Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

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Obama pulled America out of a recession caused by the previous GOP administration and the bankers. So yes, he did the best he could, especially given that the GOP was obstructing him every step of the way. (Incidentally, one of the first things that Trump did was remove the restrictions on those bankers so we can all party like it is 2006 again.)

> Based on what you say here, it's very clear to you that for poor people to vote Democratic favors their interests, and that for poor people to vote Republican goes against them. This is very evidently not so clear to everyone. Perhaps all those who disagree with you are simply ignorant fools. Then again, perhaps they're not.

Not so much ignorant as misguided. I suspect that the complexity of a modern country is such that it has become quite hard to follow the money trail.

But blaming immigrants and dismantling the small bits of social support that America has is emphatically not going to solve the problem, it will in fact do the opposite.

The question then becomes if you will feel at least fractionally responsible for the damage you have caused or if you're going to disavow your contribution.

If you want to solve a problem - any problem - you should first own the problem. Pointing at others is not going to work, it never ever has.

You speak of money trails as though there were anything to choose in that regard between those candidates who made it to the general.

You also speak as though the party you credit with social support et cetera were not also the party of "free trade", i.e. globalization. Perhaps you'll be the first to explain coherently, and in a fashion which accords with reality, how their very successful efforts in such regard have materially benefited rural Americans.

I'm not proud of what I did on November 8. I'd have been proud to vote for Sanders in the general, as I did in the primary. But, thanks to the machinations of the DNC leadership, that option was denied me, and I faced - all Americans faced - the worst choice that last year's party primary process could possibly have left us with. I took the option less incompatible with maintaining my own self-respect, and I'm still not wholly reconciled to that decision even though I could not possibly have brought myself to do otherwise.

I live in Maryland, so of course my state's electors went to Clinton. I suppose therefore that I could, if I so chose, deny responsibility for whatever outcome a Trump presidency may have, and leverage the left's own arguments against the electoral college to do so. I won't, though, because the responsibility for, and the consequences of, my unforced actions are also mine.

I can't "own the problem", as you so facilely counsel. Problems like these are far too large for that, and I think that's a big part of why they tend to prove so intractable. I did what I still regard as the least worst thing I could do under the circumstances. That I do own. But every circumstance has its antecedents, which make possible that it occur. The circumstance of having to choose between Clinton and Trump is no different. And I think there's a lot of ownership, for the actions which brought that about, yet lacking.

Globalization is a mixed blessing in the short term, a good thing in the longer term because it allows other nations that otherwise would most likely starve to slowly pull themselves out of their misery.

On that scale the people you empathize with are doing spectacularly well, and have plenty of options. Once wages go up the local economy develops a middle class and becomes self sustaining companies may move on to the next low wage country but the effects remain.

That not everybody in a single country benefits from this (especially not the blue collar workers in the wealthier countries, especially those unwilling to adapt) is sad, but as much or more caused by automation than by work flowing to low wage countries. The disparity is so great that that work will not come back, no matter what.

Whatever was wrong with the DNC that it forced you to vote against your interests and those you claim to care for is beyond me, I just can't follow that kind of reasoning. Hillary Clinton was far from the ideal candidate but she'd be immensely better for your country than Trump is, and everything that has happened so far has both underlined that and has more or less been predicted beforehand.

Make no mistake: Bannon et al are out to destroy the United States as you know it to reshape it in to a much smaller pond in which they are the bigger fish.

Sow wind, reap storm.

It is not the responsibility of the citizens of the United States to save the world. Neither is it our place, or anything we have any business attempting. Neither is it our choice, or anything we have agreed in the large to do. To be impoverished in such a cause grows over time intolerable, and I think that's what lies behind what we're seeing in the political arena now.

I'll reap what I've sown. We all will, what we've sown and what our predecessors have. To imagine the sowing began in 2016 disregards a very great deal of history. But you are of course welcome to do so as you choose.

Gah I was writing you a long answer and my browser crashed, this very rarely happens :(

The re-run:

> It is not the responsibility of the citizens of the United States to save the world.

The United States do not exist in a vacuum. If the world does well so does the US and if the world is doing worse then the US will automatically also do worse. So it's a fallacy to think that the United States is (a) saving the world (the world does plenty already) and (b) that any help the United States does export is at its own expense.

