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Comment by KingMachiavelli | Hacker News Reader

You could post this as a satire and it would work as is. Both sides see each other becoming more extreme & polarizing. It may not be apparent because it's very easy to ignore sensationalism from your own side as sensationalist individuals that don't reflect the party/group itself while sensationalism from the otherside is endemic of that sides philosophy.

The 'right' ran something about the "tan suit" but I am also sure I have read half a dozen articles about poorly fitting suits and bad fake hair.

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The thing is, we have the data, DW nominate is a solid algorithm that can demonstrate rightward/leftward political movement over time. There has been a lot of actual scientific research on this, and over the last 30 years the democratic party has mostly remained the same with a slight left trend, while the republicans have become moved much much further right.

https://voteview.com/congress/senate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOMINATE_(scaling_method)

https://voteview.com/congress/senate

> over the last 30 years the democratic party has mostly remained the same with a slight left trend, while the republicans have become moved much much further right.

On visual comparison between the 97th Congress and the 116 Congress, it's obvious that the Democrats have moved pretty far downwards as well as bit leftwards. That is, they became much more liberal on the "Other Votes" dimension while moving much less on the "Economic/Redistributive" axis. Interestingly, this leaves Democrats and Republicans with a pretty similar distribution along that axis.

I don't think this is a good method for comparing different time periods. In the 36th and 37th Congresses, the diehard pro-slavery Democrats versus the abolitionist Republicans, the graphs put the parties in the same relative positions as today and make the parties look less divided than today, even though the Democrats felt like they could no longer co-exist and seceded from the Union. It should also be obvious that the slave-economy Democratic Party was vastly different than the modern-day party, but the graphs don't reflect that.

I'm wondering what the "Other Votes" dimensions is even capturing, as Democrats seem to have been more conservative than Republicans on it up until the 2010s.

That always surprises me, especially for a crowd that prides itself on data driven approaches such as this one.

Use a source like the extremely well-researched Dark Money and it'll be evident that the GOP fundamentally isn't representative of the people, it doesn't even pretend to be, and if you listen in the right forums, their leaders don't even claim that. Yet, people, trained in data driven thinking or not, are boxed in into thinking with their guts, how they 'identify', and are taken for a run.

Maybe the strategy of making you question the very possibility of even knowing truths about political actors is working as well as the instigators of such theories think they would.

This is something I intentionally made available before I edited. But the clarification is important. “Both sides” certainly observe the same emotions in that respect. But one of the two peddles it and the other dabbles. I’ve seen people in both camps share awful, careless, unprincipled attacks. But one thing I’ve seen that’s an important distinction is that I’ve seen one side self-correct (eg a routine renouncement of body shaming and reminding people on the same side not to lower themselves to that), and the other side banish anyone who tries.

I guess that’s the other important (and still not political) distinction: one party and its cohort is self-reflective and has an internal corrective feedback loop. That broke down in the other over the last decade, quite notably after a very honest and sincere post-loss retrospective/postmortem.

Do you base your opinion of each side off of what you see on the internet?

"On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog."

Nope I’ve definitely grown up in and road tripped/train tripped red-purple country (edit: and I’m white trash and present male so it’s an easy pass) so I know what people really think. I’ve also been on the receiving end of violence by standing up and confronting them.

This is a key point - many folks who are left-leaning grew up in right-leaning areas, have right-leaning extended family, etc. We aren't extrapolating from the internet.

There are a number of structural asymmetries between left and right, and it does no favors to any truth-based cause to assume that left and right are mirrors, as if their names required that.

Your post made me remember [0]. Can you get any more polarizing than suggesting that your opponent will start the nuclear anhilatiom of the modern world?

[0]: https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/01/08/pelosi-prevent-trump-fro...

Is it that polarizing to /suggest/? I for very honest and reasonable reasons (one of his most prominent political positions prior to his presidency was aggressive use of nuclear power) worried he would and flinched anytime I saw unexpected aircraft for the last few months.

Yes, but the polarizing figures on one side are mostly random people on reddit, on the other side, it's the party leadership...

