Comment by mlthoughts2018 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mlthoughts2018 | Hacker News Reader

> “ “The damage is done. In people’s minds, Trump is a monster. It’s sad. There are people not talking to me anymore, and I’m not sure that will change,” said Gomez, who is a fan of Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigrants and handling of the economy.”

The real shame here is that she seems to mistakenly think her son is actively cutting her out. If she views Trump’s actions towards immigrants as defensible or even good, which is something that at this point is just utterly incompatible with the basics of civil society, then her own actions are forcing people away from her.

It’s sad to see people clinging to aspects of Trump, going down with the ship like this, still so lacking of self-awareness of the extreme degree of (not hyperbole) fascist violence inherent in Trump’s presidency, that she can’t realize this is entirely and unequivocally her own doing.

I wish we were still at a point where it was ideologically tractable to vote for Trump not because you like him but because of benign centrist Republican ideas, like generally lower taxes or states rights (regardless of the debates around these, at least they are legitimate, debatable aspects of the moderate Republican core).

But we are waaaay past that possibility, to the point where a vote for Trump that claims to be based on other innocuous, normal-time-debatable right-leaning issues is no longer that, and is literally (again, not hyperbole) a tacit vote for fascism and anti-science.

> her own actions are forcing people away from her.

This reminds me about a situation when a parent says to the kid: I didn't want to beat you, but you forced me to.

I think you are one of the people with extreme positions like those discussed in the original article.

Interesting. I view the OP's position as a moral one. If you think it is extreme then you're suggesting one compromise ones morals to "come to the center" or whatever.

I mean, to throw in an admitted straw man, were abolitionists too extreme 150+ years ago?

No, abolitionists weren't too extreme, but for your straw man to work you'd have to think that Trump has done some things analogous to maintaining slavery.

Well, for example his administration has put people in concentration camps and separated their children from parents. Which is quite analogous on a level of sheer horribleness.

If you're referring to the "cages" at the US/Mexican border, these were also used and indeed built by Obama.

It’s hard to imagine a more direct icon for supporting open fascism in America right now than someone saying “Obama built the cages” as if it is somehow related to Trump dehumanizing immigrants and separating children illegally or mitigates what Trump has done or in any way makes Obama or Biden or the Democratic party culpable for what Trump has done.

It means both parties committed atrocities, and the position of some leftists that they hold absolute morality somehow is baseless and delusional.

Claiming that “Obama built the cages” means both parties committed atrocities or that the parties are anywhere close to “equal” on this topic is a direct endorsement of violent fascism from the right.

That is not spin, that is not leftists unfairly claiming moral superiority, nothing remotely like that at all.

It is just purely the fact of Trump’s immigration dehumanization. It transgresses against the base requirements of civil society in a way that is deeply worse and not comparable to Obama’s own poor record on immigration, they are not comparable at all.

Any attempt to legitimize Trump’s behavior by acting like “both sides” did wrong things is directly equivalent to endorsing violent fascism at this point. It’s morally repugnant and incompatible with baseline civil society - any option to try to excuse Trump’s behavior has been removed.

The left is also engaging in facist policies. If neither party is willing to admit their atrocities then no progress is going to be made, and just more polarization is going to ensue. It's quite sickening to see the leftists claim moral superiority and virtue signal. I see more willingness to engage in debate from the right.

No, this is simply false. Your efforts to convert a nearly 100% far-right, Trump-led problem into an obfuscated “both parties” 50/50 issue is completely untethered from reality and is so extremely far away from basic civil discourse that it’s unacceptable. By repeatedly trying to dogmatically assert it’s an issue of both parties, you are doing nothing but assisting horrific fascism from the far right. We are way past any point where someone can just casually claim this is debatable.

Got you. It's only fascism if Trump does it.

Absolutely not. Trump is the only one who did it. Your comment is completely wrong. Acting as if Obama “also” did something wrong here is utterly disingenuous in an intellectually bankrupt way - it is not comparable to Trump’s behavior and any attempt to argue it is comparable is, at this point, literally the same as legitimizing fascism.

I think your comments are so blinkered and one-sided there is literally no point in debating with you. Trump Derangement Syndrome is alive and well.

The empirical reality of the situation is completely one-sided. “Both-sides-ism” at this point is straight equivalent to endorsing fascist violence by trying to legitimize Trump’s sweepingly fascist and violent rhetoric and actions.

If a person has normal, healthy skepticism and tries to derive their reactions dispassionately from the facts, they would have no intellectually honest choice but to conclude the blame is one-sidedly with Trump and his supporters who are openly calling for fascist suppression of democratic electoral process.

When reality is one-sided by all evidence, then fair-minded people are also one-sided too.

I don't think it is an extremest position to paint Trump and his supporters as largely fascist. Just yesterday I had to hear about voter intimidation by Trump supporters in my own home town. That's not the actions of a few nutters, that's action called for and promoted by Trump himself. At the risk of Godwinning, this is straight out of the Nazi playbook. It is not ok to ignore that we are potentially becoming a fascist state.

