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Comment by godelski | Hacker News Reader

I like Yang, but I've never been one that idolizes another person. I would 100% vote for Yang above another candidate (I'm actually even surprised HN, which is pretty pro UBI, isn't Yang Gang), but I've never been passionate about another person. I don't understand people that will move to another state to campaign for a candidate. I've never been part of that kind of movement before, and in it I don't understand it. So it is weird to me. I will describe people in Bernie's camp, Trump's, and others the same way. Fanatics confuse me in the same way. I do also have a religious past and it reminds me of the fanaticism of that as well. But we're all humans and see through different lenses. It just is a lens that is odd to me.

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I understand that perspective, but I hope you can see that unlike a religion, politics, especially in USA is through people. People need to push a specific candidate because they represent a vision for yourself and the people you love.

One key thought experiment I like to do is to project out a behavior pattern for all people and then asking whether that would be a positive or negative for yourself and society. If everyone were to campaign and push for the ideas they care about, I do believe that would result in a more informed and better society. Through the marketplace of ideas, we can fight through the differences and hopefully create better policy and have better leaders execute on our future.

I think for a lot of people, taking action to affect change for the community/society you live in is very natural. On a small scale that can be something like running for class president or joining your HOA. At a larger scale, politics is where change happens.

If you believe in a set of principles, it is sometimes worth your personal time, effort, and money to affect change. Hopefully you can see that from their perspective they are about their own future and this is the most effective way to impact that prospective future.

I see that perspective and appreciate the comment. To be more clear, the weird thing to me is the __degree__ of fanaticism. I understand being passionate, there are many things I'm passionate about. But there are very few things where I would drop everything and campaign for someone. This REALLY reminds me of religion (I left a religion that sends people to go knock on peoples' doors for 2 years of their lives).

I also think politics (I'm not sure if it has always been that way, but I don't remember it like this when I was younger) has a lot of parallels to religion and that similarity is growing. I do actually believe this is rooted in the growing partisanship. That political answers are not "best solution vs a different solution" but "good vs evil". Partisanism relies on good vs evil. There's a John Cleese skit about extremism that always makes me laugh[0].

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXCkxlqFd90

To take the religion + politics thing further, consider that the president is hailed as being sent by God, and is surrounded by Christian Dominionists that are actively trying to apply make the U.S. a theocracy.

That's bound to stir up some passion on both sides, being that the stakes are rather high.

My comment was based on facts, not opinion or conjecture. I guess certain people just don't like facts that don't look good to them.

I think it’s quite personal. Yang is the first candidate in my lifetime I’ve felt excited about and the first time I’ve donated. (I’m 34)

For me it’s because I see massive potential in UBI to transform society.

So it’s easy to understand there are others who are uniquely attracted to his campaign and want to do whatever they can to help.

I have always found this type of behavior perplexing as well. I had a Kickstarter campaign a few years ago and one of my backers latched onto me like glue, he was repping and praising my product like it was god's gift to man, incessantly for weeks on end. It was flattering but also a bit confusing. I scrolled through his FB wall the other day and see that over the years he's done this pretty much over everything that's gained some traction in the media.

He became a "bitcoin zealot" when that was popular, he became a AI fearmongerer, now he's a Trumpian provocateur. There is no cohesion between any of these identities other than the fact that they are reflections of what's popular at any one point. To me it's facade he's constantly draping over himself but to him that is identity.

I think humans are evolutionarily tribal and naturally some members are going to be more dogmatic than others. Myself not exhibiting that behavior, it's somewhat odd to observe from the outside.

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