U.S. Capitol Locked Down Amid Escalating Protests • Hacker News Board

Re: U.S. Capitol Locked Down Amid Escalating Protests

#561

Post by NortySpock » Wed, Jan 06, 2021, 10:13 PM UTC

gameswithgo wrote: post #494

coryfklein wrote: post #353

It's the practical erosion of Free Speech. Liberal (small "l" liberal) democracy and liberal science thrives on members: 1. Being willing to admit they may be wrong 2. Having access to a diverse information diet But the past two decades have shown erosion of not only legal Free Speech, but practical free speech: * Whereas previously they were just ignored (or even rebutted), today employees, students, and professors…

I see things almost completely opposite to you. Twenty years ago we had far less diverse access to information. You would get things from your local newspaper, or tv networks. Professionals would work and filter what we see. Today anyone can fire up a blog, twitter, youtube, and start talking about anything. People today thus have been getting exposed to all kinds of ideas, and being taken in by them: the earth is fl…

And back in the 1500s anyone could build a printer and rags for paper and crank out hundreds of broadsheets or pamphlets to be distributed all over town. Which lead to pulp fiction, the open exchange of ideas and the religious wars of the 1500s and onwards.

Open exchange of ideas is not new. It's just faster and cheaper now.

Re: U.S. Capitol Locked Down Amid Escalating Protests

#562

Post by backWardz00 » Wed, Jan 06, 2021, 10:13 PM UTC

coryfklein wrote: post #353

It's the practical erosion of Free Speech. Liberal (small "l" liberal) democracy and liberal science thrives on members: 1. Being willing to admit they may be wrong 2. Having access to a diverse information diet But the past two decades have shown erosion of not only legal Free Speech, but practical free speech: * Whereas previously they were just ignored (or even rebutted), today employees, students, and professors…

Respectfully, this is wrong. I’m afraid you are artificially constraining the argument to symptoms, not a cause.

We’ve seen headlines on this site showing how we have access to more kinds of information than ever.

Society HAD been pressured to toe the line even harder back in the day. Internet has no TV censors, though the most visible properties do.

It’s ridiculous to suggest we’ve become more protective given book burnings, anti-Dungeons and Dragons, anti-comic book, Bible thumping paranoia that used to exist.

What we’re seeing is American incompetence to comprehend more than just their speech is wrong. Their entire agency is wrong.

When political forces beat us over the head with economic correctness, which has lead to decades of growing inequality, and the Fed relied on a policy of worker insecurity to keep people in their jobs, this has little to do with Main Street tolerance for alternative ideas (they’re everywhere) and everything to do with tried and true human nature to maintain economic power in the hands of a minority.

Humans evolved quite a bit before language. What is language anyway except muscle agency emitting random sound forms? Then of course we normalize on them, effectively constraining our syntax systems organically. Even linguists agree.

This has little to do with suppression of speech and everything to do with top down control of productive agency altogether.

The undermining of agency for the masses, sequestered in the hands of a minority has nothing to do with speech. We say a lot of diverse shit. But spend our time securing the wealth of oligarchs.

Re: U.S. Capitol Locked Down Amid Escalating Protests

#563

Post by d23 » Wed, Jan 06, 2021, 10:13 PM UTC

rement wrote: post #436

Trump has called for everyone to go home. We will see if they listen to him. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/13469288825958850...

This is very blatantly a continued instigation, not an actual call to go home.

Re: U.S. Capitol Locked Down Amid Escalating Protests

#564

Post by andromeduck » Wed, Jan 06, 2021, 10:13 PM UTC

dkdk8283 wrote: post #414

coryfklein wrote: post #353

It's the practical erosion of Free Speech. Liberal (small "l" liberal) democracy and liberal science thrives on members: 1. Being willing to admit they may be wrong 2. Having access to a diverse information diet But the past two decades have shown erosion of not only legal Free Speech, but practical free speech: * Whereas previously they were just ignored (or even rebutted), today employees, students, and professors…

I’m really glad to see this as the top comment: I think your analysis is spot on. Anecdotally I’ve been reading a lot of old news (60s-90s) and it’s amazing to read as a retrospective. It has given me context for how we arrived to present day and it’s funny to see some of the same social phenomenons repeating themselves.

Same, I'd highly recommend Hayek's Road to Serfdom and Constitution of Liberty if you haven't read it already, along with Cato's letters and the the Federalist papers. It's honestly amazing and depressing how accurate they were but I suppose human nature is timeless.

Re: U.S. Capitol Locked Down Amid Escalating Protests

#565

Post by akiselev » Wed, Jan 06, 2021, 10:13 PM UTC

ben_w wrote: post #423

Here’s a “fun” thought: if you were running a foreign intelligence operation in the USA, surely you’d try to get one of your agents into the mob that got into the Capitol building and given free reign over all those computers, computers that were not locked properly before the legitimate users fled for their safety? I’m not just talking about Russia and China here, I mean all the intelligence agencies.

