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

Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 504 posts

Re: Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid

#321

Post by [deleted] »

lovich wrote: post #300
isaacimagine wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm conservative, but my friends are liberal, am I a liberal? Or maybe I'm not a conservative, and they're not liberals: we all hold different nuanced opinions based on our own life and personal experience. Binning someone based on a subset of the company they keep is dismissive at best and purposefully malignant at worst.

I’m binning a talk show host who dabbles in politics into a political bin based on their political guests. Judging them on the people they platform is explicitly what you should do. This isn’t his private life with friends and family I’m judging him on. This is especially in light of the fact that he claims to be moderate because he “has anyone on” while his actions do not show that to be true. I don’t mean to single…

[deleted]

Re: Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid

#322

Post by HigherPlain »

TomSwirly wrote: post #305
HigherPlain wrote: post #274

A great article which is ruined by politicising it as a "rightwing problem". Everything the author identifies applies equally to rhetoric from the left, as anyone who has spent time on the r/politics section of Reddit or Twitter will recognize.

> Everything the author identifies applies equally to rhetoric from the lef Looking from the outside (Europe), I'm sorry, but I just don't see this at all. A big example: Republicans have repeatedly claimed for over a decade now that the Democrats run an international child sex trafficking network I am in no way a fan of Hillary Clinton, but the right has spent almost forty years systematically lying about her, claim…

"Republicans have repeatedly claimed for over a decade now that the Democrats run an international child sex trafficking network"

You're referring to Qanon type people? They are fringe extremists. Why would you group all republicans in with them?

Compare to r/politics section of Reddit, which is a much more mainstream group of people. On that website there are regularly top-voted comments with thousands of "likes" saying all republicans are pedophiles/fascists/racists etc.

The article correctly identifies such rhetoric as poison for the societal good. But both the left and the right have to acknowledge that it exists everywhere in the online discourse.

Re: Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid

#323

Post by Jensson »

actionfromafar wrote: post #278
baud147258 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You need a government with enough heft Governments have the monopoly on the use of legitimate force on their territory (and the means that go with it). Isn't that enough heft to go after any corporation?

I don't understand how you can come to this conclusion? A small country is dependent on good relations, foreign investors and on and on and on. Even at best, the small country gets limited clout. What can a small country do against a multinational company or against the WTO etc etc

They can make an economic union and together make an ultimatum against the company. See EU, it works without creating a large centralized country like US did.

Re: Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid

#324

Post by whiddershins »

rayiner wrote: post #11

Haidt makes an excellent observation about the mid-20th century unity being an aberration due to the technology of the time: > Gurri is no fan of elites or of centralized authority, but he notes a constructive feature of the pre-digital era: a single “mass audience,” all consuming the same content, as if they were all looking into the same gigantic mirror at the reflection of their own society. Something I think we o…

I often think what social media did was make people aware that people exist who live and think differently than they do.

And many people seem completely unable to process this.

Re: Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid

#325

Post by michaelmrose »

rayiner wrote: post #157
random314 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a Republican narrative, not really backed up by any sound historical analysis. Whereas creation, nurture and development of wedge issues is a standard right wing tactic across the world. Be it love-jihad in India, miscegenation in USA, jewish hatred in nazi Germany or recognition of Ahmediyas as muslims in Pakistan. It incentivizes voters to vote on ideological lines while ignoring/ letting politicians/wealthy…

If these “wedge issues” are manufactured and inconsequential, I’m sure democrats would be happy to go along with the republican positions on abortion, etc., these issues so we can focus on the important economic issues, right? > Case in point- gun laws, abortions, gay marriage are simply not a focus of right wing parties in India. I said social and cultural issues are important to people—the specific social and cultu…

Issues trivial enough for your opponent to disarm by ceding them without society harming consequences make poor wedges. A maximally appropriate wedge is one in which you take a harmful extremist view and present it as righteous without dealing with the results of actually fully getting your way.

