Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Fourth of July

popehat.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 324 posts

Re: The Fourth of July

#221

Post by cookie_monsta »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #195
hootbootscoot wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You had me, then you lost me. Hubris and the unwillingness to comprehend real problems and the desire to cover them up with "SHUT UP IT"S GREAT!" won't go down well. What I'm seeing is more apologism for wrongful historical actions, perhaps in RESPONSE to what you described, but at this point it's become an "AMERICA IS GREAT SO SHUT UP"

It's not "SHUT UP IT"S GREAT!" so much as pointing out specifically why the claim that it isn't great is wrong, to which the responses were a moving of the goalposts to some other, generic wrongs against black people that haven't actually been specified and so can't be addressed.

Patriotism is just as absurd as any other dogma to a person who doesn't share it. I think the US has done some great things as have most countries. It's when you start blindly believing it's perfect that it seems less than rational.

> generic wrongs against black people that haven't actually been specified

Surely you don't need to hear the list again?

Re: The Fourth of July

#222

Post by AnthonyMouse »

pydry wrote: post #216
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The probability for a black person of being killed by the police in the US is approximately 0.0005%. That's the probability of being killed (most commonly because you pulled a weapon on a cop), not the probability of being murdered, which is at least an order of magnitude lower than that. There shouldn't be anybody getting murdered by the police. It's totally unreasonable. But it is in actual fact extremely uncommon.

Imagine a gang running your neighborhood that has a 0.0005% of murdering you (but if they do they'll get away with it) and an even "smaller* chance of protecting you from murder (don't forget that gangs exist for protection as much as power projection) , but is likely to beat, coerce and steal from you with total impunity. The gang is well stocked with small arms, helicopters, tanks, missiles and even anti aircraft w…

> an even "smaller* chance of protecting you from murder

Considering how much murder is happening there already, I wouldn't guess that the amount there would be if the police stopped investigating them would be smaller than the existing rate of murders by police.

Also, as already mentioned, 0.0005% is the approximate rate at which the police kill black people, not the rate at which they murder them. What do you propose the cops do when someone draws a weapon on them?

> What's to be done with that gang?

You're talking about the local police, in black neighborhoods, in cities with Democrats already in elected office. They've been able to pass whatever changes they want this whole time, so what's stopping them?

Re: The Fourth of July

#223

Post by [deleted] »

microtonal wrote: post #179
beaner wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like I might get downvoted for this, but a large part of it comes from a sense of guilt about clearly being the most successful and powerful country in the world. When nearly everyone else on earth constantly gives you shit (while also trying to enter...) many people here have started accepting those foreign perspectives and seeing themselves as spoiled and privileged. I can remember this being true from when…

about clearly being the most successful and powerful country in the world And this to the rest of the world is typical America arrogance. I am sorry to be blunt, but I have to call it out. I won't debate that the US is the most powerful country in the world. But 'most successful' is very debatable. I have been in the US often, and found that most Americans are far less well off than in other Western democracies. Most…

[deleted]

Re: The Fourth of July

#224

Post by AnthonyMouse »

cookie_monsta wrote: post #221
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not "SHUT UP IT"S GREAT!" so much as pointing out specifically why the claim that it isn't great is wrong, to which the responses were a moving of the goalposts to some other, generic wrongs against black people that haven't actually been specified and so can't be addressed.

Patriotism is just as absurd as any other dogma to a person who doesn't share it. I think the US has done some great things as have most countries. It's when you start blindly believing it's perfect that it seems less than rational. > generic wrongs against black people that haven't actually been specified Surely you don't need to hear the list again?

> It's when you start blindly believing it's perfect that it seems less than rational.

Who said it was perfect?

> Surely you don't need to hear the list again?

Is there somewhere they keep this list? I keep getting partial versions.

There's the ones where we list bad laws that haven't been on the books in many years, the ones (like police murders) that do literally happen but are dramatically less common than the level of attention would lead you to believe, the thing where people try to claim things with aggregate statistics without adjusting for confounders...

I'm sure there are some legitimate ones, what I can't understand is why the focus is regularly on all these ones that evaporate upon examination.

Maybe it's the toxoplasma thing, which I can't link to because SSC is gone. :(

Re: The Fourth of July

#225

Post by systemvoltage »

pdonis wrote: post #68
weiming wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What me and my family talked about today is that, as immigrants, we are so sad how much the "native born" people of the US hate their own country. They seem to never waste an opportunity to remind others of their disdain and it is more and more visible these days e.g. in big news media or on Twitter. Makes me sad and I hope this can change.

> we are so sad how much the "native born" people of the US hate their own country Not all of them do. I was born in the US and I love my country.

It’s interesting to see how Europeans are so nationalistic. The Swiss are very proud. They have excellent branding so to speak and you’ll know when something is Swiss made because the marketing around it would be overwhelming. I dated an Italian and there was intense sense of patriotism in everything they did. On the other hand, Swedes and Germans aren’t as much.

Nationalism in some ways bothers me because it creates a lens through which you see the world in a form of distortion.

Btw, I am an American.

