Comment by sleepingadmin | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sleepingadmin | Hacker News Reader

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Misinformation is misinformation. I am certain I am misinformed about many things. The correct response to when I post misinformation is to inform.

What happened recently with the move to yellow journalism is not misinformation but rather censorship. Fact checkers end up labelling things in order to censor them.

The interesting thing on my mind in regards to Canada. Trudeau has changed. He would take on people head on at town halls and challenging questions: https://www.nbcnews.com/video/trudeau-takes-questions-about-...

Today he refuses to even consider talking to these ongoing protests and is going to insane extremes to shut these peaceful protests down. The only way to look at it from his point of view. He must see these people as national security threats. He genuinely believes they are racists and white supremacists. He genuinely believes they are there to overthrow the government.

Which there's no justification for other than egregiously being misinformed.

I hadn't thought about it that way, but it certainly would explain his actions. You don't compromise with nazis. If you're convinced that's what they are.

This would explain a lot about Trump too. He was in a misinformation bubble as well.

Which means even world leaders aren't immune to this tribal trap.

I don't think that Trump was in a misinformation bubble. Trump was in the bubble of his own narcissistic ego. Things were "true" or "false" based on how they made Trump look. Anything that threw any kind of a negative light on him was "false".

The same was true of people. People were either "the greatest" or "losers" depending on whether the last thing they said made Trump look good or not.

Trump was creating a lot of misinformation, but it wasn't because he was misinformed (at least not primarily). It was because he cared more for his image (and, I suspect, his own image of himself) rather than reality. Facts didn't matter, only image did.

>I hadn't thought about it that way, but it certainly would explain his actions. You don't compromise with nazis after all.

The question though, are these protests really what he has called them? Are they really a military occupation?

>This would explain a lot about Trump too. He was in a misinformation bubble as well.

100% true. You will find even republican ideologues have called him out on many of his bullshit things. Hell his rhetoric was toxic. Tons of improvement could happen over Trump.

>Which means even world leaders aren't immune to this tribal trap.

It's built into our psychology, but not something out of control. Harper was in power for 9 years and never called in the military. He never demonized his political opponents. He never falsely labelled a peaceful protest as a military occupation. He never smeared political opponents as 'racists and white nationalists with unacceptable views'. He never declared a state of emergency to crush dissent.

Trudeau doesn't need the military. He gave himself to power to seize your bank account because you're a protester. No court orders. No due process.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60383385

Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said at Monday's news conference that banks would be able freeze personal accounts of anyone linked with the protests without any need for a court order.

> The question though, are these protests really what he has called them? Are they really a military occupation?

Definitely not. Every large scale protest has its provocateurs and outliers. Using the outliers to frame the 99% is dishonest to say the least.

To any neutral observer they are overwhelmingly peaceful and represent the working class.

>To any neutral observer they are overwhelmingly peaceful and represent normal working class people.

This isn't a neutral observation. "overwhelmingly peaceful and represent normal working class people" exposes a politically-motivated bias.

Does it?

To a neutral observer the BLM protests were overwhelmingly peaceful and represent the administrative class.

To a neutral observer the trucker protests were overwhelmingly peaceful and represent the working class.

Setting aside that no one would attempt to use the term "overwhelmingly peaceful" in a politically neutral matter nowadays unless they were completely naive (it would be like saying "think of the children" in the context of actually arguing for considering childrens' welfare) the word you omitted from the last sentence ("normal") is where the bias comes into play. "Normal" in that case carries the implication that working class people as a whole agree (or should agree) with the protestors, or that anyone who disagrees with them isn't legitimately a member of the working class.

More accurately, the protests (both of the truckers and BLM) represent more narrowly defined set of political prinicples than the beliefs of more general classes, which tend not to be as homogeneous in their views as is often portrayed.

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