Bay Area cities, restaurants bracing for potential election-night unrest | Hacker News Reader

Bay Area cities, restaurants bracing for potential election-night unrest

sfchronicle.com

20 pointsundefined115 comments

Looking like the insecurity of a third world nation. I remember years ago one of my bosses telling me a major advantage of moving to the US is political stability, that you didn’t have to be in fear of your life/property walking to work because of civil unrest.

Third world nation seems quite exaggerated to me.

I don't see how.

It won't happen this year I don't think, but I'm curious what would happened in an election as close as 2000 nowadays.

> “You can have whatever you have planned, but the people are going to do what they’re going to do,” she said. “In Oakland, the message is ‘this is not the America we want to live in, and gear up for four years of a fight.’”

I honestly am a little confused by people who state they are 'anti-Fascist', but then excuse rioting over.. results of a democratic election? What's the alternative?

> I honestly am a little confused by people who state they are 'anti-Fascist', but then excuse rioting over.. results of a democratic election? What's the alternative?

The US federal system of elections is not democratic, and even if it were, democracy is necessary for, but not sufficient to, a government which is in accord with the rights of the people. Popular tyranny remains tyranny, and its victims are no less justified in resisting.

Now, you can argue that the outcome these people fear would not actually be a tyranny, but that's a different argument than that your apparent argument that not submitting to a democratic output irrespective of its content is equivalent to fascism.

A functional democracy requires that all parties agree to abide by the result of the election and peaceful transfer of power.

Endorsing violent resistance is the opposite of that.

Technically yes, but a functioning democracy requires that the election itself be democratic in the first place.

As a simple example, which has happened countless times in dictatorships: if Party X arrests all the candidates from opposition parties, then people who abide by the results of the election and the peaceful transfer of power from one member of Party X to another are in no way supporting a functional democracy. They are doing quite the opposite.

(And yes, as the other reply pointed out, almost all democracies in the world can point to their foundation in bloodshed. At some point you had to transfer power away from the undemocratic regime previously in power, and they usually were not willing to be peaceful about it. Meanwhile, a desire to preserve peace in the face of a growing unsympathetic-to-democracy party who's gaining power for now through democratic means is the backstory of many of the times democracy has been lost.)

> A functional democracy requires that all parties agree to abide by the result of the election and peaceful transfer of power.

(1) A functional democracy also requires a Democratic electoral system.

(2) A functionally-democratic tyranny is not better than the absence of functional democracy.

(3) But it's usually better than a functional elective anti-democratic tyranny, which is what you have when you have the feature you describe as necessary for functional democracy is present, but neither respect for the rights of the people beyond participation in elections nor elections on democratic lines are present.

So, yes, the condition you pay out is necessary (but not at all sufficient) for functioning democracy, but not in all cases (even where the other conditions for functional democracy are present) desirable.

Mussolini, the Fascist par excellence, gained power through democratic means and democratic elections (plus intimidation, violence, and marches, of course) - the democratically-elected legislature granted him emergency powers in November 1922, he got the legislature to change the rules for the election to grant a supermajority of seats to the plurality winner in June 1923, and he won not only that plurality but in fact 64% of votes in the elections of April 1924. Only at that point were the more obvious signs of a fake democracy implemented (such as making opposition parties illegal and having someone assassinate the leader of the opposition after he complained about election irregularities), and even so, they retained non-free elections instead of getting rid of them entirely.

So I think it's entirely reasonable for "anti-Fascists" to not be placated merely by the fact that an election took place within a nominally-democratic structure, and in particular entirely reasonable for them to be skeptical of a nominally-democratic election where you can gain power through means other than winning the popular vote and where there are irregularities in counting votes.

I don't think 20th century Italy is an apt metaphor for the USA today. European politics involved several parties, and the USA only two, so much less horse-trading involved.

Also, I haven't heard anything coherent from antifa, and they're not a political party, so not sure why or how to listen to them at all. I would just call the National Guard the next time they strike a match or throw an M80, which would prevent them from driving down the interstate to the next downtown. This is not a similar situation to Kent State at all.

I think this is happening all over the US.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/walmar...

Is this only in the Bay Area?

New York too

This doesn't make any sense in SF.

SF is as progressive as they come (bar Berkeley, I guess) so all your neighbors on average think the same way... but the idea of the agitators is that because people elsewhere didn't vote in the same way, they will inflict a wound on themselves because of that.

How does that make any sense, unless people have been brainwashed.

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