Orange man has constantly been made fun of for his dumpy appearance but Obama was accused of lack of respect of the office of the president (including by orange man) for wearing a tan suit. He wasn't even the first president to wear a tan suit.

But where is the left's QAnon? Where is the left's birtherism? Where is the left's Marjorie Taylor Greene? Election fraud claims that drag on for months, enabled by major party players who see an opportunity and refuse to clearly shut it down, culminating in an armed assault that some now claim as a false flag operation? Where is the left's Lindsey Graham, a pathetic husk of a man who waffles between saying "I'm out" and then continues to double down?

Of course the tan suit "scandal" was trivial bullshit, but that's the whole point, that that's the source material that Fox News is working with to drum up this kind of outrage— the rest is pure fabrications, a self-feeding cycle where Fox provides a legitimizing platform for it, which then generates the interest and demand for "coverage". So it may well be that both sides see the other as extreme and polarizing, but it's important to not actually equate them, because that is super unfair when one of the sides is in a state of denial about basic reality.

Extinction rebellion? Members of Congress who think that climate change will destroy the world within 10 years?

Has anyone made that claim? I've always heard it as "without decisive action over the next ten years, the planet will get increasingly bad and eventually impossible to save (due to positive feedback effects like CO2 trapped in melting arctic ice)."

This is scary, yes, but ultimately grounded in verifiable facts and many scientists have come forward to express their concerns. It is most certainly nothing like the Q nonsense.

XR is mostly a UK thing. and even then, you're comparing a generally-ignored mass movement of young people in response to decades of delayed policy action that has generated a severe ongoing and oncoming crisis, to an ancient-aliens-esque protofascist fanfiction that victimizes tech-illiterate boomers and continues to be leveraged by national power players.

>Extinction rebellion?

I would say the key difference about the left is that the supporters of these kinds of movements rarely get much support at the top. Even Bernie Sanders and AOC have stepped back from supporting certain movements after criticism (I'm thinking of Venezuela), while such contrition on the right is rare (until the Capitol sedition).

>Members of Congress who think that climate change will destroy the world within 10 years?

Who, precisely? And what did they say?

AOC: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2019...

> 'The world is going to end in 12 years if we don't address climate change,' Ocasio-Cortez says

Right, so that generally falls into the category I identified in the first comment: stuff that people on the left say in the heat of the moment, but don't stick to. She was, at the time, being interviewed by the notoriously fiery Ta-Nehisi Coates. It's kind of like comparing Elon Musk smoking weed on Joe Rogan to someone who smokes weed at work every day.

I really doubt AOC actually believed at any time that the world would end in 2030 (cf. Paris Agreement's 2030 Agenda).

That's quite the stretch. We can lawyer our way out of anything if we try hard enough.

>That's quite the stretch.

It's not a stretch at all. It's an offhand comment being compared to a months-long disinformation campaign. Frankly, I was generous.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-02/sea-level...

They're both making headline-grabbing claims, but one of these is at least based in fact.

I agree that one side is worse than the other, but people tend to think the difference between their own side and the opposition is 20 to 100. In reality the difference is probably closer to 60 to 70.

What does this even mean??? These numbers don’t mean anything. You’re talking about people who’ve been intolerant of hate and shut down less of it than they should have, vs people who’ve tolerated or even welcomed and amplified hate because it suits them. Who fucking cares if they’re 10% apart? The difference is brownshirts or not.

> But where is the left's QAnon? Twitter

How much time was devoted to Trump and his "two scoops of ice cream", "dumping seed in the koi fish pond" or any of the hundreds of miniscule things he did - most of which were just mandanities, framed into a false lens and then magnified.

I'm not saying that Trump was good, just that there was so much noise from social media about how absolutely everything he did was not just "bad", but the "worst ever". A lot of left-leaning source went into an absolute frenzy about anything and everything he did to try and spin it as the worst.

Okay but "noise from social media" is very different from leading politicians and entire news organizations playing along with dangerous stuff like Trump's COVID denialism for months on end.

