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Comment by rtkwe | Hacker News Reader

It's easier to believe when from your understanding of the world the other side is blatantly lying and misrepresenting things. It forms a bit of a positive feedback loop where seeing bad intentions leads you to being less likely to give slack so you see more bad intentions.

From the left looking rightward at Fox News and many local stations (increasingly owned by and forced to run identical scripts from Sinclair Broadcasting) [0] at the response and the response to the response to coronavirus for example it's hard to ascribe that to just a different interpretation of facts.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxtkvG1JnPk

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You do realize that the "other side" has the same EXACT perception of you, right?

It would be nice if people were a bit more skeptical of their preferred news outlets and opinion makers. What I see instead is the continuing existence of the same bubble that led to the shock and surprise at Trump's election. An absolute refusal or inability to consider other views, an inability to interpret events in historical context and with a healthy dose of common sense.

No, of course, I never thought about the perception from the other side. Yes I know that, I believe the things I do though because I either think they're correct, they should be correct, or I hope they'll be right some day, I think I've considered and synthesized information from various sources not just one or a small few. I get that my whole world view is a conglomeration of what I was taught, when I grew up, what I've read etc. but if I didn't think I was at least partially right why would I believe it.

It's not even strictly about the news itself, the underlying philosophy that tilts the news and policy choices seems like it's missing or ignoring a piece of reality. [0] The further from my view the more alien the terrain seems and the less any of the logic makes sense because the priors are so different. Why do we keep swinging back and forth on banking regulations (or business regulation in general) when fundamentally the incentives haven't changed?

[0] Again I get that this is probably what a Conservative feels too but I don't know how to bridge the conceptual gap between the ideological poles here. I went into CS because I can reasonably understand what twiddling a given knob will do and I can control the scope of problems. I have no idea how to even start twiddling societal knobs.

Jonathan Haidt's "The Righteous Mind" is a good start.

> I get that my whole world view is a conglomeration of what I was taught, when I grew up, what I've read etc. but if I didn't think I was at least partially right why would I believe it.

Everyone believes this. It becomes dangerous when we start assuming these are the correct beliefs.

> I don't know how to bridge the conceptual gap between the ideological poles here.

Just talk to conservatives, in my experience they're willing to listen.

Might I add that I've had and seen much more success talking to people outside of social media, where people of every political persuasion seem more concerned with performative outrage (makes sense, since that's what social media is designed to encourage).

oh, for sure! Humans just aren't designed to communicate in a one-to-millions paradigm, and it shows strongly in the political divide we all face.

And finding common ground is still easy: "It's bad/unfortunate when police kill people", "It would be good if we could feed and clothe the homeless", "It would be good if more people had access to healthcare" are statements that most people will agree with.

"What laws, mechanisms and tools do we use to achieve those goals?" and "How do we pay for it?" -- that's where you run into differing opinions.

Conservative perceptions of their opponents have very little basis in reality as most of what conservatives perceive regarding their opponents is projection intended to deflect from their own misbehavior.

Conservative messaging is driven almost exclusively by fabricated outrage for which there is no non-conservative equivalent; non-conservative messaging is driven by outrage over actual conservative behavior.

Non-conservative media spreads outrage at factual abuses of power by conservative elites (such as the dismantling democratic norms, or police brutality) while conservative media creates outrage by giving voice to fabricated controversies created over trivialities, such as over tan suits and arugula, or by amplifying non-genuine controversies manufactured by astroturf groups.

There's no more of an equivalency between conservative and non-conservative media any more than there's an equivalency between actual public health experts and the kind of people who think injecting bleach cures COVID-19. There is such a thing as objective reality and the history of the past forty years of conservative politics is a history of conservatives abandoning objective reality in favor of delusions they find comforting.

> There is such a thing as objective reality and the history of the past forty years of conservative politics is a history of conservatives abandoning objective reality in favor of delusions they find comforting.

Again, "the other side" has the exact same concerns about your tribe.

Again, just because conservatives (or anyone else) strongly believes something does not make it true.

Take the conservative position on climate change, for instance, which over the past forty years has degenerated from 'there's not enough of a consensus to act' through 'it's happening but it's not human caused' to 'the science is a Chinese conspiracy theory to destroy America.'

