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Comment by watermoose | Hacker News Reader

This is an article essentially about how anxiety affects political views, so here's my experience on that matter.

I'm an independent that leans conservative especially on fiscal but also somewhat on social issues, and I know that my worry plays a part in it.

I've voted for independents, Libertarians, Republicans, and Democrats in past presidential elections, and plan to vote Democrat this year, and I will do so because of my worry about the Republican candidate. This candidate is unpredictable, and is focused on the wrong side of issues that I care about. I'm a compassionate person, and the candidate is not. I'm also a Christian, and the candidate is the antithesis of the behavior and goals I would hope to have in my country's leader. And of course, I think that a woman should have a chance at leading our country, even if she's not the one that I'd chose typically. So, my anxiety will play a part in the election, but not in the way this article would suggest.

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It's an article that tries, not very subtly, to associate conservative political views with anxiety disorders. Pathologizing opinions is a tactic with a long and unlovely history (cf. "sluggish schizophrenia" under the Soviet regime) and one which I find considerably more concerning than the current electoral cycle. The republic is stronger than a corrupt apparatchik and a real estate swindler. But treating dissent as disease can get ugly fast.

What's more concerning is that this comes from the state run broadcaster. If you don't toe the party line there's something wrong with you.

The BBC is not a state run broadcaster, and the current UK government is run by the Conservative Party.

As I gather the matter, the BBC is subject to prior restraint under law, any time the Home Secretary chooses to invoke the relevant provision, as has been done for explicitly political reasons in the recent past with the Sinn Fein ban. That's close enough to "state broadcaster" for an ignorant colonial like me.

The ban on broadcasting the voices of Sinn Fein representatives (but not the content of what they said) applied to all UK media, not just the BBC. I'm in no way arguing that it was a sound decision, but it says nothing about the BBC being state run or otherwise.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988%E2%80%9394_British_broadc...

I'll admit this was a provocative and hyperbolic post, I was interrupted before I could polish my though. I'm British and I can recall plenty of times the BBC has bent over to accommodate the ruling party. The only one that springs to mind now is after the invasion of Iraq BBC radio stations refused to play Edwin Starrs 'war (what is it good for)'.

In Europe I've heard a lot of comments after the Brexit that the voters of the Leave camp were "aging", "countryside" or "racist". Very few people view them as possibly having a rational reasoning. "We" try to assign them a reason for being irrational.

Whether we associate Soviet dissidents with "schizophrenia", people we don't agree with with "senility", or associate undeserved moral standards with "leftists", I reckon treating someone's vote as a consequence of their weakness and not as a consequence of their decision is ugly.

As a non-american watching from the side-lines, I feel like this presidential election will be a loss no matter which of the candidates wins.

I too watch from the sidelines, but I think that if I were a voter I would either not vote or vote third candidate. I wish there wasn't so many troubling things about Hillary's deals and ties.

This is what I do not understand. If you are so troubled by Hilary, then make a stand against her. If you think Trump is worse (I do) then vote against him in a way that counts; vote for Hilary. This is not an election to sit on the sidelines. Make a choice that matters. This is not really directed at you per say, but to Americans who could vote and are expressing this "do not vote/ vote third party" sentiment. I can only guess that they are Trump supporters hoping a three way split helps them.

"You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"

"Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."

"But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?"

"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?"

> This is not an election to sit on the sidelines. Make a choice that matters.

If you tell a kid that it's having green beans for dinner, it will throw a tantrum because it doesn't like green beans. If you ask it: "what do you want for dinner, green beans or spinach?", it will happily choose the beans because it likes spinach even less. The illusion of choice is a very powerful one.

You get to choose from a grand total of 2 pre-vetted candidates. Do you really think it matters which one you pick ?

The purpose of an election is not so the people can choose their leader, it's to make the people think they chose their leader. It prevents revolution.

Trump is a lot of things, but pre-vetted isn't one of them.

There was a robust primary season this time around, perhaps the most robust in over a century. The results are hogwash, and we can discuss what happened and what we can do about it. But it's not entirely rigged.

> Trump is a lot of things, but pre-vetted isn't one of them.

No, the republicans made a mistake by actually letting the people's vote decide and they will correct it before the next elections. The Democrats have already made this kind of mistake in the past[1] which is why they now have superdelegates to correct for that.

So yeah, Trump supporters managed to game the system this one time, unfortunately they wasted their one opportunity by choosing that clown.

