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Comment by howLongHowLong | Hacker News Reader

I'm new to HN, and find myself coming here more and more often to luxuriate in open-ended discussions between people with divergent, qualified opinions. I'm realizing the lighter-gray text is donwnvted posts. Is it a large number to cause it? I see nothing inflammatory here, it's a well-reasoned response, where both posters essentially agree - we are at an impasse do to the fundamental incompatability of the modern versions of teams Red and Blue. Am I to infer that the it's being downvoted simply because it suggests that both sides are responsible for the state of affairs? I am used to encountering this in the world from both sides, but it's sort of extra disappointing to see such behavior here. Forgive me if I'm missing something.

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The frame that helped me understand things was to start looking at America as a country engaged in a cold civil war since 2015 or so, starting from a state of total information warfare, where the Democrats had a distinct materiel advantage.

Democrats have been marshaling their forces since then, and are trying for a repeat of the 2016 strategy, only they are all-hands-on-deck this time.

Republicans have spent the past four years trying to come to grips with establishing operations in a hostile territory (Washington D.C.).

The state of the Democrats feels pretty clear to me, but it's super hard to get a read on where the Republicans are right now. Fog of war is thick, and we won't really know where things are going until November.

This forum has mostly Americans. There is a recent meme in American politics that says that someone arguing that both sides are the same is a bad thing. Because they're actually arguing in favor of one of the sides in some hidden manner, or because not picking sides only supports a bad status quo, or something like that. Anyway, it's bad and you got to downvote it.

At least in terms of my above comment, the things that Republicans believe, and the things that Democrats believe, are both true.

But I wouldn't say that they are both the same. That was true before 2016, but 2020 is a Very Different World.

Prior to 2016, Americans had two parties that largely colluded with each other to maintain power. This is why they wrestled control of the debates away from the League of Women Voters in the late 80s[1], why third parties disappeared out of the debates shortly thereafter, and why Obama, whom I voted for, governed almost identically to Bush, whom I didn't.

Let's call this duopoly the Establishment.

2016 was a brick through both Establishment windows. Bernie from the Left, and Trump from the Right. Bernie got shut down and bought off, but the Republicans, being the official party of milquetoast whining, had no tools to stop Trump.

Bernie would have stomped Trump in 2016, by the way.

Now, the Democrats are playing the same tune they were in 2016, just cranked up to 11. They had some solid candidates -- I still really like Tulsi -- but either character-assassinated (Tulsi) or ignored (Yang) the hell out of them in favor of Biden.

This hasn't done the Democrats any favors. They've been aggressively attacking anybody identified as a heretic, meaning anybody that isn't a hard-line loyalist. I'm not sure that translates to Trump votes, but I don't think it translates to Biden ones, either.

Hence, the hostility.

The Republicans are in a weird space. The Establishment faction is in total disarray, and the Trump faction is struggling with a civil service that is in large part actively hostile. Washington long-haulers are playing it safe, as if Trump is out come January, they go up against the wall, quite possibly in the literal sense.

No idea how things will play out, but the real worry is what happens afterwards.

Democrats will not accept a Trump victory. Republicans will not accept a Biden victory.

This is a bad place to be, folks. Never thought I would see things like this in my lifetime, but that's where we are.

[1] https://www.lwv.org/league-women-voters-and-candidate-debate...

Downvotes are used in practice for 'I disagree' rather than just 'this content is inappropriate.'

Platforms that support downvotes (including HN) are prone to groupthink and vote bullying. Going against the popular view--either site-wide or against the popular view of the people who access a given comment thread--will result in downvotes even when posting material that's factually accurate. This tends to create a self-amplifying process where established views become more entrenched and, possibly, more extreme.

For example, the majority view among people who access COVID-19 posts on HN is that the disease is not a major risk. Anything posted to the contrary is highly likely to be be downvoted and/or flagged for removal. This drives away factual information in favor of groupthink and creates nothing more than a single-sided echo chamber.

HN is no better than Reddit in this regard; it's just that the groupthink hot buttons on HN are different from those on Reddit.

As this view itself is a view that runs against the universally accepted wisdom on HN, this post itself has already been downvoted and will likely be downvoted further.

As a matter of personal ethics, I only downvote material that is socially hazardous (e.g. COVID-19 misinformation), seemingly inorganic, or seemingly dishonest. Being wrong in good faith isn't a karma crime and shouldn't be punished. Unfortunately this is far from a universally accepted perspective.

With regard to why both-sides-bad arguments are not well received in the context of US politics, I feel newen covered most of that in his/her reply to you. However, I will add that 'both-sides-bad' has a really long history of being used disingenuously by the right wing, both directly and by paying left wing fringe candidates who use 'both-sides-bad' messaging to split the Democratic vote.

Both sides are indeed bad (see: e.g. Obama's execution-by-drone policy), but one side is far worse than the other (see: e.g. Trump's children-in-cages policy) and 'both-sides-bad' is usually used by the right wing as a way to trivialize Republican abuses. People who pay attention to US politics tend to be aware of this and will be less inclined to give 'both-sides-bad' comments the benefit of the doubt.

Further, on the question of respect for democratic rights, the factual history of voter suppression in the United States is so black-and-white (literally: it's a history of white conservatives preventing black people from voting) that anyone who does a 'both-sides-bad' take on this is either grossly uninformed or dishonest. Neither option will be well received by people who pay attention to these kind of issues.

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