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Comment by binomialxenon | Hacker News Reader

No admission of responsibility of course, just scapegoating. I find it highly likely that Pai and his like-minded cronies were in on this the whole time.

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The reference: https://www.notboring.com/jokes/work/3.htm

Pai will work for one of the big media (cable) companies like Comcast when he leaves office.

Why would he have posted such trollish pictures of himself if he weren't?

He got real serious suddenly when that nutter threatened his family.

A real-life consequence for abhorrent behavior? I’m all for that. Maybe not quite that extreme, but I think public shaming of these people and their friends/family is acceptable. They don’t seem to respond to anything else these days.

A lesson the political and billionaire class have not learned is that when inequality gets as bad as what we have today the mob gets actual pitchforks and assassins start throwing bombs in your carriages and shooting at your motorcade.

Repression follows, more assassinations happen, and then before you know it Serbian meddling in the Austro-Hungarian succession starts WWI.

This is not limited to the countries ending in -ia in Central/Eastern Europe [0] [1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1919_United_States_anarchist_b...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street_bombing

It's not inequality. It's almost never pure inequality. It's poverty going below a specific threshold, usually hunger or homelessness.

And when was there a movement like this in the US post-prosperity (WW2)? Your links are from 100 years ago.

Things got pretty bad during the Vietnam war. There is a reason why the draft was abolished.

Wasn't that because of the draft, though? That counts as "major" since you're being shipped off to be killed. But how likely is a new Vietnam? US involvement in wars doesn't require a draft anymore...

My point, inequality itself is rarely the trigger. It needs to pass a limit, usually threatening livelihood. And it needs to be super widespread (think 20%+ of the population).

Males 18-25 still have to register for the draft, there are just enough voulenteers currently

It's extreme economic shocks generally. As in sudden changes in economic conditions that lead to a rapid and pervasive decline in living conditions. It's clearly not any absolute level of poverty. The poverty level that will trigger war in Bangladesh is far lower than what would trigger war in the US. And a country at South Sudanese levels of poverty going to a slightly higher level of development (say Bangladeshi levels) wouldn't trigger conflict, even if they were still far worse off than levels that would trigger war in better off countries. But the absolute floor at which war (or widespread systemic violence and civil unrest at least) becomes almost inevitable is when people can no longer afford food. There have been a few studies that suggest a link between sudden increases in food prices and civil unrest and wars.

Yeah, you're right, that's probably the best description. Economic shocks or a handful of other shocks (such as forced enrollment in a risky endeavor, e.g. being drafted into the army).

The hungry and homeless generally don't involve in political violence. Terrorists arise from well-to-do middle class.

Their are over 1 million homeless people in the US in the average year. The issue is more when people that could not conceive of being homeless start to be homeless that you get revolutions.

There are two things that prevent that -

- politicians have been able to convince poor people that the “American Dream” is alive. That if you work hard you can become rich and you are just “temporarily poor”.

- You would be better off if “they” weren’t taking your jobs.

If we take everything you've said here as fact you have only explained why right wing white conservatives are not conducting assassinations against the Democrats.

Mexican undocumented migrant laborers have none of those excuses yet they are not waging a campaign of terror against the GOP.

It’s been the traditional Republican talking point st least since Reagan that you just “need to pull yourself up by your bootstraps” to get ahead. Even now, there is the mistaken belief of equal opportunity when statistics show that income mobility is not that great. (https://phys.org/news/2017-04-upward-mobility-fallen-sharply...). Republicans have been trying to sell “trickle down economics for thirty years - that if you cut taxes on the rich, not only will help the poor immediately, but when they get rich, it will help them too.

Undocumented migrant labors don’t feel entitled to the “American Dream”, they wouldn’t be waging terror against the GOP.

While Black people and affirmative action is no longer the scape goat for why rural America is suffering, now it’s illegal aliens and unfair trade practices.

Except none of that happens anymore because we built a prison around ourselves to prevent it. No one with anything to lose will resist.

No. Not friends and family. That's not how we get nice things.

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