Curious: are there any republicans left on HN? I have no concept of how you can defend this
But that is the real response. All politicians do some things that you disagree with, so even if you hate some of their behavior, you can still end up supporting them if on balance their policy decisions are more aligned with your interests.
Generally, I accept slight dissonance with politicians on matters of policy. I don't think it's okay to accept politicians blatantly breaking the law and sneering in the face of culpability.
There's very little incentive to engage with the topic in an intellectually honest way. Most would prefer to only contribute in a way that paints their team in a better light.
I guess that's why any political topics should be avoided on HN. Even with perfect moderation, one can't avoid the biases of individuals selecting when to or not to contribute to a discussion.
How on Earth do you imagine that a forum like this would discuss things like AI regulation without discussing politics? Beyond just regulation, there's inflation, tariffs, copyright, immigration... All of these things affect tech workers every day. A forum without politics is an absurd fantasy.
Could really keep going forever. There's no point in listing all the crime or norms that have been destroyed. Maybe it's good that someone is exploiting all the edge cases and treating our country as a game to be won. I don't see it that way. I love my neighbors.
I'd rather see $1 billion lost to graft than $100 billion lost to bad policy. But I'll admit, Trump's flagrancy makes it hard to ignore.
I'm generally libertarian or classic liberal, so I agree with maybe 70% of Republican policy and 30% of Democratic policy (assuming those are the only two choices), but lately that's been shifting closer to 50/50.
What's objectionable about Democrat policy from the "libertarian or classic liberal" perspective?
Militarized police is definitely one of the areas I disagree with Republicans on, along with abortion restrictions.
As for thought crimes, it's a toss up IMO, but I view Democrats as more likely to try to legislate against them.
I'd like federal government to be a whole lot smaller with more things being left up to state and local governments, so that's why I tend to side with Republican policy more often, but they're not much better either.
If you pursue freedom, and individual liberty and are a US citizen, there's no way to consider GOP policy as providing more freedom or liberty. The only 2 areas I can think of where they even claim to be for freedom is: guns and freedom for corporations.
Then there's literally everything else: being a woman, not straight, not white, not Christian, an income tax payer, a property owner near an unregulated corporate entity, a person who likes sane people to have access to semiautomatic long guns, a person who enjoys drugs, a person who wants to buy or sell sex, ... etc
I don't think many people would agree with that. Other than their philosophical differences in their approach to dealing with externalities (classic liberals favoring preemptive regulations and libertarianism favoring compensation for damage to property rights), I don't see that much practical difference between them.
How on earth could you ever claim to be in favor personal liberty, and support GOP over Dems? GOP are literally trying to enforce a state religion at the federal level in 2026. The list of similar or worse infringements on liberty is truly unprecedented and for me, mind boggling.
Or let's ask the inverse: how do democrats infringe on your liberty or others?
Some examples:
- Starting a war with Iran even after being warned about consequences including the Strait of Hormuz and having the US in a worse position now than before.
- Deciding to end birthright citizenship, allowing race-based stops, and a slew of unconstitutional actions that are helped along by a GOP-appointed SCOTUS majority. This includes rulings under shadow docket so they don't have to explain themselves.
- Literally pretending the 2020 election was stolen and creating legislation like forcing states to provide voter data and targeting election results in a very partisan way.
- A hodgepodge of tariffs that seem to change at the whim of Trump and exert significant complications downstream including inflation.
- Undermining public funding of US research in the sciences in what seems to be an unconstitutional manner. Examples include withholding granted funds based on political interference.
- Completely politicizing DOJ and many other critical government departments to the point that even conservative career government employees resign noting politicization of their offices. This is one reason we see such obvious corruption -- because the watchdogs can't investigate let alone prosecute people favored by this administration (e.g., Epstein files).
- Degrading US health care policy substantially with RFK Jr and bad appointments in a number of positions.
All of the above are well-supported by court cases, investigative reporting, and even official declarations by this administration. What happened to the fundamental belief in the GOP of executive restraint, state vs fed power, fiscal discipline, free-market trade, rule of law, and democracy?
Can you name those policies? I see the most corruption and least accountability of "public servants" that I've ever seen. It is blatant corruption and the party in power, the Republicans, are fully supporting it.
That said, there are definitely Republicans here. They come out of the woodwork when the topic of government waste is brought up.
I'm far from being one of those myself, but I imagine the argument would be that any regulation one could propose to address this is bound to be worse than the problem itself, in terms of chilling effects on legitimate speech and commercial activity.
