Hacker News Reader

Comment by microcolonel | Hacker News Reader

> You're probably going to get downvoted because "both sides are the same" but they really aren't. Only one party is doing this.

This is the height of arrogance.

Either major party can be characterized as the reigning party of broken promises and slime. Both of them will represent their own policies as of six years prior as reprehensible when the opposing party runs on those same policies; and both will use whatever power the electorate gives them to enrich themselves (or at least their own cause), if that is an option.

View on HN

False equivalence is a powerful form of propaganda in heavy use today.

It is our duty to be objective and rational, and that requires us to challenge and reject "false equivalence" arguments whether it's Putin, or Assad, or Duerte, or Erdogan rationalizing their despotic government or US Republicans rationalizing their unprecedented and unequal malpractice in American government.

I feel that anyone who dares suggest that "both parties are the same" is so fundamentally ignorant that they're suffering from Dunning Kruger / illusory knowledge.

One only needs to read about "starving the beast" (a nefarious legislative plan of cutting taxes and not spending, to intentionally manufacture budget crises surrounding debt, to cut social welfare programs) or the Project for a New American Century (Republican PAC in 1999 which planned the invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Iran and Syria in the early 90's before GWB re-invaded the middle east -- that list sound familiar?) to understand how the modern assault on Liberal Democratic order in the West was planned and executed.

I'm just so tired of false equivalence.

> "a nefarious legislative plan of cutting taxes and not spending, to intentionally manufacture budget crises surrounding debt, to cut social welfare programs"

That's an odd thing to cite as it really isn't a form of corruption.

A limited federal government is a core pillar of conservatism and the republican party. That "nefarious" plan is the what they (and many right-voters) consider the most viable strategy for reducing the size and scope of the federal government. I think you'll find more instances of corruption/pandering/populism on the right, in the places where they are expanding the federal government.

Its a bit like calling democrats corrupt because they have a "nefarious" plans to confiscate more of your money (in the form of taxes) to pay for federal programs.

I find this is the way many of the back-n-forths go in the "party x is more corrupt" game. <insert party here> is so demonized in the minds of their opponents, literally acting in accordance with their political philosophy appears like a form of corruption.

I guess the "they want to kill your babies!" style rhetoric actually works.

The fallacy you are absokutely running with here is "false equivalence." Yes the Democrat party is slimy self-serving punters. But they're not nearly as good at it as the R's. Even acceptingthere isn't a difference in kind (I happen to think there is) but surely you would admit there is a difference in degree.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com