Hacker News Reader

Comment by potato3732842 | Hacker News Reader

>this is going to escalate the conflict.

Sure, if by "this" you mean media and a segment of the population harping on how the strike did little or nothing.

After the strike and before this reporting Israel could justify deescalation by saying the nuclear program was crippled and Iran could justify deescalation by acting like it was no big deal and they lobbed counter strikes to great effect (lol) and the US could justify deescalation with the usual "look what happens to brown foreigners who cross us and our buddies" schtick and from there the matter could be quietly dropped, at least as much as such things can be.

That may all still happen, but all this rhetoric about how the strikes were ineffective is driving things toward escalation.

View on HN

After the strike and before this reporting Israel could justify de-escalation by saying the nuclear program was crippled...

Except Netanyahu doesn't appear to want to de-escalate. And has a long history of repeatedly declaring Iran is only X weeks away from a practical nuke to justify immediate strikes.

Netanyahu can want whatever he wants but a "serious" war with Iran is not within the practicalities of his domestic political situation unless someone else (the US) is picking up the tab.

The media is reporting the world as it is, not the world as it should be. It's not their job to de-escalate. Kinda silly IMO to blame the people writing articles instead of blaming the people dropping bombs and launching missiles.

> The media is reporting the world as it is

Do you honestly believe this?

no, because it's much more complicated than can be summed up in a hn comment. "the media" is not a real thing, it's just a term that refers vaguely to a very large collection of different people, each of whom has different beliefs, ideas, and goals. What they write/say will be filtered through those beliefs, ideas, and goals.

If my neighbor, who grew up in Canada, says "it's not very cold out today", he is attempting to describe the world as it is. Is he correct? If I consider him to be incorrect, it doesn't follow that he is trying to mislead me.

I agree with you, while it is complicated, news organizations should and are reporting the facts (we are discussing them here). I think some people in "media" are probably using hot-button adjectives to get at Trump, and to his discredit it seems to be working.

As somebody who knows a lot of journalists I can report that I haven't met any journalist who spilled the beans on that cabal who conspires to report on a false world.

I have heard them talk so negatively on the owners and chief editors of populist media such as Murdock, Berlusconi, Springer that I have just cut them completely out of my news consumption.

I’d sure like to know what you are reading and watching that has caused you to form this conclusion.

Almost every national or international report I see and read has a distinct narrative threaded through it. Just look at descriptives and word choice.

“ICE Barbie” etc…

I have seen the term "ICE barbie" on social media, but I don't consider that a credible source.

Obviously everything you hear from someone else, whether it's published in the newspaper or a passing comment from your neighbor, it's going to be filtered through their ideas, beliefs, and goals.

Some people have a goal to communicate accurately and limit their bias. Other people find it more important to get ad clicks or upvotes.

There are a lot of what I would call left leaning news sites that only refer to Krist Noem by that name. Not just social media.

Just do a google search for the phrase and qualify it with news results only. Lots and lots of well known news outlets are using it regularly to refer to her.

I am not saying this is a one-sided thing only on the left. It’s on the other side too. The “ICE Barbie” was the most obvious recent example that I have been seeing.

Care to provide some sources for these wild statements? Got an AP article where they use that as her name? Maybe we just have a different definition of credible news sources.

Just do what what I said. Google the term, limit it to “news”. See the sources using it and see if they are well known and are considered “credible” on your opinion.

What you will see is msn, nj.com, telegraph, yahoo news, TNR, metro.co.uk, Toronto Sun, New York Sun using it

If the rhetoric is actually true then it’s not just rhetoric and things will escalate regardless based on the facts on the ground. If it’s not true then yes you would have a point, maybe.

But is it true?

Trump's goal is just to prop up his base, like any normal politician. He dropped a big bomb, made a big announcement, his base will be happy.

Netanyahu's goal is to either occupy or destroy the Islamic world. He's smart enough to know he has to do it in baby steps. He's been working the long game on this for decades. So he'll notch this up as a win, and already be working on his next plan.

I don't see an imminent escalation, unless Iran itself escalates things (in ways other than economic)

> His base will be happy

No…Trump’s base didn’t want this. They might not pull back support if the deescalation holds (because he is scratching their other itches) but the MAGA base are definitely not excited about more war and conflict for the US.

MAGA is not neocon.

MAGA is whatever the fuck Donald Trump tells them to be.

Hypocrisy or inconsistency have already never stopped the Republican party and they will most certainly not stop the most extreme version of it.

- https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/trump-posts-bom...

- https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1147408825006...

Hypocrisy is rampant in both parties and if you believe beyond his most extreme base that Trump’s whims control the bulk of the people who voted for him, I’d say you dont know many Trump voters.

Almost every Trump voter I know voted for him as the lesser of two evils.

From a European perspective you have one party which is completely delusional and another party which seems unable to capitalize on that.

How anybody can consider voting for Trump as a lesser evil is just incomprehensible.

Depends on what direction your personal "evil" axis points in.

Is not prosecuting crimes more evil, or is jailing people more evil?

Is not trusting science more evil, or is trusting (at least partly) wrong science more evil?

Is hiring people with lesser qualifications more evil, or is letting structural inequality persist more evil?

Is letting evil persist in the world more evil, or is foreign military intervention more evil?

Those are not questions with objectively verifiable answers. The answers depend on your values system. If someone has answers that you disagree with, that does not inherently mean that their values system is stupid or immoral or wrong.

Note well: I'm not saying that Trump is a good answer. Even plenty of people who voted for him don't think he's a good answer. But some like his actions during his first term better than they liked Biden's actions.

I didn’t vote for him or Harris. I didn’t vote for her because she failed in the most important duty that she had as VP—which was to become the president when it was apparent that he couldn’t do the job.

She should have raised a flag…she had the media access to do it, but stayed silent. She put her party over her country.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com