I am dating myself and making myself unemployable in SV but this was not a normal thing when I was younger. It seems to have become far more common post Bush II; the Supreme Court and hanging chads had a much bigger effect than you'd think.
(Incidentally, I also remember the "Your side lost, hippies" trolls, the "Peak oil" comments, and the apocalyptic "George Bush is going to impose martial law and cancel the election, they are building concentration camps" comments. Such a wild time for internet discussion, many of these were recycled later on.)
I grant that it wasn't too common before Bush vs. Gore. But it did happen. There was in fact a great deal of electoral fraud in the U.S. in the past, too.
Utah is also a mail-to-vote state. Republicans have tried showing how easy it is committing voter fraud in these systems, but get caught and charged quickly because it’s actually not that easy.
Restricting freedom of speech (through "hate speech" laws and the like) is a danger to democracy then since it limits people from expressing their ideas and putting political power behind them.
There are lots of communists, authoritarians, fascists, socialists, even neo-nazis in the US. All of which want to remove democracy however, a political belief isn’t punishable by death.
But we’re not talking about someone advocating slavery, we’re talking about US politics, which is essentially a slow motion hysterical melodrama over whether to spend 30% or 40% of GDP on social welfare, and on which programs.
Wishes to remove it, and speaks or acts in ways that further that goal.
There’s a false right-wing talking point that the US “is a republic, not a democracy”. The US is both a representative democracy and a republic, but the talking point equivocates on the meaning of “democracy”, conflating it with direct democracy, and this apparently fools far more people than it should.
The goal of people who push such propaganda is to weaken support for, and understanding of, democracy. There isn’t any doubt that they, and the people who unthinkingly repeat the propaganda, are a threat to democracy.
Incitement to violence is... not dangerous, got it. That's basically what you're saying. You're completely ignoring u/dang's exhortation, among other things.
No, I’m saying that “being a threat to democracy” is an actual thing. I’m saying that you can’t simultaneously say “calling someone a threat to democracy is inciting violence against them” and “what does being a threat to democracy actually mean?” as if it’s a meaningless accusation that can’t in fact be true.
If you're going to say that someone is "a threat to democracy" then you should be specific. Extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence and all that. Charlie Kirk most certainly was not a threat to democracy. Many many loonies in this thread.
And by the way, if someone can be "a threat to democracy" then surely it's also possible that someone could commit electoral fraud. I.e., if you and others here are so upset at those who say that 2020 was rife with electoral fraud as to call them "threats to democracy", then surely those people are equally justified in saying that the electoral fraud they think took place was itself a threat to democracy (as were the people who might have perpetrated it).
You really can't have it both ways.
This way of "I'm justified, you're not" lies madness. Stop it.
"Threat to democracy" is definitely broad (but not "extraordinary"), and reasonable people can disagree with specific accusations. That's not my point. My point is simply that you can't simultaneously say "calling something a threat to democracy is an incitement of violence against them" and "the phrase 'threat to democracy' doesn't even mean anything."
I personally think that the accusation is not "incitement of violence" and that the phrase does have a meaning, and thus an accusation can be either true or false. I think reasonable people can disagree on certain accusations, while other accusations cannot be reasonably disputed.
As an aside, I have no idea where you came up with the "you and others here" business about electoral fraud. That's a wild thing to pull out of thin air.
"Hate speech" isn't just hateful speech, it's a specific term with a specific meaning. Being a nazi isn't an inherent characteristic of a person, it's an affiliation or ideology that they consciously choose.
No when it's a label deliberately misapplied to run of the mill conservatives. That's defamation with the purpose of generating hate against those people.
(1) A summary of lots of people's judgements of him, which line up with my judgement of his actions. I see the type of person that just barks orders, and when someone tells him it's unwise/impossible/etc he responds with "get it done". And when it doesn't magically happen "you're fired". He surrounds himself with sycophants instead of competence, which is why all of his policies have such terrible execution - one person simply cannot micro manage every detail.
