'Do Not Split': A Hong Kong protest film [video]

Comments like this point discussion in extremely predictable, tedious, and nasty directions.

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

That's a shame. I'm not sure if the whole thread is hidden. I got 3 karma points (base 1 + 2 upvotes) for some comments in our thread below your flagged post.

> I think this verges on conspiracy theory - democrats very much care about fixing gerrymandering (among other vote suppression tactics), it's just hard to fix.

They keep very quiet and mild about it. This should be like the most important issue that affects their voters. Their voters were denied what should be theirs (democrats in power), for decades in total at this point.

I don't think it's a conspiracy theory. Nobody conspires if it's a shared understanding that democrats should loose roughly 50% of the time for the good of everybody. It doesn't require any conspiratory action. Just inaction, which is way easier to implement even if not everybody understand that it should be implemented and why.

However, whether they are aware what they are doing or not, they are still doing it (tolerating Gerrymandering to a huge degree). And it has an effect of increased stability.

> I think they want different things (arguably even more revolutionary than the left in some cases), but I don't think they want things to stay the way they used to be.

At the root of republican vs democrat is this divide between orthodoxy and progress. Of course further details are built upon that. Especially since the country, economy and government can't stay in its orthodoxy.

Still, my observation was, why would that divide be roughly 50/50?

>> "And that would mean democrats winning all the time and we can't have that because that would ultimately lead to unrest." > Or it could lead to a center-right party that's more sane that can get a larger share of the population to vote for them.

On last election a single win by democrats caused some unrest. I think democrats winning for few decades would just radicalize part of republicans and made the other part to withdraw from voting. I'm sure eventual peaceful return to some equilibrium would be possible like with Whigs. But I don't think it would be business as usual and economy likes to have business as usual.

Thank you for this discussion, but I don't want to speculate about future US too much, as I don't have a clear idea what will happen, apart from things staying pretty much the same and US really struggling to accept reality when China overtakes them.

This is why passionate users on all sides of every topic are convinced that the moderators are secretly in cahoots with their opponents: it's the same psychological mechanism producing a galaxy of contradictory conclusions. The site and mods are the same for everybody; what varies are the passions of the perceiver. Those are what determine the conclusions people come to because they determine which datapoints you notice and how you weight them (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...).

People on the opposite side from you feel like the mods are biased the opposite way. It's the same mechanism that makes sports fans feel like the refs are against them and drivers feel like they're the one who always gets pulled over for a speeding ticket.

To assess things more accurately, here are some points to consider: (1) We moderate discussions that break the site guidelines and/or go against the intended spirit of HN when we see them happening, regardless of what the topic is or which sides different commenters are taking. (2) We don't come close to seeing everything that gets posted here. If you see a post that ought to have been moderated but hasn't been, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...). People can help with that by flagging it or emailing us at hn@ycombinator.com. (3) We really don't care what side you're on, and a lot of the time don't even notice. That may sound weird, but it's just what happens to the brain after doing anything hundreds of thousands of times over enough years.

Because you have never admitted censorship of Winnie the Pooh happened on Chinese social media. You kept questioning many of the evidence I provided (“if one can only read english sources it might be a little biased IMHO”, “I can not verify your claim since I don't play Kingdom Hearts”), or dismissing evidence as “trivia”.

I don’t know if you agree that censorship of Winnie the Pooh actually happened. So I had to keep Googling for alternative sources for you. You need to point out whether you agree with the key points in the above articles, or provide solid counter evidence (with sources).

Until then, there is no way to move the discussion forward.

BTW, more censorship news: https://game.udn.com/game/story/12982/5338115

Trump recently was opposed in political processes by his own Vice President and Supreme Court nominees, as well as some members of Congress.

Within the Democratic party, there are also examples of these checks happening within the party. DeBlasio (mayor of NY) and Cuomo (governor of the state of NY) have been fighting against each other for years.

More generally though, not everything in the US is a political decision. There are other practical checks on the political process itself, like the freedom of speech Many Americans either don't like either party, or at least don't like the leadership if either party right now. We don't have songs like "Without the Communist Party, There Would Be No New China" (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Without_the_Communist_Party,...). While unlikely, in the US parties can go, and have gone, extinct through the normal political process. And every four years (depending on who wins the Presidential election) there are opinion pieces considering one party or the other's demise. If people disappear for comparing the CCP's leader to Winnie the Pooh, I can't imagine it's very safe to write about the CCP's demise within China.