Hacker News Reader

Comment by thefounder | Hacker News Reader

I think there will be a push back against the current censorship and coercion. After a while people just get fed up. The longer it takes the bigger the swing. I wouldn't be surprised to see DeSantis president or someone even "worse".

View on HN

If you're pushing back against censorship & coercion, why would vote for the guy who worked with his state legislature to pass a bill (stop woke act) that was all about limiting what teachers could teach? Luckily, a judge blocked the bill on First Amendment grounds.

Because despite all their saber rattling, the MO for US Republicans is to do things like ban books, sue teachers for teaching history, shun journalists, etc.

Public school teachers are paid with taxpayer money, that private citizens are forced to give to the state whether they want to or not. And because of compulsory education, many of the students are forced to be in the classroom, whether they want to or not. It is completely expected and not at all "censorship" for the people's elected representatives to have a say in what employees of the people's government do with the people's children and the people's tax dollars. There is literally no other way to run a public school system.

DeSantis is more of the same, perhaps even worse, just from a different political perspective. A swing towards tolerance would be nice though.

I think we are past tolerance

I don't expect any. The reason people self-censor is that the fight just isn't worth it. They just want to carry on with their lives and not get dragged into a fight by people who care way more than them.

Didn't we already get that with Trump who is immune to criticisms of this sort? The swing has already started.

Yeah but Trump was too much of an unstable clown to do anything meaningful. Trump made the whole thing about his persona. I think people like DeSantis are more on point(i.e policy not cult).

I believe Trump was voted in by people who were fed up with the new sanctimonity, especially on topics like sexism and racism. Their defense was to vote for vulgarity and Trump seemed to be a master of that if nothing else.

And the current one is definition of "anything but the last guy" too.

I suspect most of who supports him are not less sanctimonious, just in ways that preserve their status quo. They are not objecting self-censorship but objecting who and what gets self-censored.

Trump received 46% of the vote in 2016, which is less than Mitt Romney's 47% in the previous election, but squeaked by in the electoral college against an extremely unpopular opponent.

The Republican share in the last 6 Presidential elections is 47%, 46%, 47%, 46%, 51%, 48%, the outlier being Bush's reelection in 2004. There's nothing special about Trump, electorally speaking. Republicans vote Republican.

But how did Trump become the Republicans' candidate?

There were a number of factors.

"at 44.95%, Trump had the lowest percentage of the popular primary vote for a major party nominee since the 1988 Democratic Party presidential primaries."

"A total of 17 major candidates entered the race. Prior to the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries, this was the largest presidential primary field for any political party in American history."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Republican_Party_presiden...

Trump had a number of advantages:

1) He was already super famous.

2) He was an experienced TV actor and entertainer.

3) He was rich.

4) He was a non-politician, which voters like, because they hate politicians.

5) He dominated every news cycle by continually saying wildly controversial things. The news media showered him with coverage over every other candidate.

I prefer vulgarity to censorship, regardless of whether it comes from the left or right. Trump's issue was his complete incompetence, not his vulgarity. Not that I liked his vulgarity, which was hardly presidential.

I do too. Not from the US and I don't think I would have taken the step to really vote for him. In Europe we have similar problems though. We had a pirate party that championed freedom of expression and technology open to everyone.

Some in that party jumped on the feminist train and today nearly supports the opposite of what it once stood for. They complained about too many men and sexism in the party. Duh... Today they are yesterdays news but the party never really recovered and also left many politically homeless. Some of those vote for more radical parties.

Sadly, both of the major US parties are highly interested in grabbing power, even if it damages the the values of freedom :(

Reply on news.ycombinator.com