googthrowaway42

It's a reference to the famous (perhaps misattributed) quote from Stalin: "Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything."

I think I'm less pessimistic than you are but I get where you're coming from.

According to Pareto (yes, that Pareto), there is a natural ebb and flow of this sort of national vs self interest that exists within the ruling class. In a healthy society there is more circulation in and out of the ruling class which allows those with more of a national interest to dominate when that is necessary. If there is too much self interest within the ruling class and not enough circulation it ends up "killing the host".

I would definitely recommend the book "The Machiavellians" by James Burnham for a formal survey of these sort of ideas. Pareto is one of these Machiavellians and so his work is analyzed.

Yes let's compare that to:

1. All of the mainstream media except for Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity

2. All of academia (higher and lower education)

3. All of Hollywood

4. Essentially all of entertainment in general (music, late night television, Netflix)

5. All of the federal government bureaucracy

6. All major social media platforms

7. Almost all major corporations

8. Almost all of the international community

So essentially every single institution except for those you listed.

You belong to the cult of the mainstream. These talking points that you're trotting out are shallow and prepackaged, provided to you by the traditional organs of culture, and function more like shibboleths for other cult members rather than as actual arguments.

Yes I get what you're saying. It is transient in the sense that all civilizations have an arc or cycle that involves greatness and then decadence.

However, what I'm talking about is not a perfect set of selfless angels in the ruling class but rather a sense of virtue to counteract the natural tendency of wielding power in a self serving nature. I really see very little of that virtue at all right now. As a very crass but serious example of that, when I was growing up no one in a place of authority was trying to convince me that I (a male) was a girl whereas children growing up now are having to deal with that.

I find comments like this extremely interesting. What you've written is deranged and comes across like a programmed response similar (I would say functionally identical) to that of a devoted cult member. You've just rattled off what come across as very hackneyed almost childlike talking points.

However, based on your profile you're obviously an extremely intelligent and productive person.

It really shows the importance of having a well ordered society with a ruling class that has the general welfare of the citizenry in mind. The world is too complicated and complex a place for every person, even the most intelligent and productive among us, to have to concern themselves with these sorts of things.

We have a right to live in a society where we can trust our institutions. Unfortunately we are living in a time where our institutions are completely and utterly corrupt at almost evert level.

This isn't a mild scandal even when you exclude the sex/drugs component of it. There are documents and audio recording detailing relationships between the Biden family and members of the Chinese intelligence services, among other things. There are text messages and emails which show that Hunter was regularly consulting with his father Joe Biden on these deals.

Hunter Biden’s Apparent Contract to Represent Chinese ‘Spy Chief’ Leaked:

https://www.mediaite.com/news/read-the-1-million-contract-hu...

There have been text messages leaked from the family discussing allegations of Hunter engaging in sexual misconduct with a minor member of the Biden family. Photos leaked of Hunter Biden purport to show Hunter Biden (who is naked in these photos) with this minor in the background sitting on his bed.

> unverified

This term doesn't mean anything. It's just a meme. How does one actually "verify" anything? When people use this term they mean "someone I trust (e.g. mainstream media) concurs with this statement".

Even if this email has a legitimate DKIM signature it doesn't mean that someone didn't hack these accounts and send these emails or that v.pozharskyi.ukraine@gmail.com actually belongs to the person it is purported to belong to. It could be that some nation state forged the DKIM signature or that they have operatives within Google that did this on their behalf. We could go on.

The way people have been dealing with these leaks is pretty amazing. The amount of goalpost moving is so absurd that it's just amusing at this point. It's basically like one of those doomsday cults that keeps pushing back the date of the apocalypse when the previous date comes and goes.

> Also, not sure it's a good HN post.

Just lol.

People already knew in March that the virus spreads via droplets (as all respiratory viruses do) and that widespread mask usage would slow the spread. They had implemented this protocol in China and the rest of Asia for at least a month by then.

How about you use your brain?

There will be Nuremberg-like trials for doctors, guardians, and members of the establishment who have enabled this.

Even for completely apolitical checked-out "normies", enabling and in many cases encouraging minors to permanently alter their bodies with hormones and surgery is a bridge too far.

Yes and for the record I'm Jewish.

I am aware we have these civil rights laws. I am asking if you can find a scenario where someone was forced to engage in creative work for someone under these laws.

For example, someone forced to be a wedding photographer of an interracial wedding when they didn't want to.

> It worries me even more that i can't see a way out of it other than censorship

Please rest assured that there's nothing you can do about it and that is a beautiful thing.

