Hacker News Reader

Comment by lacy_tinpot | Hacker News Reader

To imagine being anti-pharma, and big corporations used to be a Leftists/Hippy talking point.

Still is. Portland, OR shoots down fluoridated water every time.

You don’t need it in the water when you can get it from many other sources. I find it strange that there would be additives to something basic like water. And as I recall there are studies that show too much can be bad too. It’s hard to know your dosage if random things incorporate it as an additive unexpectedly.

Most of the world doesn't put fluoride in tap water. I appreciate that you've been raised to believe it's a "no-brainer and only idiots would oppose it", but there are actual tangible downsides to doing it and now that fluoride toothpaste is widespread there might not even be any upside to fluoride in water anymore.

Hippies were never leftists, they were liberals. And when fascists come knocking, liberals flock to fascism.

Also, being anti big pharma isn't the same as believing in conspiracy theories. You can't resist if you don't live in reality.

> Hippies were never leftists, they were liberals. And when fascists come knocking, liberals flock to fascism.

I don’t understand this, can you explain what you meant? Maybe with examples?

Democratic party and Biden (liberals) when running against republicans (fascists): "Democracy is at stake" https://www.cbsnews.com/news/president-biden-speaks-on-stake...

Biden, when Trump arrives at White House: "Welcome home" https://www.yahoo.com/news/welcome-home-joe-biden-greets-160...

Also, in Germany the Nazi Party never got more than 43,91% of the votes in free elections. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Party_election_results Hitler rose to power through the support of the "moderate" or "liberal" right wing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler%27s_rise_to_power

Papen wasn’t even remotely left wing or even “moderate”. Hindenburg also hated democracy and wanted to destroy it.

There were barely any liberals left in the Reichstag when it voted for the enabling act (progressive liberalism as we’d understand it hardly existed in Germany back then anyway). Closest would be the moderate-conservative Catholic “Center” party who usually were historically part of the Socialist-Liberal coalition.

Anyway you cut it far-right parties had the majority of seats in 1933. Of course everyone else could have actually tried doing something instead fighting with each other or just tagging along with the nazis “since it can’t be that bad”.

Left-leaning people famously tend to disagree with each other (eg: as lampooned in https://youtube.com/watch?v=WboggjN_G-4).

If 'hippies' here refers to the original hippies back in the 1960s, they ran the whole range from far pipebombs-in-the-name-of-communism left, to centrist.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com