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Comment by applfanboysbgon | Hacker News Reader

This is a weird quote. It reeks of pretentious pseudo-intellectualism. People vote for a government that does something very tangible about all of those things. The media influenced how Americans voted in the US election, and they voted for a guy that predictably started a major new war in the Middle East. That is a real thing that happened and has impacted billions of people globally with second-order economic effects. Is anything short of each individual American taking up arms and marching to Iran "doing nothing"?

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> People vote for a government that does something very tangible about all of those things

People don't do that.

Politics in US(and democracies in general) have what I call the cable tv bundling problem.

Imagine you have only two bundle packages with your most preferred channels split evenly across two packages along with some unwanted channels. Regardless of which package you choose, you'll miss out on some of your favorite channel and still subscribe to unwanted ones.

You may enjoy watching a channel occassionally at your neighbors who subscribed to the other package but when it is time for renewal, you personally pick the package that gives you maximum bang for your money & preferences.

People will vote mainly based on one or two issues they strongly feel about.

In this case, one of the packages is uninspiring and the other is fascism, so the choice is fairly clear.

Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos.

is he a fascist?

The US is a statistical outlier in almost every single metric. Almost nothing about the US generalizes, not to the world as a whole, and not to other Western countries. Certainly not to functioning liberal democracies.

Value bundling is a pretty universal problem. Maybe Switzerland is less impacted with their direct democracy escape valves, but it's a huge issue in almost every country.

The US has an extreme case of it, with their 2 parties system, but most countries can't keep 4 different issues actively guiding politics.

The US suffers from Duverger's Law which means that any vote for anything other than one of the two big parties is wasted. In my country, we currently have 17 different parties, each with different variations of policies. Some are outliers, but many of them have or have had power to some degree over the years. Your cable-tv problem still exists, but to a much smaller extent.

My take on it is that he's not blaming people for the "doing nothing" part, but rather the fretting part. Of course most Americans can't reasonably do anything beyond vote or throw some dollars or social media sentiment at the thing. One should just take into mind that that is the limit of most people's ability to effect change.

Which is enough to make the rest of the world hold their breath, waiting to see what the sum of little choices will be.

People vote for such a government very rarely - in the US, about once every two years. I don't think anyone would object to you spending a week or even a month before the election learning a large amount about what's wrong in the world. But when you go into the voting booth on November 3 this year, do you expect your choices will be at all influenced by the details of the bad news you read on June 21?

Candidates don't pop up out of nowhere on election day, and building support for either candidates or policies takes time, public debate, raising awareness. All of that is a reason for more political engagement, not less. Given how much power we actually wield to significantly influence how issues are approached in a democracy, we should strive to make more constructive use of the news. There are real, deep-seated problems with both the current media and how people consume it, but we have a civic responsibility to do better rather than disengage, because quite literally the fate of millions of people are influenced by the sum of our actions.

Candidates don't find it difficult to express the most popular opinions in the short time before an election. You really do have to know what they did previously if you want to correctly evaluate them.

It’s not really.

The peekaboo world, elegantly described, gives you enough information or misinformation to make an uninformed decision.

You vote for who you were told to vote for.

It wasn’t predictable that he would start a war.

He presented himself as the anti-war candidate and then betrayed his electorate.

It was evident to anyone aware and paying attention.

The real question is should you have trusted his manifesto after the last time?

From outside the US, nothing about him has really been predictable, except that he consistently lies about everything.

The only predictable thing about this American presidency is the total chaos that has been inflicted on the world by millions of intellectually degenerate Americans. This is what the world sees. Almost nobody is making excuses for him, everybody is trying to move on without the US.

So yeah, in that sense another war is simultaneously an unpredictable outcome and an unsurprising outcome.

During his first term, his continuous threats to north Korea were enough to force congress to restrict presidential powers (the whole fire and fury stuff), and that's not counting Venezuela, Syria and others.

Since January 6th it was clear that he would be willing to secure his power in any way. The most obvious way in america is to start a war.