Abortion has been a great example for decades. Taking away millions of woman's right to choose what to do with their own bodies in order to save what are almost entirely insensate lumps of cells which some folks believe have been animated by ghosts bestowed upon them by folks imaginary friends isn't a tenable position. We already have long since arrived at the compromise position of making it vastly more expensive and challenging by forcing people to travel substantial distances to few clinics with substantial expensive resources to get services their insurance wont cover to mostly take a few pills. This helpfully leaves them open to public shaming and rebuke.

We also make darn sure that this doesn't occur beyond what we deem viability even though a beings ability to survive outside the womb is an artifact of present tech and doesn't measure any reasonable objective benchmark under pain of prison.

They by any measure got what one would consider substantially their way along with a sharp per capita abortion rate decrease.

It would be politically impossible for the liberals to give them any closer to absolute victory without mutiny of the electorate. In fact it would even be harmful to conservatives because it would drastically increase turnout if indeed it could be achieved over the will of the people.

Re: Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid

#326

Post by jeegsy »

jkhdigital wrote: post #84
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What I see missing from Haidt's analysis is increased federalism and localism as a solution. I'm theoretically in favor of this, but ... one of the reasons we need a bigger, more powerful federal government is to have a governmental entity that can take on the massively more powerful private entities (corporations) that exist. No state government can take on Walmart or Amazon. The federal government can (or could,…

> No state government can take on Walmart or Amazon. An alternative theory posits that these massive corporations in fact depend upon the centralization of governmental regulatory and fiscal powers for their very existence. Regulatory capture is much easier to pull off when there’s only one central authority that needs to be captured.

> An alternative theory posits that these massive corporations in fact depend upon the centralization of governmental regulatory and fiscal powers for their very existence.

Very well said

Re: Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid

#327

Post by [deleted] »

rayiner wrote: post #11

Haidt makes an excellent observation about the mid-20th century unity being an aberration due to the technology of the time: > Gurri is no fan of elites or of centralized authority, but he notes a constructive feature of the pre-digital era: a single “mass audience,” all consuming the same content, as if they were all looking into the same gigantic mirror at the reflection of their own society. Something I think we o…

[deleted]

Re: Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid

#328

Post by MereInterest »

baud147258 wrote: post #264
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need a government with enough heft to take on a corporation that has decided to ignore the law. If you think you can get heft via "better", go for it. History doesn't give me much reason to be optimistic. "The problem with corruption, inefficiency and stupidity in government is corruption, inefficieny and stupidity, not government."

> You need a government with enough heft Governments have the monopoly on the use of legitimate force on their territory (and the means that go with it). Isn't that enough heft to go after any corporation?

This phrase is frequently misunderstood, because people treat it as a truism about government, rather than the method by which to identify the government. It is not the case that the officially recognized government has a monopoly on violence. Rather, whichever group has a monopoly on violence is itself the government. If multiple groups can use violence, then there is no monopoly, and therefore no overarching government.

Re: Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid

#329

Post by rayiner »

iostream24 wrote: post #308
luciusdomitius wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what do you do if someone disagrees with the crowd? How do you force him without coercieon? (hint those two words are synonyms).

While the “ism” suggests an ideology rather than an attribute of a real world society, what you describe is the essential balance every society needs to strike between the group and the individuals, and so you find jail and fines as coercion across a wide variety of countries and systems. As a native English speaker myself, I urge you to get into etymology and understand socius and collective and community and thereb…

I’ve heard a lot of smears about Federalist Society but “lowbrow” is a new one. I’ll have you know we drink our tea with our pinkies in the air. :D

Re: Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid

#330

Post by rayiner »

sonthonax wrote: post #277
rayiner wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If these “wedge issues” are manufactured and inconsequential, I’m sure democrats would be happy to go along with the republican positions on abortion, etc., these issues so we can focus on the important economic issues, right? > Case in point- gun laws, abortions, gay marriage are simply not a focus of right wing parties in India. I said social and cultural issues are important to people—the specific social and cultu…

Careful now, you’ve read too many real books to be commenting on HN. What did you study?

My mom edited an anthology of books on the Bangladeshi independence war. It takes up an entire row on a shelf at home. I lament I can’t read Bangla script but I’ve picked up a bit by osmosis.
Post reply on HN