Our Culture of Contempt

That I'm well-aware of the difference in degree was explicitly spelled out in my original comment.

My point isn't that "both sides are equally bad" or some such - I don't believe that. It's clear that Republicans, by now, are engaging in all of these practices to a far greater extent.

My point is that you didn't make any distinction about the degree at all. You just said that these are all the things that those people did, and that's what makes them contemptible. I merely showed you what happens when that bar is applied consistently - Republicans end up looking really bad, but Dems still end up looking somewhat bad. If you don't like that result - and reject the notion that your team engaging in those same things on a smaller scale is still bad, just less bad, but enough to feel contempt over - then consider that perhaps your bar isn't where you articulated it to be.

Your comment wasn't primarily factual and wasn't the way people write when the truth is their main concern. It was aggressive polemic. We don't want that here, because it destroys thoughtful conversation and community. That's true regardless of ideology; we don't care what color gasoline is being poured onto a fire.

Is it censorship to ban accounts that post that way? Sure, if you like. But it's censorship of aggressive polemic, a.k.a. flamewar—not of ideologies or views.

I'm not sure that you'll believe this, but we don't care what your ideology is or your views are, or even read the comments closely enough to know what they are. We have to look at tens of thousands of comments. No human can read this kind of thing closely all day.

If you're genuinely asking about a way to discuss these topics that wouldn't be considered ideological battle, here's what I suggest. First, review the site guidelines, take them to heart, and rigorously edit out of your comments anything that is not in their spirit. Especially: "Comments should get more civil and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." Second, give up the idea of winning arguments or defeating enemies, and instead cultivate an attitude of good conversation between equals who respect each other, none of whom knows the whole truth. Third, be more respectful the more strongly you disagree. You can do that by editing out pejoratives and provocations, finding things you do agree on, and remaining neutral inside yourself while writing.

If you do even half of that, you'll find that moderators on HN don't show up to scold you, even though you're expressing substantively the same views as above. But don't underestimate the work it will take to get there. The enemy-smiting style is addictive and takes practice to abandon. I know because I had to do it myself.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Rights as they are actually implemented either by the UN or the US (the right to a fair trial is often brought up here) don't figure themselves to be only negative rights, Brison finds that UDHR reads "all human beings are born free an equal in dignity an rights", and Germany has explicit restrictions on freedom of speech. The issue here is not about granting "freedom to"s, but rather investigating why the negative liberty is even there. I've never been too convinced by the negative vs positive liberty dichotomy since you can express the same rights in either framework. "Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech.." can be phrased as "Everyone [whom this constitution applies to] has the right to freedom of speech".

The only way the US manages to function (in contrast to Germany or Canada for instance) is by codifying similar rules outside of the constitution. For instance, restrictions on child porn, assault letters, threats, copyright etc.

I mentioned Rae Langton in my last comment; she claims to have found a way to challenge liberals on their own ground - pornography literally silences women by convincing people that their cries of resistance are actually encouragement. If speech is to be anything more than sounds and scrawls, it relies on meaning being reliably communicated. If women cannot convey their meaning in society at large then there are grounds to say women are being silenced. Suddenly there is a weighing act between the free speech of pornographers and the free speech of women. Caroline West defends this rather well[0].

[0] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00455091.2003.10...

No, it doesn't.

Violence is common. Mental illness is common. Some people happen to have both, but there's few of them where the violence is caused by the mental illness.

When looking at things that predict violence we see that substance misuse is a better predictor. Previous exposure to violence (as a perpetrator or victim or witness) is a better predictor. Either of these combined with untreated SMI where the patient is not in contact with services is a stronger predictor. But SMI itself is only a weak predictor of violence.

You can read the NCISH (National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Homicide by Mental Health Patients) data for a research based look at the data.

https://documents.manchester.ac.uk/display.aspx?DocID=38469

EG, from the summary on page 6

> most patients had a history of alcohol or drug misuse; homicide in the absence of comorbid substance misuse is unusual

> around half of patients were not receiving care as intended, either through loss of contact or non-adherence with drug treatment

> patients are also at high risk of being victims of homicide

And for a more researchy source: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/183929

> In patients with schizophrenia, 1054 (13.2%) had at least 1 violent offense compared with 4276 (5.3%) of general population controls (adjusted odds ratio [OR], 2.0; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.8-2.2). The risk was mostly confined to patients with substance abuse comorbidity (of whom 27.6% committed an offense), yielding an increased risk of violent crime among such patients (adjusted OR, 4.4; 95% CI, 3.9-5.0), whereas the risk increase was small in schizophrenia patients without substance abuse comorbidity (8.5% of whom had at least 1 violent offense; adjusted OR, 1.2; 95% CI, 1.1-1.4; P<.001 for interaction). The risk increase among those with substance abuse comorbidity was significantly less pronounced when unaffected siblings were used as controls (28.3% of those with schizophrenia had a violent offense compared with 17.9% of their unaffected siblings; adjusted OR, 1.8; 95% CI, 1.4-2.4; P<.001 for interaction), suggesting significant familial (genetic or early environmental) confounding of the association between schizophrenia and violence.

I agree. The point isn't that, but that many on the left don't see a problem with messing with institutional norms per se, so long as it is done to advance their goals.

Also, at this point, "liberals" and "left" aren't synonyms. I'm a liberal myself, and I'm quite used to hearing that used as a slur coming from the right, but lately that has been increasingly coming from further left. It was always common sentiment for socialists (the real ones - I don't mean people like Obama, Sanders, or AOC) - but now it's also becoming more common among progressives, who appear to be arguing that some of those norms are constraining their ability to advance social progress. And there's a lot more of them, which is why you no longer have to deliberately go seek that stuff to find it anymore.

I have already mentioned filibuster, but now we're also seriously talking about e.g. Supreme Court packing. That concerns me, because one party deliberately going after those norms is bad enough, but if both become convinced that it's in their best interest, it becomes an arms race. Worse yet is that it creates perverse motivations - the more you dismantle those norms for the sake of being able to implement your agenda, the more you fear the other side taking over (because they would have that much more power to implement their agenda). If the other side can take over democratically, this means that you're motivated to be undemocratic. Republicans have had that problem on the federal level for a while, and I don't think that their penchant for voter suppression is a coincidence. But Democrats also have that problem on state level in many states, and on the federal level in the Senate. If they succumb to the temptation to solve it in the same way, there won't be anybody with a vested interest to consistently enforce those institutional norms, and they will erode that much faster.