The culture war is killing us [video] • Hacker News Board

Re: The culture war is killing us [video]

#191

Post by sangnoir » Sat, Apr 24, 2021, 12:00 AM UTC

barbacoa wrote: post #185

sangnoir wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There have been countless corporations that are openly supporting BLM and pushing the "everything is about race" I'm afraid that still doesn't answer my question. Corporations supporting BLM does not does not make "white working working class the villain and racists" unless you assume supporting black activists automatically pits you against white working class folk - and I disagree with this unstated assumption (i…

>supporting black activists automatically pits you against white working class folk That does seem to be the perception. One of the core ideas of BLM is that we live in a systematic racist society. If that is true who are the perpetrators?

> That does seem to be the perception.

Thank you for making this explicit. Thus we come full circle to culture wars - that's the only reason for this perception, IMO. From where I stand, culture wars are all about short-circuiting critical thinking and logical analysis, aiming straight to the emotional core - that is how sound-bytes like "kneeling is disrespecting the military/veterans" comes from - there's no sound logic, but it gets people going (I'm sure you can come up with examples used by the left).

> One of the core ideas of BLM is that we live in a systematic racist society. If that is true who are the perpetrators?

The system? It's paradoxic how a group can feel "left behind" or feel like "the forgotten" and simultaneously identify as part the system.

Re: The culture war is killing us [video]

#192

Post by krapp » Sat, Apr 24, 2021, 12:19 AM UTC

teekert wrote: post #172

jfengel wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you; I do take your last sentence as genuinely sincere. Regardless of the cause, it's an unfortunate situation. I am making the assertion that "it's because of both sides" is actually part of the problem. I don't believe that a reasonable person would look at the 2016 candidates and conclude that they showed hostility equally. I believe that one side is weaponizing that instinct to draw compromises. You're cert…

I agree with much of this. But there may be republicans out there that do not like every aspect of Trump, yet agree even less with the democratic candidate. Such a person may have good reasons for the way she or he voted and may be the way for you to learn to appreciate some aspects of “the other side”. It’s not black and white, your “two party system” forces a choice. I bet many people find what they choose suboptim…

>But there may be republicans out there that do not like every aspect of Trump, yet agree even less with the democratic candidate.

Sure, they wanted the Supreme Court stacked with conservatives, a hardline stance against China, a protectionist trade agenda focused on domestic manufacturing ... we've heard the apologetics. But if you're in one of the demographics that have spent the last four years living in fear and dread of what the social and political consequences of Trumpism and alt-right populism might represent, all you know is that those reasonable Republicans are willing to pay for their agenda with your safety, freedom and sometimes blood. They may not hate you as much as the extremists, but they'll tolerate the extremists all the same to get what they want.

That doesn't make them look sympathetic. The extremist elements that Trump's candidacy and presidency brought to the surface had been simmering in the Republican party for years, and they did nothing about it. There was no grassroots push within the Conservative movement or the Republican party to disavow the alt-right or white supremacist agenda working its way into the body politic, and far from separating their policy positions from Trump's poisonous beliefs and rhetoric, Republicans embraced them because to do otherwise - to even admit their house was in disorder - would be a show of weakness to the enemy.

And they still won't admit they made a mistake. The GOP would rather stand behind the woman who believes in Jewish Space Lasers and the QAnon agenda than risk loosing Trumpists in 2024 and finding a new, less insane direction for the party. Enough is enough already. Republicans can't have their cake and eat it too, they can't burn their bridges and cross them again, they can't ask for reason, tolerance and sympathy while doubling down on their support for the least reasonable, least tolerant and least sympathetic Republican since Nixon.

Re: The culture war is killing us [video]

#193

Post by javajosh » Sat, Apr 24, 2021, 1:23 AM UTC

jl2718 wrote: post #187

javajosh wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I flagged your comment. Calling names and pointing fingers doesn't solve anything. Especially since, in this case, you are reacting to something I did not say (and I reread my post to make sure).

> so many people claim ... No they don’t. You created that monster in your mind. And you breathe life into it by telling the world it exists. What difference is there then, between that monster, and you.

