Comment by khriss | Hacker News Reader

Comment by khriss | Hacker News Reader

Aaaaaand right on cue the flagging brigade promptly flagged this to get it off the front page.

What's stunning is that there doesn't seem to be a single way in which the United States has come out ahead on this conflict.

We have

* Established that US zero ability or will to protect it's 'allies' in region beyond Israel.

* Permanently ceded de facto control over the straits of Hormuz to Iran

* Significantly strengthened the hardliners in the Iranian regime and cleared the way for them to have absolute power by eliminating all moderates

* Spiked inflation at home and doubled down on pissing off pretty much every single country except Russia by heaping sky rocketing energy costs on them

* Exploded the myth of US military superiority with US warplanes unable to approach Iran and the carrier groups unable to go anywhere near the straits.

And to think we got this in exchange for spending more on our military than the next few countries combined, and the military is asking for 1.5 Trillion more to continue to fight this war.

All of this to get to a point where we are negotiating a deal which is worse than what we already had with the JCPOA.

I think we will look back on this as the US version of the Suez crisis, the beginning of the end of the US empire.

Well, people don't want to talk politics, but will gladly engage in climate conversations and other random things that are affected by politics, because the one thing where people are chosen to lead on popularity than merit is not interesting while it affects us and is currently causing more deaths than anything else (DOGE defunding, 'eradicated' viruses returning, unauthorised wars).

The front page only has so much space anyways, and they can't flag everything forever.

People talk politics and want to talk politics here. But, there are groups of people who flag politically uncomfortable stories.

And it is systematic. I yes, I read new so I dont buy the neutrality or randomnness of put of topic claims.

I agree with you. When I say they don't want to talk politics, it's more to say that Americans, which I presume makes the most of HN's readership; are embarassed by their political decisions, and would rather censor discussion than accept what the world sees of them and their leaders.

The ruling class (both foreign and domestic) are struggling on many fronts with the suppression of public dialog. HN isn't one of those places, here you can just press a button a few times ~ and the uni-party will come out victorious once again to bring the world another round of the same earth shaking bullshit.

I get this feeling that anyone right-leaning on any smarter corner of the internet is very unwilling to discuss uncomfortable politics. I presume this is largely because for many their political affiliation is emotional rather than rational, so confronting difficult topics is unpleasant and something they'd rather push away by flagging or trolling.

I agree with you right until the end:

This is closer to the end of the Roman Republic — and strange events such as threats against Greenland and Canada can be interpreted in that context as well.

That is, we’re not seeing the downfall of the US empire but the downfall of the US republic that will eventually retreat to North America and retrench its position — hence moving Canada and Greenland (and Cuba and…) from informal relations with a hegemon to formal vassals of an empire. And emerge as an actual empire, much like Rome before.

While I understand the emotional temptation, using the word “empire” in place of “hegemony” can lead to inaccurate predictions — eg, total US collapse versus pullback for retrenchment and reformation.

To add to this, in the same way that Rome and the Roman Empire in some ways lived on through the Catholic Church, I think the 'church of capitalism' will mean that the American empire lives in far far into the future, and retains some of its power.

The transformation from Roman republic to Roman empire was mainly about how the top-level government is organized. It was not about the relations with vassals/periphery. The Roman republic was as imperialistic as empire in this regard. In fact, most of the Roman conquering was already done when the republic ended.

Yes — the Roman Empire was in a period of retreat and reformation when it formed.

That’s my point:

The US has neither entered an empire nor the decline post-empire because it gained territorial holdings over the past century — that’s consistent with late stage republics as well.

> Aaaaaand right on cue the flagging brigade promptly flagged this to get it off the front page.

This is why I exclusively use https://hckrnews.com as the "front page"

After many years of using that, the few times when I manually get to news.ycombinator.com I find it unreadable haha. Crazy how ones brain adapts.

Agreed.

Aside from it being uncensored, its default chronological sort makes it much easier to follow and see where I left off.

Look at the quality of discussion here. It's all just 'America is dead/dying'. Nothing of note. No talking about the crazy inflation in Iran, the government officials discussions on how they can't afford replacing their naval routes with land routes. The current distress in Iran about raising the subsidized gas prices, and how Iran is using more gas than they are creating/importing. No awareness/comparison/context of understanding of Vietnam and it's much greater impact on the Nation/it's understanding of self/understand of it's ability to project power.

These is zero serious discussion on HN Iran threads, and anyone that posts not in line gets voted dead so just gave up on posting to them yet the people that complain about topics getting flagged dead never once complain when an entire view/side/political thought just get's voted dead instead of discussed nor raise the quality level of the discussion to make it no longer flag worthy.

This thread's content/quality level totally 100% deserves to be flagged.

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