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Comment by Mikeb85 | Hacker News Reader

Kind of ironic given Bush and Obama were the ones to expand the surveillance state, Hillary demonised the shit out of Russia to try create an enemy/scapegoat, and here Trump is, only a few days in power, not having done anything particularly bad.

Also, I should add - for Democrats out there who keep trying to compare Trump to Hitler, say he's fascist, etc... That weak rhetoric is what gave you guys your worst election result in what, 80 years? The more you cry foul over nothing, the less people will actually believe it. Just an outsider's opinion after an entertaining and somewhat perplexing election.

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I'm down-voting you, here's why:

This is a headline and an article about "alternative facts", relating them to a book about comprehensive "alternative fact" propaganda. Not about any of things that you listed.

You didn't add any meaningful information to the discussion, but have added divisive and heavily argued opinions, in a way that only furthers their divisiveness.

This is not a comment on your opinions. This is a comment about whether expressing those specific opinions on this specific news item and in that specific manner was constructive or destructive to this community; I'm saying it's destructive.

I don't see the phrase "alternative facts" (or even the word "facts", for that matter) in either the headline or the article. Nineteen Eighty-Four is very much about surveillance and totalitarianism (which is why, here in the UK, it seems even more prescient right now) so, while I disagree with Mikeb's political stance, I think your dismissal of their comment as not contributing to the discussion is unfair.

Well expressed!

There is exactly one non-Orwell link in the article, and it's to an article with this headline: "Sales of George Orwell's 1984 surge after Kellyanne Conway's 'alternative facts'"

The first explicitly political thing in the OP is "alternative facts"; so that's where I grabbed that from.

This is a perfect example of why downvoting shouldn't exist. None of the things you think you saw in the OPs comment are there. He is expressing an opinion that is widely held, here is a good essay on the habit of anti-Trump people of crying wolf:

   http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/16/you-are-still-crying-wolf/

Trump's spat over crowd sizes is stupid, but reflects someone terminally thin-skinned rather than a cunning well thought out attempt at mind control.

Meanwhile, those of us who have read it will remember that 1984 dwells on hard-left totalitarianism and its habit of doing things like censorship, the desire for unitary thinking, interfering with disagreement by controlling the language and so on.

Your comment doesn't actually rebut anything about what the OP said, but does try to lower the visibility of his views (suppressing speech) and does attack an entire class of speech on the grounds of "divisiveness" and "destructiveness" (unitary thinking).

Trump is many things but hard-left is not one of them. Stupid phrasing today by his press guy aside, Trump's path to victory was built on a repudiation of 1984 style tactics:

• Language control: political correctness, where words and phrases are redefined or suppressed through taboo

• The 5-minutes hate: the establishment against Russia

• Loyalty to the party: in our world the closest equivalent to a vast unaccountable power structure would be called "Washington" or "the elite".

The parallels aren't perfect by any means; Trump loves surveillance just like Democrats do.

I really like your comments here, but some of them leave me confused / unable to respond.

What do you think I saw in the OP's comment?

> doesn't actually rebut anything about what the OP said

I mean, I wasn't trying to. I said that explicitly.

> but does try to lower the visibility of his views > does attack an entire class of speech on the grounds of "divisiveness" and "destructiveness" (unitary thinking).

I mean, yes? But it sounds like you're confusing divisiveness with disagreement. I wouldn't quite say that Mikeb85's comment is trolling, but it's getting close enough, and yeah, I'll attack that category of speech on those grounds.

Your entire post is an excellent example of disagreement without divisiveness, and is constructive to the HN community.

I'm down-voting you, here's why:

Context is a thing, and you even make use of it in your comment. You have set up a false scenario where (according to you) we are only allowed discuss what is explicit in headline, yet "alternative facts" isn't even in the headline.

If you seriously believe that comment sections should not discuss the context around its subject, you are wasting your time here because there is an entire internet you there for you to police.

I think I see where you're coming from...?

First - I'm straight up not talking about only the headline.

Strawman'ing is a real thing, and Mikeb85's comment is doing it. The article has six sentences, and then a bunch of Orwell links.

Only one of those sentences is about anything other than Orwell, and that sentence is a link to an article about Orwell, and how "alternative facts" sounds a lot like Newspeak.

At no point is either the original article, or its sole political link, making any kind of comment of argument on any of the things in Mikeb85's comment.

Context is great! Establish some, and then present your points, arguments, and comments.

Why is voting disabled on the parent comment? Is it just me who has that or is it disabled for everyone?

Yes, it's very interesting to see them apply even more of the same logic that failed miserably last year. Also in other countries with the same tendencies, they still don't seem to get that crying about how terribly racist and fascist these people are doesn't actually reach the intended audience.

Maybe we can blame echo chambers for this...

I also find it funny that people compare him to Hitler. As if Hitler was the only and the baddest of them all.

There were also: Stalin, Mao Zedong, Mussolini, Pol Pot, Francisco Franco, Pinochet, Ceausescu...

Just in the 20th century there were hundreds of what we call 'dictators'. So it's a relatively common phenomenon.

Some of the common traits that they shared: they got shit done, they were egomaniacs, extravagant, sometimes talked crazy and were obsessed with lies, deception and then spies and enemies.

Killing (or creating the conditions for the death of) lots of people wasn't necessarily in their plans, it was just a necessary means to a glorious end.

> I also find it funny that people compare him to Hitler.

I've seen him compared to Kim Jong-Un, Mussolini, Putin, the Roman Emporer Caligula, King Louis XVI of France, Emporer Maximilian I of Mexico, and to the leadership of the Communist Party of China generally, as well, among others. Your post seems to be premised on the idea that Trump has been compare exclusively to Hitler, and not or other authoritarians, which is not the case.

The worst result in 80 years is winning the popular vote with a margin of about 3 million?

In an electoral system that doesn't take the popular vote into consideration? Yes. Democrats are now pretending that they lost "by chance", but their campaign (like the Republicans') is engineered and fine-tuned/optimized to get the swing states, not to optimize by how much they will win in traditionally blue states.

The worst election result is losing the house, senate, and presidency all at once. Look at who has power, not the votes.

No, the worst result was losing the presidency, house, senate, and 3+ Supreme Court seats to Donald Trump.

When your opponent is Donald Trump: Yes.

Oh you want to go with popular votes? Then Bernie Sanders should have been your candidate by a big margin but was prevented by the DNC's superdelegate system.

Congratulations for winning a game that wasn't being played.

If you think Trump did nothing bad then you missed the last 24 hour news cycle. Hillary is a little old lady who ran for president a long time ago so I'm not sure why you brought her up. And also an outsider here, but I've seen Republicans call Obama a lot worse things then Hitler. So apparently weak rhetoric works well on the right.

Did calling Obama "Hussein" have a positive result on their popularity? I don't think so. Maybe there's a pattern.

Can you give an example? Being compared to Hitler is pretty high on my list so I'm interested.

And how did that thetoric worked for right if Obama won?

Do a search for "Obama Antichrist" and you'll see plenty of examples. "Obama devil" gets some hits, too.

Worth a try.

Obama antichrist - 445 thousand results

Obama anti-christ - 2 million

Trump Hitler - 32 million

Try

Trump antichrist - 447k

Trump anti-christ - 1.7mil

Obama Hitler - 27mil

I think the takeaway is that stringing a couple terms together in google gives us little in the way of political insight.

Interesting.

I think the takeaway may be that both sides of the political spectrum are equally inclined to name calling.

(One tiny piece of evidence these results are not mere coincidence: there are 4x as many such results for Trump/Obama Hitler than for "Jesus Hitler" - 9.5 million)

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