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Comment by rwcarlsen | Hacker News Reader

Despite the sarcasm, I think your comment makes a really good point. People have lenses and biases that really make it difficult to objectively evaluate the actions of politicians/administrations independent of their like for the individuals in charge and other unrelated actions said politicians may have done.

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It's also really hard to find just plain descriptions of what all the different federal departments are doing and what it means. It's mostly considered too boring for general news unless someone has been able to generate some drama around it. There are huge areas where there is no reporting at all. The best you'll get is industry specific news sources, but that will usually have a pro-industry bias.

What a great opportunity to evaluate politicians with the help of AI, comparing their speeches with the actual facts.

I wouldn't paint Trump's so-called presidency with the brush that makes it looked like he was a victim of lenses and biases. It's not our inherent problem he is objectively uneducated, unpresidential, racist, sexist, and just downright lazy. It shouldn't be surprising that his lack of leadership tainted nearly everything in the government, and that his few attempts at leadership actively hurt governmental policies and initiatives.

Again - I wasn't talking about how we evaluate/measure the person/politician. I was talking about how our views of the politician affect our evaluation of the things that take place under their stewardship. And a large fraction of the U.S. disagrees with you on many of those (very subjective) opinions you just expressed. No need to presume that your opinions are the absolute truth that everyone must be enlightened with.

Politicians deserve to be evaluated for their body of work and history which includes statements and actions which may cause one to either like or dislike them.

I wasn't commenting on evaluating politicians. I was commenting on evaluating things they are involved with and do.

They get involved in certain things by being who they are. And they avoid other things and other people by being themselves.

Eating breakfast isn't bad just because Hitler also ate breakfast.

Yes. And voting is the judgement

That's reducing judgement down to a binary option which doesn't quite capture the breadth of actions. No president has only good policies. No president has only bad policies. All deserve some form of criticism and praise. Some more than others, in either direction. But reducing all this down to an election is ridiculous. They represent us. The system isn't vote them in and let them do whatever they want during those 4 years and then decide if that was good or not. We still need to operate in real time.

Voting is only the part of the judgement that intersects with voters' direct choice. 99% of things are the public discourse of opinions-- judgements-- that go into influencing people when they cast their vote.

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