"I see people I know who say, 'Chauvin is innocent', and I'm like, did we watch the same video?" This from the OP video https://youtu.be/0DRHn_Dz_js?t=384

Here is Tucker Carlson claiming the jury only convicted because they were scared to do otherwise. https://thehill.com/homenews/media/549435-tucker-carlson-sug...

"This was a trial about whether the media was powerful enough to create a simulation and decide upon a narrative absent any facts." Candice Owens on Tucker Carlson's show https://www.foxnews.com/politics/candace-owens-slams-democra...

How is claiming that Chauvin was framed different from these statements in any material way? They all tacitly assume Chauvin was justified, and explain it in some absurd way. Their narrative gets life from the same callous cruelty that let them watch that video with the motive to figure out a way to blame anyone but the obvious murderer. The summary is: "Yes, Chauvin killed the man, but he was justified. The facts were distorted by those with a political agenda in the media and in the justice system, and they got what they wanted, convicting an innocent man for murder." And that's no different than what I said.

Re: The culture war is killing us [video]

#194

Post by WalterGR » Sat, Apr 24, 2021, 2:17 AM UTC

nradov wrote: post #46

salimmadjd wrote: post #7

Have many of us have become the useful idiots of the corporate media overloads? I know it's fashionable to blame Facebook for the divisiveness, but I'm old enough to recall Obama's 2004 DNC speech that got him his first national attention. Before there was Facebook, Obama was talking about divisiveness. I firmly believe anger and anxiety is constantly injected into the mainstream corporate media to increase eyeballs…

It's well known that foreign intelligence services are active on social media trying to foment divisiveness. They're not even necessarily pushing a specific political goal, just getting Americans to hate each other. The Russians appear to be the most active but other countries play the same game. So before you get drawn into an online argument, ask yourself am I dealing with an authentic person or a paid foreign trol…

It's well known that foreign intelligence services are active on social media trying to foment divisiveness. They're not even necessarily pushing a specific political goal, just getting Americans to hate each other.

I see the same behavior in some users here on HN. You could replace "social media" with "Hacker News" and your comment would read the same.

I don't know if you include HN as under the umbrella of "social media" or not, but I just thought I'd point this out. I see lots of people "culture warring" about Facebook and "Big Tech"... on HN.

Re: The culture war is killing us [video]

#195

Post by dragonwriter » Sat, Apr 24, 2021, 2:46 AM UTC

jrsj wrote: post #183

dragonwriter wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But why are the aligned on this issue now when they never were before? Major institutions were brought around by activist pressure to pay lip service to racial justics issues before by thr Civil Rights Movement; BLM isn’t unique in that. > Less than 20 years ago the same people unanimously told us that the war in Iraq was good and necessary. No, the people positions of influence supporting BLM do bot consist exclus…

Why would it have to be exclusively? That doesn’t even make any sense, nothing works that way. There’s still a HUGE overlap. Regardless, if you actually quantify it over time, there is a sharp uptick in discussion of race and identity politics in general shortly after Occupy Wall Street. The same rhetoric was used to attack Bernie Sanders and his supporters despite from the 2016 primary onward. Is it technically a “c…

> Why would it have to be exclusively?

Because “the same people” isn’t the same thing as “a group that includes some of the same people”

> There’s still a HUGE overlap.

I see no evidence of that.

> Regardless, if you actually quantify it over time, there is a sharp uptick in discussion of race and identity politics in general shortly after Occupy Wall Street.

I see no evidence of that.

That’s very much not my memory, and doing a review of the easily verifiable facts (like Google Trends), I can see that various racial justice issues saw a turn from a preceding long gradual decline to gradual increasing interest about a year before OWS which continued long past (some dropping off a bit after 2016), and then took a sharp uptick around the beginning of 2020.

> The same rhetoric was used to attack Bernie Sanders and his supporters despite from the 2016 primary onward.

So was anti-gun rhetoric and lots of other things pertaining to core Democratic constituencies that other candidates had better relationships with. That's... kinda normal politics.

