Comment by patientplatypus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by patientplatypus | Hacker News Reader

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patientplatypus

Disagree.

You can do it with healthcare too.

Team "spent 4 years attempting to repeal the Affordable Care Act and replacing it with nothing" vs Team "Universal Medical Care for Everyone"

Or tax cuts -

Team "Gave trillions away via a big corporate tax cut" vs Team "Proposal to fund higher education via Wealth Tax"

Or environmentalism -

Team "denying there's a problem while the permafrost melts" vs Team "Wants to do something before society literally falls around us"

Or Treason -

Team "Has president in White House that literally asked Ukraine for dirt on his political opponent" vs Team "Holy Fucking Shit!"

It seems super frustrating dealing with articles that say that "politics" is stressing me out when really it's that the right has literally driven the country into the ground. What in god's name are they doing? We have a president that is literally laughing about killing immigrants days before a national shooting in Texas, who commits high crimes via Twitter, and worse! What Republican is speaking out against him? And they own the senate, so we've had 4 years of deadlock.

And that's just the United States! In the UK you have crazy Boris Johnson literally doing everything he possibly can to crash the country out of the European Union because no one was willing to work with Theresa May. God knows why as the effects for the economy (and Ireland for God's sakes - they have a border between Northern Ireland and Ireland that would have to go back up - and it could cause the Troubles again!) would be horrific. Probably because he has money on it somehow. And he attempted to essentially dissolve parliament that then unprecedentedly got thrown out by their Supreme Court and the entire thing is just a shit show.

And then there's Modi, and Bolsonaro is burning down the rain forest. The thing is the entire planet looks like it's having an attack of conscience and we could be looking at a breakdown of the global order. Things have been ok bordering on decent in most parts of the world for the last 50 years, as compared to the last 500 that preceded them. But we paid for the prosperity by consuming more than we should, and, as "stuff" starts to run out perhaps people are just no longer interested in sharing with others or playing nice.

That's a really scary thought.

I am not entirely familiar with American politics, but let me try to demonstrate why simplifications like this are stupid. Imagine someone making the following points, do you think it would be fun to argue politics with them?

Pro murder babies vs pro life.

Pro crime vs pro justice.

Pro laziness vs pro work.

Pro racism/sexism vs pro merits.

This compulsion to steer every discussion into simplistic partisan campaign talking-points is not good for people's mental or physical health, as the linked study suggests.

I hope you learn to disengage before accumulating too much damage.

It's not a talking point to say I'm scared for my country because my president is literally asking a foreign power to get dirt on his enemies.

Like, I'm worried here. This is bad, right? This isn't a simplistic partisan campaign talking point - I mean it shouldn't right? We should all have some basic values we all subscribe to, like a president should keep his oath of office and not torture kids. I'm scared we as a country no longer share those basic values because there's a lot of people who are just angry. And that freaks me out. I mean that's pretty normal, right?

> This is bad, right?

Both of the last two republican presidents started wars killing and displacing way more than anything Trump did, this isn't so bad compared to that.

The only significant thing this administration did was to ignore climate science, which is huge yes, but it isn't something new it is just normal american corporate lobbying. USA has been a major polluter for a really long time and hasn't really done much about it under any presidency.

Personally, I think it's more damaging that positions like, "Let's not lock children in cages", or "Let's actually listen to the scientific consensus on climate change rather than people paid by the oil industry" or considered partisan viewpoints. I totally get political fatigue, I'm getting really tired of all the shit going on too, but when pointing out the president blatantly committed a crime is considered partisan, the issue isn't that people talk about politics too much.

To see the problem, let me use your exact words, but simply change the issue to one you presumably disagree with: "Personally, I think it's more damaging that positions like, "Let's not murder children" is considered a partisan viewpoint. I totally get political fatigue, I'm getting really tired of all the shit going on too, but when pointing out literally killing kids is considered partisan, the issue isn't that people talk about politics too much."

I'm sure you see the problem now. I'm obviously taking a horribly slanted view on abortion and then framing the discussion under that slant. It's not only partisan but rather radically so. In particular, is the underlying causal issue a desire to "lock children in cages", or is it something else? Is the underlying causal issue a desire to "murder babies", or is it something else?

Beyond the partisanship problem, I'd also add that this is in no way conducive to productive discussion. Imagine I opposed abortion and came at you with that murdering babies nonsense. What is your response going to be? It's likely to be a mixture of knee-jerk emotion alongside a near complete dismissal of me as somebody who's probably quite radicalized. In any case it certainly would not lead to a mutually enlightening and well tempered debate. Yet this sort of speech is now becoming seen as something normal, and I think it's playing a very key role in both a lack of progress as well as an increasingly antagonistically divided nation.

Except, in the first case the underlying casual issue to Republicans separating children from their parents is their hatred and racism of asylum seeking immigrants. In the second case, the underlying issue to people who don't believe in abortion are often religious groups that have a history of persecuting anyone different than them, including the mistreatment of women and children.