Do you disagree that he is basically running the government as an extension of himself? To me, it sure seems that way when he uses chaotic tariffs to pressure other countries into making "deals" that often include his own personal financial interests.
(2) As I said, I don't understand what specific point of mine you're referring to. There are laws and enforcement in both individual liberty respecting societies, and also in dictatorships. So clearly it matters what the laws are, and how they're being enforced.
(3) No, which is why I was talking about respect for societal institutions. For every American thinker's elucidation of conservative values that I have tried to apply, if I squint I can see maybe 20-40% of them being applicable, with the rest being openly rejected.
Perhaps you would like to reference what specific set of conservative values you see Trumpism actually following? I don't mean aiming to destroy our society such to the point that conservative values will become more important, but actually applying those values to the present situation. Because as a libertarian who has entertained ideas all around the left-right political spectrum, the only thing I can find that lines up is anarcho-capitalism.
Or to come at it from a different direction, read Moldbug's "A Gentle Introduction to Unqualified Reservations". He lays out a left-right framework that seems to be underpinning much of this movement, and explicitly rejects conservatism as ineffective.
I don't see how your (1) is a refutation of a fundamental autocratic dynamic (furthermore Trump may "champion" mRNA vaccines with one side of his mouth, but he talks out of both). And you still haven't made any coherent point with your (2)s.
(3) seems to be the crux of the issue. I am giving you the opening to pick a thinker who has best articulated what you see as a good enumeration of timeless conservative values, which we can then use to judge Trumpism. Because believe it or not, I am open to changing my mind here and I really do want to understand.
If you'd like me to pick, I can certainly do that. But then I don't want to then hear that I haven't picked the "right" conservative for your taste.
Plenty of people I know believe illegal immigrants should be deported. The difference between them and people accused of being a Nazi is they don't go around calling them all rapists and murderers.
The problem isn't the claimed actions they want to take, its the dehumanization being resorted to.
You’re exaggerating greatly, of course. Among those deported are rapists and murderers, naturally, and no one has stated that everyone being deported or even targeted is one (the recent Hyundai bust comes to mind). I challenge you to find that quote.
Can you provide a source where a Republican says we need to target all immigrants? Or are you simply imagining things because the media always conflates illegal immigrants with legal ones?
The virus didn't mutate into less aggressive strains, everyone got T-cells through vaccination or infection, which made subsequent infection less severe.
Which is borne out through the higher death rate in Republicans who didn't get vaccinated, compared to Democrats who did.
And we had situations like Hong Kong which got absolutely hammered by Omicron, even though that strain was supposedly "less severe", because of the low levels of prior infection and vaccination when Omicron hit there.
> Which is borne out through the higher death rate in Republicans who didn't get vaccinated, compared to Democrats who did.
Or because republicans never took the threat seriously and didn't took effective preventive measures like reducing social contact, increasing their exposure risk.
> And we had situations like Hong Kong which got absolutely hammered by Omicron, even though that strain was supposedly "less severe", because of the low levels of prior infection and vaccination when Omicron hit there.
Hong Kong focused all its efforts in preventing the virus to even get there. Once it broke through they were unprepared to deal with it, hence the bad outcome.
> Or because republicans never took the threat seriously and didn't took effective preventive measures like reducing social contact, increasing their exposure risk.
Everyone got exposed eventually. Republicans who didn't vaccinate died at a higher rate when they got exposed.
> Hong Kong focused all its efforts in preventing the virus to even get there.
Yes, that's why it produced a good example of an immunologically naive population, late in the pandemic.
> Once it broke through they were unprepared to deal with it, hence the bad outcome.
Which was Omicron, and it turned out to be just as deadly. Which completely falsifies your argument that mutation led to less deadly strains.
We can see in Hong Kong that it was just as deadly.
In the United States it wasn't, and the difference is due to immunity from vaccination and natural infection.
> Everyone got exposed eventually. Republicans who didn't vaccinate died at a higher rate when they got exposed.
Again, due to differences in risk behavior not limited to anti-covid measures.
> Which was Omicron, and it turned out to be just as deadly. Which completely falsifies your argument that mutation led to less deadly strains.
