It’s not hypocrisy, you’re just powerless | Hacker News Reader

It’s not hypocrisy, you’re just powerless

theupheaval.substack.com

37 pointsnhchris23 comments

Nit: please change "on the bottom" to "at the bottom". "On the top" is fine.

Edit: I don't think you meant Team B is placed on somebody's ass.

Hypocrisy is mischaracterized conveniently to suit the discussion points presented. It also relies heavily on gaslighting people into believing it doesn't exist when it obviously does. Especially concerning the Internet and politics now more than ever. Many news and social sites thrive off of hypocrisy and gaslighting users.

Hypocrisy has nothing inherently to do with being born into wealth or influence, but the ideal that one was born into it, or earned it as some kind of a chosen "superior" soul in this kind of world is more like what hypocrisy is. It's ages easier to be a successful business mind if you are born into wealth, but then a huge failure if people think that business acumen translates into political skill, because being born into wealth can also provide a limited understanding of empathy for people who are not wealthy (happens more often than not).

Hypocrites work to convince the world that they are born leaders, when in fact they often are trust fund babies and children of influence under cover. This secretive wealth path works hard to stifle opportunity and entry as well as upward financial mobility of others, and it creates all kinds of special fraternities (schools, neighborhoods, and even actual membership clubs) that seek to unite one class and exclude other classes, often based on race as well, despite the world's constant and overly emotional denial that racism still exists in these forms.

To revel that anyone is powerless in this day and age is flippant, and hypocritical in a day and age where Democracy and Free Speech are supposed to preside. Even the wealthy class that now runs many Internet and social media businesses work hard under cloak to suppress equality and that free speech of others not deemed "worthy" of having a voice on their platforms, while they regularly display hypocrisy in saying that they support freedom and equality in all of their TV appearances.

Hypocrisy is the number one threat to our future, It should not be taken for granted as a serious failure of character in those who practice it.

Well its certainly entertaining writing, but I'm not so sure I understood it.

The author carefully did not identify Teams A and B, and that part worked for me. I just interpreted it as "T permute 2" for whatever Teams I cared to recognized and went on from there. But then they said

> In fact, there is no “Team A” or “Team B,” only Class A and Class B.

And I fell apart. Did they mean that I should reinterpret the teams I already recognized as classes? Or that classes A and B are separate, overlapping categories with the teams, such that a small minority of both Teams A and B are in Class A, and a vast majority of both Teams are in Class B?

The first route of reinterpreting seems more consistent with statements made throughout the piece. But then it doesn't make sense to me when I try to concretize A and B to the major political parties in my country--neither one is really dominating the other, they're in a pretty balanced arrangement and they're just being really shitty to everyone.

The second route of reclassifying maps neatly onto Marxism's bourgies and proles (sidenote: that'd be an amazing name for a folk dish). And I've tried a few different times, but I've never gotten my head around dialectical materialism and all that.

Team implies more or less equal/comparable competitors playing the same game. Class implies a class-based system like castes that assigns your worth, identity and role based on which class you're in. I think the switch to classes is quite apt and clever.

Overall, I finally felt I understood the article when I considered it in the context of US politics. It seems like a very pointed article addressing a very specific issue. It's trying to avoid being interpreted as a political message where people will automatically take sides based on their political affiliation, which is why the author is intentionally vague.

I liked the Team notation and I also started reading this as a class. This is more corporate though, class is structural, team is situational! TeamA might had someone promoted to a dominant position, or TeamA might have had a first movers advantage to a good fame from an era far gone, or the organization might prioritize not losing TeamA. Their power is implicit and temporal although more long term than TeamB can handle.

The way I read it is simply a broadly applicable notion that a certain type of people will demonstrate their power and (perceived) higher status over others by openly breaking the others' rules without consequence. EDIT for better wording

Based on the author's other writings (e.g. https://theupheaval.substack.com/p/no-the-revolution-isnt-ov...), he appears to identify with the culturally conservative, anti-woke wing of American politics. Presumably, his team is team B, while modern liberals are presumably his team A, which from a neutral observer's standpoint makes the article rather bizarre. (And which might be why the author was careful not to label B and A in this article.)

There is no word for the opposite of hypocrisy: the act of unfairly "whistleblowing" on someone else by calling them out for being a hypocrite. The irony, I believe, is that this form of hypocrisy is the most common.

Htpocrisy doesn't invalidate peoples' messages, more to the point..

Hypocrisy is what you complain about when you cannot make a substantive complaint, but want to complain anyway.

No, it's not. Saying "you want your rules to apply to others but not to you" is a perfectly substantive thing to point out.

It’s always a weaker argument than pointing out actual problems with the rules themselves is.

In principle, that is true. In practice, there's nothing to be gained with pointing out the problems with the rules if the other party won't abide by them.

It does if they do the very immoral thing they praise against in that message.

It really doesn’t - if someone is addicted to, say, heroin and publicly state it is bad, they wish it wasn’t widely available, that there was more done to stop it, that if you do it you’re going to become a “bad person” doing bad things to finance this.

Well someone might come along and ask isn’t that judgement hypocritical, aren’t you a junkie?

Well, no - it’s usually a heartfelt plea from a place of painfully hard-won experience trying to help someone else lest they too fall victim.

No different that the teenage “why can’t I smoke, both of you {mom,dad} smoke!” setup that is so common it’s a sit-com trope.

There are different kinds or degrees of hypocrisy, no? Your examples are great examples for showing why hypocrisy isn't automatically bad.

Politics on the other hand is filled with hypocrisy that is far less acceptable, like pretending to care about women while taking away their rights, or pretending to care about the children while opposing any form of gun control or accountability for police.

> Well someone might come along and ask isn’t that judgement hypocritical, aren’t you a junkie?

It's not hypocritical - the junkie considers also his own addiction and habits as bad. It only becomes hypocrisy if he makes an exception for himself, using thin excuses.

To take the example to its limit: "You shouldn't double-park" "But you double-parked!" "Yes, and I shouldn't have, I'm a worse person for doing so, don't follow my example" - that's not hypocrisy. But "Yes but I was in a hurry and parking properly would have been really awkward" - now it is hypocrisy. Especially if they don't allow those excuses when others use them.

Huh? It's hypocrisy unless they pay the same fine for double parking that they want you to pay.

Otherwise it's just "pulling up the ladder" after they've climbed it. (Which is a standard tactic for people who "regret" having an abortion but don't put themselves in jail or even adopt a child).

It works the same way at international level, A-countries vs. B-countries.

My friend, you don't know exactly what I'm thinking. You're writing this to an idea of a person that you constructed for yourself. It's not going to match most of the people reading your article.

I would drop the second person narration. I don't know what you were going for, but I'm not having "omg are you god" moments when reading this.

The presumption that you can predict all my assessments and responses is condescending in an annoying way, and detracts from the point you're trying to make.

i think perhaps the relentlessly obnoxious voice of the diatribe was part of the point (and a big part humor).

They are Class A, while you, dear reader are Class B.

The author, with all the power over their expression on their site, can characterize you however they want.

You can complain, but the site remains unmoved.

Indeed, very much the article's point. Dogs kept behind fences always be barking the loudest.

I think it makes sense. I thought it obnoxious at first but after re-reading it and realizing who the article is actually talking about (team B is not necessarily the reader), I quite like it.

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