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Comment by ripdog | Hacker News Reader

I'm a LOT more concerned about the rise in hateful, violent rhetoric being bandied about by self-described 'patriots' who seem hell-bent on bulldozing their way into political power as soon at it became obvious that they could not win by legal means.

These people stormed the legislature of the US to attempt to install their cult leader as dictator. If that doesn't concern you, I don't know what to tell you.

And Parler will find another web host. If the daily stormer can find one, these clowns will. They're not disappearing.

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Of course it's concerning, but it's also concerning how quick people are to dehumanize and call for censorship, putting a lot of energy into discussing endlessly just how evil or stupid or unreachable those other people are, rather than root causes [0]. The mainstream is whipping itself into hysteria just as much as QAnon does, and it really does seem like circus all around. Just for some perspective:

> The capitol has been the site of multiple bombings, shootings, assassination attempts, and stormings for centuries. Pretending its an unbespoiled sacred Church which has never been penetrated so vulgarly is just ahistorical.

-- https://old.reddit.com/r/stupidpol/comments/kt0xpm/in_1954_4...

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiCeqySVhCE&t=20m55s

edit: clicking a button doesn't constitute an argument. You can only ignore Chomsky, neither tie his shoelaces or address his points. Shame on you.

This is also because learning to live with each other is harder than just denouncing the other side. We need to help people understand that the root cause needs to be examined as you said.

This looking for the root cause usually works well in big companies - for example on the Toyota production line but in politics people tend to look for easy answers. Examples like the war on drugs, getting overly tough on crime or defunding the police altogether do nothing but exacerbate the underlying issues.

Apart from calling this out and trying to vote in people who can think deeper I'm not sure what else to do. Living in close nit community/larger families you need to learn accept people for who they are and that seems to be going out the window with the increased focus on the individual in modern western culture. There's no one size fix all unfortunately...

I’m equally concerned about the rise in left wing propaganda. Including extreme double speak and obvious gas lighting. Censorship and manipulation. Very clear online manipulation by bots and paid trolls. Extreme bias in news.

America has become a country of absolutely insane extremists in a relatively short time.

There doesn’t seem to be anyone willing to try to get things back on track. As an outsider looking in it feels like everyone’s IQ has dropped below room temperature.

It's amazing to see this downvoted within a minute of you posting it, probably by someone not even aware they are only underlining your point.

No, they are being downvoted because "don't storm the Capital chanting about hanging the vice president", and "don't use allegations of voter fraud as an excuse to violently oppose the installation of a duly elected government" are probably not Extremist Left Wing Propaganda.

You know I didn’t say that. And your response is exactly what I’m talking about.

You’re operating on stress, fear, and propaganda my friend. Find the truth, and bring your IQ back up.

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