141–150 of 212 posts
So some of us are more conscious of it. Are they feeling uneasy about what used to be easy to willfully ignore? What's the price of justice? "All created equal"? Fancy words. "I got mine." Ain't that grand.
Isn't this normal for US politics? This clip could as well have applied to the 60s and 70s. For example: > The late 1960s, early 1970s saw a dramatic shift in the American political matrix, a redefinition of competing political ideologies or belief systems. War, urban riots, campus protests and student alienation, assassinations, inter-generational mistrust, monetary inflation, the growth of the welfare-warfare state…
I believe the cultural wars focus the population's attention on issues that divide us, rather than issues that would unite: concentration of power, gutting of main street, etc. The detachment of our news and media from local civics denies our population practice working together, with real problems, with real consensus. Instead the polarization is on more abstract, national, and intractable concerns -- political spor…
"As technologists, how can we work to rebuild regional and local political and economic sovereignty?" I always thought it fascinating how "technologists" thought themselves somehow able to solve social issues. SV is a glaring example of this - Mark Zuckerberg anyone? Anecdotally, I know many people in the MMO game industry. Wonderful people, but none have more than average EQ. Most are extremely awkward and/or have s…
I presume that, to affect the world in a positive way, it's done though collaboration with those able to articulate real problems and form a coalition of those working to address them. In this regard, technical expertise is a necessary element, but one should not confuse our part of the effort with the entire work. We should not be seeing ourselves as building "the solution" to social challenges, so much as we may better equip a community that tackles those problems.
Check the history. There's nothing new about divisiveness in America. Nothing. Culture wars? A lot of mounds have gone missing since 1494. So some of us are more conscious of it. Are they feeling uneasy about what used to be easy to willfully ignore? What's the price of justice? "All created equal"? Fancy words. "I got mine." Ain't that grand.
I see it in the smartest people I know. I live in the Netherlands but I have a "CNN addicted" colleague. And I like to tease her and say things like: "You know people want to carry guns so the government does not have a monopoly on violence, so when you feel like you got a leader (as you do now [this was Trump era]) that really does not have the consent of the governed anymore, you may not be powerless." Sure, societ…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> He specifically chose not to condemn riots No, he explicitly did. Even in the full context of the famous "language of the unheard" quote it is clear he is criticizing both riots (as being counterproductive) and the conditions that led to them. Here's a another quote from him: > Let me say as I’ve always said, and I will always continue to say, that riots are socially destructive and self-defeating. I’m still convin…
I think your reading is more correct, I can no longer update my comment.
I wish HN and other social sites gave you the ability to update your comment at least with an indication that you no longer stand by it.
I believe the cultural wars focus the population's attention on issues that divide us, rather than issues that would unite: concentration of power, gutting of main street, etc. The detachment of our news and media from local civics denies our population practice working together, with real problems, with real consensus. Instead the polarization is on more abstract, national, and intractable concerns -- political spor…
> As technologists, how can we work to rebuild regional and local political and economic sovereignty? I think you hit the nail on the head. Unfortunately, technologists are naturally focused on scaling solutions up to the entire world. We want to use technology to push hard real world problems behind a screen, behind keyboards, and behind servers. This creates a contradiction in our thinking that cannot be resolved.…
These are not mutually exclusive; on the contrary, they are complementary. Moreover, with the notion of "calm companies" who move deliberately and fix things, it's though local economic engagement that social problems are resolved though mutual interdependence and individual prosperity.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's an ant death spiral at this point. The only way to be free of it is to unplug and focus on your own life.
Yes, individuals can flee to get out of the path of said shit snowball, but their descendants, family, friends, and neighbors are directly down hill from it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unfortunately, the very idea of locality and federation of power is itself one of the dividing lines - clever, that, really. The people who believe all things must be fixed from the top down, and the people who believe things can only be fixed from the bottom up.
I'm not sure that line cleaves along political affiliation, but I'm willing to be convinced. I know both Democratic party insiders who have pivoted to local political activism following the presidential election, and Republican businessmen who are adamant that taking a stand in local politics is the way forward for their movement.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please don't post political flamewar boilerplate to HN. Threads here are supposed to be curious conversations. This is not that. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Dang, theres too much inconsistency with your moderation. You didn't seem to want to limit such flamebait from false statements from GP's comment. It is unfortunate factual statements are not allowed on here. Allowing one side to flame away is not the process to reach curious conversations. Good luck with that.
> It is unfortunate factual statements are not allowed on here
People use the words 'facts' and 'factual' a bit magically in internet arguments. There are infinitely many facts [2]. They don't select themselves; people do that. When they do it as part of curious conversation, great; when they do it as part of flamewar, well, the 'flamewar' part is the high-order bit. We're trying to avoid that here.
In the GP case, a barrage of links about everything from Vietnam to Ukraine to Robert Kagan is not curious conversation—it's boilerplate, as I said, meaning it reads like pre-existing material designed to be copy-pasted into ideological arguments. Even if all that is "facts" and all 100% correct on all the underlying issues, doing that is still boring and not what HN is for. How would you enjoy a conversation where someone insisted on reading all that stuff out to you?
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...