Comment by rhegart | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rhegart | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

It’s so weird that out of a group of black men calling children homophobic F word, n words, a bunch of racist stuff. A Native American telling kids without provocation to go back to Europe, this is our land we don’t want you, and a bunch of kids doing a school chant, the entire left and center media went after a kid smirking.

They didn’t even cover the racist stuff said against the kids. Just some fluff about white supremacy, and MAGA hat being akin to KKK. All the headlines were inflamatory racial tensions inciting and all the corrections were STILL misleading and headlines seeming the kids were wrong. I’m talking about NYtimes, cnn, msnbc, not just the buzzfeed rags.

And then they pull up a picture from 4 years ago that’s misleading and not at all related to the kids. Get called out for fake news, and then they push another fake narrative from an out of context video and that turns out that the kid isn’t even from the school. Then finally another fake narrative about some kid not allowed to speak because he’s gay, turned out fake.

The journalists on twitter wishing for death to the kid based off a smirking clip and no rebuke for the actual racists are terrible human beings who themselves are racist. I unsubscribed from the NYTimes over this. Fox News during peak birther conspiracy wasn’t a 1/10th of this ridiculousness. Legit racists run these companies and legit racist are employed.

Oh and get this, just saw on Facebook my High School History teacher posted a bunch of basketball players holding up the “3 point shot” sign arguing how the school is racist because apparently an “ok” sign is code for white supremacy when literally every nba player makes it after a shot. That post has 35 likes. It’s like our collective IQ dropped 30 points in 2016. There’s a certain rationality you expect when you have a discussion with someone that seems to have completely dissipated into emotional tribalism.

So sad a factual post is being flagged on HN. This isn't a matter of politics - Bari Weiss from th NYT has poured through all the footage and her conclusions are the same as your own.

Oh please !! The conservative media posts and have posted thousands of explicitly racist articles about Obama. Trump was the biggest birther conspiracy theory, the root of which was unbridled racism [1] He even said that he has investigators in Hawaii finding things about his birth certificate. Trump also said Mexican judges are incompetent, white supramacists are same as counter protestors, immigrants are criminal and commit crimes, set-up a hotline for people to complain about crimes committed by immigrants, constantly retweets famous white supramacists, dog whistles on every speech, trashes death of black folks on the hands of police, should I go on ? Pardon me if I don’t feel the same amount of sympathy for teenagers wearing MAGA hats. If you align with explicit racists, be ready if the world thinks of you in that terms.

[1] https://youtu.be/OOA4ziGl5ZQ

This is the emotional response I was describing in my post. These people have this emotional outburst and have an urge to immediately demonize the other side almost as if their reputation and perhaps the world is at stake. They don’t try to understand or have any nuance. It’s done by the right and left, though more so the left lately.

The main premise of your argument is that the birther situation is racist and a big deal. In my post that’s what I clearly stated. The most racist and stupidest thing I’d seen journalists do in my lifetime was the Obama birther BS supported by Fox News and I commented that even that was 1/10th of this Covington story. They were calls for doxing minors liked hundreds of thousands of times by popular celebrities and journalists based on an innocuous clip and 10,000 plus death threats. Likely hundreds of thousands of people like you feeling no sympathy for teenagers getting death threats wearing MAGA hats and completely ignoring the blatant racism against them. The difference between us 2 is that I condemn the racism against Obama and the racism against these kids and I do feel pity for the other side. You’re quite off the deep end if you don’t.

I’m sure this individual was a very bright person pre 2016, but the collective 30 point iq drop seems to have had an unequal effect, harming some more than others as clearly demonstrated here.

This type of behavior is going to cause civil war in Western countries. It is beginning to reach absurd levels, even when facts change there are too many who refuse to acknowledge the situation.

My response was fairly civil until my last paragraph but I felt that emotional need to attack because I felt attacked. I kept it in there on purpose and I clearly am part of the problem here.

