Hacker News Reader

Comment by kashunstva | Hacker News Reader

From the United States government letter to Harvard: "Harvard must implement a comprehensive mask ban with serious and immediate penalties for violation, not less than suspension."

So if a student has, say, an immunodeficiency syndrome and wears a mask to protect their health during the riskier seasons of the year, they would face dismissal from the university? (Or worse - whatever that is - according to the letter.)

This is how we know that the Republican party has no interest in freedom as the word is conventionally defined.

View on HN

They want freedom for themselves. They're free to impose their will on others without judgement. That's the purpose.

I wrote this on another thread recently, reposting here:

Things started to make more sense to me once I realized that by nature, human beings hate freedom and love tyranny. Once you accept this, it all falls in place. Deporting citizens to foreign prisons? Sounds great. Incoherent foreign and economic policy? Love it. Freedom of the press? Who needs it! Destruction of democracy? Own the libs! Legalize bribery of foreign officials? Even the playing field! And finally, words don’t need to mean anything because they are simply evocations intended to stir up certain emotions. They are more akin to a hunter’s duck call. The hunter doesn’t speak duck and doesn’t care whether that sounds he’s making have any meaning, he simply makes noise and looks for a result. Not getting the desired result? Just change the noise a little.

This is why democracy will eventually fail and autocracy will rise in its place. And no one will ever learn.

Seems like this could also be explained by short memories. Most westerners, me included, have never lived through true tyranny, we don't know the signs and probably are just too comfortable coasting along, thinking what we have now won't suddenly disappear [1].

We can read history, but it's nothing compared to actually living through it. And I think most American voters don't know their history, and don't bother to inform themselves either, which makes things much worse.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seneca_effect

A large part of the population struggles to even entertain a hypothetical scenario. I’m active in several agricultural forums, and it’s clear that many participants lack fundamental knowledge across the board. They’re generally incapable of engaging in meaningful discussion. Almost every comment they post seems aimed at shutting down the conversation rather than continuing it. There is no curiosity. The world is already way too complex.

I think that's a function of the internet combined with a new flavor of individual exceptionalism. It is shockingly easy to engage only in echo chambers, even without knowing it. You're just on a site for people with similar interests, nevermind that those people all agree with you entirely.

Combine that with the lessons kids are learning that they are legitimately unique and special, and anyone who makes them feel bad is just wrong, and here we are.

Or maybe I'm just the old man shouting at clouds now. Who knows.

The “unique and special” kids are mostly Americans, I think. At least I don’t recognize that parenting style anywhere around me.

I really think the world is too complex for most people and they outsource their critical thinking to the group they chose to join or even were born into.

I don’t think it’s a modern problem. Religion formed enormous safe spaces for incurious people before they ran into new peers via the internet.

There's a whole Radiolab or this American life episode on this.

Basically, young people haven't lived through anything and are very willing to give up democracy.

Autocracy, or some form of it, has been the dominant form of governance throughout the history of human civilization. That's not gonna change just because we got Apple watches. Democracy was a really nice experiment, but it's over now.

ironically enough, most of those regimes also fell. Even autocracies realized from millenia of history that its easier to control people when they feel like they have power. Or distract them with circuses.

Turns out Apple watches can change and stabilize such autocracies.

Yeah, for about a century or two. This is not the first time all of this has happened. Read your history.

The current regime in Washington is clearly fascist, there is nothing democratic at all about them. They want to banish Americans to foreign concentration camps for torture, he said that just before his interview with the El Salvador President who is hosting at least one of said concentration camps. Yet the media says little.

A "comprehensive mask ban" would presumably include exceptions for people who are immunocompromised, actively sick with an upper-respiratory infection, etc.

Steelman, don't straw man.

That's open to interpretation. That's the problem. We've seen how Republicans treat anything that deals with nuance.

I mean...the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is really clear, and the Democrats have weaponized it to help the constituencies they're pursuing. Whether that's morally correct or not is beside the point, because that's not why the party machine is doing it. They've institutionalized racism and sexism at a scale we haven't seen since the civil rights movement brought merit ("...by the content of their character.") to the fore.

> Whether that's morally correct or not is beside the point

ignoring if you claim is even correct: morals drive logic for most laws. That's why every first world organization says "killing is bad". And then cut further saying "killing is justified if your life was in danger".

Morals ostensibly drive logic for some (not most, most are boring tax stuff) laws, but what's really going on is some group of people thinks the law will advantage them and so pushes it. Blue Team doesn't inherently care about black people, they care about getting black Americans' votes. You'd hope the moral and the instrumental would align, but not always.

"presumably" is carrying a lot of water here. For instance women are bleeding out in Texas parking lots because doctors are afraid to give abortions even on women who could potentially die from complications because it's not a sure thing. This is the MAGA mentality

Let's be realistic: how many doctors have ever been held accountable for performing abortions to avoid complications? How do you even imagine a trial against such a doctor? Women are bleeding out in Texas parking lots because doctors wants them to bleed out to make a political stunt.

>how many doctors have ever been held accountable for performing abortions to avoid complications?

I got at least one: https://apnews.com/article/abortion-doctor-maggie-carpenter-...

https://www.texastribune.org/2025/03/17/texas-abortion-midwi...

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/13/us/texas-abortion-doctor-...

it's very recent law but the cases are already racking up. And it's just basic game theory. Help and you might be arrested, don't help and leave it to the state to battle between negligence vs. upholding the law.

>How do you even imagine a trial against such a doctor?

As seen in the DOJ, I expect a kangaroo court, of course.

That's exactly my point: all three articles says nothing about any doctor's responsibility for abortion with the goal to prevent harm to pregnant woman. No arrests, no charges, no fines, nothing, not even single case (as far as I know; your links also describes zero such cases).

And still women are bleeding out. What else could it be other than doctors' political stunts at the cost of women's lives?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com