And even if noone could predict that - the worst part is all the Americans sitting by, twiddling thumbs after seeing Trump making the whole world worse. You are the loudest "democracy" on the planet, but noone demands the necessary accountability from the dear leader. Democracy does not only happen on election day.

If you paid attention to his actions while in office, rather than a selection of his words while on the campaign trail, it was pretty clear he wasn't in the least bit interested in being a "peace president;" he just wanted the Nobel Peace Price because Obama got one.

I agree with this. What was certain and predictable was that Harris was a war candidate (the Democrats presided over the first year of genocide and were intending to continue).

MAGA was going to be bad in some way, but the Democrats were very bad in very known ways, so voting for whoever was at least saying they were against war was the rational decision for anyone who cared about not having genociders at the helm of the state.

>MAGA was going to be bad in some way, but the Democrats were very bad in very known ways, so voting for whoever was at least saying they were against war was the rational decision for anyone who cared about not having genociders at the helm of the state.

This implies that Donald Trump/Republicans weren't pro-Zionist and didn't support Israel which is obviously untrue.

The truth is there was no "non-genocide" candidate between the two parties and pretending otherwise - particularly by voting for Trump - was simply self-delusion.

Both sides are against the genocide of Israel, thank God - and against the genocide of Arabs.

(Unlike the meme-puppets who now believe that some genocides are better than other genocides).

Both Harris and Trump were identical in that respect, so it shouldn't have swayed your decision.

Harris was a known to be bad with respect to the war issue, became very obviously bad when she started campaigning with Liz Cheney. Trump was less known bad, so that difference should certainly have swayed your decision.

Greater variance, same mean

Trump had already tried to overthrow the previous election. He could only have been thought less bad if you weren't paying attention.

If you define paying attention as funneling MSNBC straight into your brain 24/7, then sure.

To give you the benefit of the doubt at best it would be like 5/10 vs 6/10. There wasn’t ever any difference that Soto’s have ever recruited into any decision. The only reason someone would have thought Harris was a war candidate would have been because rogan or similar said it.

How many wars and military actions did he start in his first term? How many times did he do the opposite of what he said he did? The specific case is unpredictable, the general pattern isn't.

He presented himself as someone who has utter disregard for any form of coherence and people actually argued that that's what made him palatable to the masses. I don't think that someone who voted for him can in good faith claim they didn't know he would betray his promises. All they wanted Is for him to own the libs

You'd have trouble finding a candidate who wouldn't predictably start a major war in the middle East. Biden and Trump 1 were kind of exceptions. Kamala certainly seemed pro-war-in-the-middle-East with her support for Israel, so she's out. Who did you vote for instead?

Frankly, bullshit. Harris did not seemed more pro war or aggressive, unless you live in deep conservative bubble.

The slight problem here is that the war was started by Netenyahu, whom US voters are unable to remove. But yes, I doubt Harris would have gone for the decapitation strike that destabilized everything.

War was started by Trump, Hegseth and Netenyahu. Hegseth specifically wants wars for emotional reasons - it makes him feel good.

America has a lot of Iran hawks, especially in goverment/military circles. They got their way.

See what I mean? America keeps starting wars in the middle east. Go back further in time and it was Obama, then Bush, then a little bit of Clinton, then the other Bush. It doesn't matter who or what party they're in, they mostly end up doing it anyway. No reason to think Harris would be anything different, especially considering her statements of promising military support to Israel.

It sounds like you are trying to both-sides away the fact that Trump (or "Trump 2", if you insist) is an outlier here. US support for Israel has been pretty invariant over the years but nobody went along with Bibi's wet dream until now.

No I dont see what you mean. You are trying to Harris sound the same as Trump. That is extremely dishonest framing. There is a reason why Israel and pro-Israel Americans went with Trump - because he was giving them a lot more of what they wanted.