Not really since there's no mention of the treatment or lack thereof used there. You assume the outcome is due to lack of previous exposure when it can just be poor management.
But hey, at least is nice to see people who admit natural infection confers protection. That wasn't the case during the pandemic.
> But hey, at least is nice to see people who admit natural infection confers protection. That wasn't the case during the pandemic.
That is incorrect. Nobody with a passing familiarity of the human immune system would claim that natural infection didn't confer immunity. It just also carries a substantially higher risk of death and disability compared to vaccination.
The problem is that this is so ideological for some people, damn the science and facts, lies and positioning are all that matter in the post-truth world
Imagine believing that in a world of billions, that the vaccine didn't save at least 2M lives through reductions in symptoms and spread. The same is true for virus mutations
It's perfectly reasonable to believe that when the vaccine in question is crap that doesn't prevent transmission, whatever limited positive effects it has last very little time and has severe side effects like heart inflammation.
> Not really, the virus mutating into less aggressive strains did.
This didn't happen. There was no selection pressure on the virus to mutate to a "less aggressive" form. To think there was is to fundamentally misunderstand the science here.
The incubation period was plenty long enough for the virus to spread before incapacitating the host. All the selection pressure was for the virus to become more virulent - and that is precisely what happened. We saw multiple strains appear which were harder to deal with.
This had a negligible impact. Patients were only put on ventilation when they were already very sick and at a high chance of death. Worldwide only a tiny proportion of deaths came about in this way. Even rich countries only had ventilators in the tens of thousands. Compare that to the billions who received vaccinations.
> The incubation period was plenty long enough for the virus to spread before incapacitating the host. All the selection pressure was for the virus to become more virulent - and that is precisely what happened. We saw multiple strains appear which were harder to deal with.
Is Omicron equally as deadly as Delta? No.
> This had a negligible impact. Patients were only put on ventilation when they were already very sick and at a high chance of death. Worldwide only a tiny proportion of deaths came about in this way. Even rich countries only had ventilators in the tens of thousands. Compare that to the billions who received vaccinations.
That's just one example. Not using effective antivirals is another one. With time, treatments improved and so did the outcomes, regardless of vaccination status.
It depends how you look at it. Omicron had a lower CFR, but higher transmissibility, so arguably worse.
There is no inherent selection pressure on viruses to mutate towards being less aggressive. Omicron had a transmission advantage that coincided with being a bit less lethal, but often being more transmissible correlates with being more lethal (e.g. delta variant).
We could have easily had a more lethal omicron variant emerge if it wasn't for vaccination effectively halting the pandemic.
Far more people were saved by vaccination than any luck on random mutation in the virus.
> With time, treatments improved
They did. Like the use of dextramethasone. Still a small improvement compared to the dramatic success of the vaccines.
> and so did the outcomes, regardless of vaccination status.
No. Vaccinated individuals were better off in pretty much every measurable statistic. By any reasonable measurement vaccination saved millions of lives.
What do you mean "prevent"? If you mean vaccines didn't completely prevent transmission, then yes. If you mean vaccines didn't prevent a proportion of transmission, then no. The vaccines did significantly reduce transmission in general.
Of course the main benefit of the vaccines was a dramatic reduction in severe disease, hospital admissions and deaths.
They didn't affect transmission at all. Symptom reduction is also debatable since it can also be explained by immunity from previous exposure, less damaging variants and better treatments as time went on.
There's plenty of evidence that vaccines reduced transmission, especially in the earlier variants.
The idea that vaccines didn't reduce severe illness is laughable. Multiple robust tudies across many nations and institutions have been carried out, showing that several different vaccines were highly effective.
I am citing past comments to demonstrate the individual has a pattern of disregarding basic hygiene measures. And that it's related to their current view on vaccines
And as you can see from their reply they don't mind talking about it.
The phrase "disregarding basic hygiene measures" is also a rhetorical interpretation that indicates you're more interested in battle than curious conversation.
