711–720 of 1001 posts
Someone on reddit made an interesting comment about how many foreign agents are using this opportunity to plant bugs in various locations.
Who knows if congressional members can reasonably safely meet before such a sweep occurs.
The riot is winding down. The Capitol Police cleared the building hours ago, and many of the crowd just hanging around have left. More cops from Virginia and DC have arrived, and are slowly pushing the remaining crowd back. Tomorrow, Congress will finish counting the electoral votes. I suspect that some, if not all, of the planned objections will not be made.
I sure hope so. There were dudes inside Congress waving rebel flags. Trump and friends probably didn't count on that when they were posturing on Twitter. Hopefully, that scares them straight and cools some heads. And not just Trump, but the entire political class who've been playing loose with divisive/identity politics for the last decade.
Of course not, they were hoping the mere threat would get a sufficient number of Republican lawmakers to immediately and publicly side with rejecting the election results (or get Pence to recant and do so, refusing to open the dispute votes), so that the mob could switch to celebration rather than carrying out violence.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/13469288825958850... "This claim of election fraud is disputed, and this Tweet can’t be replied to, Retweeted, or liked due to a risk of violence" That's a new one. Twitter openly admits the content is dangerous, but they still don't want to ban him so they carved out a special quarantine mode instead.
Honest question: does anyone think this would have happened if Twitter and Facebook did not exist?
Obviously it's all conjecture, but I don't think so. Essentially all the mainstream news sites have not gone along with the claims of fraud. The only place Trump has an audience for all his nonsense is on Twitter. And Twitter marking all his tweets as misleading does nothing to deter his more extreme followers. I really hope they just ban him someday.
What do these protestors hope to accomplish?
According to some of the more conspiratorial comments in this thread, a coup. The actual answer is probably that they do not believe the claims of election fraud have been sufficiently investigated. I'm sure they want a more thorough investigation to be held before the election results are officially recognized by congress. That and they're just angry people who have resorted to rioting - like how a toddler resorts t…
How did we arrive to this point where a huge chunk of the population is in one reality and another huge chunk of the population is in another reality? Segregation of information sources? Politicization of media outlets? Self-reinforcing social bubbles? A combination of all of them and more?
It's always been that way. We've been at war with each other since the very beginning. North vs South. Federalists vs Anti-Federalists. Nativists vs Pro-Immigration. Protectionist vs Free Trade.
Heck, just a decade or so into the republic a vice president and a secretary of treasury had a duel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burr%E2%80%93Hamilton_duel
The easiest tell is in the name. "United" States of America. If we were so united, we wouldn't have the need to put united since it would be self-evident.
The only times we've come together, briefly, is when we have a common enemy - whether it is natives, blacks, germans, japanese, russians, chinese, mexicans, etc. For a brief few weeks, the country was united after 9/11.
> Segregation of information sources? Politicization of media outlets? Self-reinforcing social bubbles? A combination of all of them and more?
Nope. You can have the same information and two people are going to come to two different conclusions. Forcing the entire country to watch CNN or Foxnews isn't going to solve the problem. It is just going to antagonize one side even more.
You can argue that it is impossible for a country as large as the US ( or china, russia, india, etc ) to be "united". Too many people across too vast a territory to keep everyone's interests aligned. Heck, you can argue that these aren't really countries but empires too. And all empires eventually crumble.
But the truth is that huge chunks of the population have lived under different realities in the US since the very beginning and has continued ever since.
Here’s a “fun” thought: if you were running a foreign intelligence operation in the USA, surely you’d try to get one of your agents into the mob that got into the Capitol building and given free reign over all those computers, computers that were not locked properly before the legitimate users fled for their safety? I’m not just talking about Russia and China here, I mean all the intelligence agencies.
That’s (mostly) because such information is the domain of the executive branch.
Are there people here on HN that believe the election was stolen? I haven't seen any evidence, most of the lawsuits haven't borne fruit either. However, I also recognize that there may be blindspots/biases. I'd really like to hear from anyone who believes this, to present a cogent argument. I promise not to attack. I want to hear the argument from the other side. I also beseech the rest of HN to please refrain from a…
I don't believe it was stolen. I think we should be able to see how our vote was recorded. The whole system is based on trust. Right now that trust is being threatened (eroded?). Since there isn't a way to individually inspect the system, we have to rely on the word of others to validate it. The government doesn't always act in the best interest of the populace and often outright lies to it. This begs the question, s…
It's the practical erosion of Free Speech. Liberal (small "l" liberal) democracy and liberal science thrives on members: 1. Being willing to admit they may be wrong 2. Having access to a diverse information diet But the past two decades have shown erosion of not only legal Free Speech, but practical free speech: * Whereas previously they were just ignored (or even rebutted), today employees, students, and professors…
I cannot believe someone would look at the current situation and think to themselves "they decided to do this because they weren't allowed to offend people on college campuses." If anything the current situation is caused by a lack of moderation and instead giving absolutely everyone the same level of authority and deference online, regardless of whether they deserve it. Every bozo gets their own twitter and substack…
It's the practical erosion of Free Speech. Liberal (small "l" liberal) democracy and liberal science thrives on members: 1. Being willing to admit they may be wrong 2. Having access to a diverse information diet But the past two decades have shown erosion of not only legal Free Speech, but practical free speech: * Whereas previously they were just ignored (or even rebutted), today employees, students, and professors…
I cannot believe someone would look at the current situation and think to themselves "they decided to do this because they weren't allowed to offend people on college campuses." If anything the current situation is caused by a lack of moderation and instead giving absolutely everyone the same level of authority and deference online, regardless of whether they deserve it. Every bozo gets their own twitter and substack…