just don't want them destroying private citizen's stuff, or killing them when they defend it.
And I don't read Breitbart. I read Mother Jones and the New Yorker, and sometimes I read Breitbart when left wing people get outraged by their articles.