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points by swingandamiss 4 days ago | 0 comments

I truly hate what HN has become. It has all the expected comments about Musk, fascism, etc. This is exactly why I stopped going to reddit.

[–] aliasxneo 4 days ago

Just a friendly gesture that there's still independents/non-partisan's here. We're a dying breed, but it seems to the the inevitable outcome when politics becomes a religion.

[–] i_love_retros 4 days ago

In current times only cowards and deadbeats are non partisan.

[–] aliasxneo 4 days ago

Non-partisan doesn't mean lack of engagement or action. Maybe that's why there's so much confusion here.

[–] mangodrunk 3 days ago

By non-partisan, it is meant that a person will apply reasoning instead of blindly following the partisan narrative.

[–] torlok 4 days ago

Buddy, ICE is chasing down and killing US citizens. Musk is openly supporting European neo-Nazis. The US tech sector is supporting the genocide of Palestinians, and interfering with foreign elections.

[–] cowlevel 4 days ago

The left: we need free healthcare and less market capture.

The right: we need to torture immigrants and more market capture.

The center: I can't decide between these two equally appealing, equally moral options.

[–] mangodrunk 3 days ago

Or,

The left: let’s do empty gestures and those who are supposed to help just commit fraud instead. Let’s support genocide but be “sad” about it online.

The right: let’s make sure that people aren’t hindered in leading the lives that they want and everyone benefits from this.

The center: the left claims to do nice things and the right doesn’t seem friendly.

[–] cowlevel 2 days ago

Which part of exiling people and torturing other people is "making sure they aren't hindered in leading the lives that they want"

Or do those ones not count as people?

[–] verdverm 4 days ago

This is a naive perspective. Both extremes are losing people to independents for a reason. What we want is less of this and more of civil discourse. Most people are not tuned into the details, are focusing on their family, and vote based on how their wallet feels and the things they hear 2-3 weeks before the election.

Perhaps if the far left and hard right didn't dominate primaries (many reasons for this), we could have less extreme candidates in November. But it is what it is until we start having civil conversations with our friends, family, neighbors, and community. We could be having conversations about how we improve our democracy.

You comment lends to being part of the problem. Please stop demeaning everyone with blanket statements.

As an independent volunteering with Indivisible, my main effort has been to moderate the members on the far left.

[–] cycomanic 4 days ago

Just to clarify I'm not american and I don't support either us main party, but your comment that the hard left and hard right are dominating the primaries sums it up pretty clearly. From an outside perspective only absolute miniscule fraction of politicians in the US are hard left. Most of US politics would be anywhere between moderate conservative to extreme right in the rest of the world.

[–] aliasxneo 4 days ago

This person seem content with summarizing the entire choice of a political party into a single point of torturing immigrants. It's no wonder we're in the state we are.

[–] cowlevel 4 days ago

I have heard of precisely three people in American politics who are left at all, much less far left. Those are AOC, Bernie Sanders, and Zohran Mamdani. The left is certainly not dominating any primaries.

[–] verdverm 4 days ago

They are democratic socialists, the far left is a much bigger camp.

The rule of thumb I use is, do they say things like "win at all costs" or talk about how they want to dominate others, forcing their views on all Americans.

[–] cycomanic 4 days ago

So where are the quotes of hard left politicians (and not some fringe politician) saying they want to dominate everything. Also how is that even part of a left/right definition. In fact in my experience the ones who most talk about eliminating others in politics are the self declared moderates, who at every opportunity talk about how we need to eliminate the extremes from politics.

[–] alex-hall 4 days ago

guy whose blog is capstoned with "vive la résistance" bragging about spending his free time moderating the left

[–] cowlevel 4 days ago

By that metric Donald Trump is far left, so I don't think it's a good metric.

[–] Refreeze5224 4 days ago

> until we start having civil conversations with our friends, family, neighbors, and community. We could be having conversations about how we improve our democracy.

You don't have much idea what some of our family, friends, and neighbors are like do you? I have nothing to say to fascists, Nazis, and anyone who advocates for the things MAGA advocates for. Spare us the "oh we should just talk it out" BS. The time for discourse ended when people started advocating for racist fascism. And if you're unable to spot the racist fascism, then you likely support it.

[–] verdverm 4 days ago

How do you expect them move away from those awful mindsets if we don't talk to them?

[–] Refreeze5224 3 days ago

There is firm historical precedent on how to talk to Nazis.

[–] mangodrunk 3 days ago

Buddy, I think you would benefit from getting your news from other sources.

[–] aliasxneo 4 days ago

See, the problem is that each side has moved so far to the extreme that any middle of the road comment is perceived as supporting the other side. But thanks for the demonstration, I guess.

