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Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

TBH I'm not sure why you're being downvoted. Trump's oval office speech where he announced the closing of flights from Europe was one of the most disgusting displays of "leadership" I've ever seen. Right at the moment we needed international cooperation, he was highlighting how great the US was and how bad Europe was and that's why they were seeing spread, when in reality the US is just a couple weeks behind Europe.

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Not only that, but it blindsided European leaders. You'd think one would want to communicate an incoming travel ban to our allies before announcing it on live television...

https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/world/2020/03/12/many-europ...

That's what you get with an incompetent leader in the US :)

His means of communication is impulsive use of Twitter, so I don't know how you could expect something different.

From all Americans, I want to apologize for our stupid fucking leader.

We know, no worries ;)

Our partnership has been stable and long. No idiot can change it in just one term.

40% of Americans don't want you to apologize on their behalf [0]. From a Canadian, this type of comment is exactly what is driving your country apart and what lead to the election of Trump in the first place.

[0] - https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/...

What is your suggestion for unifying with people who support a leader who has abused his power in broad daylight over and over again? And who has abused that power to avoid punishment for other abuses?

It seems pretty fundamental to me: It's a matter of if are you okay with a blatant authoritarian if he's in your side. I don't know how to bridge that cultural difference in how we wish our leaders to behave.

Just show the world how dumb Trump really is, instead of showing/suggesting how he is getting money in a corrupt way.

That's how you convince people who don't like/hate the traditional system.

Go talk to them, listen to them, sympathize with them, you know, be a compassionate human instead insinuating their stupidity by outright calling someone they support stupid.

Are you replying to the right comment? Nothing in my comment said anything about Trump or his supporters' intelligence in any way.

It's not an insinuation.

Who can't see that Tr. is in politics for his own pockets is it too.

I've added a lot of pointers already. But another one is to look up the documentary about his son in law: Kusher Properties.

They are literally made for each other and not in a good way.

Other comment for handling a different argument.

I joined a big discussion group to see how I could convince people ( > 8000 Dutch members on Facebook).

While I took a lot of effort for 5 months to reason with the outliers of the group.

I had concluded that it was not possible to reason with outliers since they used "Whataboutisme" and the only effective way to convince other people and "shut them up" ( I know it sounds rude) was to actually be rude, handle their current arguments and point out the idiocracy of the arguments they were using ( hence the harsh term used).

My effectiveness rate went from 4-5% to almost 90% in having the "last" argument. It also seemed to greatly reduced the amount of pointless topics started by that person.

There was only once someone effective in working arround it, using "doubtful" sources.

I disagree with your second conjecture. The polarization of United States has been largely due to bankcrupting its middle class of its industry, paying off executives(not literally, but due to allure of making cheaper goods in China), social media and Russian interference in the election of Trump.

This is a grand plan of Russia and China to divide western nations, increase internal anti-US propaganda to bolster their authoritarian regimes.

You're pointing to the symptoms, not root cause. And this is exactly what the communist regimes want the west to do - fight against each other. Just wait before Canada get's roped in all of this as well.

The Soviet Union ended 30 years ago and reducing China's government to "communist regime" is at best naive and ignorant and at worst deliberately misleading.

You're right, I'll edit to to "authoritarian" regimes. What I meant was that authoritarian goverments cannot afford dissent and try everything to supress.

It's already happening in Canada. Look at our last election [0]. A clear divide between Toronto and Western Canada. It was a very sad day for me to see my country completely torn in two with both sides cementing themselves in place.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Canadian_federal_election

This is the same guy who first downplayed the virus risks, then now that is completely out of control in the US as well cries wolf against "enemies" from the outside to boost his strong man in power image.

One wouldn't expect this from someone whose grandfather himself was killed by the 1918 pandemic flu.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/03/07/flu-trump-...

In fact the US is worse than many parts of Europe, the difference is that the US government is not testing people! In the last week, testing crawled to a near halt, while the virus is ravaging almost every state of the country.

I wonder if the US will block inter-state travel for a while. Can they even do that?

Congress has the authority to regulate interstate commerce.

That is not applicable here. The US Supreme Court has repeatedly asserted that freedom to travel in the US is a fundamental right like free speech; regulation of interstate commerce is prohibited from violating those rights. Suspension of that right requires a narrowly targeted and compelling government interest, blanket prohibitions are prohibited, and requires due process for affected individuals.

In other words, "you might have COVID-19" has the same authority granting power as "you might be a terrorist" or "you might be a child pornographer", which is to say, very little absent specific evidence.

