
Ask HN: Why are there no discussions related to the Trump Administration? - ForrestN
As I write this, none of the top 30 links pertain to the massive emergency engulfing Y Combinator&#x27;s home country, which will have rippling negative effects around the world. Why isn&#x27;t this news more important here?<p>HN is full of extremely intelligent, passionate and capable people. Collectively the readers here could form the bedrock of a powerful resistance to what will very clearly be an abominable and destructive regime. I came today expecting a community making plans to protect the vulnerable, to save the planet from climate catastrophe, to ensure the economic environment that has allowed Silicon Valley to flourish. Instead: &quot;I’m a huge fan of Zelda, The Wind Waker’s graphics.&quot;<p>What does it mean that we as a community are silent about perhaps the most important turning point in society so far in most of our lifetimes?
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pmorici
I can only speak for myself but I've been clicking flag on anything election
related including this. I think both the candidates were bad in their own
ways. Hillary an ethically challenged war hawk who as secretary of state
brought US Russian relations to the lowest point since the cold war. Trump is
crude, unapologetic and his greatest skill is self promotion.

It was pretty clear to any one that bothered to pay attention that the
election was very close, either way neither outcome was going to be positive.
People predicting the end of civilization because Trump was elected are
totally divorced from reality and not thinking rationally. That kind of fear
mongering is dangerous and unwarranted. If you want to participate in that
there are many many websites you can go to to get your fill personally I'm
tired of seeing it and don't think it has any place on this site not to
mention political stuff is off topic per HN guidelines.

~~~
tptacek
I appreciate you doing this. I haven't been as zealous lately because I'm
shellshocked by the week, and as a result I've been at least once sucked into
a political thread that wasted a bunch of my time.

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Jugurtha
With all due respect, I think you are simply overwhelmed. Specifically, this:

> _which will have rippling negative effects around the world._

We don't know that.

> _to what will very clearly be an abominable and destructive regime._

Nothing clear about that.

> _I came today expecting a community making plans to protect the vulnerable,
> to save the planet from climate catastrophe, to ensure the economic
> environment that has allowed Silicon Valley to flourish. Instead: "I’m a
> huge fan of Zelda, The Wind Waker’s graphics."._

Silicon Valley was not born to protect the vulnerable or save the planet, but
to create technology. Often in the form of games and graphics.

To calm your spirits, let me try to put it succinctly:

People are trying to infer what kind of president he will be based on what
kind of candidate he was. This doesn't work. When someone is a candidate,
their job is to win at the game of being a candidate. This involves a certain
tool-set: Scandals, digging up skeletons, making dead people vote,
disinformation campaigns, promising a utopia, coming out as crazy, whatever
gets the votes. Some are morally higher than this. It might work, but I don't
think they ever become presidents, especially when others are playing by
certain rules.

When a candidate is elected, though, they are the president and their job
isn't to be a candidate anymore, it's to be a president. It's different.

Candidate Trump was something, but President-elect Trump is another thing,
POTUS Trump _will_ be something else because he _needs_ to be.

~~~
DefaultUserHN
Exactly. People forgot that election smear is just that: smear. Both opponents
will try their hardest to make the their opponent look bad.

People need to realize that their image of Trump is not the real Trump, it is
only the smeared version of Trump.

~~~
grzm
Laudable sentiments. Are you willing to extend the same to Hillary?

~~~
DefaultUserHN
Of course.

Unfortunately, her e-mails are revealing a lot of stuff that are not just
smears. Smears are smears when you have no way to prove it. But with Hillary,
her emails are right there for everyone to see, to read, and judge for
themselves.

So I try to extend it to her too, but she made it impossible, especially since
you don't need to rely on someone else telling you that she is corrupt.
Instead, you can read the e-mail evidence for yourself and decide.

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pedalpete
Personally, I'm mostly tired of it already. Is this the "most important
turning point in society...of our lifetimes?"

I think that may be overly dramatic. There have been many things which have
had a dramatic effect on society in our lifetime, both positive and negative.
I don't want to give Donald Trump the satisfaction of being a member of that
club.

Living well is the best thing you can do, no matter who is president. That
doesn't mean living high on the hog, that means doing well, being good,
helping others. Nobody can stop us from doing that.

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bdcravens
HN is for news and discussion about "hacker news": programming, the startup
scene, etc. It's not for organizing political movements, even if you assume
everyone is of the same political slant.