Re: The Fourth of July

#226

Post by charlescearl »

weiming wrote: post #42
myrandomcomment wrote: post #2

As a father, a husband, a former soldier and an American, this brings a tear to my eye. “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.” - Lincoln As an American I feel we are bound not by our failures of past moral…

What me and my family talked about today is that, as immigrants, we are so sad how much the "native born" people of the US hate their own country. They seem to never waste an opportunity to remind others of their disdain and it is more and more visible these days e.g. in big news media or on Twitter. Makes me sad and I hope this can change.

If you fail to understand how so many Indigenous and Black people of this country view it with such contempt, I would recommend a few reads. But first I would ask you to consider that whatever greatness it can claim lies not in it’s continued founding myths, but in the many unheralded acts of sacrifice and resistance that so many of it’s marginalized citizens made and continue to make down to this very minute.

James Baldwin’s “The Fire Next Time”, or his “No Name in the Street” layout both how the country was brought to the reckoning of the Civil Rights movement and then completely capitulated to white supremacy. Frederick Douglass’s “What to the Slave is the 4th of July” [1] still rings true to so many of us. Read David Truer’s “ The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present” on the meticulousness explicated horror of how this country has and continues to destroy and devalue Indigenous life.

The people protesting Friday in the Black Hills or in the front lines of the Black Lives Matter actions are calling upon us all to view it as it is, and dare to imagine what it could be. I am sad that we don’t embrace the movement to bring about real democracy.

[1] https://nmaahc.si.edu/blog-post/nations-story-what-slave-fou...

Re: The Fourth of July

#227

Post by [deleted] »

lm28469 wrote: post #217
rayiner wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a serious attempt to cancel America, that goes beyond holding America responsible for its past wrongs. Someone posted a link to this tweet elsewhere in this thread: https://mobile.twitter.com/arlenparsa/status/116818940954980... I think this is not an uncommon opinion and it’s becoming more and more mainstream. And that sort of thinking is an attempt to cancel America. It’s not just saying that America has d…

> There is a serious attempt to cancel America _links to a random post on twitter_ See, this, right there, is the root of the majority of our problems. The world isn't twitter. Twitter is majoritarily left leaning, middle class, white, US male, millennials [0] stop making it sound like the world is out to cancel the US. It's a tiny minority of the world on a big website, a big fish in a small pond. Don't shape your v…

[deleted]

Re: The Fourth of July

#228

Post by systemvoltage »

tathougies wrote: post #161
ncallaway wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny enough, I was part of the protests in Seattle that led up to the autonomous zones. Proclaiming Americanism failed to live up to its ideals isn't hatred. It's a simple factual statement that's painfully obvious. Harsh criticism is necessary to reform. You can't move towards that more perfect union if we don't open our eyes to the problems of the systems. If you reject all criticism out of hand as unpatriotic, th…

Signs saying 'now leaving the USA' are not saying america has failed to live up to its ideals. It's saying... we don't want to be part of America anymore. That's fine, I'm not knocking you, but this is just revisionism. I don't reject criticism as unpatriotic. I was made aware of no-knock warrants from Ms Taylor's unfortunate death, and I am against them. I am in favor of most police reform. I am not in favor of the…

We now have 500 black militia marching with weapons in Georgia: https://amp.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/hlciwl/a_bl...

And people are supporting this. We should condemn all forms of violence from both sides - white supremists and the people who counter them with more violence.

It’s unbelievable how we allow this on our social media platforms and yet we have a policy for inciting violence.

There is a race war going on and it’s terrifying. Forget social justice, we are gonna have massacres.

Re: The Fourth of July

#229

Post by filoeleven »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #150
yongjik wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Focusing on the "cancel culture" is, IMHO, putting the cart in front of the horse. It is a by-product of a society where a cop can murder an African American in broad daylight and (in most cases) suffer no consequences. If you can't trust the society to not murder you , why would you refrain from tearing down anything you don't like? When the society doesn't serve justice, people will implement "justice" with their o…

The probability for a black person of being killed by the police in the US is approximately 0.0005%. That's the probability of being killed (most commonly because you pulled a weapon on a cop), not the probability of being murdered, which is at least an order of magnitude lower than that. There shouldn't be anybody getting murdered by the police. It's totally unreasonable. But it is in actual fact extremely uncommon.

What’s the probability of being killed in a terrorist attack?

It happened a handful of times before in the US, then in 2001 reaction one attack spawned whole new agencies, onerous airport security changes, etc.—not to mention the longest running war in the country’s history. And for the most part, Americans were cheering about it.

Why is 9/11 revered as a national tragedy while ongoing murders by racist police are being downplayed?

Re: The Fourth of July

#230

Post by maxerickson »

WalterBright wrote: post #109
vore wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even from just examining the present, it's hard to find much to like about how the US is handling a pandemic.

It's generally left up to the states to deal with it as they see fit. I don't see anything particularly wrong with that. Some governors have stepped up, some haven't.

Budget constraints.

I know people like to fantasize that the national debt will be paid down eventually, but we are just sitting waiting for widespread budget crises and the municipal and state levels. The federal government can solve the problem with the stroke of a pen.

Post reply on HN