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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

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How many of those same people are Republicans today, because of various shifts in the political positions the different American political parties take with respect to demographic groups such as men?

More than a few—this was Georgia Tech and these are all southern white guys—but not the majority.

That’s quite the Overton window you’re living with.

> Georgia

Ah yes, I see.

24 was one of the highest rated shows on television, won 20 Emmy awards and was nominated for 68. People just like torturing and killing terrorists. Not just Americans either—it’s a popular Bollywood trope as well.

Show me someone who "likes torturing" and I'll show you someone who's a social media algorithm away from being MAGA or the local equivalent. "Right wing" is the correct term.

Briefly checking your comment history, it's the correct term for you as well, so what's the issue? You don't want to admit it?

I’m happy to admit it. But I think that there’s lots of democrats who are fine with it too—folks who agree on how to handle terrorists, but just want more generous social welfare. I don’t think its a real dividing line in the electorate.

My opinion probably doesn't matter to the commenter before you (because I am also from the shudder US South), but I think a few things are true here

First, I agree that 24 did have mainstream appeal regardless of political ideology. Pretty much everyone I knew watched it.

Second, the appeal was not solely grounded in "Torture is good". I walked out or closed my eyes on a lot of those scenes, but watched the first few seasons because I liked Chloe's character and because the the format (every episode as one hour of the same day) was novel. Also because it was something I could talk about to friends and family - back when we all consumed the same media regularly.

But if you think back to the Bush years, it really wasn't until after the Iraq war, and Abu Ghraib in particular (2004), that democrats started to come out more vocally against Fox-news approved "enhanced interrogation". It wasn't that they were also pro-torture before, but I think it felt more theoretical to Americans on both sides back in 2001.

Later on anyone who was paying attention had to confront the reality of it. That's when the sides splintered and the Fox-news machine ramped up on normalizing/praising abuse and characterizing every individual ever captured as a blood-thirsty future Bin Laden. Relatedly, Gitmo was a huge deal to the dems back then, even Obama campaigned saying he would close it (it didn't close). He may not have won the nomination without that promise though.

So it was a real dividing line for a moment, but ever since the financial mess of 2008, the democratic voter base has been more engaged on economic and healthcare inadequacies, so when those took over the news, the party was grateful to not remind people about gitmo.

I will say there were pro-torture, war-hawk dems at the highest level. That's always been a problem for dems. But the tone on the ground was very consistently anti-Bush, anti-war, anti-torture (for a moment at least).

Note that democrats and republicans are both right-wing parties.

Only according the far left, in reality this is not true and shouldn’t even be entertained except to a laugh at people trying this hard to shift the Overton window in their favor

Indeed, it's absurd people still have this left/right standoff. Boggled my mind as a kid in history class that the Republicans somehow wanted to free slaves in the past but are all in on bombing the crap out of iraq. Well, guess there's no real code or manifesto to follow. It's almost like they're just saying whatever the heck they have to just to get elected, after that all bets are off.

> Boggled my mind as a kid in history class that the Republicans somehow wanted to free slaves in the past but are all in on bombing the crap out of iraq

It's Christian universalism in both cases. Your average person in the midwest--descendants of people who volunteered for the Union Army at disproportionate rates despite being fresh immigrants with no horse in the race--thought that Saddam Hussain was a comic book villain holding Iraqis hostage and that, if he was overthrown, Iraq would become a democracy like Iowa. They couldn't conceive of a society where a brutal secular dictator was a local optimum.

Then I guess America is just a really right wing country and I’m correct that most people were okay with Jack Bauer torturing terrorists for the greater good.

Highly doubt, perhaps you're just biased due to your own beliefs. Anyway the left/right divide is really silly -- it mixes economic and political orientation. National socialism would be left because socialism and so my god, Mr moustache man really liked beating bad guys. Alright you can argue about this, then what about the bad guys he hated most, most notably the other Mr moustache, Stalin? Communism surely is very left by today's standard, and guess what -- they enjoyed beating bad guys. Both sides of the spectrum literally call for violent revolution all the time.

Who doesn't like beating up bad people? It's in children's fairytale. Getting what you deserve is codified in human moral ideals since like probably cavemen times and movies today still have this theme.

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