Trump is almost certainly among the bottom 3-4 worst US presidents in history [1]. Was each individual action the "worst ever"? No, of course not. But the sum of the pieces was indeed ghastly, and it's ridiculous to claim that these are just gaffs like any public figure has, and once everyone calms down and stops blowing things out of proportion he will be regarded as just another normal, middle-of-the-road president.

[1]: https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/15/politics/trump-best-worst-pre...

So, do you rate GW Bush better or worse than Trump?

Why wasn’t the left all in a lather about killing 100s of thousands of innocent Iraquis based on false evidence of Chemical weapons stockpiles? Why not impeach Bush then? Why not now?

The left was up in arms and protesting the invasion and war, it was the DNC that refused to act, choosing instead to sit on their hands.

The democratic party is still in the pocket of big business. Don't confuse them with actual leftists.

If nothing else, Bush already served two terms.

That makes it even more exasperating. He was elected into office twice and caused immensely more damage.

About 20k service members and ngo staff died in service under Bush.[]

How many are dead due to Trump's refusal to address covid19? Hundreds of thousands of civilians.

[] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/04/24/georg...

I hate to comment but I am quite sick of seeing this "refusal to deal with covid" type rhetoric. On what are you basing that accusation, because actual reality doesn't bear it out.

Refused for months to endorse basic measures like mask wearing, undermined his own doctors, gave political cover to people protesting lockdowns (the "LIBERATE" tweets, among many others), repeatedly pretended that it was just a flu and would go away on its own, repeatedly and unnecessarily politicized the whole thing by using racially charged language ("kung flu", "China flu", etc), gave guidance and timelines that were based on his own hopes and political ambitions rather than the advice of experts, treated press briefings like a reality show, using them to speculate about miracle cures rather than platforming people who knew what they were talking about.

Never mind the absolute fiasco around supply stockpiles and the management of testing, most of which ended up dumped onto governors even after splashy announcements gave the impression that a national strategy was coming.

So yeah, reality absolutely bears out that the Trump administration's handling of covid was a complete fiasco, and that many, many fewer people could have died if it were done better.

But somehow this is all no big deal to the political movement that once lost its mind over Obama's so-called "death panels."

The reality you occupy may not bear it out.

Anyways: https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/21/politics/biden-covid-vaccinat...

As one example of, ? Thousands?

I am not on either side in the US, there isn't a party that represents me, but something stuck out to me.

>culminating in an armed assault that some now claim as a false flag operation?

We had to hear all summer about how it was really Boogaloo Boys/White Nationalists/The CIA and not BLM rioting. This is something I see as endemic to all sides. I think this must be perspective based as everything in the above list has a mirror image from the other party, and in both cases it seems like a fair criticism.

> We had to hear all summer about how it was ... not BLM rioting.

I think an important distinction here is that the riots had no political goal to them, and had almost no support from BLM figures themselves, and even less from national politicians. Indeed, if your goal is for the police to be defunded, then the last thing you would want to do is create a situation where people fear for their lives and their property and need the protection of the police.

Contrast that with the goals of the people storming the Capitol and you'll see that they had national politicians who also wanted to interrupt the joint session of Congress and prevent (some of) the electoral votes from being counted, to ultimately change the outcome of the election.

Double standard. You're a victim of the bias the article is highlighting.

Do you really see the BLM marches (even the small minority that turned violent) as equivalent to what happened at the Capitol? Some obvious differences:

- There were no politicians or their cronies calling for "trial by combat" or similar.

- There was no one showing up with a gallows.

- There was no intent to disrupt a democratic procedure.

- Where violence occurred, it was quickly and unequivocally condemned across the board.

- Destruction of property is not the same as threatening physical harm to people (and no, before you go there, engaging with riot police is not the same as advancing on a chamber of mostly-elderly, unarmed politicians).

Congress was able to convene immediately after the nuts stormed the Capitol inside the Capitol. Minor physical damage was committed. Compare that to the BLM marches and the nuts that rioted, burned, and seized city blocks, freeways, police precincts, harassed people in restaurants with bullhorns, drank from their cups, ate their food, etc.