I have zero faith in the current federal and supreme courts upholding those rights. Stare decisis is basically dead and a full third of the judiciary are federalists or federalist-adjacent.

Also, I think you drastically underestimate what can be legally done under the aegis of "you might be (insert undesirable class here)".

Yes to both, since the case numbers will continue to increase exponentially.

No, Americans have a strong Constitutional right to move freely within the country, with large quantities of consistent court precedent on this matter in diverse situations. Suspension of this right requires both individual due process and compelling government interest (e.g. imprisonment for a serious crime). It is on the same tier of rights as freedom of speech in the US. The Constitutional authority simply isn't there for the Federal government to ban travel, and any attempt to do so would be met with an instant court injunction.

The courts have also consistently rejected overly clever de facto travel bans via regulatory mechanisms intended to prohibit the use of common modes of transportation. Courts have taken a very dim view of arguments, which the government has made in the past, that e.g. free travel can effectively be restricted to walking. American courts have ruled in the past that the right to travel extends to the use of common modes of transportation.

If fundamental Constitutional rights could be suspended every time the government claimed an emergency, Americans would have no rights in practice. There is no allowance for the blanket suspension of fundamental rights by reason of public emergency in the US.

Trump is already considering domestic travel bans, they can always find an "exception" to the constitution like they did after 9/11.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/airline-news/2020/03/1...

Except that they did not institute a travel ban after 9/11. They temporarily suspended air travel in order address manifest safety and security deficiencies in the US air travel system. The FAA has grounded fleets many times under similar authority. The highways were still open.

That is a very different legal authority than de facto blanket bans on free movement of Americans, which is expressly disallowed by the Constitution. This has actually been adjudicated several times in the Supreme Court, which has consistently rejected attempts by the government to use regulatory technicalities to deprive people of their right of free movement via common modes of transportation even subject to due process.

This is not new territory, there is extensive court precedent surrounding the right of free travel in the US. It is on the same tier of right as freedom of speech in the US.

Also, trump's anti-european sentiment is fuel on the fire for pro-federal and integrationist political forces in europe to form an ever closer union.

Also, why should germany/EU not block this sale at the national/supranational level?

At the same time, Germany, Norway, Denmark, and others(?) closed their borders contrary to demands from the EU itself. International cooperation can and does happen without travel.

Honestly, it should have happened a week+ ago. There were accounts of people who changed their flights from Italy to hop through London so they could skip quarantine procedures. That's irresponsible at best and dangerous and accelerated the spread at worst.

There are a lot of trump supporters on hacker news. Have no idea why.

The downvote button here has much less power here than it does on Reddit.

What downvote button?

the downvote button on comments is only visible once you reach a certain karma threshold https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

There are a lot of reflexively partisan Trump supporters, more precisely. It's routine to find fairly reasonable partisan discussions, with facts on both sides, reasonably broad participation, etc... Yet see that one "side" is grayed out.

This is a serious problem, and while I'm sure someone will disagree, it seems almost completely asymmetric to me. There's an army of centipedes, as it were, poisoning the discourse here with vote buttons and not arguments.

I don't see how it is possible for both sides to be grayed out if, as you say, one side isn't presenting arguments. With no arguments you can't get grayed out.

You can't even be sure it is Trump supporters doing the voting and flagging. Maybe some of the anti-Trump people don't want flamebait. The rules here are that you aren't supposed to use the site for political battle.

One side is unafraid to openly express political hostility. The other side is silent. That should tell you who is afraid to express an opinion. Imagine if Trump supporters did come here and make equally partisan comments, gloating about how Trump is the most capable person for handling the crisis and how he has done a fantastic job. Those comments would be well beyond gray in less than an hour. They would be [flagged][dead] and the users might even be banned. (don't test it now, days later in an aging thread)

Same reason there are libertarians here. Not much life experience and too much Reddit.

It's a lower proportion than the general population so I don't know why it would be particularly surprising. You have to realize nearly half the country has a favorable opinion of him as President.

I’m a facts supporter. I don’t subscribe to either party blindly.

Like 45% of the country supports him, and plenty of such folks have interests related to HN topics.

As much as I despise Trump, this is the simple reality.

Even intelligent people can become cult members. While I understand it in an intellectual capacity, it still blows my mind.

It's a good reminder to be skeptical of our own beliefs and ways of thinking. Foolish thoughts, tribal biases, and motivated reasoning -- to name just a few distortions of reality -- are things that every human experiences.

I like to think is possible to get better at it. For me, things like meditation help, as the ego is often a main hindrance.

Some people act irrational in time of "danger" ? :)

Tbh: don't know why either ;)

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