Even so, nothing has happened. He was elected, and will be inaugurated in a
couple of months. Perhaps we wait until some bills actually get proposed or an
actual executive order before we get all crisis mode?

~~~
dvdhnt
^ this

Furthermore, there have been articles referencing the analytical failings
behind the miscalculation by those who claimed Trump had no chance along with
numerous links to self-reflection pieces characterizing the attitudes of the
media, especially a perceived "smugness" as it pertains to the liberal media.

Confession, I'm socially liberal yet conservative on a few other major issues;
I have a history of exhibiting said "smugness" and rather than seeing this
election as an "emergency", I find it to be a thought-provoking indictment of
our (liberals) ineptitude at true empathy, collaboration, and compromise.

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philiphodgen
There are plenty of places to hear alarmist talk. HN is not the place for
that.

Bookmark your sense of alarm. Your sense of impending doom. Remember your
feelings today, then get on with life. Come back in a year or two. How will
your perception today compare with reality two years from now? (I have a
prediction . . . .)

This is said by someone who has watched the sky fall and people throw hissy
fits since the 1968 Nixon victory.

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sergiotapia
>Collectively the readers here could form the bedrock of a powerful resistance
to what will very clearly be an abominable and destructive regime.

No. Your hypnosis will soon wear off, give it a couple of months. This is
exactly why nobody talks about this on HN.

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angersock
I'm uvpoting this post _pour encourager les autres_ , so we can talk about it
and mock you^W^Wdiscuss it and posts like it in one place.

 _> As I write this, none of the top 30 links pertain to the massive emergency
engulfing Y Combinator's home country, which will have rippling negative
effects around the world._

What "massive emergency"? What "negative effects"? Every four years the losing
voters will say that it's the end of the world, and yet here we are, going
through the same tired shit _yet again_.

 _> Collectively the readers here could form the bedrock of a powerful
resistance to what will very clearly be an abominable and destructive regime._

First, the people here are entrepreneurs and many of them would be the first
to sell software to run trains to the camps if it meant turning a buck. The
people here are the sort whose businesses collect the data that would used by
a fascist state. The people here are the type to laugh at the enslavement of
the poor by the service industry. I would count on them _not one goddamned
bit_.

Second, looking past the silly rhetoric and bluster, how can we claim the
"very cleary...an abominable and destructive regime" bit? What, like the
excessive assassinations via drones Obama carried out? Or the bombings of
countries the US conducted under Clinton? Or the comically large fuckup of
military adventurism under Bush II? You gotta do better if you want to sound
credible.

 _> What does it mean that we as a community are silent about perhaps the most
important turning point in society so far in most of our lifetimes?_

More important than 9/11 and the Patriot Act? More important than the fall of
the Berlin Wall? More important than the release of Netscape and IE? More
important than Facebook and Twitter and Paypal?

Do you even _read_ what you're saying? Your alarm is only matched by your
ignorance.

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minimaxir
Politics is off topic per the Guidelines. Even then, there have been several
discussions about Trump in the past few days.

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tzs
There was a very good link submitted to an NPR article that simply took
Trump's published list of things he says he is going to do in the first 100
days, and annotated the items with a short look at what it would take to
accomplish them.

It did not advocate for or against the various items. It just looked
objectively at whether they could be accomplished. There was nothing partisan
or inflammatory in the article.

It was [flagged] and [dead] within minutes.

If a simple, nonpartisan, neutral analysis like that cannot make it here, no
way is anything even remotely near political activism going to fly.

~~~
grzm
A lot of people on the site are tired of the political discussion on the site,
especially given what such discussions have looked like recently, and that
political discussions are not generally in line with the site guidelines. I
suspect a lot of submissions are getting flagged as a result, sometimes
regardless of the tone of the article.

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DefaultUserHN
Is this your first election? What you are experiencing is called OMG!-The-
candidate-I-voted-for-did-not-win-so-the-world must-be-ending Syndrome.
Happens every election. Remember Bush? "OMG! That idiot will be the end of
America as we know it!" Well, we're still here, America is still here.

So calm down. The President is not a dictator. The President does not have
that kind of power.

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inimino
Discussions about Trump have been all over the front page ever since the
election.

> massive emergency

Maybe that's just not the consensus view you thought it was.

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TheSpiceIsLife
Something that really helped me stop getting panicky / excited / enraged by
politics is ready and listening to P.J. O'Rourke. He's entertaining and funny
and level headed.

Definitely helped me gain a calmer understand of politics.

Try his books or start here[1] with his 'Dangerous state of the nation'
address at the Sydney Opera House.

1\.
[http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/bigideas/pj-o'-...](http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/bigideas/pj-o'-rouke/7733076)

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detaro
There are multiple threads, some of them with >1000 comments. why they are not
in the top 30 (anymore) has been answered in the other comments.

From what I've read of them (as an outsider), there is still a lot of "Why did
that just happen", pro-contra-Trump debates and of course a lot of
hypotheticals -> we don't know all that much yet. It seems people will need
time to cool down and figure out where to go next, and watch what actually is
likely to happen.

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ForrestN
I think I got part of my answer: it seems that many people on HN do not
interact much with those of us who are now in immanent danger. Reading the
delusional apathy, ignorance and disdain in the replies here I'm even more
concerned.

~~~
inimino
If you're going to blame people for not interacting with you, pay close
attention to how you treat them when they do.

> delusional apathy, ignorance and disdain

I engaged with some folks I know on Twitter with calls for moderation and
suggestions that things might not be as dire as they seem. I was asked to
"stop", "go away", "shut up", and "respect the pain".

Twitter now seems to be functioning as the national amygdala.

