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Comment by hintymad | Hacker News Reader

Why? Trump will have just one more term at most. So are you essentially saying that you're not happy with the current election system and you tend to use violence to overthrow it?

Or are you saying that you dislike Trump or Biden so much that you'd rather use violence to achieve what you desire?

Let's say you'd use Guillotine so Trump can step down, then should those who dislike democrats also use the same means to have Biden step down? And if someone tends to oppose what you do, you'd rather use Guillotine to resolve the difference?

I think it's pretty clear what kind of person you are.

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I’m saying there are policies that an overwhelming majority in USA supports, such as universal healthcare, taxing the rich, stop foreign wars, stop police violence, reduce carbon emission, etc. which will never be enacted in the current political climate. Our choices—well the voters choice; I’m not allowed to vote—is basically: Not getting what we want or not getting what we want plus inhumane bigotry.

If this were a real democracy, popular policies would be enacted, or at least be on the ballot. But this is not the case. As evident from the Black Lives Matter protest, riot seems to be the only avenue for change. And as popular policies keep getting put on the back burner while corporate interests keep getting the front seat regardless of who we vote, the illusion of democracy will frustrate more and more people. The more frustrated we get the more likely we will resort to violence.

I’m not saying that violence will lead to good outcome (it probably won’t; as history shows), but an ever angrier and more frustrated population will eventually use it if democratic means remain unavailable. That is more and more people will vote for the Guillotine if the only options on the ballots are: a) business as usual, or b) business as usual + hating minorities.

> are policies that an overwhelming majority in USA supports, such as universal healthcare, taxing the rich, stop foreign wars, stop police violence, reduce carbon emission

None of those things are supported by an overwhelming majority unless 3/5ths now constitutes “overwhelming”. Additionally, your view of what the issues are show how biased your approach is to begin with.

- Almost nobody has an issue with reducing police violence, but a bunch of people have issues with getting rid of the police.

- Almost nobody “wants foreign wars” but a bunch of people think military intervention is needed.

- Nobody is against taxing the rich, it’s already right in the tax code and the top 1 percent pays something like a third of all tax revenues already. What a bunch of people are against is arbitrarily raising their taxes further because of tall poppy syndrome.

- Reduce carbon emissions. Yes, but sadly not overwhelming majority still and even then, the “how” is critical and there is even less common ground there.

So there are nuances when making legislation to enact popular policies. I know that, what is your point?

A functioning legislator discusses these nuances, and comes up with a legislation that enacts the policy such that most people can benefit from it. This is one of the benefits of having a diverse ruling class. No one person needs to know how a popular policy gets enacted, that is the purpose of representative democracy.

He explicitly stated his point before the enumeration; your phrasing of the original comment is both technically inaccurate and reeks of your biases to such an extent as to sour further engagement with you.

You're technically inaccurate because 58-60% is not an "overwhelming majority".

I'm not a US citizen (or resident), and I find it almost unbelievable and absolutely unacceptable that you don't have some form of universal healthcare, for example. I probably agree with you politically way more than I disagree with you, but the other posters points against you still stand.

EDIT: I realise my first paragraph here might sound a bit harsh, that was not my intention - my intention was to make it explicitly known to you such that you might take it to heart and it might possibly be helpful to you to realise.

No, you’re not getting it. “Reduce police violence” is something people can support. However, the position taken by a major party has been “defund the police” instead. They have started with the “how” and have done so with an untenable position for more than half of the country.

The same applies to solving global warming. Carbon taxation was actually a feasible solution with conservative support. Now instead, a huge chunk of the liberal position has shifted to the green new deal, which is a jobs program and wealth redistribution scheme only orthogonally related to slowing global warming. Nuclear is another viable solution to global warming that nobody wants to touch because science is scary.

This is precisely the kind of scarecrowing we are seeing with the ruling class today in America. I purposely worded the demands as vague and agreeable as possible, because that is what the majority of the population can agree on.

I personally want carbon tax and police abolition, but there is no consensus on either of these, and what I personally want doesn’t matter. I am not a dictator and the USA is not a dictatorship. It is the legislator’s job to gather what the people want, and find a way to deliver it in a way that will benefit the most. However the American ruling class is not even pretending to be interested in what policies the general population supports.

> I’m saying there are policies that an overwhelming majority in USA supports, such as universal healthcare, taxing the rich, stop foreign wars, stop police violence, reduce carbon emission, etc.

The average person might support all of those end results if the cost to get there were zero, i.e. if we could wave a magic wand.

However each one of those has a cost or tradeoff that a significant number - possibly majority - of people would be unwilling to accept.

Should it matter if the majority supports something if it violates the human rights of others?

Yes, it should! But none of the policies I mentioned previously does that.

>I think it's pretty clear what kind of person you are.

This sentiment is a pretty on-the-nose example of the societal problem we're discussing.

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