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Comment by Bukhmanizer | Hacker News Reader

The thing that worries me about this is that it’s being increasingly clear that the US is becoming too partisan to do anything.

Despite all evidence to the contrary, I’m guessing that a very high percentage of people will continue to blame wind. And I’m guessing this splits pretty heavily on party lines.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that this removes all accountability from the government. If your constituents are always arguing about something other than your governance (I.e constantly in some ideological battle), what incentive do you really have to govern well?

The US still does many things well. But I think the system supporting the ability to do things well is decaying.

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It's disingenuous to just call this an partisanship problem, this is specifically a problem with the modern conservative movement, and it's specifically due to the influence of Fox News and other similar media organizations that back up Conservative politician in their lies. As we are currently seeing with Liz Cheney the modern conservative movement in this country has no time for someone who is unwilling to agree with their lies.

The most Orwellian thing I have recently witnessed was around the days prior to the inauguration. MSNBC was covering the border and commentators frequently used the phrase "kids in cages", after Biden took office they suddenly went from frequent coverage of "kids in cages" to infrequent coverage of "migrant overflow facilities". Nothing had changed policy wise, the man took office less than a week prior.

Point being, Fox News aren't the only ones like that, they are just the only mainstream conservative outlet like that.

Arizona is currently hiring a disreputable security firm to scan the ballots for bamboo based on the belief that China sent over thousands of prefilled ballots to sway the election in the state. A republican congressman said that the people who stormed the capital and killed a police officer were participating in a normal tourist visit. Meanwhile MSNBC might have changed the phrasing they used but they are still publishing articles critical of Biden's immigration: https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/biden-s-immigration-promises-a...

Sounds like a crazy conspiracy theory, next they will be saying the president is an Manchurian candidate/agent of Russia and launch a similar fruitless investigation.

If you come out of the sports team, we are the good guys mentality it's obvious this is tit for tat depending on who is currently in office. Many MSNBC viewers think the 2016 election was illegitimate just like Fox News viewers feel about 2020.

To be clear, the assessment of the US NSA, FBI, and CIA was that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to assist Donald Trump, and multiple people affiliated with the Trump election have been arrested for violating election laws. You making a false equivalency here is exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about that is specific to the modern conservative movement.

Then there was the Obama birthers, they were preceded by people who thought Gore won...

Ask the fans of a party about any election they lost and they will tell you the other team cheated going back a couple of decades. Interestingly we seem to have the safest and most secure elections on the planet should their preferred candidate win.

>Obama birthers

Clinton opposition dossier v1.0

Bush v Gore was about a legitimate issue, deciding how a ballot should be evaluated when it is ambiguous who the person intended to vote for, and how long the process for recounting should go. Comparing it to the 2020 election controversy or the Obama birtherism conspiracy just goes to show how far apart the modern conservative and liberal movements in the US are.

To be really clear here, if you think arguing over how to count an improperly bunched out ballot is the same thing as alleging without proof that China sent thousands of fake ballots to the US are equivalent, then you really need to stop and reflect.

Legitimate or not doesn't even really matter, you are going around complaining about the other team as opposed to holding your representatives feet to the fire. If you are perfectly happy with the state of things, that's fine but it's exactly what the grandparent described.

You won't live to see Medicare for All, but AOC sure dunked on Ted Cruz on Twitter.

I'm not sure what you are arguing at this point? Do you acknowledge that the modern conservative movement has embraced conspiratorial thinking and lies in a way that the liberal movement in the US hasn't? If so your pivot to saying that I need to hold my representatives feet to the fire is very odd, since the reason my congressional representatives can't pass legislation is due to Republican obstructionism, not because of AOC's twitter account.

> since the reason my congressional representatives can't pass legislation is due to Republican obstructionism, not because of AOC's twitter account

Democrats can end the filibuster if they wish, however if the emperor actually has no clothes like I and grandparent suggest that would make it obvious.