Also note the increasing fondness of senior Republican figures, from Trump downwards, for Q-anon and it's associated conspiracy theories. Notably, there's no Democratic Q-anon equivalent of any statute.

Finally, while in office, Trump has told upwards of 20,000 lies regarding objective facts[0]. There's no equivalent lie count for Obama, Biden, or any other prominent non-conservative in very large part because they, unlike prominent conservatives, accept that objective reality exists and see their duty as finding a way to cope with it.

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/07/13/president...

At first I downvoted you.

Then I realized that this is a stupid way to have a discussion, so here's my reply instead.

I would love to see a specific example of "conservative fabricated outrage". Not because I haven't seen any in my life, but to align our understandings of the fabricated outage.

The most recent one is probably that with a new supreme court judge nomination. Here's what I managed to find out:

- according to [1] rejecting a supreme court nominee from the opposite party is a relatively rare, but not completely outstanding event. Last time (ignoring current senate) it happened when Reagan nominated Bork in 1987.

- in "good olde times" senate minority could use filibuster to block the unacceptable nominee. This option has been eliminated by Harry Reid in 2013. All McConnell did was to keep the status quo.

- current situation is in no way unique: over the history of USA 29 times supreme court judges were nominated in election year. In case of aligned senate 17 nominations out of 19 were confirmed. In case of a misaligned senate 2 out of 10 nominations were confirmed.

- in 2016 dems have brought up some very good arguments to why having just 8 judges is problematic and why the president should nominate a judge as soon as possible (even in election year). I personally think these arguments were exceptionally reasonable and they still hold in 2020: the president should indeed nominate a judge as soon as possible

Your turn?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nominations_to_the_Sup...

I'll leave GP to answer the outrage comments, but I think the rest reasonably calls out for perspective.

Merrick Garland wasn't just not confirmed, his nomination was ignored for 9.5 months. As you point out, it's not uncommon for opposition party senates to turn down supreme court nominees, as is their due. It is, however, extremely rare for them not to hear those nominations at all, and Garland's nomination timeline stands out for its longevity.

Out of 163 nominations, only 11 have lapsed (from your wiki link, which lists an incorrect count in the summary). Reverse chronological order of the most recent 5:

- Garland (2016): 293 days. Opposition senate.

- John Marshall Harlan II (1954): 27 days in lapsed nomination + 49 days for confirmation. Ally senate, confirmed by opposition senate.

- Pierce Butler (1922): 14 days lapsed nomination + 16 days for confirmation. Ally senate.

- William Hornblower (1893): 45 days lapsed + 41 days to reject confirmation. Ally senate.

- Stanley Matthers (1881): 36 days lapsed + 59 days to confirm. Opposition senate, confirmed by split senate.

The point being that there is essentially no historical precedent for this behavior, to the point that we need to look 135 years in the past simply to find any example of an opposition senate delaying a candidate's nomination. Even then, Garland is the supreme court nominee with the most time under nomination in US congressional history by a factor of more than 2.

> over the history of USA 29 times supreme court judges were nominated in election year

This doesn't really do justice to the history here, 1/4 of those nominations happened in a single year due to conflict between President Tyler and the Whig party, and an overlapping 1/4 were withdrawals. The last ~170 years of supreme court nominees have been pretty uninteresting and undramatic.

- Garland (2016): lapsed. Ally senate.

- Fortas (1968): confirmed. Ally senate.

- Thornberry (1968) withdrawn because the seat was no longer available, due to some musical chairs replacing Chief Justice Earl Warren. Ally Senate.

- Murphy (1940): confirmed. Ally senate.

- Cardozo (1932): confirmed. Ally senate.

- Clarke (1916): confirmed. Ally senate.

- Brandeis (1916): confirmed. Ally senate.

- Pitney (1912): confirmed. Ally senate.

- Shiras (1892): confirmed. Ally senate.

- Fuller (1888): confimed. Opposition senate.

- Woods (1880): confirmed. Opposition senate.

- Hunt (1872): confirmed. Ally senate.

- Chase (1864): confirmed. Ally senate.

- Bradford (1852): lapsed. Opposition senate.

- 7 various nominations (1844): none confirmed. Opposition senate.