I don't really care about this country being a ""global leader"" in an industry, but not having to compete with the whole world for my job is sweet.
Thanks to Trumps policies reducing the amount of international students and workers visas, I was actually able to both get accepted into a grad school I never expected and land and a job straight out of college.
Turns out supply and demand also applies to labor, whodathunk.
“That didn’t happen. And if it did, it wasn’t that bad. And if it was, that’s not a big deal. And if it is, that’s not my fault. And if it was, I didn’t mean it. And if I did You deserved it.”
If a President is so corrupt that he is selling access for what is loose change for him - I mean what is $100k when he is getting $400million jet - their local offices will also feel comfortable nickel and diming them for small access. A trip to DMV will turn into "You want your driving license? That'll be $50 extra for me on top of the administrative fees". This is the reality of life in some low trust third world countries. Now coming to America!
But in the meantime lets celebrate equivocating and whataboutism.
I imagine these companies were already spending some amount on crawlers that would poll every N milliseconds to get an edge on some market-moving post. In turn I imagine Truth Social were also spending more serving this bot traffic.
Truth Social making $1M a month from it — a rounding error in Trump’s fortunes — doesn’t seem like a world-ending catastrophe.
Trump has done many bad things to erode trust in our institutions and government. When compared to him trying to overturn the results of an election, this too seems like a rounding error.
I have never voted for Trump, either in a primary or general election. I disagree with him strongly on much of what he does. I would describe myself as conservative, but definitely not MAGA. I'm what was Republican 10 or 30 or 50 years ago, not what they've turned into.
How can I defend this (pay for early access)? I don't. I oppose it.
For those without the power to change reprehensible institutions, invoking this level of tribalism only further entrenches those with power because we remain powerlessly bickering with each other rather than uniting.
Those who seek power seek it to: 1. Enrich themselves and their family 2. Wield it to achieve their means
The "pay to play" is rife everywhere. The contractors who get a sweet deal from local / fed government, the competition is stifled. The senators who make 10's of millions on insider information. The imminent domain cases where property is seized so corporation / donor can make millions. The "futures market" where insiders use their knowledge of product release date to swindle money for ordinary folks. The crypto scams, lotteries, casinos, street vendors, telemarketers, info-mercials, self-help gurus, snake oil sales, lemon peddlers, and more.
The truth is that the human system has not deviated far from the imposed hierarchy of feudalism / monarchy, we have only become better at concealing it, making it more potent in some ways. Power, corruption, opportunism, and greed are part of our nature. In an extremely large population with a democratic veneer, the levers of power become diffuse an ineffable, until they are blatantly shoved into our face.
In some ways I'm glad because its only through a constant vigilance and resetting the public vigilance that these kind of things can be controlled to any degree. Its an entropic force, seeping into the system at all times, only kept at bay by the disdain of the populace and fear in the hearts of the ruling elites.
Its definitely not a Republicans only phenomenon, the list on both sides of the aisle is embarrassingly long. But due to how our political system is setup, and human psychology, little will change by voting. People are tribal, and only have two choices in the matter, both of which are usually power-seeking corrupted. The prisoner's dilemma is giving the US a life-sentence.
Thanks for sharing this. It's a deep insight for me. I did not understand how the same people that were deeply skeptical about the state, ended up being so quiet when the state's corruption became flagrant and blatant. But this line of thinking makes a lot of sense.
In fact, the corruption is what the voters want, to show that they prioritize their group (white, men, rural, rich, benefactors, whatever helps you identify with the “winner” etc) at the expense of others.
One of the easiest and most assured paths to success, wealth, a comfortable life, influence, significance, and security, is by playing the power game. Hence, it will attract those who seek those ends, and discourage those who let beliefs, values, morals, or other similar concerns interfere with their own acquisition of power.
Its only inevitable then that the most corrupt players will eventually ascend, as they continue to amass money and power in such a system. Believing that the real difference is voting for "the good guys" and that will cause wide-sweeping change is probably what Tea Party voters thought in the early 2000s before they morphed into MAGA.
Given that about a third of the voters are fully in support of this, and likely about similar numbers are oblivious, I expect that nothing will be done about it once this admin goes out of power.
Maybe a few people will be made scapegoats to pacify the third that want justice (likely low level/weak ones), but the top level of perpetrators will be untouched and keep most of the loot.