Comment by jccooper | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jccooper | Hacker News Reader

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Houston's a very large place, and while there's bad stuff going on in places, there are also large parts of the city--probably most of it--with no particular damage. I'm in the middle of it right now and know people and organizations all over and most have had little or no problem (though sadly I don't have to go too far in my social graph to find people who left their house via boat).

The concept of a city-wide evacuation is, well, I'll be charitable and call it ignorant. Flooding here is nowhere near systematic enough for that to make sense. This is important to understand: the city remains largely intact and functional. The water's good, the power's on, the internet is on, two thirds of the grocery stores are open, emergency services are doing a great job, and some very large percentage of the city is just waiting for the damned rain to stop and the roads to clear to get back to normal.

It's just not a wide-scale evacuation scenario. And I know what those look like. And so does the Mayor.

The level of vitriol targeted towards the mayor, usually referred to as "democratic mayor Sylvester Turner", on the internet during the height of this disaster is pretty disgusting.

It's just a sign of political polarization. Like when people say the republican governor of Texas [did something not aligned with Democrat values] when discussing liberal ideas.

I'm not going to agree that both sides are the same. There's a serious problem with conservatives demonizing and even dehumanizing those who don't follow their ideology, which IMHO lays the foundation for current conservative leaders. In the U.S. and Europe you can't find significant liberal leaders nearly as extreme and polarizing as many major conservative figures, some of whom are heads of state, nor liberal equivalents for white supremacy and extreme nationalism that are anywhere close to having the support to win power. The left-wing equivalent in the past would have been Communists, but they are very weak - there is no chance for a Communist to win office in any major country; even China's Communists are authoritarian capitalists who have retained the old brand name.

Dehumanization is equally present on the left. The left is currently redefining the word Nazi to be equivalent to conservative in order to gain moral high ground. It's a big problem on both sides of the aisle and if you don't see it, you're drinking Kool aid.

> The left is currently redefining the word Nazi to be equivalent to conservative in order to gain moral high ground.

The scenarios I've seen people called Nazis, it was a matter of calling a spade a spade. What would you call a "conservative" who has swastika tattoos, a propensity to shout "hail victory" and re-enacting Nazi torch ceremonies? If you consider these folk the standard-bearers for conservatives, I think this says more of you than the people calling Nazis by their name.

You are being disingenuous if you are suggesting that the Nazi label is being applied to anything more than the (seeming ascendant) far right fringe.

Those aren't the only people being labeled. Plain Trump supporters get called that. Black people ho support Trump or Latinos supporting trump's immigration policies are getting lumped into the same group. It's really unfortunate because it's as if anyone who doesn't agree with their world view is a nazi.

It's unfortunate because people in the middle, who will now get skewered for being fence sitters will be more likely to vote against the antifa types who are trying really hard to antagonize.

> Plain Trump supporters get called [Nazis].

Show your sources.

> Black people ho support Trump or Latinos supporting trump's immigration policies are getting lumped into the same group.

Show your sources.

> it's as if anyone who doesn't agree with their world view is a nazi.

Show your sources.

Kids getting called Nazis for supporting Trump:http://news.wgbh.org/2017/03/14/local-news/newton-young-trum...

Alright, thanks, we have one incident where one student was called a Nazi.

Gonna need some more before GP's comment is even vaguely accurate.

You can go look for yourself on the main politics subs on Reddit or check out Keith olbermanns twitter feed.

You're going to have to narrow it down - Olbermann's Twitter feed is full of videos I'm not going to wade through. A search doesn't find any evidence of calling "Plain Trump supporters" Nazis - I mean, he's definitely calling people who support and excuse Nazis Nazis but I think that's a reasonable stance, no?

I'm not a conservative. No need for personal attacks, even if I was. Nobody considers some random Joe six pack to be the standard bearer for conservatism...except people that are trying to draw that comparison for obvious subversive reasons.

> Dehumanization is equally present on the left

it's always a problem no matter who does it; I abhor it from the left too. But consider that it's unlikely to be 'equal' at any point in time between different groups in a fast-changing political landscape.

My main point is that the difference between the groups is not ordinary people on Twitter, but high-profile leaders, even national leaders, are doing it on the right; Obama did not act like Trump in that regard; the UK foreign minister and the leader of Hungary, among others, openly advocate white supremacy. Also in the media: Read Wall St Journal editorials, which go out of their way to demonize (and dehumanize) those on the left; it's in almost every one, it seems.

But I agree; let's oppose it everywhere.

Except those on the right are members of Congress and the President himself while those on the left are fringe groups and internet comments.

See the difference?

No. That is a temporary arrangement that will inevitably shift back into the left's favor.

The current president refused to speak against swastika-waving literal Nazis. The left certainly has problems, but it's not accurate to say they're just as bad.

>nor liberal equivalents for white supremacy and extreme nationalism that are anywhere close to having the support to win power

Win power? I hope not. Who would want any of those two choices. As for implied hate, well... I think Antifa is proving Jung's enantiodromia true:

http://i.imgur.com/h1gpoI1.jpg

>even China's Communists are authoritarian capitalists who have retained the old brand name.