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdelegate#Origins

Actually, the Democrats aren't the only ones that have something to protect against that: while the Democrats have superdelegates to tip the scale in favor of insiders (though, as yet, the supers have never actually, AFAIK, tipped the result in a different direction than the majority of pledged delegates), they, unlike the Republicans, actually assign pledged delegates in a basically proportionate manner (there are state by state differences, but all of them are fundamentally around a proportionate baseline.)

The Republicans also have a system to prevent a popular outsider from winning, its just a different system. Rather than assigning pledged delegates in a basically proportional manner and then establishing superdelegates as a safety valve, they have designed a system to favor candidates with establishment support by, in most primaries/caucuses, giving vastly disproportionate delegates to the plurality or majority winner (in some cases, winner-take-all), a system designed to favor candidates who start off ahead, which is assumed to be (and usually is) those with the most party pedigree and establishment advance support preparing the ground.

This backfired on the establishment in this election largely because the establishment started out backing a candidate that was so unappealing to their own key supporters that even major donors were bad mouthing him from the beginning of the primary campaign and talking about how they were only giving to him because they felt compelled out of loyalty to the Party and the candidates family, which gave plenty of opportunity for a celebrity candidate to leverage free media to a powerful lead while the establishment was scrambling to adjust, which they never managed to do.

>No, the republicans made a mistake by actually letting the people's vote decide and they will correct it before the next elections. The Democrats have already made this kind of mistake in the past[1] which is why they now have superdelegates to correct for that.

What are you talking about? The superdelegates weren't even a factor in nominating Hillary; she won the popular vote in the DNC primaries even without taking into account the SDs. You can argue that media complicity and other factors like CtR had a big hand here, but in the end, it was the Democratic voters who pulled the lever for her. So just like the Republican voters managed to choose a clown, so did the Democratic voters, except it was even worse for the Dems: on the Rep side, at least they can point out that it was actually a minority of Rep voters who chose him, and he won because of vote-splitting between all the other candidates. This just isn't a case on the Dem side, where all the other candidates aside from Sanders got almost no votes at all, and Hillary won a clear majority.

> What are you talking about? The superdelegates weren't even a factor in nominating Hillary;

Who's talking about Hillary ? I'm just saying they have a mechanism in place to make sure there is no actual democracy going on. I didn't claim they had to use that mechanism in this election.

They may have a mechanism in place, but your argument falls flat at complaining about this mechanism (or any undemocratic mechanism) when it hasn't even been used to change the final results of any election.

I guess you could say that Democratic voters are a lot better at nominating the person their party leadership wants them to than the Republican voters.

Why not vote against both and send a _very_ clear message that both parties, frankly, suck?

The solution that forces you to choose between two not acceptable outcomes is a very bad solution. If both choices are not acceptable then there should be a way to reject both of them.

"Let's flip a coin, heads I win, tails you lose. You don't like those rules? Too bad, you must play."

Likely third-party voter here:

(1) I suspect every voter has a threshold of evil-ness beyond which they simply can't in good conscience vote for Candidate X, even if Candidate Y is evil-er. For me, we've passed that threshold.

(2) I don't live in a swing state, so my vote already has only symbolic significance. As such I'd rather go on record voting no confidence in either Clinton or Trump, and vote for someone that I think would actually do a reasonable job if by some miracle they became president.

(3) I know Gary Johnson and the other third-party candidates have no chance of winning - _this_ time. I accept that (in my opinion) we're screwed for at least the next four years no matter whether it's Clinton or Trump, but if as many votes as possible go third-party this election, maybe - just maybe - third-parties will gain enough credibility to have a reasonable chance next election, or else the two major parties will finally get the message and pick better candidates.

>or else the two major parties will finally get the message and pick better candidates.

You'd think that after Bill's success in 1992, Gore's failure in 2000, Kerry's failure in 2004, and Obama's success in 2008, the DNC would finally have gotten a clue about how important it is to have a candidate who's well-liked and popular with the younger voters. But apparently not.

>(1) I suspect every voter has a threshold of evil-ness beyond which they simply can't in good conscience vote for Candidate X, even if Candidate Y is evil-er. For me, we've passed that threshold.

This is another really huge factor.

Sadly IMO, most people think that way, therefore we get to make this exact same choice every 4 years, where we vote for the overtly racist party to defeat the blacks, or the other party to think of ourselves as a friend to the blacks (or because we are the blacks) and ignore the terrible effects of bipartisanship. The only reason this election is interesting is because a critical mass of people are irritated by the two parties in general; normally, this would be a Jeb Bush v. Hillary Clinton election, and Sanders would have dropped out after the first Democratic primary debate.

Of course, if things had been going normally, Hillary Clinton would be serving the end of her second term. The potential energy for change has been building for a while, 9/11, the Iraq debacle, the housing bubble, the rise of the social Internet, the death of the Silent Generation and the Baby Boomers turning 70 have had a huge effect on how political thought amongst the American masses is distributed.

