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Comment by lossolo | Hacker News Reader

That would be a great world if that vision could materialize. But as long as people continue polarizing society, exploiting emotions, and using divide and conquer[1] tactics to gain political power, not much will change, and things may even get worse. Social networks have amplified this dynamic more than ever before.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divide_and_conquer

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There is hope.

GP is currently the highest comment, and on other sites I've visited, while too many people cheer this or call for violent retaliation, most of the highly-upvoted comments (both liberal and conservative) condemn it and argue for de-escalation.

Anger and fear are powerful emotions, but so is hope. Barack Obama campaigned on hope and became President, winning his first election with the highest %votes since 1988. Donald Trump also became President in part due to hope; his supporters expected him to improve their lives, while most of Hillary Clinton's and Kamala Harris's supporters just expected them to not make things worse. Now lots of people desperately need hope, and if things get worse more will.

Irrational hope can be dangerous: all the time, people make decisions that backfire horribly, and deep down they knew those decisions would backfire horribly, but they made them anyways out of desperation for an unlikely success. Perhaps this is another example, where the assassin delusionally hoped it would somehow promote and further their desires, but it will almost certainly do the opposite.

But hope can also be rational, and unlike anger and fear (which at best prevent bad things), hope can intrinsically be for causing good things. If a group or candidate that runs on hope for a better world gets enough attention and perceived status, it could turn public perception back to unity and optimism.

Have we considered that the assassin, directly or indirectly, is a seditious third party actor trying to destabilize the US?

I am not claiming this is true. But merely that if I was employed to destabilize the US, I would claim to have been responsible for a number of recent events in order to please my boss.

I am hoping the possibility of a joint common enemy can perhaps unite people in America a bit.

Yes, I was considering that just now, and I thought it's probably not Russians, anyway. There's been a series of actual Russian attempts to destabilize France, including one in the news currently, and they're crude and easily traced because they're carried out by hiring Serbians and Moldovans and Bulgarians to make a relatively short journey and do something relatively easy and low-risk, motivated by money.

The guy who shot Trump in the ear had (arguably) no particular ideology or goal, just an interest in assassinations and a possible depressive disorder.

There's also a possibility that a democratic country in the Middle East with the letter I is involved here, because Charlie Kirk began publicly questioning and speaking about the billions in financial aid it receives. Seems pretty petty on the surface but apparently this country cannot afford to take further hits to its image worldwide, especially in the US.

How would you define "third party" in this case? We now know that the assassin was a follower of Nick Fuentes, acting on the suggestion of Laura Loomer. Both are working with Donald Trump on destabilizing the US. On top of that, the victim itself was also a seditious actor trying to destabilize the US.

In that light, does it really matter what tier party the assassin belonged to? The joint common enemy you allude to is already inside the white house, and as long as that is still up for debate, the country has no future.

> But hope can also be rational

it's not, poor parents can't feed their children with hope

Can be rational. Not everyone is inescapably poor, and for those with opportunities, hope can motivate them out while despair leaves them stuck.

I believe that social media tapped inadvertently into the most effective way ever existed to do this. None of the billionaires really wanted them, I think it was just a happy accident. But instead of recognizing that, they all doubled down with gaslighting and toxicity, because admitting they created a monster would just go against them becoming powerful and rich. And also, let's admit it, because they genuinely can't see it as the monster it is, because it doesn't affect them directly.

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