I retract my use of the term "LGBT themed", that was too strong a description. However at the very least common sense tells us it would have had some reference to the homosexual nature of the marriage (e.g. "Adam & Steve" written in icing)

> On a scale of 1 to 10, how authoritarian was it when the government forced wedding planners, wedding reception venues, photographers, dessert shops etc to plan and serve custom wedding plans and events for interracial couples despite business owners claiming that their religions forbid race mixing?

Do you have an actual example of this happening?

> they requested a cake that happened to be for gay people getting married.

From the court filing: "In July 2012, Craig and Mullins visited Masterpiece, a bakery in Lakewood, Colorado, and requested that Phillips design and create a cake to celebrate their same-sex wedding."

They requested that the bakers design the cake for their gay wedding yes. You can't make people design things for you if they don't want to. If you believe that people should be able to compel this sort of work then you are an authoritarian.

From your linked court document: "In July 2012, Craig and Mullins visited Masterpiece, a bakery in Lakewood, Colorado, and requested that Phillips design and create a cake to celebrate their same-sex wedding."

"LGBT-themed" I suppose is too strong a description so I will grant you that given that they never got into design discussions.

> Denying someone a cake

It wasn't about denying someone a cake. The shop had many premade cakes available for purchase. It was about being forced to create a custom LGBT themed cake that the gay couple wanted baked.

If you believe they should have been forced to do that you are an authoritarian.

> No, because those are laws, and those regulations exist for a reason.

Therefore you wouldn't see any problem with regulations or laws that restrict the rights of companies to enact this sort of policy that Mailchimp is.

Can you put the same person for all of your choices?

The report that NBC is referring to was compiled based on public data. It can all be checked.

Really it's just sad how cattle-like some people are.

Edit: Here it is: https://www.baldingsworld.com/2020/10/22/report-on-biden-act...

Every claim is footnoted with a direct link to a cited source that is publicly available.

Tucker Carlson has said they made copies anyway.

He still isn't ready to believe that this whole movement that accompanies CoCs is pushed for malicious purposes by twisted power hungry people. That would require a massive loss of innocence and a reckoning about the nature of the world that only comes, reluctantly, from repeated exposure to and reflection on the same problem.

I have seen many people in similar situations that just completely roll over in a prey response and just bow down to these people. So at least the author has that spark of dignity where he's willing to stand up for himself.

Yes of course but in this case you're just wrong. This is a very well documented pattern of behavior at this point. Fortunately you're not my boss or colleague and so you can continue to promulgate these structures that cause a lot of misery and distress and lost productivity and I will continue to avoid being subject to them.

> Maybe it's not what's being said but how it's being said.

This is the kind of rhetoric I'm referring to when I say Kafkaesque. These people derive power from being victims so if they are given this benefit of the doubt you are granting them where the onus is on some person to walk on eggshells lest that person upset the perpetually upset these perpetual victims will of course announce they are upset and victimized no matter what is said, thus fending off any attack.

Kafka would be proud.

I don't think it's particularly insightful. I'm just stating it since it doesn't seem to occur to most adults these days.

Certainly it is interesting to consider the set of circumstances that give victimhood and fragility such power to those who claim it.

That's quite the inversion. It is interesting that the people who focus so much on the analysis of hierarchies to the point where they see them everywhere and assert the unjustness of hierarchy qua hierarchy end up just inverting these hierarchies and using their power to tyrannize other people.

What does that say about the people that allow them to do that?

I can assure you that speaking out against CoCs under your real name in a professional context can be quite difficult. The people who tend to create, promote, and defend CoCs tend to engage in incredibly Kafkaesque and pathological behavior as a matter of course.

As far as HN goes, I use the term "intelligent" quite loosely but one of the hallmarks of intelligence is pattern recognition.

Yes in some cases there are bad things in this world that are promulgated and promoted under the guise of being good. Learning to recognize those bad things for what they are instead of naively accepting their self-serving sanguine explanations is part of being a developed adult.

> The thing HN likes to do best with any story is to generalize it and find sweeping conclusions.

This is what intelligent people do. They recognize patterns and extrapolate. At this point the vast majority of people have experienced variations of what this guy has gone through.

In my own experience I have seen the exact same pattern of behavior in a slack community set up for my town.

> This is one of those posts where the title is going to trigger a lot of unproductive subthreads,

They seem quite productive to me. This sort of pathological behavior is increasingly common and finally people are willing and able to talk about it in public.

It's back up now. It was down.