Hacker News Reader

Comment by vsnf | Hacker News Reader

Sometimes I feel like I'm being caught in a pincer maneuver by contemporary US society where the far right is wielding increasingly concerning amounts of governmental power to force conservative changes, and the far left is wielding social power to force overly liberal changes. Not only is this very difficult to navigate at an emotional level, it's also just generally concerning that both legally and socially, radicalism is taking a stronger and stronger hold.

View on HN

Everyone has decided government should be used to tell everyone else how to think.

I would like the option of a party that wants to focus on things like preventing fraud and ensuring freedom, but seemingly across the western world such things are uninteresting.

There is such a party. I've been a member for forty years. But there's not much point in naming it as it is almost entirely irrelevant to modern politics and that doesn't appear to be about to change. Our desire for this is quite niche.

>I would like the option of a party that wants to focus on things like preventing fraud and ensuring freedom

Where's the profit in that?

The benefits of these policies are diffused throughout the country, so advocates find themselves unable to organize.

But that doesn't keep the levers of power in power

What you need is not another party(assuming you’re American). What you need is a revamp of your whole system.

1) dismantle the federal state

2) direct democratic rule of the states. A hybrid system like in Switzerland.

In general, decentralisation and democratisation.

We'll get right on that. In the meantime, what can be practically done?

"some professors in Psychology may be self-censoring to avoid controversy"

solution: straight to "dismantle the country".

genius. this is some serious, next level shillbot-ing

If feels that way sometimes. I heard a joke the other day related to this:

Q: What is the most important priority?

Liberal A: Letting kindergarten teachers help kids transition their gender.

Conservative A: Banning abortion and contraceptives.

I don't get the joke?

I think the joke is that those issues arent important at all

But they are important to them. And social media bubbles maybe makes people think, the whole world shares the priorities of their specific bubble - and act enraged, when they learn that is not the case.

I mean, we tech nerds can maybe relate with our struggle of privacy, open source etc.?

I can't relate. Sure these are problems, but definitely not the most important problems in the World.

I meant relate to the concept of: what is important to your bubble might not matter to the rest of the world.

Most people don't care about surveillance, nor have they heard of open source. But being a tech nerd, I absolutely do think they are very importang for the whole world to embrace.

But on a philosophical level I can see that other people have other priorities. Or a different angle how to solve things.

Many would say climate change is the most important problem, to which I would say, open source (hardware) has the best chance of solving this crisis. Making the tech broadly avaiable. (And anti surveillance so we do not end up in totalitarian states while trying to solve the other problems)

But to a conservative he sees no base of anything, if the foundations of (his) morals are destroyed.

This joke is too bitter to laugh about.

There is a little bit of joke in every joke. Most jokes are just candid observations of reality ;)

In reality these are priorities to an increasingly vocal tiny minority in both categories, it is as they say "terminally online"

In reality people care more about the prosperity of their local area, access to hospitals, etc

I'm not sure if they're increasingly tiny minority but they are becoming more vocal.

in 2024, "vocal" comes from internet traffic, be it tiktok, forums, reddit, or astroturfing campaigns to hit specific demos on facebook, etc.

It was intended to be read as a tiny minority who are increasingly vocal, rather than increasingly tiny.

Here's a serious way to identify if someone's left wing or right wing. Ask them this question: what's more important, human rights or property rights? If they answer that property rights are more important, or, especially if they say something like "Property rights are human rights," you've got a right winger on your hands.

I get your point but only to a degree to be honest. I think more people are purple than purely blue or red when it comes to individual views on things. If you asked me for my opinion about a certain set of issues you'd probably think "this guy is absolutely a left-winger!" However, if you asked me about another set of issues, you'd conclude "this guy is absolutely a right-winger!"

I've personally learned to be careful about casually binary sorting people - life isn't that clean in my experience.

Eh. "Blue" and "red" are not the same as "left" and "right." Both blue and red are neoliberal (i.e. right wing) parties at their cores. There is no actual "left" in American politics to speak of at the national level.

Where is the joke?

Thesis and antithesis.

I'm always down to laugh at liberals for the silly shit we do but this isn't really one of those things. Teaching children about gender isn't an actual liberal issue, that's just the conservative framing for trying to stop the some 500 anti-trans bills conservatives have been pushing, many (like Florida's) that explicitly ban teachers from asking someone's pronouns, banning answering questions students have about it, banning books about it being held in the library, require teachers out trans kids to their parents, and the whole bathroom/spots debacle.

There was no issue until state Republicans tried to weaponize the state to censor people and make trans kids' lives miserable for political points. Schools let trans kids play sports on their own, they stocked informational material on their own, doctors made their own standards for trans care on their own, and Republicans weren't happy about it so they brought down the legislation hammer.

So the joke either needs to pick something stilly liberals actually push for, or the conservatives issue needs to be one that uses exaggerated liberal framing like, "make women the property of their husbands again."

This might come down to definitions, but I don't think "liberal" and "conservative" are good descriptions of the political left and political right.

Liberalism is, or should be, an ideology of democracy, human rights, and personal freedom. Conservative is, or should be, valuing the rule of law, traditional mores, and personal integrity. These two sets of values are in tension, but they aren't opposites. Giving up one doesn't automatically give you the other. If you're careless, you can lose both.

There's nothing "liberal" about a cancel culture ideology which equates speech with violence. And there's nothing "conservative" about a cult of personality that worships a mockery of moral character and undermines the rule of law.

How is liberalism not about the rule of law and personal integrity?

Both seem like a reaction to the other from where I'm standing, basically a series of over-corrections/reactions.

The endgame of that seems to be that you have two sides with some completely crackpot stances that they (hopefully?) don't even really believe in themselves, but use as a sort of identity marker.

I have to confess that personally I find some of it utterly laughable and it's hard for me to engage seriously.

Like, yeah, of course abortion should be legal, but also, being "non-binary" is just a little bit weird.

Both of those camps are, well, to put it politely, in search of a hobby.

From the evidence I’ve seen this is the explicit goal of anti-liberal forces in the world, particularly PRC, Russia, and Iran.

I understand those a-hole’s objectives and can emotionally write them off as a-holes, but the way people in the West play along as useful idiots does get under my skin

No, you're not. There is no "far left" in American politics. The Democrats are not a left wing party.

They are relative terms (though a bit reductionist).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com