That one is a little more nuanced than you present. They are communists except for some big areas of the economic system. However, there are many areas where they have not departed. How the party is run, how the country is organized and governed, how the people are controlled, 5-year plans, etc.

> Win power? I hope not. Who would want any of those two choices

I agree. I'm against both. My point is that there is no threat of that from the left right now, but perhaps the largest threat from the right since WWII. Antifa has no chance of gaining political power anywhere much less having advocates in the White House and other national capitals.

> >even China's Communists are authoritarian capitalists who have retained the old brand name.

> That one is a little more nuanced than you present. They are communists except for some big areas of the economic system. However, there are many areas where they have not departed. How the party is run, how the country is organized and governed, how the people are controlled, 5-year plans, etc.

I don't know if I agree. They remain authoritarians (maybe becoming totalitarians) in those regards; they use the same structures that were used by Communists when they were ascendant in China and worldwide; but I'm not sure what is particularly Communist about all of that in the political ideological sense. I do know that Xi was reviving some of the ideological language, but that seemed more like a tool of obedience than something anyone took seriously. Capitalist authoritarians took over the Communist machine and decided it was easier to use the legacy tech. But maybe you know something I don't ...

So basically they're Stalinists, which is very different from "true" Marxian communism (even better: it's a modern version of real socialism).

> I think Antifa is proving

Do you have any evidence linking those accounts to Antifa? Or any indication that they're Antifa? I might be missing it but I can't see anything in that image which justifies you linking it to Antifa...

> There's a serious problem with conservatives demonizing and even dehumanizing those who don't follow their ideology

This is the best example of Psychological Projection that I have seen all week.

A fair point; I should have written that more carefully. But if Amy says, "Bob is a hypocrite and you can't trust anything he says", and Bob responds, "Amy is demonizing me" - Amy and Bob are not equally guilty of demonization.

Perhaps I should have written: There's a serious problem that large numbers of conservative leaders and elite engage in demonization and dehumanization of others, to the point where it has become normalized, acceptable political discourse for them.

In hindsight, it worked out OK for most people. Most of the time it does. The problem is that sometimes it turns out really really bad. I'm from Florida and I worked in construction during college. I was down in South Florida after Andrew. Ground zero was like a warzone. No street signs, traffic lights, etc. Almost every single house was missing a roof. There was no place to buy fuel, food, and water. I saw a lot of human misery. Especially among the poorer population. It was like this for months because of the scale of devastation. We still feel the effects of Andrew in FL. We probably have the most stringent building codes in the country and the highest insurance rates.

Major catastrophes like Andrew and Katrina are black swans. Nobody predicts the level of devastation ahead of time. It's usually hindisght, like "it was so obvious!". Therefore, I think it's ignorant to not at least advise people to evacuate at some point. Maybe not 2 hours before the storm hits. Days maybe? They always do advise evacuation of coastal regions here in FL. I always listen too.

Katrina was not a poor prediction of the storm, it was the levee that broke combined with a depressed geometry that made it so disastrous.

And we could not have advised people to evacuate days ahead. Thursday morning, it was just a tropical storm. Suddenly, around lunchtime, it was a category 3 and my business launched business continuity planning procedures. By the end of the day, it was a cat 4. It made landfall the next day. Evacuation would have only put those people outdoors when the storm hit.

You have made my point twice. Nobody predicted the levee was going to break. Nobody predicted Harvey would be a Cat 4 by the time it made landfall. There is no way to know which storm is going to be the "big one" until the aftermath. Therefore, we shouldn't assume there is no need to evacuate.

Related news: a levee south of Houston was just breached. https://twitter.com/BrazoriaCounty/status/902539081841827842

Nobody assumed there was no need to evacuate - the problem is that evacuations make things worse unless you have time. And declaring an evacuation over every tropical storm would just desensitize people.

To expand on that point slightly: Houston uses interstates as extra storm water collection areas. That is, the interstates are at lower elevation than the surrounding area, so the water collects there rather than (or at least before) flooding other areas. If you have an evacuation ordered, where the people don't have enough time to get out, you have huge numbers of people in cars sitting on those interstates as the water starts rising. That is not a healthy scenario.

Of course, you now get the opposite problem. My brother-in-law's neighborhood now has a mandatory evacuation. But now nobody can get out, because the roads are already covered...

Coastal areas of Texas are advised (and/or required) to evacuate in advance of a major hurricane hit. Galveston was uninhabitable after Ike and Bolivar Peninsula was literally completely destroyed. Those areas were evacuated, and Houston was begged to stay put so that they could be. And that was the right thing to do.

But Harvey was not a direct hurricane hit, and Houston is not coastal. Houston is what it is because it's far enough inland to be reasonably hurricane resistant. And Harvey landed 200 miles away and nobody knew what it would do afterwards, just that it would do it slowly. That's not a situation where you order evacuations. Frankly there's very few situations where Houston can and should be evacuated.

The local (and regional!) response has in my opinion been excellent. Loss of life has been very low. It's not over yet, but I've seen single-day flooding events that have been deadlier. Economic damage will be extremely high, but there's really not much to be done about that.

Agreed. I was stuck as a tourist evacuating out of the South Carolina lowcountry, which has dramatically fewer people during the general evacuation for Matthew.

It was a a nightmare experience that should always be avoided.

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