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Comment by Etheryte | Hacker News Reader

I'm not from the US, so I don't really have a direct horse in this race. Don't you think that polarization like this is exactly what led to the current situation? Culture begets counter culture and demonizing the other side turns into a rallying call in turn.

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There's also a lot more nuance here and I definitely wouldn't say demonization of Democrats as a party is what lead to the current situation, that's seems a very oversimplified take. I would say more demonization of LGBT people, immigrants, scientists, government workers, media, etc. and demonization of those people is very different than demonizing the partisan apparatuses. I'm honestly on board with hating the Democrat political apparatus.

You should be allowed to hate on a political party, it's weird to think that's inherently an issue (especially in the current climate). I think a big part of the problem is in the US we're only allowed 2 parties so if one doesn't stuff you find unacceptable you sorta just need to support the other. Gotta love the "land of the free".

That's all fair, but you do understand that a large part of your point boils down to saying the problem isn't us demonizing them, the problem is them demonizing us, right?

I'm saying demonizing political organizations isn't a problem, demonizing broad classes of people is.

For example: there's a difference between saying immigrants are "poisoning the blood of our country" (direct Trump quote) and "I would never vote for a Republican". The latter is generally fine and expected in any democracy. People have party preferences.

Edit: there's also context and matters of degree that matter here but this is an HN comment and I'm not gonna write an essay.

Since OP didn't find it appropriate to include the context, I'll do it for them:

https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/10/04/trump-poison-blood-qu... -- not even Snopes agrees with this take, and it is wildly out of context.

This out of context take was started by Hasan Piker, a billionaire (or maybe multimillionaire I forget) zoomer streamer self professed 'socialist' lol:

"I was up in New Hampshire the other day. The biggest complaint they have—it’s with all of the problems going on in the world, many of the problems caused by Hillary Clinton and by Barack Obama. All of the problems—the single biggest problem is heroin that pours across our southern border. It’s just pouring and destroying their youth. It’s poisoning the blood of their youth and plenty of other people. We have to have strong borders. We have to keep the drugs out of our country. We are—right now, we’re getting the drugs, they’re getting the cash. We need strong borders. We need absolute—we cannot give amnesty."

I don't really like the phrase because it is definitely easy to use out of context - but heroin and fentanyl are in fact poisoing the blood of this country, and eliminating that is an admirable goal.

There is another quote where he uses the phrase and you can see the full video/context, but the bottom line is not even snopes can get on board with this interpretation and they definitely would if they could manage.

They once claimed a convicted terrorist wasn't a terrorist because there was no universally accepted definition of terrorism, since 'The Weather Underground' were a democrat-aligned group and they will bow down to anything left.

And yet, they still don't agree with what is being claimed here....

The other quote was also in reference to drugs:

"TRUMP: No, nobody has ever seen anything like this. And I think we could say worldwide. I think you could go to the... you could go to a banana republic and pick the worst one, and you're not going to see what we're witnessing now. No control whatsoever. Nobody has any idea where these people are coming from, and we know they come from prisons. We know they come from mental institutions [and] insane asylums. We know they're terrorists. Nobody has ever seen anything like we're witnessing right now. It is a very sad thing for our country. It's poisoning the blood of our country. It's so bad, and people are coming in with disease. People are coming in with every possible thing that you could have. And I got to know a lot of the heads of these countries. They're very cunning people. Very street-smart people. If they're not street-smart, they're not going to be there very long. And when they send up those caravans, and I had it ended, we had the safest border in the history of our country, meaning the history, over the last 80 years. Before that, I assume it was probably not so bad. There was nobody around. But, we had the safest in recorded history by far. The least amount of drugs in many, many decades.*"

Can you make a fake argument that this is implying race mixing is bad? I guess, but you'd be a liar. It is very clear he was using what is in my opinion a terribly worded phrase due to the ease of taking it out of context.... but you would be a liar if you said whattdb7893 said.

