Comment by dukeofdoom | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dukeofdoom | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

A few issues:

1) The most radicalized are by Q. Which itself is a disinformation campaign, contributed to by government entities.

2) Bernie sanders brags about occupying government buildings. Would he be held to the same standard? OAC praised BLM protesters marching on the White House a few months ago, with Antifa trying to breach police lines and storm the White House. Should we throw her in jail for sedition. How about Pelosi that asked the army to ignore orders from Trump.

The US might be a democracy. But just because you can vote, does not mean you have any meaningful amount of power. The powerful cabal of corrupt politicians, and their rich backers, they have power. And they have been there for a very long time. They are almost impossible to displace. This breach shook them, because it was common, everyday people that did this. The same people that have had their livelihood destroyed, and have been hurt by all the COVID rules, rioting, trade deals with foreign countries, and so on.

Trump is great for democracy. At every turn he exposes the hypocrisy of the current system. He needles them, and each time they over react. Exposing all their flaws. The amount of backstabbing he gets just from the Republican party, is waking up millions of people.

Thanks to him, we found out how convoluted and non transparent the election process is. How biased the media is. How the Supreme court cowers to political pressure. And now how big tech is working in collusion.

All things that a democratic movement can help to fix.

> Bernie sanders brags about occupying government buildings.

Your whataboutism fails when I ask you how many police officers Bernie Sanders bludgeoned to death.

How many police have you seen Trump bludgeon to death?

Manson was convicted and sent to prison for the rest of his life even though he wasn't at the Tate-LaBianca murders.

> Bernie sanders brags about occupying government buildings. Would he be held to the same standard? OAC praised BLM protesters marching on the White House a few months ago, with Antifa trying to breach police lines and storm the White House.

This is "what about"-ism. It deflects responsibility and puts the focus on other's behavior. In this philosophy for one side to accept that what they did was bad, it requires every single other person in the world to be perfect, which is obviously impossible and therefor insulates the person from criticism.

But, I'll indulge anyway.

Occupying a building is a form of civil disobedience, which in the US is a respected form of protest. I don't know what incident you're talking about with Bernie, but the results matter. Did he schedule the occupation of a government building that threatened the lives of elected officials and killed a police officer? Or was it a peaceful protest?

For AOC, was she praising the mass of peaceful protestors and what they stood for or was she praising an attempt to breach the White House? There's a big difference, so I want to be clear. If it was the later, then that is definitely dangerous.

But praising or bragging is a far cry from planning, persuading and instigating. Plus, Bernie and AOC aren't the leader of the free world. The President has a responsibility to serve the entire US, all 330M, regardless of who voted for him or against him. Bernie has a responsibility to Vermont and AOC to the Bronx. It's apples and oranges. If you want the highest public office in the country, you need to be held to the highest standards and not complain about how those with far less power might have acted.

> Occupying a building is a form of civil disobedience, which in the US is a respected form of protest.

Assuming the owners of said building do not want you there, occupying a building is at best trespassing and at worst breaking and entering.

Civil disobedience is explicitly breaking a law because you believe it to be unjust, with the full expectation that you will be arrested and possibly punished for your actions.

When most people talk about "protesting", I don't think that's what they're talking about.

OC was talking about government buildings which are typically open to the public.

I think you're talking about privately owned buildings.

i mean aoc’s referenced sit in was in a federal building open to the public, it’s just being passively noncompliant in a public space. like i’m sitting on the floor in the office and it’s sort of obnoxious but i certainly did not break a law getting here. okay, so now someone asks me to leave and i say no, i am making thus and such a point. then the police come and take me away, typically without incident.

i imagine the person relating this kind of action, practiced en masse since the 60s across civil rights, nuclear nonproliferation, environmental, LGBT movements with storming barricades, dragging police from windows and beating them to death, and literally threatening the seat of government did not actually intend to conflate the two sorts of events.

> leader of the free world

Always a rather arrogant phrase, but especially absurd now.

As a member of the "Free World", not a citizen of the US, can I please be exempt from being lead by the US and any of its leaders.

There was a point in time when the US was seen as having some degree of leadership, mostly because it's military power. These days I think it's seen by many as being a bit of a bully boy only useful in keeping some degree of balance with the other bully boys.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com