Hacker News Reader

Comment by JSdev1 | Hacker News Reader

Because the entire strategy of one of the political parties is to divide people by race, class, sex using misinformation to deceive in order to gain political power

View on HN

I like how anyone could read this and think it applies to the other party.

That's because they are both correct. The ruling class uses identity politics to divide, and the ruling class isn't limited to one party.

It's a demonstrable fact that it is true of both. It's also a demonstrable fact that one is insanely worse. Doing every single thing the other does, at even worse levels, and then adds even more insanity the other one wouldn't even dare to try. It's the party that let their sitting president attempt to overthrow a legitimate election by violently interrupting a senate ceremony and then dismissed it like it was just a typical Wednesday in Washington.

One side tries to get rid of known sexual predators and racists. The other promotes them. One side lets at least a small amount of dissenting voices play the game. The other viciously attacks anyone not moving in lock-step with the current dictator, including the vice president. One side attempts to make voting more accessible. The other makes it less. One side believes in separation of church and State. The other does not. They both suck corporate dick but one does it in the back office, the other cups the balls while staring their employees in the eye, gurgling something about deserving a fair wage as they grab the safety helmet off their head to spit into, and tell them to get back on the floor and work hard so they can get some of that sweet trickle down.

I'd say you meant to post on Twitter but you're above the character limit.

Ask yourself which one has greater thought dominance among the kinds of urban middle and upper class youth, hipsters, university students, yuppie types, tech workers and also many elites that work in, heavily consume and dominate much of the mainstream and digital media narrative, and then ask how despite this supposedly "less terrible" dominance, all of the problems of division that you describe are so rampant regardless of which party is in power. Also, as for the January 6th events, shitty as they were, I take a moment to mention the completely dissimilar, in no way violent or destructive... fucking months.... of "protest" that were heavily fueled by a certain political tendency's media narratives, and those of political party that this media tendency heavily favors. Protests in the middle of a pandemic no less, which suddenly were not at all likely to be super spreader events because: reasons, hand waving, political ideology over basic science...

Also,

>tries to get rid of known sex predators and racists.

Really? I'd say that for the racists, it depends on what ethnic group they belong to, and as for sex predators, there's no shortage of them on either side of the spectrum. After all the husband of a certain 2016 political candidate was very closely associated with Epstein at one time, among other things.

Edit: text addtion.

BLM was instigated by a real video of a cop executing a Black man face-down in the streets, and then escalated by more real videos of other cops executing more Black people extrajudicially, (all following decades of more real videos showing the same type of thing), and then escalated even further by the sitting president not showing a single ounce of empathy for those situations and then actively fighting it in some of the most unconstitutional ways the country has seen since the 50's.

Jan 6th was instigated by completely fabricated lies, lies that began months before there was even an election to be contested, again, by the sitting president. Made more effective by people the sitting president had just recently plopped into key positions that would be involved in controlling such an event.

One side scorned the violence for both events (showing sympathy/understanding for violent reaction to very real, very bad things is not the same as advocating), the other scorned one and excused the other using the same lies that started it.

Regardless of all that, comparing a coup to a protest is absolutely stupid. Only one side does that, because it lets them downplay a coup as nothing bigger than a protest when it's clearly a much bigger issue, so much bigger that, in the constitution, one is a protected right and the other is treason.

For one thing, the January 6th event was no "coup". It could maybe, very ambiguously, very generously speaking be called a coup attempt (a truly idiotic, inept one if so) and more plausibly you could call it a sort of protest of its own (yes, protests that get violent still get to be called protests even if they don't fit your personal political prejudice). Secondly, the vast tide of BLM-inspired protests was enormous and lasted for many weeks, with many flavors of violence and also in many cases what could very easily be called attempts at local government overthrow in some cases. Whether they fit such a description is arguable, but without a doubt they were in numerous cases no less violent than the January 6th events. Your comparison between the two is absurd and absurdly biased.

> For one thing, the January 6th event was no "coup". It could maybe, very ambiguously, very generously speaking be called a coup attempt

Firstly, we should understand that while "attempted murder" is a thing when the intended victim lives, this is an unusual situation. If I attempt to rob a bank, but I am arrested when I trip and fall running for a door with a sack of cash, the charge would be "bank robbery", not "attempted bank robbery", as that's not a thing. There is no distinction (1). No court is going to say "well the cash never left the building so hey, no crime!"

> (a truly idiotic, inept one if so)

If I attempt to rob a bank, with a water pistol, the charge would be "bank robbery", not "idiotic bank robbery", as that's not a thing. I'd be an "idiot criminal" but it's a regular crime, not a separate one. There is no distinction.

> plausibly you could call it a sort of protest of its own

It was protest, a protest about the election result, and also part of a larger plan concerning that election result, which cannot in any way be said about BLM. Other parts of the plan were to delay certification of the regular electors, pick alternate electors, change key states votes ... you know, coup stuff. They had a PowerPoint for it. The fact that the coup attempt did not succeed make no difference. The supposition (which we cannot be sure of) that it was not close to succeeding makes no difference.

1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbery

"Robbery is the crime of taking or attempting to take ..."

Ah yes, it's the other team's fault entirely (I can't even guess which party you're referring to).

To paraphrase Ogilvy, half the country is being manipulated by a political party using misinformation to gain power; the trouble is I don't know which half.

"Both" is a possible answer here.

“Both” is the PROBABLE answer here.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com