I'm troubled by both Hillary and Trump. I'm excited by the inevitable outcome that we are going to elect a weak President after a couple of decades of Executive branch expansion. I'm excited to vote for someone other than the two parties to promote ideas that are usually excluded from the public discourse for reasons other than their merits.

What's so troubling about Hillary's deals and ties? I can see that many people are upset about them, but when I look into details, I don't see anything particularly serious. I don't think her ties are any more troubling than, say, Romney or Trump, and no one really talked about those.

And of course, I think that a woman should have a chance at leading our country, even if she's not the one that I'd chose typically.

This I find the worst argument for her presidency imaginable. "I am so virtuous and anti-sexist that I prefer the female candidate for being female" It's pure sexism. You stop being sexist when you leave the gender out of the equation. Completely.

The trouble is that so many people use that argument while completely ignoring their own biases.

E.g. "I don't care that she's a woman, but she just doesn't look presidential."

"I just don't trust her, she's too shrill." "I just don't trust her, she's too quiet."

Look at all the media attention to her hair, her outfits, her skin, etc and you see that she's treated fundamentally differently than a male candidate.

The presidency has been held by a male exclusively for so long that voters don't know what a female president looks like. When so many (shockingly many) people vote on gut, instinct, or just their emotion, taking the time to acknowledge bias is a useful step.

Look at all the media attention to her hair

I am not gonna lie, Trump's hair got much more coverage. She is not treated fundamentally different than a male candidate, except in a positive bias as in "I want to see a woman leading the country!" It is obvious that Hillary leverages gender-based tribalism to get the female vote (and the gentleman's).

The argument that people are unconsciously biased is precisely such an emotionally manipulative argument to give Hillary a gender-based advantage. That does not work with people who are hardened against emotional manipulation though, like myself.

> Look at all the media attention to her hair, her outfits, her skin, etc

Strange comment to make considering the constant articles and social media posts about Trump's hair, Trump's orange skin, and Trump's little hands, plus the widespread coverage of the naked Trump painting and naked Trump statue that were created to mock his weight and body parts.

Trump invites that sort of coverage by being a thin-skinned, narcissistic buffoon who thinks he's above everyone else.

Case in point: The whole 'small hands' thing would've blown over if Trump had ignored it, but he couldn't help himself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuSdCXmDOus

On the other hand, if you use conscious bias to counteract unconscious bias, that might lead you to the best decision.

And it's valid to consider the externalities when you're making a political choice. The goal is a better future, after all, not maximizing fairness in the short-term.

Still, it's a relatively minor factor with the way the current race has turned out. So we don't need to worry about those arguments.

The goal is a better future, after all, not maximizing fairness in the short-term.

That's why you shouldn't judge by gender, but by performance of the candidate. That just proves my point. If your goal is a better future and you make performance-based decisions, you will minimize biases like sexism all by itself because what is less discriminating than assessing raw performance?

Before you can have an unbiased result, you need an unbiased pool of candidates. A temporary bias in the last round is an attempt to help fix the clearly-broken funnel that leads there. It might not be the best way of doing things, but the plan is not obviously wrong or anything.

Affirmative action is destructive. You are setting up people to fail by promoting them into positions they are not fit to take. Either they are qualified or they aren't. End of discussion. It's the same way with marks. Nobody is helped if a black person with bad marks gets into a college when they should not, and they end up not being able to handle the subjects and drop out later.

Not only that - affirmative action is disrespectful. Women can do as well as men. I believe in it. But that is precisely why affirmative action is obsolete. Only those who think women cannot handle the work and cannot perform on par with men favour affirmative actions based on gender. In the German language, there's already a word for women who were promoted into positions they cannot handle because there are certain quotas to fill as required by law. This is called "Quotenfrau" and is incredibly derogatory.

If someone isn't qualified, then a small bump won't be enough to put them in the job. We're not talking about picking a random person off the street to meet a quota.

There are flaws in affirmative action, but doing nothing about disparities that have self-perpetuating attributes is a pretty bad plan by itself. Top candidates don't appear out of a vacuum.

It's rational to say that "all other things being equal, I should choose the one that I'm most likely to be unconsciously biased against."

Forget racism or sexism, that's how I choose software, which movie to go see, or which pair of pants to buy.

This isn't a gift to Hillary, or a matter of fairness between her and Trump. It's an evaluation of her qualities on another (largely before-unseen) metric. If pure sexism got us better presidents the sexist decision would be the right one, but as you'll see, it isn't actually sexist.