He's used this language many times and the snopes article doesn't capture all of the times he's used it since he has used it since then. Some of the times he was clear in referring to drugs but some other times it seemed clear to me he was referring to illegal aliens doing it. It's not really worth it to me litigating how he thinks they are poisoning our blood since saying that a whole group of people is poisoning our blood is a good example of what I was talking about about regardless.

Here's an NBC article that mentions some other times he's said it after that article you linked. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-doubles-...

Edit: also you mention some Streamer named Hasan but your Snopes article references some news host with it looks like a last name of Hasan and I don't think they are the same person

Mehdi Hasan and Hasan Piker are two different people.

My bad there - I have seen Hasan Piker going on unhinged rants about it and I really am not a fan, so I think I saw Hasan and just starting skimming past to the meat of the story.

That was a legitimate oversight on my part and unfortunate since it detracts from the core message, which is that the quotes are wildly out of context and clearly about drug not 'race mixing' like is being claimed here.

https://www.wsj.com/tech/doge-staffer-resigns-over-racist-po...

Look sources and everything.

I'm not sure if you replied to me by mistake or not, but this thread was about the out of context quote that even Snopes did not agree with the presentation of, that was from Trump about drugs rather than 'race-mixing' as was implied here by the poster who deliberately left out the context under the guise of being too lazy.

This appears to be a 'source' claiming one of the DOGE people that Musk hired made a comment perceived as racist in the past. I'm not sure what that source is supposed to add to a conversation that has nothing to do with anybody in it, so I have to assume you meant to reply to someone else.

I think you are lost, but hope you find your way!

EDIT: Just so no one else has to jump through the paywall hoops, here is the 'source' in a readable format: https://archive.is/k1FGs

tl;dr - A DOGE staffer made a racist comment and is no longer with the staff as a result. Not sure what that is supposed to do with taking Trumps quotes out of context deliberately, but I'll save you a few clicks ;)

Look. The general vibe of your comment was "this one cherry picked example was out of context in my opinion so therefore nothing is true", a disingenuous trolling strategy we are all familiar with by now, and you did that in the middle of a larger discussion about the current goings-on with DOGE, to try and cast doubt on the reporting.

Sorry glossing the story I misstated Hasan Piker -- my brain filled in the blanks bcause I saw him going on an unhinged rant about it on mulitple occassions and I try to avoid him as much as possible, so I think I mentally saw 'Hasan', remmbered his rants, and tried to move on.

Thats a legit oversight on my part, even though he did raise a big stink it's not relevant here and dtracts from the real point that these quotes are clearly out of context and used to justify casting Trump as some kind of KKK member despite all of his attempts to help minorities through things like the "Platinum Plan"

I do not think op has duty to enable. It is not even polarization to say you wont vote for a party.

Yes; but in my view, one of the political parties in the country has gone completely off the rails. I was raised right and actually have some core values, so how can I respect someone who enthusiastically voted for president “grab ‘em by the pussy”? There is nothing left to demonize: his sins and crimes are completely out in the open and his followers love 'em. An impeached felon and rapist who tried to blatantly steal the last election is our head of state, and I feel like I have nothing in common with half the country anymore.

In truth, though, I don't think much of this is organic. Right-wing TV and radio (Gingrich, Limbaugh, Carlson, etc.) have been rotting brains around the country for decades. Our current situation is the result of a concerted propaganda campaign by the powerful and wealthy going all the way back to the Nixon impeachment, not some day-to-day disagreements about taxes or culture war issues.

And it’s strong and consistent propaganda. It’s amazing to watch one right wing troll on Twitter state explicitly that he’s going to target the phrase CRT for demonization and within a week all conservative influences, news stations and politicians are talking about how awful CRT in our schools is. All of them sending the same message over and over again completely fabricating a drama out of nothing. And it works. Over and over again from migrant caravans to sharia law to immigrants eating your cats and dogs. Just blatant lies repeated enough completely warps peoples brains. Just look at how many conservatives believe Kamala wants free gender surgery for illegal immigrants and post birth abortions. There are literally tens of millions of people in this country with zero grasp on reality.