Today we had a white man kill a black man allegedly due to wanting to start a race war (I didn’t double check and media lies like crazy so might be misleading, but let’s assume it’s true). You have Breitbart and other far right rags basically baiting this. Inflaming racial tensions like crazy. Against blacks, Hispanics, and Asians via crime, illegal immigration, and h1b abuse. They take 3 legit problems and tie racial tensions to them to cause division and hatred.

The left which went off the deep end after Trump are doing the same thing demonizing white people, men, and the wealthy from legitimate problems of race, violence, and income inequality. You take these already serious problems and tie race divisions to them and you get the fringes to grow larger and the extremists to increase in number. More and more will do extremist things. I mean you have a poster here that doesn’t care about kids getting death threats and tries to defend it by mentioning unrelated issues and HN is way critical thinking than the average person.

There is no media or journalists, just propaganda and propagandaists.

I think Twitter is a huge problem that has really inflamed this.

> I’m sure this individual was a very bright person pre 2016, but the collective 30 point iq drop seems to have had an unequal effect, harming some more than others as clearly demonstrated here.

Do not do this on HN.

It is good to read that some people are at least trying to take a measured view of things that are happening. I don't know how to handle the "news" these days other than to ignore it completely. People are just too interested in being entertained on a simplistic level I guess. It is really hard to watch.

Your last line really revealed you. Didn't it ?

You can't differentiate between some twitter trolls doxing, to a major party platform working overtime to de-legitimize the first black President hand in hand with the biggest news channel in America. Are you this naive ? And the fact that our current President was the lead cheerleader of this effort. Should I point out the hundreds and thousands of stories that conservative media and politicians commented about Michelle Obama's looks. Should I point out about the massive systemic effort that conservative states create to disenfranchise minority voters ? Trump and MAGA is this whole movement in steroids. It is part of an overall effort to turn back the clock of progress in America. And you think that is 1/10th of some new story that people will forget in 2 weeks. Are you kidding me ?

So much of what you said is just plain inaccurate. For instance, Trump did not say that Mexican judges are incompetent. A case against him before the election had a Mexican judge presiding over it and he was afraid that the judge wouldn't be objective due to his wall/the perception that he's racist.

That's just one point. Most of the other points you made can be equally refuted or are just ridiculous - "dog whistles," come on. That's code for "they didn't say anything bad but I'm going to interpret bad intentions because I don't like them."

I don't like the guy but I hate the lies and misinformation about him more. Not because they're damaging to Trump but because they're harming our democracy itself.

Not a single thing I wrote was inaccurate. From his elevating cases of immigrant crime, to his complete disregard for NFL players peaceful protests, to his calling other countries "shithole", to his pardon of Joe Arpaio, we know who he is and who his supporters are. He is the most dangerous thing to democracy and spread of democratic values in this world and must be handily defeated.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/01/15/opinion/leonh...

If the Dems can’t get their shit together and the economy doesn’t tank, we’re in for another four years of Trump.

Dems just flipped 40 seats in the House and 300 in the state legislatures. So there is a strong possibility that Trump will lose. That said, Trump is just a vocal symptom of larger trends in the society. They may be subdued momentarily once Trump is defeated, but they are not going away. He has shown a path forward, and there are others willing to go further. This will be a long fight.

> we know who he is and who his supporters are

I don't think the way forward is to claim half the country is racist. Some of the Trump supporters are, but I feel like it's an easy/unfair explanation for why Trump was elected.

It's been talked to death, but Democrats made a lot of mistakes in 2016, and should look inward to try and fix things before 2020. I feel like the things they are focusing on are just making the division worse, and alienating voters they could win over.

I don't think half the country is racist in the traditional sense. But if a supporter tolerates this behavior because they like something else (e.g., tax cut), doesn't that make him or her a willing participant ?

>They didn’t even cover the racist stuff said against the kids.

Do you seriously not understand the point of that statement being made to people wearing MAGA hats? Notice I said understand, not agree with. Because labeling statements that are designed to use the absurdity of the MAGA's hatters position on various topics as a rhetorical tool against themselves as "racist" in order to fabricate some sort of "gotchya" talking point tells me you don't.

>I unsubscribed from the NYTimes over this.

Spare me.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com