Trying to state there are radicals "on both sides" just isn't true in degree or kind. We don't have radicalized left wing socialists shooting up schools. We just don't.

Do you think it’s possible that someone doesnt have hatred toward and wasn’t racist against asylum seeking immigrants yet still supports immigration control that results in children locked in cages? Do you think all ICE employees are hateful racists? Are all proponents of a wall hateful racists?

I think it’s hard to understand someone’s position when they are lumped into caricatures. Maybe there are other reasons. But setting up a world where people who disagree with me are all racists is a world where the people I call racist don’t want to talk with me. Yet we live in a world where they vote the same as I. So if I want them to vote my way, I need to understand them. To understand them, I have to talk with them.

No. Yes, yes.

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. "Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

That poem was penned in 1883. Do you know what the federal tax rate was? No need to bother with brackets, as it was 0%. And the state tax rate wasn't much different. How did we pay for our programs for migrants and ensure they were able to achieve a decent and humane life? We didn't. There were some independent 'poor houses' which were essentially farms where people could put in a hard day's work for a hot meal and little bit of cash, but beyond that people were on their own.

The reason this is relevant is because it radically reshapes migration. It means that each and every person who came to this country managed to contribute to society and start earning a living, or they left. As a result of this each and every migrant was, at worst, a non-negative on society. They integrated, they contributed, and society was all the better for it.

Today society is much more humane, and that is probably a good thing. But it also means that each and every person who lives, or comes, to within this country can now be a net negative on society. And so this rather radically changes the calculus. It means each and every person who comes to this nation, if incapable of providing for themselves, stretches our society's finite resources that much thinner. Consequently, there is need for judiciousness and restraint if you wish for these programs, and our generosity, to remain sustainable.

Critical theory can generally be refuted pretty easily with a bit of critical thinking. Abortion for instance is the lower hanging fruit here. It's something that has nothing inherently to do with religion. You can find discussions of the topic dating back literally thousands of years ago in contexts entirely free of religions that held the view one way or the other. For instance Aristotle discussed the topic in his phenomenal Politics series in what would have been about 2300 years ago. See section 16 [1] :

"As to the exposure and rearing of children, let there be a law that no deformed child shall live, but that on the ground of an excess in the number of children, if the established customs of the state forbid this (for in our state population has a limit), no child is to be exposed, but when couples have children in excess, let abortion be procured before sense and life have begun; what may or may not be lawfully done in these cases depends on the question of life and sensation."

He quite obviously was not being influenced by a religion that still had a few hundreds years to go before it would be invented.

This is one of the critical problems with critical theory. You can always attribute some social issue to everything because social issues and society are so deeply interweaved. Religion is again the obvious example because, not that long ago, religion was ubiquitous in society. Consequently every single aspect of our history and culture has been deeply touched by religion. Because of this you can attribute nearly any behaviors you like to religion with facile, but not necessarily sound, logic. This is why it's always important to try to refute your arguments, rather than simply indulging them. Otherwise you just end up as a slightly higher brow version of a racist who is quick to attribute every flaw in a society to whatever group they happen to not like.

[1] - http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/politics.7.seven.html

No, religions love the idea of an abortion ban, because it makes sex scary and not fun which means they get control over who gets to live and form an intimate relationship with who. Which religions love. Same reason they hate condoms - if abortion were really about the life of an unborn child then condoms and sex education would seem like a good idea. But nope! That leads to sexy sex which can't be OK, and apparently is worse than abortion.

We could go back thousands of years, or I could just point out the southern baptists standing outside colleges with signs against homosexuality today.

Or we could go back like 5 years when the entire country lost it's mind that two people with penises could live together and be called "married" by the state.

Because orthodox religious people in my country are cruel and like power. And they're very against abortion because they want power over people because in their own lives they are weak. At heart it's the same kind of hatred that's against immigrants - a selfish peevish little feeling that rears its head in order to make one seem better at the expense of others.

It's not that deep or hard to understand. We don't need fucking Aristotle and the Mystery Machine.

Don't you see the problem? You are taking one group and attributing that to the source of an ideology when the ideology predates the group, literally by millennia in this case. It makes no sense. In any case it's rather clear that religion is not the fundamental source of opposition to abortion. And you engaged in a similar fallacy for the rest of your suppositions.

> To see the problem, let me use your exact words, but simply change the issue to one you presumably disagree with:

Wow, when you change a sentence from something that is happening to something that isn't happening, the meaning changes! What an amazing rhetorical device that is.

> crash the country out of the European Union because no one was willing to work with Theresa May.

The possible was agree Theresa May's deal untouched, drop some UK "red line issues", remain in the EU, or no deal Brexit (crash out). That's it.

Except many didn't think that good enough, or it wasn't in Britain's interests (no kidding) and we've spent 2 years trying to tolerate them all indulging in this political act of national self-harm. Our international status is "laughing stock". Surprisingly, the impossible has not yet become possible!

EU's chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, published a single slide in 2017 that summarises the whole mess well. CGP Grey has a video on this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agZ0xISi40E

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