The invasion of the capital was an attempt to stop the legally mandated processes that allow the peaceful transfer of power. The attackers were intent on hanging on pence and others as evidenced by their chants and the equipment they brought.

The rioters cannot honestly be lumped into the Democrat, blm, etc groups as different groups plainly held different objectives. I think the best explanation for the riots is simply revenge against people that sit comfortably ignoring the disaffected cries for help.

So then your position is:

Revenge and destruction and murder are justified so long as it doesn't interfer with a political process?

Other than a small minority of agitators, I don't think most people went to a BLM protest with revenge, destruction, and murder on their mind. I mean, the whole point was opposing the murder of unarmed citizens by agents of the state. The slogan was "defund the police", not "hang Mike Pence."

Yes, ~25 Americans were killed last year in connection to these things, but as this article shows, that may be as much about the presence of guns at these things than anything else— here's a pretty solid summary: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/31/americans-kill...

That's a bad faith argument if I've ever seen one.

Understanding why people do things, even bad things, is crucial to easing divisiveness.

I understand why people stormed the capitol. I do not condone their actions and hope they are all made examples of.

Just as I understand the hundreds of years of history that is behind this summers protests. I am far more sympathetic to the tens of millions that protested against fascism and racism then I am to the actual fascists that tried to usurp democracy and install a dictator while taking scalps.

When impoverished, abused, and neglected people peacefully take to streets en masse to demand change are met with brutal policing, that could be war crimes, instead of compromise and change what else do you honestly expect to happen? When millions of people can't afford to put on the table what do you expect them to do when the majority party fails to provide even a poverty level existence during a pandemic that disproportionately effects their demographic? Should they shut up and starve to death? Should they continue to take these beatings from police? Until the field is leveled don't expect this movement to die; they're fighting for their right to live.

So, if more people protest about a long-standing issue, it has more credence than fewer people protesting in one instance about a recent issue? Is that what you are trying to say?

It seems you may be asking a leading question in bad faith with the goal of trapping me in a gotcha. If that's not your goal please clarify your question.

Ignoring reality doesn’t make it go away. Those riots caused large areas of cities to be burned and seized, killing dozens if not hundreds of people, attacked police and local politicians, stormed into residential neighborhoods targeting specific profiles of people, harassed patrons of restaurants, beat and bludgeoned owners and patrons of stores based on racist targeting, crushed the economy of certain areas, burned and vandalized courts and police precincts, and all this over a span of months.

You want to equate that with the Capitol riots which happened over a span of a few hours by a few hundred people? Seriously?

If you belligerently disregard the the plight of being, poor, minority, lgbtq+, etc in America then sure these are awful behaviors. This is intellectually dishonest, and a bad faith argument straight off of fox news.

These riots piss you off and terrify you because they expose the fragility of your privileged existence that is wholly reliant on the systemic imbalances the protestors have spent their lives under the boot of.

Fighting for ones right to exist without being murdered by police is the argument of blm. Focus on that instead of using the actions of a few to air your racist and classist grievances.

Protesting is a feature of democracy even if it offends you.

Storming Congress to hang the vice president and Trump's other political enemies is an assault on democracy and a push for dictatorship.

Your inability to recognize the difference is extremely concerning.

Every point you made above is easily refuted as untrue.

The only difference I see was the media approved of one and didn't of the other. There are far more similarities.

Both felt an injustice and disenfranchisement had taken place by their government.

Both were co-opted by the most extremists members of the group and caused havoc.

Both groups ridiculed the perverse and dangerous actions of a few.

I don't agree with or associate with either but they were mostly the same.

Trump's America, 2021. There's a lot of work to do.

>>>Do you really see the BLM marches (even the small minority that turned violent) as equivalent to what happened at the Capitol?