Yeah, the caravan that attacked another Presidential candidate on the highway is straight out of a third world country.

I'd love to hear the defense for this .

"attacked"

Someone on the Trump side rammed someone on the Biden side so I'd call that an attack

Not really:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24969112

Here's a video of at least part of the incident: https://twitter.com/truthserum4all/status/132239359596236390...

At the start of the video, the bus is in the second from rightmost lane and looks like it's starting to merge into the rightmost lane, which will put it directly in front of the black truck. There's a white crossover SUV that is directly behind the bus and will no longer be directly behind the bus once the bus finishes merging.

The camera turns away unfortunately, then pans back to show that the bus has merged and the white SUV crossover which was behind the bus before the lane change is now trying to merge directly into the black truck, in order to stay behind the bus. The black truck then pushes the white SUV crossover back into its own lane.

Obviously what the white SUV crossover did was illegal. I think the most charitable interpretation of its behavior is that the driver didn't see the black truck.

The black truck driver could have rapidly decelerated to allow the white SUV crossover to merge in front of it, but I don't think it's fair to characterize pushing back on someone trying to force you off the road as "attacking." A more accurate description might be "defending." I probably would have done the same, since I don't like bullies and don't like to endanger the innocent people behind me by rapidly decelerating due to distracted/angry driver next to me.

This isn't the best video, but if you pause it and determine which lane each vehicle is in, it seems fairly straightforward. Do you have a different interpretation of this video, or perhaps a better video?

EDIT: clarified wording about "attacking" vs "defending"

Jesus, this is even worse than I had seen in the past. These Trump vehicles are clearly harassing and surrounding the bus and that black truck is trying to get into the chase position. This is something you shouldn't see in a first-world country.

You can very clearly see the Trump truck swerving left into the car. That driver needs to be under arrest.

Other reports indicated that the Trump caravan was trying to drive the Biden bus off the road [1]

The driver apparently bragged about it on Facebook as well ("that was me slamming that f_cker") [2]

Regardless of who is at fault, a collection of Trump supporters were harassing the bus of their opponent TRAVELING ON A ROAD, using their vehicles.

[1] https://twitter.com/ericcervini/status/1322336226792321025

[2] https://twitter.com/bookbaybe/status/1322883111626178560/pho...

I can see how you would interpret it that way if you don't pay attention to lane crossings. But the white SUV crossover is merging into the truck and the truck has nowhere to go...so it pushed back. What would you have done? Decelerated rapidly? Physical contact was made no matter what the black truck driver did.

As for the driver bragging about it, so what? He did slam into the vehicle trying to push him off the road.

All the Trump vehicles were stopped in the video you linked. I think we should focus on the actual video of the incident, it helps keep us honest.

I wouldn't have been tailgating a political opponent, that's for sure. Slowing down would have been a smart move. Leaving an appropriate length behind that bus would have been a smart move.

What I see in a video are a bunch of Trump supporters attempting to intimidate a political opponent. If that doesn't terrify you, you might be too far gone.

Your pains to defend outrageously fascist behavior by the drivers supporting Trump is terrifying to me.

I even agree with you that the white car crossed into the right lane, but the idea that this discussion is about whether that car crossed the lane or not is psychotic.

Zoom out just a minute. Before you have any cars crossing any lanes, you’ve got a caravan of cars for one political candidate aggressively flanking and boxing in a bus for the other candidate and trying to intimidate any drivers associated with that campaign.

That is so deeply, deeply wrong and horrific. There is utterly no excuse for it.

How can you not see that by acting as if there is any semblance of a legitimate discussion to be had about the microscopic details of the white car changing lanes that could in any way mitigate the horrific election interference that the black car and others are perpetrating, you are yourself literally (not hyperbole) tacitly supporting fascist repression of fair electoral processes.

Your comments here are disturbing to a literally violent degree.

You obviously haven't seen the Antifa riots for the last 6 months then or the shops being boarded up in case Trump wins.

Those protesters were >99% peaceful.

The remaining were members of radical groups on the left (mostly anarchists, maybe some antifa) and the right (neo nazis) that want to tear down our democracy.

This is all well-documented.

From my perspective the center in American politics has steadily shifted rightward since the Regan administration. As such the perception of what is extreme right was similarly shifted and what was once considered extreme right is mainstream. This is similarly to the idea behind the paradox of tolerance.

I suggest that if Trump has not lied enough, grifted enough, broken enough laws, or is not incompetent enough to dissuade people from voting for him then the country has gone too far down the path of tribal politics. Obama was a moderate Republican president by the standards of the 1970s and there are large numbers of Republicans who consider him extreme left.

When we shift the center too far to one side of the spectrum then this causes too many people to become unbalanced in their views as they look to the center as their guide. In my opinion this is what is happening in the United States.

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