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Comment by yannyu | Hacker News Reader

In the current setup, having enough money protects you from the laws of the country and the judgment of others. Thiel is rich enough and therefore powerful enough that these culture wars will never personally affect him or anyone he cares about.

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I've always suspected this mentality had a lot to do with why Peter Thiel is like that. Growing up in the wreckage of the AIDS crisis and thinking to yourself, "I don't have to go down with them. I don't ever have to be like them. I'm still here, because I'm smarter, I'm better than them." I'd never admit any of this publicly, but I have a lot of similar thoughts as a trans woman who slipped through all the cracks and ended up wealthy in my thirties. Poverty is the tip of the discrimination spear and you really could buy your way out of it all.

Tell that to Ernst Rohm...

"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition...There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."

There's no point misrepresenting a political stance. Well, there is a point, but it's malicious.

Personally I find that quote tired and trite. But so-called "conservatives" could certainly stand to clear up the matter by articulating what their constructive political stances actually are these days - that is beyond merely vice signalling, performative cruelty, and a cult of personality around Dear Leader.

As a libertarian, I certainly have my problems with the progressive orthodoxy. But every time I've tried to work out current conservative principles, by generally appealing to what they claim to be, I've basically just gotten a brush off of why those traditional ideals are not applicable and then a bunch of whataboutism to justify why they have to kill our society to purportedly save it.

TBF Trump isn't a conservative. He's a populist that overthrew the Republican party without firing a single shot and the "conservatives" are all too busy running around in circles to do something about him.

Sure, I agree and I've made similar arguments. But there are still throngs of people self-identifying as conservative and considering Trump conservative. The best I've been able to surmise is that to them, "conservative" merely means in line with the reactionary talk radio of the past several decades, and that anger has replaced all of their ideals.

This is kind of understandable, because that reactionary talk radio was always a form of managed dissent. They kept getting tricked by it, and as communications democratized they somewhat realized this (hence the whole RINO thing). But as usual they're unable to see the larger overall picture, and so direct blame at whomever scapegoats their new info-bubble managers point at.

While I think one party started it back in the '90s, both parties are mostly 2-minute hate daily talking point driven at this point.

I don't think that bodes well for our geopolitical competitiveness in the long run. And you can already see it in the irrational hatred of renewables on the right and the irrational hatred of AI on the left. Meanwhile, enough of the rest of the world has better things to do that we seem destined to become a geopolitical NPC.

While the Democratic party has strongly embraced the 2-minute hate in much of their propaganda, I do not think the both sidesism is warranted. The point is that Republicans have taken their 2-minute hate dynamic of the past several decades, and retconned that anger as the entirety of their policy platform. Whereas Democratic leaders are still trying for constructive policies that abide by their own ideals. We can criticize those ideals, and criticize their policies for failing to live up to those ideals, yes. But their platform doesn't revolve around overtly harming the country with the idea that the other tribe will be harmed more.

As for the "irrational hatred" of "AI", isn't that what laying the groundwork for controlled opposition and regulatory capture looks like? There have been serious problems from lack of business accountability and responsiveness, now exacerbated by AI. But pigeonholing it all into an "AI bad" narrative is basically setting up to defeat any specific reforms.

My take on the democrats at this point is they are the party of learned helplessness. And that's just as harmful as the party of nihilism when they both drop their differences to block the emergence of new voices and new parties.

But I agree they have become the useful idiots for regulatory capture. The right's hatred of renewables is just stupid.

Learned helplessness is not as harmful as nihilism. Learned helplessness has lead to inaction and ineffectiveness, which has at least allowed for stability. Whereas nihilism has led to lashing out, which is quite destructive.

Learned helplessness is just another term for complicit IMO. I'm reminded of the streaming media people whining about licensing terms rather than taking responsibility for their poor job at negotiating with the studios and other holders of media.

if these supposed elected representatives can't take the responsibilities of their jobs and they just want the perks, they need to resign to make room for someone better. Not holding my breath there.

I don't know if much useful can come out of speaking purely in platitudes. I agree there is a lot of blame to be laid at the feet of the Democratic party. But it's important to not lose sight of the larger picture where the Republican party took the status quo of both parties being similarly bad, as an opportunity to become even worse.

The conservatives vote for trump. That's a pretty strong signal.

The secret is that their racism and bigotry is more important to them than their conservative "values".

See also: the success of the "Southern Strategy" in converting racists in the southern US from Democratic to Republican voters, taking advantage of the Democratic Party's focus on civil rights.

As long as Trump keeps hurting the people they don't like, they'll continue to support him.

> There's no point misrepresenting a political stance. Well, there is a point, but it's malicious.

Interesting perspective, considering that you said this only 5 minutes later in this same post:

> There's a communist who's just been elected to Mayer of New York.

The weird part isn't that a socialist got elected mayor of New York. The weird part is that the Democratic party didn't have anyone better to primary him out of the nomination.

The two-party system seems pretty cooked at this point.

Not a socialist. A democratic socialist.

I was wondering about the origin of this phrase, and it may not be what you think it is.

https://slate.com/business/2022/06/wilhoits-law-conservative...

I'm quite aware of the origin, but I appreciate you posting the link for others' edification.

For one with less confusion about the speaker: "For my friends everything, for my enemies the law." --Oscar R. Benavides, President of Peru from 1933 to 1939

Now THAT'S a good quote! Not sure I've heard it before, but it'd be helpful if everyone heard it soon.

I used to think this was deep, but it equally applies to progressivism as well as well as a range of human institutions. It's a restatement the basic observation that humans are prone to in-group bias. What's really dangerous is that some refuse to see the same flaw within themselves and instead always ascribe it to "the other".

And we're all made of matter and anti matter and nothing has meaning. This reductionism is not helpful.

And that includes the Catholic Church.

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