The parent comment was saying that there was too much partisanship, you are saying the way to solve this issue is by getting rid of the filibuster? Or that if the democrats got rid of the filibuster it would prove they weren't partisan? That makes no sense whatsoever, it's essentially arguing that the democrats need to be more partisan.

> you are saying the way to solve this issue is by getting rid of the filibuster?

Yes. If the party that wins gets to drive then they will be responsible for the direction the country is headed in. After a few years, If people like that direction they will vote for them, if not they won't. The current system let's them blame the other guy every time they fail to do what they promised, the new one makes it clear that it just wasn't a priority for them.

One way to limit partisanship is to work together, another way is to have one party win and be accountable, knowing that they will be replaced if they don't perform.

> ...another way is to have one party win and be accountable, knowing that they will be replaced if they don't perform.

Which brings us right back to TFA, with the govenor attempting to avoid accountability through what amounts to barefaced lies. If tactics like this are successful - and they seem to be unreasonably effective - then your alternative here will not come to pass.

Taking you down rabbit holes _away_ from their argument is a method modern conservatives have perfected.

It is what-aboutism all the way down. :)

Fruitless? Are you referring to the Mueller investigation? I admit I’m an outsider to the US, but didn’t that “witch hunt” catch a hell of a lot of real witches?

It did. Mueller specifically stopped short of recommending indictments (based on Department of Justice policy of not indicting sitting Presidents), but he found ten counts of obstruction of justice, and explicitly said that his report does NOT exonerate Trump.

I don’t think it’s a thing specific to conservatism, although I do think conservatives are more susceptible to this thinking for various reasons.

It absolutely is a partisanship problem, and you're just echoing a partisan line. If you look at it from outside the bubbles, it's clear that both sides have lost their minds, and MSNBC and CNN are just as bad as Fox News. Arguably even worse in effect, because unlike Fox, their propaganda is still taken seriously by the rest of the media, most of tech, most of the government and academia. They have far more institutional power.

To be fair, MSNBC has a smaller viewership and is taken with a "grain of salt" by even the most consistent viewers. Fox News is scripture for many people in ways that are scary to see.

That's because the left is spread among more outlets. MSNBC, CNN, NYTimes, NPR. Whereas Fox is the only major media outlet for the right.

You can see the partisan breakdown here:

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/04/01/americans-m...

Also you can find many "blue checks" and their followers on Twitter who take MSNBC as scripture to a frightening degree.

OAN is increasingly relevant for average republicans.

I'd also add in that there's no need for a constant 24 hrs news cycle.

Further, many of the cable "news" TV stations (MSNBC, CNN, Fox, etc) are largely opinion and analysis and not news anyway.

I encourage people to (a) Read their news as much as possible, including opinion pieces and (b) If you watch/listen to news, find specific news segments (e.g. your local TV station's new hour). Tune in for 30 minutes to an hour and leave it at that. Tivo it if that's an option for you.

There's no need to have a cable news channel playing all hours of the day.

I blame r/all for such 'original' opinions. People in China are less brainwashed than this. Who's free?

Specifically the denial of man made global climate change.

I am libertarian and conservative leaning, although, modern day "conservatives" are far from conservative in any sense of the word. For example, true conservatives advocated for abortion rights, because the government has no business regulating what a citizen can do to their body.

TLDR; I will never side with a party that insanely denies climate change.

I don’t know if it’s so much an issue of partisanship - you don’t see the democrats pulling this sort of science denial + distraction + reframing technique, and I think it only exacerbates the situation to lay blame on both sides equally. The crazy in our government is not distributed equally. The obstinance in our government is not distributed equally.

I’m sure there are crazy and obstinate folks on both sides, but one side does this sort of thing much, much more often. Maybe their constituents who care about that stuff should change parties, or force their party to change?

We are all assigned opinions - some of us have self-awareness to acknowledge it.

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