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Comment by jtotheh | Hacker News Reader

So, Team Reagan left the hostages there longer, sold arms to an enemy and subverted the POTUS - why is there a statue of that !@# at Washington National Airport?????

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Because Republicans are not at all interested in the failings of their leaders.

That’s not a quality that is unique to Republicans.

I agree that it's a reasonable approximation to say the Republicans are the bad guys, but that in no way makes it true that the Democrats are the good guys. In fact, the more odious the R's behave the worse the D's can do say and still say, "well, at least we're not them.".

Life isn’t a Marvel comic book. There aren’t good guys and bad guys in Washington, DC, just corrupt self serving politicians on both sides of the aisle that say what they think their constituents want to hear while doing the bidding of their campaign donors.

In the last 55 years they've had Nixon Reagan Bush Sr Bush Jr and Trump. Compare this to Carter Clinton Obama and Biden.

4 of the 5 on team red blatantly attempted to subvert Democracy. One legalized indefinite detention and torture and Another outright attempted to take the government after losing.

They might as well be comic book villains.

> 4 of the 5 on team red blatantly attempted to subvert Democracy

Wait, which 1 do you think didn't?

It's possible I'm less aware of the exploits of Bush Sr due to being very young then and it not being as notable as Nixon or Reagan.

First of all, Bush was Director of the CIA before he was VP, which is bad enough by itself. (Operation Condor, etc.) Bush was also close to Bill Casey (mentioned in the article), who ran Reagan's campaign, recruited Bush for the ticket, and became Reagan's Director of the CIA. Bush and Casey were both knee deep in Iran-Contra, a massive subversion of democracy and constitutional crisis in which the Reagan administration disobeyed an act of Congress. When Bush left office, he pardoned a bunch of Iran-Contra conspirators, thus covering his own ass too.

There won't be any reasonable, principled government in the US while people voluntarily divide themselves into these two arbitrary tribes and shout about how they are better than the other side. People actually believing this is how the Duopoly is maintained. If you can take a hard look at your own side, a really hard look, you'll see rot there too. Better to see it, know it, be aware of it. Support those who oppose it irrespective of the arbitrary label they choose to call themselves.

Karl Popper described democracy as a system that is not defined by giving you the chance of getting people you like into power, but by giving you the chance to remove those you disliked.

A duopoly that is this far apart in terms of ideology and goals is preventing that part. What needs to happen for a convinced Dem/Republican to vote for the opposing party to pu ish bad behaviour within their own party? This is much easier with more parties with more nuanced choices.

> A duopoly that is this far apart in terms of ideology and goals

I don't know that I would be able to convince you otherwise. Just, if you think that GW's extraordinary renditions set a dangerous precedent but Obama's Disposition Matrix was an unfortunate necessity (or vice versa, as but two examples), you just may be distracted by tribal affiliation. As another example, if you were to get close to passing meaningful election reform that would enable effective multiple "third" parties, you would see the polarized duopoly close ranks in unified attacks on the idea - and on you, personally - pretty darn quick!

My advice to anyone who will listen is to really pay attention to the sins of your own side, really listen to your opposition without reflexively what-abouting. Eye opening. It doesn't mean the other side is better! It's just helpful to know. Also, shows a way forward, as slim as that may be.

> My advice to anyone who will listen is to really pay attention to the sins of your own side

I am not from the US and do nopt plan to ever live there. With the distance of a European perspective I'd even phrase this more harshly: Don't pick a side. you don't have to. Judge political actors by their actions, that means by what they get done and by what they prevent from getting done. It is also okay to stand behind single political individuals if they do a compelling job and shine through their integrity and endurance.

Your job is to remove people from office if they fuck up. And that includes people on "insignificant" levels of politics, be it your town, city, province or whatnot.

What baffles me most about the US, is that you guys can elect somebody as a head of state who has millions less absolute votes than the other candidate and not completely loose your shit about that fact alone. Where I am from this would cause riots in the streets for weeks.

You're referring to the Electoral College. I won't get into much detail about it, but it serves the purpose of ensuring that the rural vote is not swamped by the urban vote. Shockingly, those who are of the urban clans believe it should be abolished, but it has long tradition.

Personally, I think the Electoral College is not nearly as bad as the first-past-the-goalpost-winner- take-all electoral system for every single office from President to town council. Your best strategy will always be to put all of your resources behind one of the two front-runners in any election. Voting for anyone else makes it a certainty that your opposition wins. Fixing that somehow to be a more proportional representation system would at last break the duopoly and calm everyone down. People would finally feel like their values are represented in government, rather than compromising or settling.

> Personally, I think the Electoral College is not nearly as bad as the first-past-the-goalpost-winner- take-all electoral system

Agreed. This even has a name, Duverger's Law:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law

Bring back ostracism? It was a key part of Athenian democracy…

Make Athens Great Again!

Sadly the politicians manage to distract anybody from wanting tougher campaign financing and lobbying laws.

I am not too deep into US politics, but if you wanna vote for tougher regulations on that there is one party that is not like the other based on the bills they proposed.

But hey, that won't stop the majority from waving their stupid party-political flags and go full "but the other side"-mode.

Failings? Seems he was rather successful. I mean, he got away with it.

I think this illustrates the problem. You can't seem to recognize that failures of character are concrete failings.

My apologies, I was being facetious. Of course he had failings but our society rewards rather than punishing them.

Plus let people die of AIDS, because he thought it was gay. Then straight people started dying and it was a problem.

Gay lives don't matter to Republicans.

Dont forget flooding america with cocaine to pay for those weapons.

Heck, the airport was even renamed for him, as a special slap in the face to the air-traffic controllers.

I live there, I still try and refer to it as National Airport.

Keep in mind, the proceeds from the weapons sales to Iran were used to finance Nicaragua's Contras, in the Amerikan attempt to create a right-wing puppet state in Central America.

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