Re: The culture war is killing us [video]

#196

Post by rektide » Sat, Apr 24, 2021, 2:54 AM UTC

gameman144 wrote: post #75

rektide wrote: post #29

[flagged]

I'd recommend watching it before objecting to the content as a whole, as some of those objections are answered. For instance, the quote about political faction being more divisive than race or religion was explicitly made to contrast the "bad old days" of Jim Crow or Catholic-bashing against today's society. Everyone can identify the hatred of those times, and pointing out that political identity is now more divisive…

I really wanted to vomit after the first couple minutes, so I think I'm gonna pass. It felt incredibly leading & manipulative & I'm disgusted this sort of shit is out there, making people feel like they have very smart educated sophisticated takes for swallowing this dramatized weakly structured pucky.

Re: The culture war is killing us [video]

#197

Post by bostonsre » Sat, Apr 24, 2021, 3:05 AM UTC

marcus_holmes wrote: post #114

bostonsre wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure corporate media had much choice in the matter if they wanted to survive. Almost all are for profit companies that lost heavily when eyeballs shifted to social media. Social media companies make money off of ads, so they optimized viewership without being concerned with the consequences. In order for corporate media to stay alive and stop hemorrhaging viewers, they needed to play by the new rules. It's a…

They were going this way before the internet threatened them. Newspaper reporting (and journalism generally) was becoming increasingly emotion-based rather than fact-based. The rise of the tabloids in the UK is a good example: highly-partisan papers that appealed to specific demographics with stories that aimed to evoke an emotional response (usually a negative emotion). It's the same mechanic, though: competition fo…

Yea, they were definitely ahead of the curve. The rest of the industry still had some soul and dignity for a while there. The hacker news links to news sites with sliding bars for left or right bias are nice and all, but I'm not sure they're doing anything but preaching to the anti tribe choir. Not sure how we go about uniting or at least going the other direction without some horrible disasterous tragedy like a world war or an alien invasion. Would have thought maybe a global pandemic would have done the trick, but not bad enough I guess.

Re: The culture war is killing us [video]

#198

Post by sunshineforever » Sat, Apr 24, 2021, 3:15 AM UTC

anticodon wrote: post #104

nradov wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's well known that foreign intelligence services are active on social media trying to foment divisiveness. They're not even necessarily pushing a specific political goal, just getting Americans to hate each other. The Russians appear to be the most active but other countries play the same game. So before you get drawn into an online argument, ask yourself am I dealing with an authentic person or a paid foreign trol…

> The Russians appear to be the most active but other countries play the same game. Russia is bombarded incessantly by US propaganda from US troll factories. Ever since I'm on Internet, I'm reading that Russians are drunkards, barbarians, that our past (even going 1000 years back) is all history of mutual killings, yadda yadda. It's so disgusting that I guess it even somewhat stopped to work because people are tired…

For the Russian perspective, спасибо.

Re: The culture war is killing us [video]

#199

Post by proc0 » Sat, Apr 24, 2021, 3:35 AM UTC

GingerMidas wrote: post #8

A FPTP two party system almost necessitates culture war, since by definition if you're for one party you're against the other. At the end of the day you're forced to pick a side. The anchors are suggesting you ignore that eventuality.

> At the end of the day you're forced to pick a side.

Who's forcing? It's possible to be in the center...

Re: The culture war is killing us [video]

#200

Post by teekert » Sat, Apr 24, 2021, 8:00 AM UTC

krapp wrote: post #192

teekert wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with much of this. But there may be republicans out there that do not like every aspect of Trump, yet agree even less with the democratic candidate. Such a person may have good reasons for the way she or he voted and may be the way for you to learn to appreciate some aspects of “the other side”. It’s not black and white, your “two party system” forces a choice. I bet many people find what they choose suboptim…

>But there may be republicans out there that do not like every aspect of Trump, yet agree even less with the democratic candidate. Sure, they wanted the Supreme Court stacked with conservatives, a hardline stance against China, a protectionist trade agenda focused on domestic manufacturing ... we've heard the apologetics. But if you're in one of the demographics that have spent the last four years living in fear and…

It went too far. And although your attitude may be excusable and perhaps even rational, it is for sure not helping to get your country into a better state. Maybe it now seems impossible but the road to a nicer country starts by forgiving and then understanding. And then civil discourse, perhaps over dinner ;)