As a black American I absolutely consider last year's widespread urban riots WORSE than the Capitol raid. The summer demonstrated a complete unwillingness to enforce law and order, creating an environment which cost the lives of at least 3 black people[1][2][3], and close to 30 other American lives as well. Livelihoods of minority small-business owners were destroyed. [4][5] We can nitpick whether this was explicitly supported by politicians, but it's fairly obvious it was tacitly supported by Democrat leadership for political gain in an election year.[6] As I look for small business investment opportunities, why would I ever put money in a distressed American neighborhood, with such a high risk for destruction of assets in the current political climate? I'll do business with my Mozambican and Tanzanian friends before I ever invest in an American district run by the sort of idiots who steered their own communities towards evaporating wealth instead of building it. And I bet you we wouldn't have had the upswell in insurgent inclinations that culminated in the Capitol raid if the Trump-supporting extremists hadn't observed the rampant civil unrest for months and concluded "Oh, I guess it's okay to break stuff and violate rules now. There seems to be minimal consequences." Boy were they wrong.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_David_Dorn

[2] https://www.kltv.com/2020/07/29/black-trump-supporter-fatall...

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/29/us/seattle-protests-CHOP-...

[4] https://www.foxnews.com/us/black-firefighter-devastated-minn...

[5] https://fee.org/articles/here-are-just-10-of-the-many-minori...

[6] https://www.newsweek.com/democrats-hypocrisy-riots-reveals-p...

You can also argue that Republican leaders tacitly supported the BLM protests.

You didn't see republican leaders putting on riot gear to go beat people up, thus they must have been supportive

> We had to hear all summer about how it was really Boogaloo Boys/White Nationalists/The CIA and not BLM rioting.

I’m sorry the reporting is so bad. Here in the US as a leftist I saw most of my friends posting “in defense of rioting”, “property isn’t people”, and quoting MLK on the lessons of riots. The right just thought they could stage a coup and also get away without any criticism for trying.

Interesting take. The blm riots were supported and approved by both the mainstream levers of power (media, government) and continue to be so. They were both larger in scale and duration.

The capitol riots were both smaller in scale and, more importantly generally condemned by their sides equivalent levers of power.

I actually consider the right response here more reasonable than the left.

If black lives mattered and politicians represented their constituents these riots would not have occurred. I expect more. Until the consequences of treating minorities as subhuman directly effect billionaires and their very lives nothing will change.

>>>But where is the left's QAnon?

Working at MSNBC? [1]

The far-left conspiracy groups probably got really quiet after one of their own tried to murder Republican Congressmen. Did everyone just forget about that? [2]

*On May 22, Hodgkinson wrote "Trump is a Traitor. Trump Has Destroyed Our Democracy. It's Time to Destroy Trump & Co." above his repost of a Change.org petition demanding "the legal removal" of Trump and Vice President Mike Pence for "treason". He belonged to numerous political Facebook groups, including those named "Terminate the Republican Party", "The Road To Hell Is Paved With Republicans", and "Donald Trump is not my President."*

[1]https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/russia-has-been-cult...

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Congressional_baseball_sh...

Russiagate and the “piss dossier”?

The left literally treated the last 4 years as an election fraud scandal that they refused to shut down.

I'm generally in the center, but dislike when one party treats the other as solely being the problem. While I can't think of a specific qanon level of craziness on that side, they have their own, different craziness.

> The left literally treated the last 4 years as an election fraud scandal that they refused to shut down.

Hi, I'm "the left", at least for the purposes of this conversation. The left did no such thing. I tried to get us to do so because there was clearly a fraudulent election. But it didn't matter what I said, the left didn't want to hear none of it. They were more concerned (legitimately) about Russophobia and not giving too much legitimacy to the alphabet soup agencies.

"The left literally treated the last 4 years as an election fraud scandal that they refused to shut down."

Please cite sources for Democratic senators, congresspeople, and/or party officials advancing these claims.

> Our election was hijacked. There is no question. Congress has a duty to #ProtectOurDemocracy & #FollowTheFacts.

- Nancy Pelosi on May 16, 2017

https://twitter.com/SpeakerPelosi/status/864522009048494080

The Senate Intelligence Committee and the Mueller Report both concluded that Russian propaganda affected the election. What was not shown was that Trump offered any support ("collusion") for these efforts. Simply complaining about Russian propaganda like this is hyperbolic, but not a conspiracy theory.

