Comment by wonderwonder | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wonderwonder | Hacker News Reader

The author is completely right in that the government at least in the US attempting to downplay, mislead or 'avoid panic' absolutely destroyed any credibility and is still suffering from it. Most people are not stupid, if provided with all available information as well as clear statements regarding the reliability of that information and just a clear message saying "hey this is new and we have no idea, we are making our best guess" people will make decent choices. Unfortunately the US decided to torpedo its credibility, and all sides decided to turn it into a political issue which a pandemic should very much not be. All politics all the time and the US is now crippling itself. In the absence of real honest leadership people turned to the loudest voices of the media. Once the people distrust the government and think they are lying its very hard to appeal to their logic again. I am very much not a fan of Bush II but he did it right after 9/11. What he did after though is a topic for another day.

Most people are not stupid, but unfortunately in the US many issues are moralized to the point that people have a hard time discussing them rationally. You question Fauci? You're an anti-science freak. You question CDC's decision? You're a Trump supporter. You ask how CDC's numbers lead to certain decisions? You're a racist. I really wish people do not attack one's motives and focus on discussing facts.

People in the US have become very good at totally ignoring the argument and just tribalizing the approach to everything. X must be right and how dare you question them as they are part of us. Nothing can be nuanced anymore. Read a twitter thread this morning discussing a father whose daughter was raped in a high school bathroom and then the perpetrator who they did not really make clear if it was someone that was trans or just a guy in a skirt was transferred to another school while pending trial and then assualted another girl. Father was obviously against trans women in the girls bathroom after that and was arrested for disturbing the peace. Crazy thing was people in the thread were more upset if someone misgendered the perpetrator than the fact that they raped 2 kids. I say this as someone that truly believes that people should be left alone to live however they want with out judgment. We live in strange times.

My interpretation is the the life in the US has been so good that Americans could never imagine what it was like living in 1950's Cuba, 1960's China, 1970's Cambodia, and North Korea. Do people really think that people in those countries were evil or were crazy? The truth is, the people there started with good intentions. They wanted to have equity. They were pained by all kinds of oppression. They genuinely believed that "anti-revolutionary" people or "anti-progressive" people can be educated. Then, it started with your neighbor reporting your indecent behavior to the authority, or your neighborhood organized to educate you. Then it went on, and elementary school students beat their school principals to death. Your neighborhood looted your family for the cause. You lost your right to go to university or get a job because your great grandpa owned properties. Ironically, no one in such nation ended up living well, except the top few. That road to hell is paved with good intension is really not a cliche.

US has just started on that path with the passage of laws incentivizing you monetarily to turn in your neighbor for undesirable behavior.

A cliche is a saying, idea, or artistic component that has lost its meaning from overuse. The way you used “the path to hell is paved with good intentions” points to the fact that it is a cliche and that you want people to be aware of that and consider it instead of reading past it.

I am sure that "the people" had good intentions. However, you can be sure that the sociopaths running the show knew perfectly well what they were doing. It's not like Mao wanted to save the people from oppression and ended up screwing everybody by mistake.

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