How Twitter poisoned politics • Hacker News Board

Re: How Twitter poisoned politics

#171

Post by dredmorbius » Sun, Oct 07, 2018, 7:14 AM UTC

nindalf wrote: post #140

village-idiot wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never forget the Gracchi brothers. Populist reformers who were both executed by the Senate because of the threat they represented to patrician power. The older of the two was killed in an area of Rome where weapons were not permitted, by senators, while he was Tribune and technically sacrosanct. When politics goes bad, it goes really bad.

A word on the Gracchis. The Gracchis were radical reformers by the standards of their time - they wanted to take lands from large landowners and give it back to landless peasants. Tiberius Gracchus was clubbed to death in broad daylight. Gaius committed suicide when he knew his death was inevitable. What's interesting is that when studying the fall of the Republic, it makes sense to start with these guys. Roman polit…

Any reading you'd recommend?

Re: How Twitter poisoned politics

#172

Post by Natsu » Sun, Oct 07, 2018, 9:02 PM UTC

naravara wrote: post #95

Natsu wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, there's a very long history of political assassinations, civil wars, etc. all of which predate Twitter. Everything is just more public now.

I love how every example of "It was always this bad" involves people reaching back to before the '60s and, in some cases, before The New Deal. In most cases, reversing several decades of stability and progress would have been considered a very troubling development.

Bolsonaro was stabbed in Brazil just months ago. Congressional Republicans had someone come to their baseball game and shoot at them. There have been all those assassinations involving Russia, as well. There was that relative of NK dictator Kim's that was poisoned. And that's just recent news, if I actually researched it we'd have a long list. You don't have to go that far back to remember things like President Reagan being shot.

I suppose you might say those are just attempts, but that's more a reflection of better security details. The underlying willingness of people to murder others over politics is still evident from the attempts.

Regarding civil wars, I would think you'd know about Syria at least. Wikipedia gives me 17 civil wars since 2000. We could roughly triple that if you want me to cut off anything from the 60s or before:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_civil_wars

If the only political assassination you're aware of is JFK and the only civil war is the US civil war, which is the only way I can come up with those cutoff dates, then I submit that you might want to look at more world news.

Re: How Twitter poisoned politics

#173

Post by Natsu » Sun, Oct 07, 2018, 9:04 PM UTC

moorhosj wrote: post #117

Chinjut wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think the examples are all before the 60s? There were some very prominent political assassinations during the 60s, Watergate happened during the 70s, etc.

The 70s were over 40 years ago.

I posted above, but I see no reason to limit things to the USA and I see no reason to limit assassinations to only the successful ones. Just because politicians have better security and actually thwart more assassination attempts, that doesn't mean that the underlying willingness to murder people over politics has gone anywhere.

There are plenty of close calls to show that the schemes were serious: Bolsonaro was stabbed, Reagan was shot, etc.

Re: How Twitter poisoned politics

#174

Post by zapita » Tue, Oct 09, 2018, 9:43 PM UTC

chiefalchemist wrote: post #161

zapita wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see. How do you define “mainstream media”? Outlets with a very large audience? In the sense that large media outlets covered Barack Obama one way, and small media outlets another?

Outlets where the emphasis is on the talking head and the entertainment value, while journalism takes a back seat. Outlets that parrot press releases and the narrative dictated to them via back channels. Outlets where asking questions, analysis and looking beyond the common narrative is frowned upon. Outlets that shamelessly relabel editorial / op-ed as news and/or journalism. Outlets that self-anoint themselves as "…

Are you sure you understand what the word “mainstream” means? A recent dictionary defines mainstream as “representing the prevalent attitudes, values, and practices of a society or group”. You don’t seem to use that meaning of the word at all.

Your definition seems closer to “low-quality” or “biased”. As in “The low-quality, biased media only talks about the good sides of Barack Obama”. Is that what you meant?