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Comment by DominikR | Hacker News Reader

I'm in Austria, it was a disgrace. All of media was attacking the right wing guy with no dissenting voices, and you have to be afraid of personal and professional consequences if you endorse him or say anything against the Socialist candidate they are trying to push.

It's literally like in the Soviet Union, at least that's what my parents told me as they came from a Communist country.

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The media can't be very good at propaganda if they were 'all attacking the right wing guy' and he _still_ managed to poll almost 50% of the vote.

It's a feedback loop of adverse selection. They become more politically slanted, fewer people listen to them, their revenues plummet, their recruitment pool gets shallower, they become more politically slanted... At a certain point only true propaganda believers willing to work for ~minimum wage remain. Now, they're also getting hammered by social media hastening the process.

The same thing happened to communists. After 50 years only idiots and sociopathic opportunists (since they still had the spoils of power) could be found in the party.

Just like the US this year. This is not an exaggeration. Many people would have professional and personal consequences for supporting Trump in public. People like Peter Thiel and Scott Adams have enough money to not care. Scott isn't even endorsing him and he says that his speaking engagements have dried up.

We may see a big difference between the polling and the election results this year. The Shy Tory Effect came to America.

Scott Adams has been obviously supporting him since last August, his claims of endorsing other candidates have been very clearly not genuine.

Yeah, I had pretty major family problems for saying that I thought he was a lot of hot air and not actually that dangerous--with a disclaimer that I would never vote for him. Although my perspective on him has changed, it seems to me that the American left has turned into the authoritarian controlling power they so often claim to fight against.

>Although my perspective on him has changed, it seems to me that the American left has turned into the authoritarian controlling power they so often claim to fight against.

Only if you consider Clinton to be leftist, which really doesn't make much sense.

https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2016

American left != Clinton.

I quite realize, but I don't see much authoritarian tendency in the parts leftward of Clinton. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders just aren't that authoritarian, let alone the Green Party.

I was talking about the people adhering to the left--the social movement--more than the politicians themselves. The example I used was my own family, who are not politicians.

In your view, individual people exercising their personal social power is authoritatian?

>authoritatian?[sic]

Yep, that's what xe said.

Scott Adams in his own words: http://blog.dilbert.com/post/150919416661/why-i-switched-my-...

Is he kidding? I can't tell if I'm reading satire there, but I don't follow his blog.

Edit: I'm flipping through his blog and the extent to which politics, for him, is about the meta stuff is honestly kind of surreal

He has said himself -- he says whatever pops into his head, and he's "clearly joking" about anything that is offensive or ridiculous.

Saying whatever pops into his head is hardly unique among bloggers.

The thing that appears to set him apart is a complete indifference to the issues, in favor of a focus on his pet topic, the art of persuasion. He dismisses the correct answers to policy questions that come up as unknowable (wow). Except, amusingly, the question of what his own estate taxes ought to be. He somehow managed to cobble together an opinion on that.

> he's "clearly joking" about anything that is offensive or ridiculous.

We should all go through life with such a disclaimer in place.

I hate to respond to myself, but it is interesting how you can get down-voted simply for providing a reference to man's own words.

When I've posted criticism of Hillary on Facebook, I've gotten savaged in the comments by my liberal friends. It's a sobering and depressing experience and I'm sad to realize that my respect for most of them has declined, as no doubt theirs has for me. Periodically I will post a defense of freedom of speech, and I'll remind people that I'm willing to fight and die for their right to disagree with me, with which they tend to agree. But they also believe that anyone who doesn't toe the party line is practically an enemy of the state.

You posted something your friends disagreed with, they posted something you disagreed with in response. That's what freedom of speech is about, unless they're posting about how you should be jailed for criticizing Hillary.

Freedom of speech isn't freedom from people changing their opinion about you based on what you say.

Unfortunately, in the modern Alt-right view, "freedom of speech" means "freedom of everyone agreeing with me and not talking back"

Even here. Downvoted for this simple observation. What have we become?

"this simple observation" is indicative of the bubble you're in. There are plenty of places where the reciprocal is true. Politics in the workplace and among friends has always had ramifications. Unfortunately with both candidates being so polarizing, it's worse than usual.

Your comment reads slightly like you have a persecution complex.

You're making a lot of assumptions. I'm a Hillary supporter and because I am, I'm in a bubble of them and I see a lot condemnation and shunning of Trump supporters - more than I see of Hillary supporters.

The fact that you assume that I am the one who feels persecuted says a lot.

Hint: the faulty assumptions we make of others strengthen our bubbles.

If Scott isn't even endorsing Trump in public, why is he half of your examples of people who are facing consequences for it?

I suspect it has a lot more to do with people paying more attention to his shit-slinging blog. Just on Thursday he declared that he's relieved that "Everything that goes wrong with the country from this point forward is women’s fault." How many people are going to pay to hear that?

You can't even present facts in a way that feels to liberals like defending Trump without facing social consequences (this is what Adams is guilty of.) I had several problems with friends explaining positions taken by both candidates during the debates and discussing the legality of what's known publicly about Trump's tax returns. Discussion of any of those topics will agglomerate the liberal view of Trump as racist, sexist, xenophobic, and stupid, and project them onto you.

Personally I think both candidates are awful, but suggesting that Trump might be right about something or Clinton might be wrong is social suicide on Facebook (for example) and I wouldn't dare discuss it at work.

Adams faces social consequences because of his bizarre and paranoid rantings, such as that Hillary supporters will literally assassinate him if he supports Trump [1].

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/145456082991/my-endorsement-for...

He said in an BBC interview that the FBI contacted him that some of the death threats he received were credible.

Maybe it's true, maybe not. But I can see how in the current situation it can be dangerous to you to endorse Trump. There's just too much hatred, especially after Trump is constantly compared to Hitler. (which can give people a justification to kill him or his supporters)

Meanwhile, Adams doesn't believe that women on Twitter don't get threatened with rape and violence, and Trump motivates his supporters to coordinate and commit terror attacks on Muslim-looking Americans, e.g., http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/15/us/hate-crime-charges-in-a...

I don't know about this Adams statement (please add a link, I'd read it) but Trump "motivating" his supporters to "coordinate and commit terror attacks on Muslim-looking people"?

I get it that you dislike Trump (fine by me) but how on earth did you convince yourself to believe something like that. (I have no doubt you do, you could probably pass a lie detector test without a problem repeating this statement)

http://bridge.georgetown.edu/when-islamophobia-turns-violent...

http://usuncut.com/news/there-have-been-23-hate-crimes-again...

http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/10/us/brooklyn-muslim-women-attac...

In sorry, I can't let such obvious bullshit pass unchallenged.

There are many thousands of people who are being richly rewarded for supporting Trump, including members of the media like Matt Drudge, Sean Hannity, Corey Lewandowski, Bill O'Reilly, the entire staff of Breitbart, the entire "alt right" media ecosystem, etc.

In addition there are many thousands more who benefit financially from the pervasive coverage of Trump, like Jeff Zucker and other media executives.

Trump is polling above 40% nationally; he is not some secret oppressed political minority. He has received more benefit from media coverage than any other candidate.

However he is almost certainly going to lose, and that is because it is obvious that he would be a terrible president.

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