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Comment by chiefalchemist | Hacker News Reader

That's true but the point is it an oversimplification, a fringe subset that fits a now convenient narrative.

Trump targeted the discontents. Full stop.

Like it or not, that's what good marketing does. Like it or not - and the status quo still refuses to admit it - those numbers are significant. Significant enough to get Trump elected.

The fringe subset narrative of white supremacists is just that...spin. Unless of course all those who went for Trump in 2020 are white supremacists. That doesn't seem likely, not based on the numbers we're talking about.

It's also important to realize the fact is, the same actors who push the white supremacists narrative are the same who crafted and front lined the Russian narrative, and as we know that was a lie.

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A lot of the discontent as you put is race based. Whites soon will no longer have a majority and there is an ongoing shift in the demographics. There is a sense amongst uneducated whites and lower class whites that things aren’t right and their ire is focused at the wrong thing. There is also a rural/urban divide. As is common in America the lower classes get sidetracked by talking about race instead of class. There is anger and it is being successfully diverted from the oppressor to the “other” side.

There is definitely a white nationalist backlash at a grand scale. America is changing demographically and the infrastructure is declining. Women are dominating in terms of college degrees now and in terms of graduating from college. Russia and others have done a great job at sowing dissent. Corporate media too have done a great job. Humanity is not prepared to be manipulated at the scale Facebook enables and the cost doing this manipulation is cheap.

The U.S. is in a long term state of imperial decline. We are not ready for the social changes that are occurring. All of these things suggest to me that the country is ripe for authoritarianism. It just takes a demagogue with an ounce of competence to install it. Trump, fortunately, is devoid of competence and he failed. The next demagogue will likely succeed.

> Whites soon will no longer have a majority and there is an ongoing shift in the demographics.

The "ongoing shift" narrative turns out to be quite illusory. Hispanics are increasingly joining the "white" bandwagon, so "whites" will not become a demographic minority any time soon. Yes, this also means lots of potential voters for either party: there will be no raw demographically-based prominence for either Republicans or Democrats.

Well, Republicans haven’t quite shifted their views/policies enough to include Hispanics as a whole in their party. Rabiblancos (Panamanian Spanish term) are acceptable but even ones like Rafael Cruz feel the need to go by names like “Ted”. Republicans went hard for the white nationalist vote in 2016 and 2020. Can they shift enough, soon enough? I don’t know. They have a propensity - and Democrats too - to care about the next election and not long term.

>Russia and others have done a great job at sowing dissent.

This has been debunked by non-corporate journalists like Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, etc.

After 1.5 years of investigation, unlimited subpoena powers and 10s of millions of dollars spent, nobody can name 1 american citizen who has been convicted under the original premise of the Russiagate, which was criminally conspiring with the Kremlin to interfere in the 2016 election.

EDIT: While we're at it I'll also address this comment you've made: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29776626

>Regardless of whatever happened in the past the fact remains that the government was almost overthrown on January 6 and the instigators (the top leaders) have not been brought to justice.

700+ people are charged with crimes associated with Jan 6. Not a single one, not one has been charged with insurrection, inciting an insurrection, attempting to overthrow a government, sedition, treason, etc.

They're all just common crimes: Trespassing, violent assault for the ones who used violence, interrupting government procedures/processes, etc.

If this was an actual insurrection, or a seditious act, or a coup, why is the Justice Dept. under the control of the Biden administration, not William Barr or Donald Trump, not charging anybody with those crimes that are alleged to have taken place?

Why are they charging them with common crimes that happen at protests and riots instead?

Could it be because that was all that event was?

I wasn’t referring to Russia gate as such. It is clear that foreign governments are using bots and fake accounts to sow dissent. China uses a lot of people to do this. Israel uses fake accounts and whatnot to try to sway opinions regarding Palestinians and Iran. Mass manipulation is quite cheap and easy in the age of Facebook. You don’t think this occurs?

January 6 was an insurrection. Why DOJ chooses to or not to pursue charges is not something I’m privy to. Biden, Pelosi, Garland and others are governing as if the political norms haven’t drastically changed. While DOJ is headed by a moderate Republican it’s not as if he can control the rank and file to do his bidding. He has great influence but he’s not a dictator. Trump couldn’t dictate exactly what he wanted DOJ to do either. We haven’t reached that point yet.

Politics are involved and those in power do what they think is right considering their personal moral views/ambitions and their reading of what is politically feasible. That it isn’t being treated as an insurrection indicates to me the fragility of the system. The precedent has been set. Don’t like the result of a Presidential election and you have an army of fanatics willing to assault the Capitol then you may have them do so with impunity.

That reasonable people such as yourself don’t see the danger in this tells me that we are past the point where we will ever return to normalcy in governance. Eventually one side or the other will lead us to authoritarianism or secession.

EDIT: Capone was never charged with murder. Do you think he was never guilty of murder or being the cause of murders? One must disassociate the actions/intent of a person from the charges used against them. Perhaps prosecutors think Republican jurors will balk at the notion of insurrection and will never convict on this charge despite the evidence. You appear to ignore the plain evidence of insurrection and refuse to use that term.

>Mass manipulation is quite cheap and easy in the age of Facebook. You don’t think this occurs?

"Cheap and easy" != effective.