- Crittenden (1828): postponed i.e. rejected. Opposition senate.

- Johnson (1804): confirmed. Ally senate.

- Ellsworth (1796): confirmed. Washington was president and rejected party politics, but the Federalists were friendly with him, so ally senate.

- Chase (1796): confirmed. Ally senate.

- Cushing (1796): confirmed. Ally senate.

I think there's plenty of evidence that Garland's nomination fight radically rocked the boat in US national politics, and we're likely to see similar boat rocking over the next few years as Democrats are pushed harder to abuse the limits of their power in order to improve their leverage on Republicans.

It's not accurate to imply that upcoming crises over USSC nominations will be the result of a Democratic power grab.

More intense fights over control of the USSC will happen because the differential population growth between the states and the rigid allocation of Senate seats means that the USSC is being filled without benefit of the democratic consent of a majority of the American population.

The fact that the USSC is being filled with judges who are hostile to the social values and economic interests of the majority compounds the problem.

Political strife over USSC nominations is not a partisan problem but rather a function of the fact that the US constitution, by design, allows the reactionary minority to dominate the majority. The constitution gives the reactionary 40% the legal right to rule the majority, but this does not mean the majority is under any obligation to meekly accept this.

(putting my hard hat on)

I am not sure the consent of majority or for the perceived benefit of majority is the right way to go.

What if the majority of the class votes that Jenny now must go to all school events wearing nothing but stockings and lingerie?

That's an arguable point; indeed it has been argued since at least Plato. No hard hat required as far as I'm concerned.

Excessive public representation can cause poor outcomes, (hard hat on) such as the governance problems in California caused by ballot initiatives. Letting the public write policy does not seem to lead to good outcomes in most circumstances.

However, representative democracy which combines the requirement that leaders secure consent of the governed with with normalized protections for individual rights seems to be the best system of governance humanity can come up with. Leaders, like employees, tend to do a better job if they can be fired for doing a bad job, and that is what the need for majority democratic consent provides. Protections for individual rights reduces the risk of individuals being harmed by mob rule, such as would be the case in the dress code problem in your post.

Indeed, most of the democratic world combines these principles to good effect. The US is an outlier among nominally democratic countries as it is governed without the consent of the majority.

Political systems that allow for governance without the consent of the majority allow rulers to act with impunity towards the majority and, as such have a very long history of abusing the majority. The kind of people who rise to the top of such systems tend not to be the kind of altruistic people who will govern in the interests of the public, and without any requirement for democratic consent they absolutely will not govern in the interests of the public. Indifference to majority needs, persecution, or even genocide, often follows.

Quite frankly, this is the situation the US has blundered into. Over the past few decades the US has gradually shifted from a polity where broad consent of the governed was essential into a situation where the constitutionally empowered minority (represented by the Republican party) has become increasingly abusive towards majority interests. Under Trump, the minority is now pursuing a platform specifically designed to antagonize--or even persecute--the majority. Fights over USSC nominations are just a part of this.

This isn't a good place for a country to be, especially as a large portion of the American ruling minority population is very pleased by the prospect of persecuting the majority.

The quip I threw out regarding 'tan suits and arugula' was not random; both were outrage incidents manufactured by conservative media in relation to President Obama.

Conservatives manufactured a moral panic over how Obama was unfit for office because he wore a tan suit in public and how he was out of touch with 'real Americans' because he ate arugula.

In contrast, most non-conservatives are disgusted at Trump because of his cruelty towards others, his failure to address COVID-19, the fact that violated democratic norms to put himself in office, and the fact that he is taking steps to rig the 2020 election in his favor.

The kind of scandals that conservatives created around Obama (such as tan suits and arugula) are not equivalent to the actual scandals that surround Trump.

I don't doubt conservatives feel like liberals believe in nothing but power, and I'm sure the left has a few marks against it on that count. But I'd appreciate a few examples of them behaving in such a manner as knowingly lying about how deadly a disease is and then having large crowded in door events shortly afterwards[0]. It's easy to manufacture a narative that has the left drinking the blood of babies, but how much support is there for some large scale malicious thing?

https://www.npr.org/2020/09/09/911109247/trump-admitted-to-p...

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