The alphabet soup networks pushing the Russia hoax for 4 years didn't convince you?

Do "the alphabet soup networks" include the Senate Intelligence Committee?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_Intelligence_Committee_...

What was the hoax? The Mueller report had an entire section about Russian meddling. The investigation also indicted a number of Russian nationals.

I'm not saying there wasn't an investigation, but I'm not convinced by the evidence after reading that document. The biggest thing that I saw was the ad spend was very small (<$1M)

And of course the hack and leak of Podesta and DNC that led to a billion dollars of earned media for Trump.

Which makes much more sense as to why Trump won than a delusional Russian conspiracy theory...

The Russians hacked the emails - How is it then a conspiracy theory? These things are all facts:

Trump asked the Russians to hack Hillary, and hours later they began probing the Clinton domains.

Russian government hacked Podesta

Russian government hacked the DNC

Russian government gave those emails to Wikileaks to hurt Hillary / boost Trump and they were weaponized explicitly to do so (e.g. the Podesta release coming hours after the President was on tape bragging about grabbing women by the pussy)

Russian businessmen, closely linked to the government spent millions of dollars on a social media campaign to boost Trump

Trump's campaign took several meetings with Russians offering help with the election, including explicit meetings offered as "Part of the government's assistance to the Trump campaign" and then lied to the press and the government when asked about those meetings

Trump's campaign manager gave private polling data to several Russians, including a probable spy

Trump dangled pardons for his team if they didn't cooperate with the investigation

Trump pardoned those people who didn't cooperate with the investigation

Trump's team changed the entire GOP platform to be more friendly to Russia

Trump's transition team took clandestine meetings to promise to remove sanctions that were in place for the above activity.

Trump's son-in-law offered to take meetings in the Russian embassy to be out of range of US intelligence.

So far as I can tell, the "Hoax" that people are adamant about refers to the Mueller finding where they couldn't prove that any of the above was coordinated - And it very well might not have been! - but to say that it was a hoax that Russia helped Trump win is so silly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efforts_to_impeach_Donald_Trum...

Has plenty of names and links to read all about it, if you missed it.

Attempting to impeach someone based on their actions != falsely claiming election fraud in the face of evidencd (and attempting to coerce others e.g. Pence into doing so)

https://www.bostonherald.com/2020/05/17/disinformation-from-...

"Even after the Mueller report clearly indicated that there was no provable collusion or coordination between the Russian government and the Trump campaign, Schiff continued to propagate the lie."

> the Mueller report clearly indicated that there was no provable collusion or coordination between the Russian government and the Trump campaign

Except that it didn't, really.

"there was knowing and complicit behavior between the Trump campaign and Russians that stopped short of direct coordination, which may constitute conspiracy"[1]

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report#Redacted_report...

You are realtime evidence for mikepurvis to see that the left never let go of the Russiagate conspiracy theory. Thanks for helping me to prove my point here.

Can that conclusion be any more mealy-mouthed?

You couldn't think of an equivalent of qanon for the left, so you just elevated some minor critique until it satisfied your desire to say "both sides" and shut down any actual analysis.

THIS is the problem!

That's an interesting view to have - I know that at the start of Trump's term there was a lot of discussion about Comey's involvement and Russia that I really just wish people would shut up about. Most of that died down after the Mueller report. And by the end of his term Trump was (IMO) pretty blatantly trying to subvert the election. Where do you get your news, if I may ask?

The Mueller report was released in 2019, 3 years after the election. Perhaps 4 years was incorrect of me to state.

If your last question is in earnest...I guess nowhere in particular and yet everywhere. I don't particularly like any of the news media companies, as I find they all have a blatant bias.

There is a disturbing trend of news media. It's how they have to turn a profit, and starting to quote social media. That is not reporting, and news should be balanced, not just opinions and rage.

However, in front of Tea Party, Trumpism and coup attempt, sadly outrage and calls for accountability are rightly justified.

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