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Comment by thrillgore | Hacker News Reader

Having seen Diane bootlick for the telecoms most of my life, good riddance.

Yes, you heard me. I am not even going to pause for a condolance or bite my tongue. I'm glad she's gone. She was 100% unfit for the position in the last few years of her life and nothing was done about it. This is a problem with US Politics, they are too fucking old to represent the actual population so they are pulled by SIGs and lobbyists. We are not accurately represented.

We need term limits in the Senate. She was part of the problem, and the problem needs to be fixed.

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Term or age limits don't fix corporate and media capture. It doesn't matter who gets her seat, they are still going to vote party line and so will you.

I strongly disagree with her politics, and also believe that she should have retired earlier.

A mentor of mine used to remind me, "always react with class". I fail at this a lot, but try.

I think it would be good for you to try too.

And also to remember that she was fairly elected. She was who the people wanted. If you want to be angry, be angry at the people who continued to elect her.

Maybe not so much vitrol directed at her on a day of tragedy.

She's now literally the only person who cannot be affected by vitriol.

Nevertheless attempts to pin the blame on her for things her constituency was obviously happy or oblivious to is misguided.

Term limits give more power to the lobbyists and other back-room powers, because they are never term limited, and they quickly learn how to be exceptionally persuasive to newbie representatives.

At least a non-limited representative has the chance to learn to resist, thought it's pretty darn rare. Term limits would snuff that out entirely.

> She's now literally the only person who cannot be affected by vitriol.

You feel like heaping vitrol on a recently deceased person is an acceptable thing to do?

My point was about reacting with class.

You don't have to live that way, but practicing it makes your life and the lives of those around you better.

I agree with your other points though.

One of the unintended consequences of term limits is the strengthening of the bureaucracy.

If vitriol has to be heaped I’d rather it be on the dead, though you could argue they can’t defend.

But heaping vitriol does much more against the heaper than the heapee, in almost all cases.

"and nothing was done about it"

Who was supposed to do something?

Voters, the Democratic Party, etc.

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