Short term thinking vs long term thinking.

> I'll reap what I've sown. We all will, what we've sown and what our predecessors have. To imagine the sowing began in 2016 disregards a very great deal of history. But you are of course welcome to do so as you choose.

This obviously did not start in 2016, but it did get a lot worse starting 2017 and hopefully it will not break beyond repair before the music stops. If it does then you and yours will be the ones to pay the price.

If you really want to improve the situation you need:

- to get money out of politics

- reduce the power of the presidency (stop voting for a king/queen)

- get rid of the 'winner takes all' system so there can be viable third (and fourth and so on) political parties

Also: note that the United States' problems are far from unique to the United States in so far as the economy goes, and that other countries have managed to fix or at least reduce the impact. In the United States anything along those lines gets resolutely destroyed along the lines of fear of communism, even though those things are not even closely related.

Such irrationality does not help.

Anyway, you're about 2 months into your favorite presidency, do you get the impression that you are making meaningful progress towards your stated goals?

Since "throwanem" hasn't responded, I'll jump in to say that although your logic looks like it would be right, I agree with all of his reasoning so far in this thread. Like him, I also would have happily voted for Sanders, although unlike him I couldn't bear to vote for Trump and thus "threw my vote away" on Stein because she matched my positions best.

But painful as the last couple months have been, I still still think Trump was a better outcome for the nation than Clinton. I like and respect Obama, but I don't think you understand how badly much of rural America has been doing under Democratic leadership. Voting for an independent running as a Republican may well be more logical than voting for more of the same and hoping that this time things will be different.

get money out of politics

reduce the power of the presidency

viable third (and fourth and so on) political parties

I think these are great goals, and suspect "throwanem" would agree.

do you get the impression that you are making meaningful progress towards your stated goals?

Actually, yes, but in a judo sort of way. I think the backlash will be so strong that if we can make it through his term, I think the three goals you stated are more likely to be achieved in the near future than if he hadn't have won. I think both the Democratic and Republican establishments will end up weaker than they were, which I think is a good thing, and some days I'm even optimistic enough to think that Trump might accomplish some positive things along the way.

I couldn't have said it better.

Let's hope the price won't be too high. The problem with causing avalanches is that you can only start them, you can't stop them and there is no way of knowing what the new stable configuration will look like. There is a good chance that the new situation will be much worse than the old one, and people like Bannon want to achieve just that and are very close to being actually at the helm.

If the end result of a Trump administration is a review of politics in the United States as a whole and the world ends up with rainbows and unicorns then we're all much better off, but there is absolutely no way to be sure that is what will happen.

> But painful as the last couple months have been, I still still think Trump was a better outcome for the nation than Clinton. I like and respect Obama, but I don't think you understand how badly much of rural America has been doing under Democratic leadership.

The country hasn't been under Democratic leadership. Obama faced an unprecedented level of obstructionism from Congress combined with an unprecedented deliberately planned and closely coordinated attack from media agents who deliberately sabotaged and delegitimized his administration. Try to remember that 44% of Republicans still don't think Obama was born in the US [1].

The problem with this entire sad logic chain constructed by "thowanem" and yourself is that... you still don't get it. You've learned nothing these past eight years because you don't actually understand what happened over these past eight years. You have this idea that Democrats and the establishment "ignored rural voters" -- but this is a fantasy that has no basis no in reality. The reality is that thanks to Obamacare roughly 20 million people have healthy insurance now that didn't have it before. It's the sort of thing that's very difficult to prove but it would not be unreasonable to suggest that these suicide numbers would be far worse if Democrats hadn't passed comprehensive health insurance and expanded Medicaid.

Anyways, I just want to point out, on some level, this is why thins aren't going to get better any time soon. Too much of the country is caught up in delusion and fantasy and while everybody feels like they understand what's going on... in fact very few people are looking at the facts. Fantasy, the rejection of reality. is a privilege that is not sustainable. Reality always catches up and the truth will come out. But until then I suspect we'll have a lot of nonsense discussions about how immigrants destroyed Sweden and all the problems in this country are supposed to be traced back to some mysterious "establishment."

[1] http://www.mediaite.com/online/new-poll-shows-that-41-of-rep...

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