Comment by IslandRebel | Hacker News Reader

Comment by IslandRebel | Hacker News Reader

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> Let's call it what it is, someone crying because their project isn't getting the love it wants while someone new did. Welcome to life. This happens all the time in business. CSS-Tricks is old, it had it's time and now it's time to move on. DO can do whatever they want. If they want to focus on getting Omarchy popular, then so be it.

CSS Tricks was a massively useful resource. However tailwind and/or other frontend frameworks have abstracted a lot of this away and tbh I've haven't even bothered looking at the site in several years.

> And dude, what is with all the DHH hate??? The dude isn't a Nazi, fascist or racist. The dude sees the country he loves turning into a cesspool and wrote about it. We're seeing the same thing here in the US with all these immigrants taking over Michigan.

Unfortunately political polarisation is affecting everyone and everything.

The topic is an almost obligatory mention any time Omarchy gets mentioned. I've seen stuff like this webpage https://stopomarchy.neocities.org/ where they are claiming Jeff Geerling to be a fascist, which is obviously ridiculous.

I don't believe DHH to be a fascist or whatever (yes I read the blog post, it is standard reactionary politics that been around for about a decade now). I am not sure why feel the need to constantly mention it, I understand he may have some views that people disagree with, but he cannot realistically affect any change. The obligatory mention feels performative IMO.

Moreover, I deeply disagree with the politics of many prominent people (of all political persuasions) that are often front and centre in tech, you won't hear me mentioning it unless it is relevant to their work or they are in a position to actually affect change.

> I understand he may have some views that people disagree with, but he cannot realistically affect any change.

You keep saying that, but I think what you’re missing is that he can affect change. He’s a public figure with a large amount of influence, as made evident by the companies giving him money. His reach gives him the power to contribute to the normalisation of certain topics, thus moving the Overton window, and his opinions attract like-minded powerful people with political influence.

Ignoring him as just some powerless guy who cannot enact change is frankly naive, and a mistake the world has made before.

I am sorry but you severely misunderstand how politics work if you believe the amount of money and some notoriety online will translate into votes / enacting legislation.

Do you... not know how political donors and lobbying work?

Pretending that support for a Linux distro is going to translate directly (or at all) into political lobbying that is going to eclipse large donor groups that will sink hundreds of millions behind a candidate is delusional.

Why should it need to eclipse them? I think you are either ignorant or naive if you can’t see how this could be politically motivated.

It was a turn of phrase. I am just pointing out that it is extremely unlikely.

I don't think any of this is politically motivated (the Linux stuff). I don't see anything on the site that even mentions anything remotely political.

You severely misunderstand the world if you believe the only way to be harmful and enact change is through votes and legislation.

Also, perhaps read up on lobbying and historic cases like Citizens United v. FEC, if you think money plays no part in politics.

I find these sorts of conversations tiresome. Almost nobody who isn't interested in particular parts of the tech remotely knows who DHH is. He managed to secure some funding for his Linux distro. None of this directly translates to the broader political landscape.

I think you and others that pretending that this is the case, is borderline delusional.

> I am sorry but you severely misunderstand how politics work

I'd say you are the one that doesn't know but that's exactly how far right propaganda works.

They are all saints fighting their evil enemies for a noble cause - "their country!!!" as you mentioned while also having strong racist/xenophobic opinions about other countries.

I am quite aware how it works. What you are describing is nationalism which isn't what is happening online these days. Nationalism is an older form of propaganda / State control. I am not a Libertarian/Ancap but this is a concise description of the mechanism.

> Since most men tend to love their homeland, the identification of that land and its people with the State was a means of making natural patriotism work to the State’s advantage. If “Ruritania” was being attacked by “Walldavia,” the first task of the State and its intellectuals was to convince the people of Ruritania that the attack was really upon them and not simply upon the ruling caste. In this way, a war between rulers was converted into a war between peoples, with each people coming to the defense of its rulers in the erroneous belief that the rulers were defending them. This device of “nationalism” has only been successful, in Western civilization, in recent centuries; it was not too long ago that the mass of subjects regarded wars as irrelevant battles between various sets of nobles.

https://mises.org/online-book/anatomy-state/how-state-preser...

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