Why Hostility Can Bring People Closer Together • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Hostility Can Bring People Closer Together

#31

Post by Viliam1234 » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 8:54 PM UTC

bilbo0s wrote: post #24

delore1 wrote: post #18

You can definitely see that in Russian politics. It’s very “enemy” oriented. Everyday we see on national tv that west countries are bad and against us. That we have our own path and so on and so on. And it’s very frustrating that it works because it's the only news sourse for many people. It’s psychological thing that a common enemy brings people together. Really hope it will change. We even have this idiom — my enem…

"...Everyday we see on national tv that [insert enemy here] countries are bad and against us. That we have our own path and so on and so on. And it’s very frustrating that it works..." This works everywhere in the world, there is nothing endemic to Russia in this strategy. I'm born and raised in the US, and this is pretty much how news has been since I was a kid watching talking heads drone on about how dangerous the…

It's funny how every time anyone says anything negative about Russia, someone feels the urge to say "USA is not any better". But not the other way round.

Like, seriously, notice any debate where Russia is mentioned, and this pattern is everywhere.

Re: Why Hostility Can Bring People Closer Together

#32

Post by Viliam1234 » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 8:56 PM UTC

Chronos309 wrote: post #10

DanAndersen wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's supposed to be some sort of Arabic proverb that's something along the lines of "Me against my brothers, me and my brothers against my cousins, me and my brother and my cousins against the world". It feels like a lot of attempted global social policy of the past 50 or so years has been trying to create a stronger consciousness of "humanity" as a thing, with our new enemies being abstract issues like poverty, h…

I wish people felt the same about going to space as I do. I think that if we were more knowledge focused as a species that we'd be racing to the stars which would mean an insanely different mentality than the 'tow the line' kind of thing I think we have nowadays.

The greatest enemy of us all is the Universe itself. It's the thing that is trying to kill each one of us individually, and all of us together, and to destroy everything we ever built or cared about, and then even tear apart the very atoms.

Re: Why Hostility Can Bring People Closer Together

#33

Post by romwell » Thu, Aug 02, 2018, 12:33 AM UTC

bilbo0s wrote: post #24

delore1 wrote: post #18

You can definitely see that in Russian politics. It’s very “enemy” oriented. Everyday we see on national tv that west countries are bad and against us. That we have our own path and so on and so on. And it’s very frustrating that it works because it's the only news sourse for many people. It’s psychological thing that a common enemy brings people together. Really hope it will change. We even have this idiom — my enem…

"...Everyday we see on national tv that [insert enemy here] countries are bad and against us. That we have our own path and so on and so on. And it’s very frustrating that it works..." This works everywhere in the world, there is nothing endemic to Russia in this strategy. I'm born and raised in the US, and this is pretty much how news has been since I was a kid watching talking heads drone on about how dangerous the…

>This works everywhere in the world, there is nothing endemic to Russia in this strategy.

Yeah right, no[1].

My family moved to the US from Ukraine when I was 16, and I've been keeping tabs on the politics and media over there.

So no, you can't compare US media and Russian media. Just because 1 and 10 are both positive numbers, it doesn't mean they are close if you consider the interval [0, 10].

You know, from casual mentions that Russia is "the only country that can turn America into radioactive dust"[2] on prime-time TV news to, well, everything else - you just don't get this stuff here. (And please don't object if you haven't watched Russian TV in Russian! You don't have a point of reference to compare to!).

The US media has taken a large step towards Russian-style vitriol with Trump's campaign, which is when I started to suspect a Russian connection. In my opinion, that has been the largest (and, sadly, nearly irreversible) impact on this country - shaping (or, rather, destroying) the discourse.

To my surprise, many others have noticed it, and written about in major publications and blogs [3][4][5][6][7] - and yet it still remains largely under the radar in discussions about Russian influence.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

[2]https://www.vesti.ru/doc.html?id=2816127

[3] https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/03/is-trumps-chaos-a-mo...

[4] https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/27/trumps-ru...

[5] https://theoutline.com/post/3522/donald-trump-and-vladislav-...

[6] https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/02/how-russia-expor...

[7] https://amandarivkin.wordpress.com/2017/07/27/from-russian-t...

Re: Why Hostility Can Bring People Closer Together

#34

Post by romwell » Thu, Aug 02, 2018, 12:35 AM UTC

Viliam1234 wrote: post #31

bilbo0s wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"...Everyday we see on national tv that [insert enemy here] countries are bad and against us. That we have our own path and so on and so on. And it’s very frustrating that it works..." This works everywhere in the world, there is nothing endemic to Russia in this strategy. I'm born and raised in the US, and this is pretty much how news has been since I was a kid watching talking heads drone on about how dangerous the…

It's funny how every time anyone says anything negative about Russia, someone feels the urge to say "USA is not any better". But not the other way round. Like, seriously, notice any debate where Russia is mentioned, and this pattern is everywhere.

It's an old Kremlin technique[1].

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

Re: Why Hostility Can Bring People Closer Together

#35

Post by hkai » Fri, Aug 03, 2018, 4:27 AM UTC

delore1 wrote: post #18

You can definitely see that in Russian politics. It’s very “enemy” oriented. Everyday we see on national tv that west countries are bad and against us. That we have our own path and so on and so on. And it’s very frustrating that it works because it's the only news sourse for many people. It’s psychological thing that a common enemy brings people together. Really hope it will change. We even have this idiom — my enem…

Which is exactly why it's scary to see American politics dominated by the same hate towards Republicans/Democrats. When I read American media it feels like I'm reading a Russian newspaper back home.