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Comment by jdavis703 | Hacker News Reader

I'm not really surprised at this. I was in DC for the inauguration at an officially permitted protest. Afterwards I'm heading back on the Metro with a small sign saying "illegitimate president." When I get to the platform level there are several armed people in camoflauge, I'm assuming military, but I'm not 100% positive. I'm told by one of them that I need to leave the station immediately. I responded "is this a joke?" (Hindsight 20/20 that probably wasn't the best idea) and she says "no" as more armed people start approaching. Needless to say I left the station, but at that moment I realized something was different this time. You may disagree with the message I was carrying, but having military (or their look-a-likes) booting out people with messages against the official government line is pretty scary.

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Are you sure they were in the military? I wouldn't be that surprised to see armed people in camo who aren't in the military at a Trump event. I think open carry is illegal in DC though, so if they had obvious weapons they were probably officials of some sort.

Also, were there other people in the station? Were you the only one asked to leave, or were they clearing the whole platform?

I ask because I was in DC for the inauguration and the women's march, and there were thousands and thousands of protesters with costumes and signs of all sorts. It seems weird that they would single you out.

I don't approve of scaring people like that of course.

But it's possible that they thought you were carrying the protest on into the train station or some other place which they had safety concerns about.

Carrying the sign is a danger now? How about printing it on your clothing? Must one cover up to go outside and only protest when one is licensed to do it? Could he have worn a full-body protest costume instead and traveled in it? If not, how is this more dangerous than a Big Bird costume?

There are multiple ways to handle a safety concern, one of which is just by talking to the individual and observing. Someone with a sign acting like all the other passengers isn't much of a worry, I think.

My guess is they are worried about protesters collecting in a train station, which could be a serious safety concern.

They see someone with a sign, and they try to get him to move along quickly before (potentially) a train load of additional protesters arrive.

I don't really know all the facts here, I am just offering an alternative way to interpet the facts provided.

Stuff like this is why we need to have more political discussions on HN. If we don't talk about these issues openly and try to come up with solutions, we will look back and wonder how we managed to spend this era of USA's transition to fascism discussing utterly trivial stuff like the latest JavaScript frameworks.

To paraphrase the famous saying, evil succeeds when good men and women do nothing. I have seen this happen in my own country. Don't want to see it happen in the USA as well.

> If we don't talk about these issues openly and try to come up with solutions,

You can check out my twitter feed if you think I don't care about politics, but there are a ton of places where we can 'talk about these issues openly'. Just maybe spare this one site from all the politics? It tends to, uh, eclipse, everything else, as it is far more important.

The same reason the Go 1.9 changelog won't be discussed in political forums, opinions on USA's political landscape surely has a better home on the Internet than here.

Most sites are either echo chambers or fighting cages. The civility of Hacker News makes it a great place for not having shouting matches. Perhaps you know of other political sites with a HN-like community?

> The civility of Hacker News makes it a great place for not having shouting matches

Maybe, but maybe we'll lose this civility if we encourage this type of discussions.

Golang 1.9 changelog wont be discussed in many places because it's a niche topic. Politics affects everyone, and therefore should be discussed everywhere.

Again these same types of arguments I've seen happen back home. People used to say stuff like "oh my god do we have to discuss politics here too??!" End result: the country slid down to authoritarianism and now everyone is fucked, even those who insisted on staying in their own little niche bubbles.

Most of HN readers are heavily impacted by US politics in our technical interests and sometimes our daily jobs - even if we don't realize it.

This thread is actually a prime example of why we can't have politics on HN.

Even in an otherwise smart, rational and measured community, in this thread we're seeing appeals to emotion, partisan "outrage" and downvoted being used as a tool of disagreement.

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