Trumps military/war track record so far is a.) Iran war b.) Venezuela kidnapping c.) pro-Russia stance in Ukraine d.) board of peace composed of dictators and murderers e.) regular boatsmen murders f.) trying to steal Greenland. The Harris "refuses to take pro-palestinian side and refuses to abandon Israel entirely, but still not enough for pre-Israel side to accept her" is weak sauce.

We're talking about before his election. What made it predictable that Trump would bomb Iran but Harris wouldn't? Whoever the president is, the forces that make America fight wars seem to keep on successfully pushing them to do it. Both their parties started a lot of wars in the middle east with their previous presidents (Obama and Bush II).

Trump avoided briefings like they were his uglier children, famously first term rumours claimed the intelligence crowd had to dumb down two hour compact briefings to 5 minute cartoon animated toilet reading fodder.

Harris has a background as a prosecutor and has a track record of being literate and processing stacked feet thick piles of paper.

The force pushing to bomb Iran has always been Israel, the counter force has always been detailed backlogs of military exercises that relentlessly conclude that to be a bloody stupid idea.

It was predictable that Harris would take good advice (and perhaps follow that), and equally predictable that Trump would bluster his way forward and ignore the existing weight of experience and prior exercises.

FWiW I would not have predicted that Trump would stick himself into Iran ... I honestly thought he was stupid, just not that stupid. Although the Obama deal was famously one of his weird tic like bugaboos .. correctly factoring in how much room the former POTUS occupied in the Trumple cranium was likely where I failed.

> conclude that to be a bloody stupid idea.

You say that as if all the other presidents' wars in the middle east were shown to be good ideas and they were smart to follow that advice and kill all those people their generals wanted to kill. Iran seems to have not been nearly as terrible as Iraq, Afghanistan, or Libya, or Syria. The death toll is only around 10000. What's the problem? Don't say oil prices increased because that's a good thing.

> You say that as if all the other presidents' wars ...

That would be entirely your take on things I did not mention.

> The death toll is only around 10000.

What's the population of the suburb you live in? About that?

> What's the problem?

\1 Trump started by destroying an agreement hard fought for by multiple countries that actually contained enrichment.

\2 The US has lost the bulk of post WWII soft power built up over decades as a result.

\3 Iran has splintered into independent smaller groups any one of which can go rogue with nuclear weapons / dirty bombs.

\4 Other states (eg: North Korea) are now fully emboldened and have ramped up their actual nuclear weapon production.

... etc.

There's a long long list of problems here - all could have been circumvented by a competent POTUS with a full experienced diplomatic cadre.

>What's the population of the suburb you live in? About that?

This comment shows you're being disingenuous. If a war killed 4 people, you'd be asking how big my family was. You can obviously understand the significance of that figure and it's nothing to do with suburbs.

Netenyahu has been pushing the "Iran is building a nuke; they're literally a week away" line for decades.

Trump and the day drinker were the first senior US officials to take that seriously - Trump kicked that off by neutering a working and workable international agreement that capped HEU levels and allowed routine inspection and on site monitoring agreement, with more stupidity following.

Harris, and most other "traditional" (non MAGA) candidates typically follow the advice of the core military and intelligence services; it's unlikely any career politician would have jumped into open assault on either alleged drug boats or Iran.

Is Netanyahu now an official representative of the american government?

No, but neither was Musk, yet DOGE happened. Trump isn't just a malignant sadistic narcissist, he's also a vulnerable senior with dementia that others can exploit.

netenyahu may have convinced trump tp go to war, but its the US that started the war.

it would be a different case, and very likely a different iranian response if israel had started the war, and the US did its more typical "is nearby and shoots down missiles flying overhead"

On the other hand - you may not choose a whether a president will start a war in the middle east, but Trump's cost was abnormally low compared to his predecessors in one very important area - soldier's coffins coming home. His adventurism may have had substantial financial costs, but is better than Bush or Obama on deaths while in combat.

Trump is unhinged enough to not care about sunk cost fallacy. The deal is still terrible though.

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