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Comment by taolegal | Hacker News Reader

Except every important cultural institution and practically every tech space is left-biased.

Twitter's now owned by Elon, who is making friends with right wing reactionaries in public.

Fox News is the most watched news channel on the continent.

All tech companies at the very least are pro-capitalist, it's often a choice of whether they're outwardly more pro-market or more technocratic, which has nothing to do with political lefts and rights.

> Fox News is the most watched news channel on the continent.

They have high viewership in spite of the fact that liberals have complete dominance over so-called "official" news media & centers of cultural production, as well as universities. Conservatives don't control government or anything else in any meaningful sense. Just look at American govt over the course of the 20th & 21st century to see that progressives squarely won in terms of shaping the size, scope & spending of govt.

> has nothing to do with political lefts and rights

You're supposing a True Scotsman that "liberals" aren't true left or something, that's complete nonsense. You may as well be regretting that a horse isn't a unicorn.

Tech companies are overwhelmingly biased towards liberals. Don't play dumb.

> Conservatives don't control government or anything else in any meaningful sense.

6/3 conservative Supreme Court and the House. That’s half of the federal government.

More like a just over a sixth, there's three branches, executive, legislature, and judicial. If you buy into the whole "media is the fourth branch" thing, I say that's actually a minority or a plurality.

If you think "complete functional control over the supreme court for likely decades" is insignificant enough to make conservatives count as a minority you need to pay more attention to the powers and impact of the supreme court. They can effectively overrule any legislation if they wish and have proven a desire to do so.

They say they can do that (judicial review is kind of not in the constitution) but what California and New York are doing post New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen puts a bit of a question on that. Making much of New York City a "gun free zone" is not what "the right to keep and bear arms" sounds like to me.

I’m counting executive branch, judicial branch, and congress as two because they each individually have their own mandated powers.

The conservative Supreme Court just unilaterally gutted fundamental human rights for everyone in the country. That’s serious power that not even the President has. It’s a joke to pretend conservatives have no political power in the face of that.

The third highest government official is the Speaker of the House, who will be a Republican in January, so it’s pretty hard to say Republicans have no power when they control the Speaker. It’s crazy how much power that is.

But to call the media a branch of government and to assign “control” of media to Democrats is really a stretch. Pretty hard to make that case with Fox News around.

Progressives aren't able to beat conservatives into submission because there's foundational checks and balances against that.

That conservatives have any power at all is a testament to progressives ability to catastrophically & embarrassingly mismanage themselves and fail to deliver.

But really progressives are just complaining that things aren't changing fast enough, it's inarguable that govt as it exists today is nothing remotely like limited govt.

There's no political constituency for "limited government". Most voters want the government to do things they like and not do things they dislike. They just disagree on what those things are.

Progressives aren’t trying to “beat conservatives into submission”, where do you get that? Political violence is currently a big problem on the right, according to the head of the FBI (who himself is a conservative). Conservatives were the ones who lost in 2020 and attempted to literally beat their opponents into submission on Jan 6 2021, ending a record of peaceful transitions of power.

> Political violence is currently a big problem on the right

Political violence was pioneered by far-left terrorists, famously when they bombed Congress.

More recently, Rand Paul got violently attacked. And a Bernie supporter committed a mass shooting & shot a Republican congressman. Of course you can't ignore there was the pervasive political violence throughout 2020 during BLM rioting.

Remember the guy who mowed down a Christmas parade?

Really the worst was when Hilary Clinton was the first to go all-in on election denial in 2016. And then spawned an entire 4 years of conspiracy theories surrounding Russia. Liberals largely failed to call her out & hold her accountable. They just project all of their worst crimes on their opponents.

Three days ago the leader of the Oath Keepers, a right wing paramilitary organization, was found guilty of seditious conspiracy. As it’s a conspiracy conviction, we can expect more convictions to come.

You whatabout this with several examples that aren’t even political violence. Rand Paul’s neighborhood spat isn’t political violence. How is the Waukesha attack political violence, I just don’t see it.

Republicans have shown us exactly what political violence looks like. Thousands of people, flying the banner of a political party, organizing to attack the government. Seditious conspiracy is coming from the right, and nothing even approaching that severity is seen on the left. The FBI director is right to draw a distinction between left- and righ-wing violence.

The age of small-scale lone wolf attacks being the worst of political violence in the US are over thanks to the right. Now the biggest problems are homegrown terror cells like the oath keepers, and terror attacks instigated by media and the high ranking government officials, as the former President did on Jan 6.

> 4 years of conspiracy theories surrounding Russia

You need to catch up; the only ones still denying Trump’s collusion with Russia are Trump and Russia. Even Trump’s campaign manager has admitted to his role of coordinating campaign strategy with a Russian intel officer, which is a fact reported by Senate Republicans in their investigation.

The Trump tower meeting with the Russian spy is known by all and admitted to by all participants. The Trump Tower Moscow deal is known by all and admitted to by Trump. We know Russia hacked the DNC and Trump admits to welcoming that help, as shown in the Mueller report. Hillary Clinton was largely vindicated.

It's truly incredible that this easily-verifiable statement of fact has been downvoted.

Reality has a known liberal bias

As Colbert once said, "reality has a well known liberal bias."

And it’s precisely that sniveling, sanctimonious attitude that makes someone like Trump attractive.

Liberals almost never fail to be utterly unlikeable & unrelatable.

Then why the need for so much censorship like we have seen with Twitter?

> Except every important cultural institution and practically every tech space is left-biased.

This is because progressism is associated with the left. The tech space lives on the edge of innovation, so of course it leans toward progressism.

This is what I find fascinating. A majority of these companies are staffed by the best in technology who are particularly intelligent and vote more progressive. Then comes along some dumb conservative complaining that a majority of people working there don't want to hear some dumb conspiracy.

> a majority of people

so minorities should be abused?

I can't even begin to fathom how you are reaching that far. We are taking about skills here not race.

You're saying that when people are outnumbered they should be at the mercy of the majority.

Even worse that you're apparently ableist saying that it's better if it's on the basis of skill rather than race.

You're saying that if people have no medical degree that they should be given jobs as surgeons because they are in a minority group of not having the skills necessary to perform surgeries? No where have you claimed or provided proof that conservatives are being discriminated against in hiring.

If everyone in an organization is liberal isn’t that organization systemically biased?

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