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Comment by minitel | Hacker News Reader

I think the point is that they pander to both sides of any argument to increase the divide and lessen the chances of society making a sane compromise. Much more effective than just spewing insanity and hyperbole.

Extreme progressives would destabilize the country by setting up structural racism and sexism in order to achieve "equity", dissolving borders, gutting the police, and over taxing companies.

Extreme rightists would destabilize the country by repealing too much of the social safety net, closing down the country to immigrants, militarizing the police, and letting companies behave anti-socially with no repercussions.

Our enemies are smart to try to push us into embracing extreme policies. Either way they win. Because when our institutions start to fail we won't be able to project power anymore. It will draw us off of the world stage to some extent.

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Nothing could ever make compromise more unlikely than a winner take all voting system that has then predictably created exactly two parties whose followers again following the incentives rarely have an original though beyond "the enemy of my enemy is my friend".

Worse yet: "the opposite policy of my enemy is my policy". We're seeing situations on both sides where people are taking positions in arguments solely because it's the opposite position of their opponents. Because taking any less than the polar opposite position would be seen as "going soft on them" by their electorate. It's a total shitshow.

The funniest example right now are the Rs who are against USA violence in Syria but for it in Iran, juxtaposed with the Ds who are against USA violence in Iran but for it in Syria. Syria and Iran are allies, and there is no compelling reason for USA violence in either nation. The whole war media narrative has really gone off the rails...

False equivalence, though. Syria is a country already in a civil war, where the nominal government has used chemical weapons on its own citizens multiple times, afawk. Iran is a stable partial democracy that is, afawk, complying with an international agreement to prohibit nuclear weapons.

South Korea and the US are allies too, but only one of us is at war, albeit technically.

Yeah if we talk to a Republican she'll have her own ridiculous arguments in the other direction. There is no "afawk". Every new detail we hear about supposed Syrian chemical attacks is worse for the war media narrative. And what's the point anyway? USA weapons are killing innocent people in at least five nations, right now. How would deaths of innocents in some other nation justify adding that other nation and its nuclear-superpower ally to our list? The only reason the "civil war" wasn't over years ago is that we have continued to flood it with munitions. Even after the supposed "good rebels" fled the area we continued to ship arms in, only to "whoops, they've mistakenly gone to ISIS again". ISIS only exists in the first place because of our ridiculous yet in retrospect remarkably similar decision to kill a bunch of innocent people in Iraq. How many times do they have to repeat this desultory performance before Americans remember what happened the last time they believed it?

You appear to be thoroughly brainwashed.

1. It’s not a “nominal” government, but the actual one.

2. The use of chemical weapons by Syrian government has never been proven. Moreover, it has no incentive whatsoever to use them.

3. Iran is not a democracy, partial or otherwise. Ayatollah decides everything.

> winner take all voting system

It was pretty entertaining watching people complain about the electoral college system in the 2016 election.

"Why should someone in Wyoming have more of a vote than someone in California!?!"

No mention of winner takes all, though: that would enable a certain basket of deplorables in CA to vote (and have it mean something.)

Just a note: calling oneself a deplorable makes it very tempting for me to deplore you. It's really weird social signaling: someone says you're a terrible group, and they start calling themselves the terribles as if that somehow proves the original point wrong.

I'm more ambivalent about the use of "nasty woman" -- perhaps because I'm blue tribe, but also because the word "nasty" is more ambivalent. It can mean annoying, cruel, promiscuous, or just gross. If it's the last meaning, saying that people have a reflexive negative emotional judgement of you is a far cry from the above, which is a moral judgement.

You're entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts.

The State of California has passed a law declaring its opposition to "winner take all".

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

I'm fascinated to know how you think that's in opposition to "winner take all."

Yeah. This is subtle manipulation; I guess Americans are accustomed to loud yelling and namecalling.

> militarizing the police

That's where the right-left model breaks. This is not an extreme right wing thing, it's statist authoritarianism. Can be embraced by both sides, extreme or not.

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