Comment by djsumdog | Hacker News Reader

Comment by djsumdog | Hacker News Reader

This will probably get flagged as being non tech, but yea. Duh.

I've been reading The Dictators Handbook recently and it does a good job of explaining this situation. You help those that will keep you in power and give you the resources you want. Every American president will help regimes who will give them support and money, so they can pay their supporters (all the people at the top in DC) and then they use what's left over on the people. Democracies tend to spend more on people ideas, because there's a larger set of replaceable (voters) in the selectorate.

It doesn't matter if a leader is doing what is good or not good for the people. The chief goal of a leader is to get in power and stay in power. They have to pay off all their supports, or keys to power. If that involves things that are unsavory. You censor it. In democracies, you just make sure your supporters include the propaganda (a.k.a news) agencies.

If a leader does something that helps the people, like in Libya where they gave people free education, free power, housing subsidies, gas subsidies; but do so at the expense of their supporters (not playing ball with America in the oil trade), then the leaders get take out, given fake trials, killed and the propaganda networks demonize them. It's not hard to demonize them, because all leaders must be corrupt to get into power; so you can always find something to speak to that corruption. Lest we forget that Obama gave America over to the health care industry, killed thousands with predator drones and was the first president to spend every day in office at war.

What I dislike about this attitude is it's reductionist. No: not "Duh."

Here in America we have a very confusing system, and no not everything is explained by self interest. For example: George Washington voluntarily turning down more power. Yes, self interest is a large player in people's choices, larger than they publicly admit, and maybe larger than any other factor.

But jumping from that to helping a foreign dictator use chemical weapons is not a "duh."

True. "Duh" might be heavy handed. But this is certainly no surprise.

Let's not forget we (read: CIA, I believe) trained UBL & Co to fight the Russians in Afghanistan. And then what happened.

And then of course, there's are previous antics in Iran. That is, we have a history there, and it's not pretty.

I'm not being troll-y, but I have to ask: What do you find confusing about the American system (that a quick read of history doesn't explain)?

Personally, I think "duh" is the perfect sentiment for this. What governments, ours and "corrupt" ones, are really doing behind closed doors vs what we're told by our media is vastly different. The hysterics over the latest Syria gassing and the Russian hackers epidemic are just the latest examples in a long line of using the media to manipulate public opinion and keep people fighting among themselves so they never find out what's really going on. And those that do peek behind the curtains, brand them conspiracy theorists. Works like a charm.

I hear this theory a lot. And it's not paranoid, but it's also not fruitful without substantiation.

You need to develop your theory and gather some evidence. How is the government controlling media? Which media? Why are there no whistleblowers? What's your evidence? Obviously the US government isn't censoring the internet.

In the meantime, I fear you're actually making people more skeptical of you by jumping to conclusions

> And those that do peek behind the curtains, brand them conspiracy theorists.

Well that didn't take long.

Oh good lord, you talk as if this is the first time you've heard such a theory. Everything you ask for has been well discussed and proof of varying degrees provided, as I imagine you well know.

The parent comment to mine seems to have been granted an interesting status, it now loads as collapsed under all browsers, including incognito.

This frustrates me, because I think your behavior makes people trust government MORE. Because you're inarticulate, don't link to any articles, and also unfriendly, it pushes people in the neutral zone away from your cause.

If you think there's objective proof of widespread government manipulation of newspapers, then link to the wikipedia article. If you acknowledge a neutral set of intellectual and informed judges (wikipedia) find it absurd, then don't go around saying it's "proven."

This comment is excellent (except for the proven slip-up), but you probably knew that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent

And anyone who keeps up with congressional hearings and discussions or even watches C-SPAN from time-to-time knows that there are multiple sides to any decision that gets made. We have a democracy made up of various representatives, and parties, sometimes competing on issues. Even the currently ruling majority being the same party as the president doesn't guarantee that a certain decision will hold.

On situations of global conflict it's even more complex. We have to negotiate with our allies and with organizations like the UN and NATO. And move within the confines of various agreements and deals we've made with other entities. And take in different intelligence reports and strategic assessments.

The modern world is more complex than we want it to be. But overly-simplified perspectives of it aren't always helpful.

> Obama gave America over to the health care industry

This is disingenuous at best - health care costs have and will continue to grow every year. At least for its first few years, the ACA decreased the growth of health care spending. We'll see how it goes now that it's being played around with.

Do you live in the US? My insurance now costs me more than half of my mortgage. Prior to the ACA it was about half of that.

I do live in the US. The growth figures relate to population-level metrics. At the level of the individual, other factors are also at play, like the willingness of one's employer to subsidize health insurance.

EDIT: a reference - https://wire.ama-assn.org/practice-management/health-care-sp...

Part of the ACA was capping profit percentages, which just incentivises insurance companies to increase revenue and spending to increase real profits year after year.

I don't think that's true. I worked in Health Insurance for three years during the height of the ACA debates. I had high hopes for the ACA, but most of the positive provisions where crippled and the ACA varies heavily from state to state.

Had everyone been forced to buy from the marketpalce, we would have seen a more significant difference. After living outside the US and returning, I wrote about this last year:

https://fightthefuture.org/article/returning-to-america-and-...

I took a look at your article - what points in my claim (i.e., annual health care cost growth decreased in the first years of the ACA compared to expectations) do you find incorrect? I'm happy to find primary references if you'd like.

EDIT: As I said before (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16933813), an individual's health care costs depend most strongly on personal factors like employer contributions.

>Lest we forget that Obama gave America over to the health care industry, killed thousands with predator drones and was the first president to spend every day in office at war.

I believe LBJ spent every day of his presidency at war as well.

You could say that, but the level of involvement in the "advisory period" of the Vietnam War must have been matched in various Caribbean ventures in the early 20th Century. I suppose that you might as well count Lincoln, for secession preceded his inauguration.

Secession wasn't the official start of the war, I would say it was Sumter, which happened shortly after Lincoln took office.

I was going to mention Lincoln, but he was in office during Sumter and when he died, Lee had already surrendered the confederate army. It's fairly fuzzy too because there were battles after the surrender.

For some reasonable values of "at war", the US has inhabited it for nearly its entire history - making this sort of distinction moot.

> "Lest we forget that Obama gave America over to the health care industry, killed thousands with predator drones and was the first president to spend every day in office at war."

He also, for all intents and purposes, pardoned Wall Street (for crashing the world economy, and - per estimates by economists - killing thousands).

But he, we are told, was a great president. Mainly based on words (e.g., "That's not who we are...") and complete disregard for his actions.

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