The threat has already been realized. Apparently a twitter user got into Pelosi's office and posted an screenshot of one of their computers (tweet deleted about an hour ago [1]). You can see the tweet at other sources [2]

[1] https://twitter.com/ElijahSchaffer/status/134690542554391757...

[2] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/pro-trump-report...

Re: U.S. Capitol Locked Down Amid Escalating Protests

#566

Post by cozzyd » Wed, Jan 06, 2021, 10:14 PM UTC

mhh__ wrote: post #242

bryanlarsen wrote: post #112

"Democracy is a system in which parties lose elections" - Przeworski In other words, the core concept of democracy isn't the elections or any of the other trappings, it's the fact that it's possible for one group to lose power, transition to another group and retain the possibility to transition back in a subsequent election to the original group.

On that note, the Pa. State Senate Republicans are just refusing to swear in their new democratic colleagues. I Can't wait for this attitude to inevitably cross the pond.

Here's a former PA lawmaker, nearly elected to US congress, who may have been part of the group that breached the capitol:

https://twitter.com/Redistrict/status/1346938310359396354

Re: U.S. Capitol Locked Down Amid Escalating Protests

#567

Post by standardUser » Wed, Jan 06, 2021, 10:16 PM UTC

slumdev wrote: post #468

dhruvkar wrote: post #47

Are there people here on HN that believe the election was stolen? I haven't seen any evidence, most of the lawsuits haven't borne fruit either. However, I also recognize that there may be blindspots/biases. I'd really like to hear from anyone who believes this, to present a cogent argument. I promise not to attack. I want to hear the argument from the other side. I also beseech the rest of HN to please refrain from a…

Fraud occurred. That much is tautological. A single instance of a dead person voting proves the statement true. To say, "fraud didn't occur," is an outright lie. The debate is over (1) how much fraud occurred and (2) whether it affected the results. Someone else posted the "Here is the Evidence" link. Too many videos of (R) election judges being denied access to counts done in secret, organizers paying for votes, pos…

You just made a listen of unsubstantiated lies. Trump and his team had dozens of opportunities to provide ANY evidence of ANY of these lies to many different judges and they failed to every single time. If the full power of the Executive branch and an army of lawyers can't find evidence to show to judges, what makes you think any of the lies are true?

Re: U.S. Capitol Locked Down Amid Escalating Protests

#568

Post by LeifCarrotson » Wed, Jan 06, 2021, 10:16 PM UTC

shadowfacts wrote: post #40

It is despicable how tepid the police response to armed rioters storming the Capitol has been compared to the response to BLM protests over the summer.

I think they've responded well. All the congresspeople were evacuated safely, I expect that if they had any chance of causing harm there the police response would have skyrocketed.

What you had after the evacuation was complete was just a few fools breaking some windows, posing on the dias for Twitter likes, and wandering the hallways. I'm surprised they haven't spray painted their message on the walls yet.

Government property gets vandalized all the time, and can be replaced. The last thing you want to do is to kill these people who have been trapped in a cult of disinformation and turn them into martyrs, possibly building into a civil war. Currently, the response makes them look weak, but at the end of the day they'll all just leave, hopefully without loss of life.

That civil war must be avoided at all costs, and if a tepid-looking response, a few of them getting away without being arrested, a few panes of glass, and some carpet cleaning are what that costs, then I'm more than happy to pay it.

I'm less enthusiastic about the criminals at the top escaping prison time, as Joe Biden seems intent on allowing per his messaging, but again, if prosecuting everyone complicit in the previous administration's crimes has a 1% chance of inciting civil war, well, it's just not worth it.

Re: U.S. Capitol Locked Down Amid Escalating Protests

#569

Post by h2odragon » Wed, Jan 06, 2021, 10:17 PM UTC

moosey wrote: post #329

dhruvkar wrote: post #47

Are there people here on HN that believe the election was stolen? I haven't seen any evidence, most of the lawsuits haven't borne fruit either. However, I also recognize that there may be blindspots/biases. I'd really like to hear from anyone who believes this, to present a cogent argument. I promise not to attack. I want to hear the argument from the other side. I also beseech the rest of HN to please refrain from a…

A person can believe anything they want. If there were evidence of a stolen election, then Trump would have won a number of court cases from one of the MANY judges, mostly ... well, conservative, to use a label ... that he placed his cases in front of. Anyone can look at these cases and have an understanding of the actual evidence presented, and see, objectively, that there was not significant election or voter tampe…

Many people look at these cases and see they were not allowed to be heard. How many of Gore's supporting court cases were tossed for lack of standing etc?

Re: U.S. Capitol Locked Down Amid Escalating Protests

#570

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jan 06, 2021, 10:18 PM UTC

umvi wrote: post #72

How did we arrive to this point where a huge chunk of the population is in one reality and another huge chunk of the population is in another reality? Segregation of information sources? Politicization of media outlets? Self-reinforcing social bubbles? A combination of all of them and more?

[deleted]