I lost my own father to this pipeline. He is basically the “How I lost my father to Fox News” case except it was AM radio over decades as a long haul truck driver. He went from being an intellectually curious atheist to a Bible thumping trumper who constantly rants about Muslims coming to kill us all. The man has never met a Muslim in his life. I don’t recognize him anymore.

I lost my mom to this too. She was turned anti-vax during covid and ended up dying to it in 2022. She successfully beat lung cancer after smoking all her life and then wouldn’t take the most basic precautions she had provided to her kids when we were growing up without any controversy and Covid won.

Your "local" news is regularly contractually obligrated to run segments written by a right wing company:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fHfgU8oMSo

"This is dangerous to democracy"

This is true across the board - your 'local news' isn't local at all, and you'll notice that highlighted outlets include CBS, NBC, Fox, etc.

I'm well aware of that clip, and it disgusted me when it first began circulating nearly a decade ago.

I am opposed to govt influence in media and journalism, period. It doesn't matter which side you pick. Yes, Sinclair Broadcast Group has a right-leaning bias, and the way they have monopolized local news is sickening.

Sinclair is a blight on 'local news' for a variety of reasons, but having a right-bias really is the least of them when you consider how many of the 'big media' companies have a 'liberal bias'. To me the concern here is really the death of local reporting which is being outsourced to a monolithic entity with no stake in the local community.

Here is a general breakdown of the national / international players and their bias:

Comcast - Liberal Bias (https://freebeacon.com/politics/comcasts-agenda/)

Disney - Liberal Bias (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_Walt_Disney_C...)

Warner Bros Discovery - Mixed Bias (Although they own CNN, which is viewed largely as liberal bias: https://www.newsminimalist.com/articles/cnn-faces-financial-...)

Paramount - Liberal Bias (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Paramount_Global)

Sony - Mixed Bias

AT&T (which largely owns the Time Warner conglomerate now): Mixed Bias (https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/at-t-inc/summary?id=D000000...)

News Corp - Conservative Bias (https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-chart) National Amusements (which owns Paramount, MTV, BET, CBS, Viacom which is a conglomerate in and of itself and many more) - Liberal Bias (https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/national-amusements-inc/sum... + https://www.allsides.com/news/2024-07-02-1716/banking-and-fi...)

Viacom - Liberal Bias

Sinclair Broadcast Group - Conservative Bias

These companies compromise the vast majority of media available, particularly in the US. They are all so large with so many subsidiaries it would be impossible to break them all down in a HN comment, but just counting the 'heads of the snake' we have:

Liberal bias: 5 out of this list

Conservative bias: 2 out of this list (and 2 of the smaller of the bunch)

Mixed bias: 3 out of this list

It's great you see the 'local' news for what it is, but that's just a tiny slice of the issue.

So while I certainly agree that the Sinclair situation where they gobbled up any local news stations is a problem, if your trying to imply that the media as a whole is more a conservative bias than liberal that is preposterous. The overall landscape is indisputably 'left leaning' when it comes to Bias.

As I am sure you are aware, similarly there was recently controversy about George Soros buying a major stake in 227 radio stations in the US, which reach 165 million Americans in the 45 markets they cover -- so roughly half the country in that single investment, and if you limited it to adults it's closer to 82%. That's a pretty large chunk of people to have influence over, and could potentially dwarf the Sinclair issue you highlighted but it is at least in the same realm. (https://finance.yahoo.com/news/george-soros-fund-buys-400-16...)

TL;DR - I know you think you did something here, but if you zoom out your point is basically moot even if the buyout of local journalism and news broadcasting is abhorrent.

"Polarization" is an awful, borderline evil way to understand the world today. I hate that is mainstream.

Every single time an extreme right-wing populist runs against any opponent who is _not_ extreme right-wing, the media portrays the election as a "sad reminder of our polarized world". That is absolute bullshit.

Anywhere in the world, the histrionics, the deranged conspiracy theories, the chtonic racialism always come from one side alone, while the other side - which is more often than not garden variety right-wing, mind you - mumbles "let's not do that". But somehow mainstream media successfully portrays this dynamic as "polarization" and "a fight between two extremes".

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