581–590 of 715 posts
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He switched to supporting Trump after Trump repeatedly joked about someone breaking into a San Fransisco home to attack the owners with a hammer. So the temperature has been high for a while and he's on board with it.
Didn't that already happen with Pelosi?
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These are message boards. The obvious sentiment, that firebombing attacks are awful (perhaps cut a little bit with "the perpetrator appears to be someone deeply in need of help) is boring. This is an availability bias issue: the only sentiments that actually spool out into threads are edgy. Once you learn to spot these effects, message boards make a lot more sense and are less jarring.
Another good thread to follow is the murdering of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42317604 It's an interesting exercise to compare these threads. My own position on the matter is the not an edgy one: political violence of any kind, is never justified, but it does signal that something deep in society requires a change.
"Respice post te! Hominem te esse memento!"
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“ever”? So we’re not limited to reality or likely scenarios? Just anything I make up as if I was writing a creative fiction novel? I’m not sure how much this question actually measures propensity towards violence, than it does creativity and imagination.
Yes political violence is NEVER justifiable. That is the one and only correct answer if you wish to live in a modern society. And believe me, you do not want to live in the other kind
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> but it's a growing minority I’d want to see this interrogated with rigor. The alternate hypothesis, and my null, is a relatively fixed fraction of folks is more connected and visible today than before.
It's been studied pretty widely. https://www.npr.org/2025/10/01/nx-s1-5558304/poll-political-... > Respondents were asked if they agree with the statement, “Americans may have to resort to violence in order to get the country back on track?” Agree: - March 2024: 20% - September 2025: 30% Disagree: - March 2024: 79% - September 2025: 70%
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> explains why it is almost only an US phenomenon Genuine question: is it?
Certainly not. Nepal's Gen Z literally overthrew their government due to inequality and corruption. https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2025/09/nepal-gen-z-t...
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I don't condone it, but I understand the anger. The billionaire class has enabled armed masked police in our streets, endless layoffs, basically don't pay taxes at any reasonable percentage, and basically have rigged politics with Citizens United. Given that, I can see how people are resorting to 18th century French tactics.
The top 1% of income earners pay 40% of all the federal taxes collected. The top 25% pay 89% of taxes. Net of transfers, 60% of households receive more from government transfers than they pay in taxes. The idea that rich people don't pay taxes is just not correct. The entire system is basically rich people subsidizing everybody else through byzantine distributional systems.
Eta: these data are from 2018 before the BBB
It is a bit scary how people seem to genuinely be OK with violence (see this reddit thread [0]). Is just me or does it feel like the overall "temperature" has gone up. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1shugf8/firebomb_t...
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It's been studied pretty widely. https://www.npr.org/2025/10/01/nx-s1-5558304/poll-political-... > Respondents were asked if they agree with the statement, “Americans may have to resort to violence in order to get the country back on track?” Agree: - March 2024: 20% - September 2025: 30% Disagree: - March 2024: 79% - September 2025: 70%
Off topic: please tell me how you managed that formatting in the agree/disagree section?