The alleged Russia intervention appears to have been on the order of several hundred thousands of dollars worth of Facebook ads. The exact figure differs depending on what sources you read, but a Pres. election operates on the scale of billions, not < 1M.

And if it is so effective, how come Mike Bloomberg, who spent some $560 Million on his election campaign, had nothing to show for it? Surely he could have hired all those Russian political campaign savants with that much money, no?

>Don’t like the result of a Presidential election and you have an army of fanatics willing to assault the Capitol then you may have them do so with impunity.

An army of... unarmed fanatics? The wanna-be insurrectionists killed nobody, there were no weapons brandished in the Capitol. Do you want people to take seriously a claim that around a 1000 unarmed men are enough to overthrow the most militarized and powerful government in the history of mankind?

The Feds were also well aware of it, just type into any search engine "NYT Jan 6 informants".

>Republican jurors

Republican jurors in DC, that voted 93% for Clinton in 2016? Really?

This is the line of thinking that lead good people, but who consumed too much media, to believe that Jussie Smollett really was really assaulted in the dead of night in very blue Chicago in freezing temperatures by Trump supporters with a noose and bleach, yelling "This is MAGA country". At some point you have to rely on Occam's Razor and start questioning the most basic of premises without being afraid of appearing a conspiracy nut.

> Capone was never charged with murder.

Yes, but those who carried out his orders were. And if a murder takes place there's a body, or if the body was moved or disposed of, there's at least evidence of struggle or evidence that the victim was at the crime scene. And there is also evidence that the criminals were at the crime scene at the time the crime itself took place.

Thank you for your response. It’s fascinating to me.

I talk about sowing dissent as the specific form of mass manipulation that is easy and cheap to do. You then bring Bloomberg’s failed Presidential bid. Winning an election requires support and buying support is hard to do without rallying the base. Bloomberg spent that money trying to manufacture a base and that is hard to do. Sowing dissent is easy and cheap. You provide a great example of this when bringing up Smollet. Look at how easy and cheap it was to get people all upset and angry over something that didn’t actually happen.

You ask why the insurrectionists aren’t charged with insurrection and I say that I don’t know. I give an example of how sometimes prosecutors bring charges they think they can win and not necessarily with the full extent of what they think the person did. It is obvious this is so and there are lots of examples of this. But you ignore the broader point and get stuck in the minutia of the example I used. That’s fascinating. It’s fascinating that you think Republicans jurors are not a thing in D.C. By your own admittance at least 7% of the electorate are Republicans. Prosecutors need unanimous verdicts. Not just 93% approval. But like I said I don’t know the thinking prosecutors used on this case to determine what charges to bring.

The U.S. is not the most militarized government in the world. North Korea is. Unarmed rebellions have successfully occurred many times. In Romania thousands of unarmed people stormed the seat of government and that led to the overthrow of the government. What happened a year ago was an insurrection. It was poorly thought and incompetently led but the precedent has been set. It’s now known how fragile our system and society are.

You make assumptions about me because you yourself have bought into narratives that you have been fed. Try to look at things dispassionately. I suspect you wouldn’t believe me if I told you that my vote for Trump in 2016 was the first time I voted for the winner in a Presidential election. I’ve voted for Republicans for President more than I have Democrats. In fact, I’ve never voted for a Democrat for President.

>In Romania thousands of unarmed people stormed the seat of government and that led to the overthrow of the government.

Wikipedia says[0] it was "the only violent overthrow of a communist government". Violent does not sound unarmed to me, since punches and kicks only take you so far.

"As anti-government protesters demonstrated in Timișoara in December 1989, he perceived the demonstrations as a political threat and ordered military forces to open fire on 17 December, causing many deaths and injuries. The revelation that Ceaușescu was responsible resulted in a massive spread of rioting and civil unrest across the country.[3] The demonstrations, which reached Bucharest, became known as the Romanian Revolution—the only violent overthrow of a communist government in the course of the Revolutions of 1989"

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolae_Ceau%C8%99escu

>The U.S. is not the most militarized government in the world.

https://www.pgpf.org/blog/2021/07/the-united-states-spends-m...

>It’s fascinating that you think Republicans jurors are not a thing in D.C.

It is a thing. It's also a thing that an average Republican in Texas and an average Republican in NY or DC are not quite the same. Even if we put forward the very unlikely premise that they are super MAGA Republican, peer pressure is a thing. Simply going by the numbers, chances are a significant chunk of their friends and family are Democrats, and it's not like an average person can easily hide they were on a jury. Also, consider how many juries there would be for that many defendants, will no one be convicted?

The speech Ceacescu gave in Bucharest after what happened in Timisoara led directly to his downfall. It started with unarmed people storming the capitol building. There’s video of this on YouTube. The army switched sides to be against Ceacescu and that led to armed fighting against the Securitate.

But great job at ignoring all the broader points and ignoring the fact that you originally claimed that unarmed rioters can’t possibly overthrow the government and now write that Romania was the only violent overthrow of a communist government. This means that some communist government were overthrown by unarmed people. So you must now agree with me that unarmed people can overthrow a government.

The U.S. spends the most money in absolute dollars on the military. It is not the most militarized nation in the world. That would go to a nation that spends the highest percent of GDP on the military or one that has the highest percent of its population in the military. The U.S. is not first in any of these categories.

You would benefit from taking a course on statistics and economics.

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