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Comment by empath75 | Hacker News Reader

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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)

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