And just because somebody doesn't complain about you digging up old comments, it doesn't make it OK to do. We can't know in advance how it will make someone feel, nor how they actually feel about it, even if they haven't complained about it.
The central issue is still that you seem to be using HN primarily for ideological battle, which is not what it is for.
Hacker News doesn't allow old threads to deprecate and doesn't allow you to delete your account. You choose to create a permanent public record of everything everyone has ever said on this forum, and I've seen mods go back months into a commenter's history to do exactly that.
What's good for the goose should be good for the gander.
Anyone can email us to have comments deleted if there are no replies, or anonymized/redacted if they no longer want the comment linked to their identity.
We cite past comments only to demonstrate a pattern when taking action against a user who has a history of guidelines breaches.
It's a long-established norm on HN that weaponizing historical comments in a present-day argument is not considered a fair debating tactic, as we have no idea if the person still agrees with what they posted a long while ago, nor whether the context of the historical comment is relevant to the present topic.
Geese and ganders have nothing to do with it and I don't know why you're using my efforts to uphold fair debating between community members as grounds to attack our moderation.
The energy of "highlight[ing] bad faith actors" is not what we're going for here. The guidelines ask us to "assume good faith", and there are valid reasons why someone's present-day position could (appear to) contradict a historical position. The best reason is that they have undergone some personal growth, which we would hope of most people over a year or more, and we definitely want to allow space for that on HN.
If they do have such evidence it would be worth while to justify their cuts with that evidence. Just because it was rushed out doesn’t mean it wasn’t used by billions of people tens of billions of times with an extraordinarily low incidence of side effects observed in situ. This is a situation of unparalleled prevalence, including probably everyone reading this now. If there were evidence of problem it would be globally observable and impossible to suppress. Even if the pharma industry would want to, all it would take is a single professor of medicine, statistician, epidemiologist, etc anywhere on earth looking for tenure to be able to produce a compelling and well structured survey and / or meta analysis that showed mRNA vaccines had any level of harm. But it didn’t happen. Because they are safe, and literally everyone who has had one - which is pretty much literally everyone - knows this. RFK Jr knows this too, but he is seeking something other than truth here.
No, what I said about masking policy during COVID was this:
> Reasonable at first. Once it was known that the virus is transmitted via aerosols then forcing masks was the wrong thing to do, specially on children. Useless and damaging.
I don't know why you wouldn't wear a mask to stop aerosols. Masks were a correct answer. The problem was pushing those pieces of crap made out of cut up t-shirts and other hopium, to help cope with the presidential dereliction of duty failing to address the shortage of real PPE P95/P100s.
> I don't know why you wouldn't wear a mask to stop aerosols.
Because the masks don't stop aerosols. They're too tiny for them. Then there's also the fact that being so light they accumulate in the air and last there for an hour or longer and can even infect people through the eyes.
That argument was always trotted out in the context of the hopium made out of t-shirts, or surgical masks with open flow paths around the filter. Everything I saw confirmed that P100's were quite effective at the relevant drop size (as you'd expect them to be, as they stop things like atomized and aerosolized paint spray). As far as the eyes, reducing viral load is worthy on its own. Or if you want the proper solution, that is a full face mask. But either way, not having a perfect solution certainly doesn't indicate going in the opposite direction and completely giving up on the idea.
> not having a perfect solution certainly doesn't indicate going in the opposite direction and completely giving up on the idea.
Having a so-so solution can in fact be worse than nothing since it makes people think they're safe, which leads to much greater exposure than if they thought they were in danger. Promoting ventilation and open-air interaction is a much more effective solutions but the latter was banned and even persecuted.
You didn't address my core point, and you're still pulling in this odd direction of pointing to the failings of the straightforward approach to justify contrarianism based around doing even less.
Ventilation and open-air interaction were also both widely promoted, and widely used for things like social gatherings in parks and outside of homes. There were plenty of situations (eg grocery stores) where they were inapplicable from an individual perspective, hence the masks.
Which was defined as merely questioning official sources, pretending such sources provided nothing but the absolute truth.
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