Imagine yourself as a sport team leader. You've normally picked large bruiser types and you say "Hmmm, I should try a lighter person with better speed." You don't know it'll work out, and it's "unfair" to the big bruisers, but it's a rational thing for a team leader to do.

Considering that left-handed players often get a benefit from simply being unique, choosing a female president could pay out now even if in the long run there's no real difference.

I'm with you, with the exception, of, 'I think a women should have a chance a leading our country-'

I used to think that way. Give them a chance. After Margret Thatcher, I changed my mind. Women are just as ruthless, egotistical, quick to war, as men. That lady ruined the "A women wouldn't act like a man." argument.

I too suffer form anxiety. It really affected the quality of my life.

I don't want to put words in your mouth, so I'd like to ask for clarification:

It sounds as though you are saying that women should not have a chance to lead the country because they are as X as men. But I'm not sure how it follows that, all things equal, men with X should be given favor over women with the same X.

From what I understand it, parent hoped women would be better than men in government (e.g. alluding to matriarchy vs patriarchy in societies), but the women that do make it in politics in our era are the same (or even more) cutthroat and ruthless politicians as the men are.

So, what you read as

"all things equal, men with X should be given favor over women with the same X"

is not really saying "favor men over women" but more like "don't bother voting a woman candidate if you think it will be better just because she's a woman, it will be just the same shit".

Or, maybe "those women that get to play at the top of politics, are even more ruthless than men, because they have to be so to match and surpass their male competitors in a male dominating field" -- so instead of a matriarchical viewpoint, you'd get patriarchy x 2.

Forgive me, but I don't see where "let's give a woman a go, maybe, see if it works out" is equivalent to implying women will be better Leanders than men. It seemed to be merely recognizing that there has never been a woman president and maybe, a woman can be president and not be a garbage fire.

>Forgive me, but I don't see where "let's give a woman a go, maybe, see if it works out" is equivalent to implying women will be better Leanders than men.

Well, that they could be as bad as men is probably a given, and no reason to give a woman a go just because she is one ("see if it works out").

Only if one had some stronger expectations from women in power compared to men would it make sense to just say "let's give a woman a go" just because of her sex.

>It seemed to be merely recognizing that there has never been a woman president and maybe, a woman can be president and not be a garbage fire.

"It won't be a garbage fire" or even stronger, "it will totally be business as usual", is hardly something to excite one to vote though, is it?

> no reason to give a woman a go just because she is one

It's a bit like going to a different restaurant just to mix things up. It's not because you have some belief it will be better, it's because you think the possible unseen benefit is worth something.

To be fair, and that's not something I'm inclined to often with Thatcher, the two wars were much clearer cut cases than adventures since.

Falklands - British Territory had been invaded at gunpoint. Several histories have commented that in making the Task Force decision the day after invasion, British lives were a key factor. They also commented that she made a point of listening to all views, and continued to do so in the War Cabinet.

Gulf - Kuwait had been invaded at gunpoint, Saddam was setting fire to every oil field he could find, and a large coalition being assembled. she'd resigned before action started, so the war itself was under Major. As was Bosnia.

There's been several commentaries that the successful military operations, and the associated public popularity of a clean, won, war, heavily influenced Blair's adventures. He wanted to be a popular, and successful, war leader and saw the poll advantages. So she was perhaps some influence on Blair buggering up the next 15 years. The Iraq War was plain stupid.

She stayed as PM far too long, and had dozens of other issues mind you. Not least, the poll tax.

I suspect that sex and much personality is irrelevant to running a country, it's the nature of the position that shapes the personality. You can have policy and ideology differences, but if events need a fast or firm response that's what you get. At ministeries there's more room for individual differences.

> Falklands - British Territory had been invaded at gunpoint

I think what you meant to say was that England felt like invading random weaker nations.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falkland_Islands_sovereignty...

Hillary is more war eager than Donald. Look at her mails regarding Syria. Also, she hates Russia (meaning that the proxy war there would continue) while Donald do not (meaning he may work to find a solution).

Interesting, for me, gender, like race, plays no part in my decisions or thoughts.

I always find it intriguing that so many people actually care what gender or race someone is. Very jarring that people can't get over such basic things.

Before someone says that I am making small of a large issue, perhaps that is the entire goal, to eradicate those notions that we are different simply because of our race or gender. I choose to believe we are the same, we all get the same chances, modifiers might be different from situation to situation just as in any situation, but very much the same, regardless of what you say, and I always will.

So, gender of the president? I don't care. Can be anything you want, as long as they are worthy of the position in their ideals and plans.

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