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Comment by jmward01 | Hacker News Reader

This is illegal, immoral and not supported by the vast majority of the country. Every us citizen and every elected official needs to act, now, to stop this.

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I'd avoid speaking in absolute terms, especially when you're wrong.

At this very moment I am likely a lot of things, but at the top of the list is mad. Very, very mad. I don't have words for this anymore or the patience to debate the intricacies of the broken system that has gotten us here. I am just viscerally, exceptionally, mad. Something will change.

A hostile dictator that caused lots of suffering to his people was removed from power. I don't think mad is the right sentiment but to each his own.

Oof - imagine if the rest of the world decided to abduct the US president using the same argument - and oh yeah, Americans better be grateful.

Don't threaten me with a good time.

To be analogous, hundreds of US civilians would be murdered leading up to the events and the US itself would be bombed to aid the abduction.

Not supported by the people of the USA or the people of Venezuela?

The majority of the country voted for this. Don’t let them off the hook so easily.

Technically ~49.8% of voters, ~31.6% of eligible voters, or ~22.7% of the US population. Or at least those were the numbers when I looked it up 10 months ago.

> not supported by the vast majority of the country

Votes suggest otherwise.

We both know this is an imperfect statement without getting into a lecture about representative democracy or voting modalities.

Americans have been all for this the last couple of rounds as well.

Trump won the electoral vote [edit: and the popular vote]

That’s the one that governs, but in 2024 he also won the popular vote.

I guess we'll forever wonder how much of the lack of turnout was due to backing the wrong party outside a swing state.

This is muddying with jargon. You're insisting on nuance where there is none: Trump won emphatically, and the campaign couldn't have been clearer about what MAGA intended to do in power.

As I recall, Trump specifically campaign on the promise of no more wars.

Nope, I will not get myself dragged into this mud, except maybe to say that by the numbers, "not voting" won.

The combined margin in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania (which could combine to flip the election) was about 250,000 votes. That's not all that emphatic.

The polls[0] on the war do not necessarily fall along party lines

[0]: https://usapolling.substack.com/p/america-marches-into-anoth...

> 60% of Americans oppose sending US troops into Venezuela to remove Maduro from power. Support is heavily concentrated among Republicans, with 58% in favor, compared to just 21% of independents and 14% of Democrats.

But they do.

So there we see that the vast majority of the country opposes this war.

60% is far from vast and the party in power is all for it.

60% represents a considerably greater margin than any presidential election in recent memory

Now that Trump has reported that Maduro was removed from power, it will be interesting to run this poll again and see the support given the success of the operation.

He promised his voters no new wars. So your statement is completely wrong.

He asked why he can't use nukes in 2016. Trump is pro raw power, pro war, always was, always will be. "We didn't vote for this" - all Germans 1945. SPOILER ALERT: They did, it was all in "Mein Kampf".

I hate it when everyone says "Nazi Germany" instead of just "Germany".

Perhaps it is just a Special Military Operation?

The majority of the country voted for this.

Trump won the electoral vote.

Trump asked why the US can't nuke other countries when it has so many nukes. Trump loves war ("department of war") loves bombing other countries - always has. That he is so eager to use nukes should frighten everyone.

Especially in the US, this is a strawman. There is simply not enough granularity of choice that you can make voters accountable for every action Trump does.

Trump was wildly transparent about what kind of person he is. In this case, you can and should.

Guy: "Why do we have nukes if we don't use them?"

Same Guy: "If Europe doesn't buy more weapons from us, Russia should invade Europe, torture, plunder and kill people and do their worst."

People: "I guess I vote for that guy!"

Guy randomly bombs Iran, Yemen, Nigeria, Venezuela, Iraq, Somalia and Syria - people "Huh? I didn't vote for this".

The US only has two parties and decisions are decoupled from the wishes of the people.

It is already a stretch to call it a democracy - which is required to insist on democratic reasoning.

The US only has two parties because people only want two parties. The "our team vs. other team" is so ingrained in US all thinking, people can't stop. Football is not played with three teams. The election system doesn't help, but there is nothing in the constitution that says "Only two parties".

The two party nature is a part of it - historically it might have worked. I currently it seems like oligarchic structures are what's ruining the democracy.

Regardless, If allowed intellectual hoolahop, then most systems of governance can be argued to be democratic.

The polling indicates that the US is desperate for an alternative for something other than the two incumbent parties. They're wildly unpopular and there actually seems to be a political consensus that the US is sliding into ruin which reflects badly on the mainstream policy consensus the majors have been pushing over last few decades.

Just a post ago you identified that Mr. "Why do we have nukes if we don't use them?" was the best available option. That doesn't mean he's a good option, it means there were two choices and the other one was generally seen as the same or worse than Trump. Which given all the stuff that got thrown at Trump is an impressive level of failure.

It’s because of first past the post voting system.

I believe the problem with democracy is that it's affected by various problems analogous to the ones of markets, but often amplified.

In this case, to me, it really seems a matter of extreme information asymmetry as you'd never see in a regular market.

Does he actually mean those things, or is that some sort of joke? How do you even know? BTW, he didn't actually use Nukes, and I don't believe he will. On the other hand, he said he wanted to end wars and sounded like he was against starting new ones.

I've seen people regretting voting for Trump because of tariffs, even though they supported tariffs in the first place. They had no idea that Trump's "tariff" would mean some blanket tariffs at those rates. They thought it was some small tariffs on "key industries".

A further confirmation of the information asymmetry is that after a year, support for Trump is far below what would be needed to elect him.

I'm not sure what the solution is.

I agree with the rest of your point but I dont think its factual to say the majority of the country voted for trump. 77m/343m or ~20% of the country voted for trump, though I'm sure this is what you meant to say.

1. The majority of voters voted for Trump 2. People who don't vote are like fine with whoever wins like "What pizza? I'm fine with every pizza you bring"

Yes, 5 year olds didn't vote for Trump.

Trump won less than 50% of the popular vote.

False. Comment demonstrates ignorance of the electoral college and disregard for fact. Even among eligible voters who did vote, Trump got less than 50% of votes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidentia...

You don't need > 50% of the votes to make a majority when you're pool is more than 2, which it was. Weird thing to hang your hat on.

Majority means > 50%. Perhaps you meant plurality.

Regardless, US presidential elections do not depend on getting a majority or even a plurality of popular votes, but rather on a majority of electoral votes. And Trump did not get a majority of popular votes as claimed.

This being HN, the fact-check seemed appropriate and I stand by it.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/majority

Of the definitions, seems like the third is correct for this context:

3 : the group or political party having the greater number of votes (as in a legislature)

>And Trump did not get a majority of popular votes as claimed.

I would think that he did.

> The majority of the country

He did not win the popular vote.

He won the popular vote, but not a majority of it.

Trump won the popular vote. Those who didn't vote, were "Nah can't be bothered, I'm fine with whoever wins"

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