Comment by oneneptune | Hacker News Reader

Comment by oneneptune | Hacker News Reader

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I hear this a lot from Americans, that the percentage of Americans that align with the current right-wing party is actually low. Sometimes you'll see people state that a lot of the right-wing posts you see online are mostly bots.

It's curious to me though, that:

The majority of state governorships,

The majority of state congresses,

The majority of law enforcement,

The majority of military members,

The majority of the US house,

The majority of the US senate,

The majority of the US labor unions,

The majority of the US corporations,

The majority of the US media organizations; both legacy and new,

The majority of the US Supreme Court,

and of course the US Executive branch....

... all belong to the right-wing party we're supposed to believe, according to online rhetoric, is actually only backed by ~30% of Americans. You'd expect a more broad and public resistance if that were true?

Supposedly the centrists and left-wing party members are the silent majority while the right-wing party enacts their agenda with no resistance?

I think the reality is; what we see and hear in the real world is who the US truly is.

In quite a few areas you mention (control of congresses, senates, president) the system has been optimized to allow less densely populated areas to have outsized control. Less densely populated areas historically were the ones that wanted slavery and currently are the areas dominated by Republicans for a number of reasons. The majority it the supreme Court reflects who was in power when people died it retired, not an actual reflection of the people. If a state has a Democrat governor it probably means most of the state is left wing. If that same state has a Republican Senate and a Democrat governor (like mine does) it means that more people are left, but the right has disproportionate control do to low population areas getting disproportionate control

I think for law enforcement and corporations, there is more money and power to be found in supporting the right, so it requires strong leadership to try to do what is best for the population instead of themselves. On the corporate side, this isn't helped by the view pushed into the legal system that corporations only social responsibility is to make the most money for their shareholders in the short term.

We seem to have a system of democracy that may be inferior to many other countries and the cracks are showing. On the not so positive other hand, countries that I would have said have a more robust system are also starting to show cracks, and I don't think it is only because of the influence of foreign big money.

I think it is true that many policies of this administration are only supported by a small minority of Americans and this doesn't seem at all strange to me. The US is (with various state and local exceptions) a first-past-the-post democracy. That means that all political interests necessarily have to coalesce into two political parties or forgo any chance at representation. So the Republican party (and the Democratic party) are really coalitions of dozens of different political interests.

Some people are Republicans because of their opinions on abortion. Some because of their opinions on immigration or crypto regulation. Or their dislike of covid lockdown policies associated with Democrats. Or their preference for tariffs. And so on.

So if a given voter's most important issue is crypto regulation, even if this voter is pro-choice and supports traditional multi-lateral foreign policy, they very may well support Republican politicians, not because they are against abortion or want to invade Greenland, but because those issues are less important to them than their primary issue of crypto regulation.

Now I'm not saying this exonerates the character of the nation. One could argue that it is immoral for voters to prioritize crypto deregulation over multi-lateral foreign policy.

I'm just saying that it is very plausible that only a small minority of the US population supports an invasion of Greenland and, given the political system, there is nothing particularly mysterious about that fact.

Half of these items can be attributed to the fact that low density, rural states have a structural advantage in representation in federal governments, and in the current political era these states lean conservative.

Some of these are just wrong - unions generally lean democratic:

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/10/17/key-facts...

I’m also skeptical of the media organization claim.

And it should surprise no one that purely profit driven corporations switch their professed values with different administrations - see the rapid adoption of DEI programs during the Biden administration, then subsequent abandonment in the Trump era.

Bunch of people explaining this based on voting representation structures but I think they're missing the forest for the trees.

It comes down to power and money. In any capitalist economy with large highly profitable corporate entities, the part(ies) that represent their interests most strongly are simply going to have more leverage and power.

Biden and Harris made the "mistake" of starting to go after Silly Valley for tax evasion and for social/communal issues and so on.

They made the "mistake" of trying to actually advance, modestly, some climate change policy that hurt the oil industry. They made the "mistake" of harming the same global energy industry by heavily sanctioning energy superpower Russia and trying to defeat it in a proxy war.

They made the "mistake" of trying to regulate the cancer that is the cryptocurrency "industry."

And they were completely buried for it. "Allies" in the tech industry just completely abandoned them, and put Vance up as their sock puppet. Musk went scorched earth.

It doesn't matter that centrist opinions might accord with the majority of US society. At least to some degree.

It doesn't match with those who hold real effective power -- monetary, capital power -- need.

Capitalism and democracy only sometimes overlap. They only do so when people keep corporate interests in check through mass action and opposition and unionization and having an active social democratic party, etc. Something the US entirely lacks.

What are you expecting in terms of "broad and public resistance"?

Unfortunately, the political system in the US has been untenable since Citizens United. We only have two viable parties, and both receive their funding from the same sources. I regularly send letters to my Democrat senators and representative, and based on the responses I get back, I can only assume Republicans and Democrat are the same party - they just wear different fashion.

The powers at be are waiting for a Reichstag fire. But, (luckily) Americans are too lazy for that.

A bit unrelated vut this "sending letters" schpiel is genious. A letter sent is not seen by anyone else than the one sending it and the receiving it. They could get millions of letters and the public could still think it was a minor issue.

What are you expecting in terms of "broad and public resistance"?

At the very least, a general strike. That's absolutely the bare minimum that should be expected of the 94% of US citizens that do not support this regime (as is the claim upthread).

Not parent, but while I agree with you, I have very little faith (virtually none) in that happening. Most people are in a week-to-week or month-to-month financial situation; so, even if the desire & political will were to manifest, most people literally can't afford to strike.

If it's true that history repeats, the rational thing to do right now is to lay low, take care of those nearby, and wait for an external rescue party

I know I’ll get downvoted for this but it needs saying.

I don’t think the allies made any exemptions for the German that wrote their representatives in the lead-up to and during the second world war. All got stuck with the bill, 6 million got forcibly deported from their homes. There is a thing as collective guilt and responsibility.

Your country is on collision course with mine, threatening invasion. I really don’t think a few letters absolve you.

I might like you as an individual, who knows, but you can’t run from some responsibility for this.

Hint: these are not independent, random samplings. Turns out when you eliminate restrictions on campaign finance the people who run corporations, the people who get elected, and the people hired and appointed by those elected all wind up being aligned.

It's like commenting that it's weird everyone in any sort of position of power in Russia just happens to be a Putin supporter.

> I hear this a lot from Americans, that the percentage of Americans that align with the current right-wing party is actually low.

The percentage isn't low, you just aren’t going to find them here. And by here I mean hackernews, or the cities that people who are on hackernews live in. There are basically two Americas and they don’t really mix.

There are also moderates who see both sides as corrupt. I’m one of those, but unlike me some of them were disillusioned enough to vote for trump and didn’t know what they were getting into. If you actually look at those voters, they are really confused by this Greenland nonsense.

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