[–] cowlevel 4 days ago

A middle of the road comment would be "we need taxes, but not too high" or "children shouldn't be going hungry, but very sadly we can't afford to feed them from the city budget". What's actually being responded to above is the complete lack of a comment.

[–] torlok 4 days ago

Swing and a miss buddy. The point is that big tech is political by its own choice, and you have to be extremely ignorant to look past that.

[–] aliasxneo 4 days ago

No, you just blatantly assumed none of those things mattered to me. You do realize you can have morals and opinions but also be non-partisan, right? Of course big tech is political, I completely agree. But you never asked me that question. Which again, really just keeps driving my point home. It's rabid.

[–] cowlevel 4 days ago

The parties have morals and opinions which are quite diametrically opposed. If you have any at all, then you necessarily align with one or the other - being in the exact middle is an extreme rarity (and also quite a stupid position, because it implies you can't decide whether it's better to have free healthcare or to torture immigrants). Most people who claim to be in the exact middle are in fact not.

[–] aliasxneo 4 days ago

Being non-partisan or independent has nothing to do with being in the "exact middle." I don't even think that's a real thing, nor did I ever imply it was. A better example is that, given an election ballot, I might split party lines rather than toe it unconditionally. I register as neither party because I generally disagree enough I don't wish to be affiliated with their policies. It doesn't mean I don't agree with some. Perhaps one election cycle I swing more left than right and the next I swing more right than left. It doesn't mean one cycle I identify as a Democrat and the other a Republican.

Since you keep baiting me with your straw man, I'll address the example: I neither want to torture immigrants nor do I want to give free healthcare to non-taxpayers. So, given your straw man, that would posit I'm in neither party's camp.

[–] vrganj 4 days ago

"We'll just shoot protestors a little bit"

[–] roshannarma 4 days ago

Yeah it's a really bad echo chamber, hard to find any system that is not built around group thinking

[–] mangodrunk 3 days ago

The mental gymnastics on display here by so many is quite impressive. Many are now saying term limits are bad. They want the government to control media outlets. They take on face value vague accusations against META doing something wrong.

[–] newsy-combi 4 days ago

True.

[–] mmustapic 4 days ago

> I truly hate what HN has become

Account created 3 months ago

[–] swingandamiss 3 days ago

As if alt accounts don't exist

[–] i_love_retros 4 days ago

So you're not against fascism?

[–] draxen 4 days ago

Anglo-American media spend the 2000s and 2010s accusing Denmark of being fascist.

The word is absolutely meaningless now.

[–] tim333 4 days ago

The word may be ill defined but it's a useful term for the current trend of right wing populist autocratic leaders.

[–] mangodrunk 3 days ago

Unfortunately those on the left seem to have fascist tendencies.

[–] tim333 3 days ago

Well some of them. You can always use another word for those. Socialist tends to get used. It's kind of funny how politics corrupts all terms from their original meaning.

[–] georgemcbay 4 days ago

A shocking number of people aren't against fascism, as long as you don't use the actual word to describe what they support.

And when you correctly use the word to describe what they are supporting, you are inciting violence.

[–] cowlevel 4 days ago

Example?

[–] howunfortunate 4 days ago

O'Sullivan's First Law: "Any organization not explicitly right-wing will eventually become left-wing"

[–] cowlevel 4 days ago

Usually laws are based on some kind of observable reality.

[–] howunfortunate 4 days ago

Here are a couple examples of initially neutral or moderate organizations that became left wing bastions:

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

Screen Actors Guild–American Federation of Television and Radio Artists

Writers Guild of America

Directors Guild of America

National Education Association

American Federation of Teachers

American Psychological Association

American Sociological Association

Modern Language Association

American Historical Association

Association of American Universities

Columbia University

Harvard University

Yale University

University of California, Berkeley

Oberlin College

Reed College

NPR

PBS

The New York Times

The Washington Post

The Guardian

Human Rights Campaign

GLAAD

Good luck finding examples of the opposite direction.

[–] lioeters 4 days ago

The "left" has a well-known reality bias.

[–] cowlevel 4 days ago

Here are a few examples of initially neutral or moderate organisations that are using their time machines to harbor enemies of His Majesty Homer Simpson:

(Pretend I wrote the exact same list)

[–] tmnvix 4 days ago

The New York Times and The Washington Post left wing bastions?

Either your list is way out of date or the Overton Window is so far to the right in the US that this statement is somehow possible.

There are many more institutions on that list that are explicitly not left wing by non-US standards.

[–] CRConrad 3 days ago

the Overton Window in the US is so far to the right that it's not even on the wall any more. It's just hanging in space, off somewhere outside the whole building (aka physical reality).