Comment by kenjackson

Careful, making this kind of statement publicly might hurt your loyalty rating.

HN has a whole lot of people trying to make it really big financially, for a huge variety of reasons. One of the things that excludes someone from that group is an understanding that our culture is dominated by the idea that wealth is the first, biggest, best priority.

We collectively give the wealthy extra protection, status, and influence. Basically every definition or subcategory of power.

When you do this, it creates a disgusting race to the bottom from those trying to reach the top. We are seeing the ultimate result of that: a mafia kingdom. A feudal clown show.

You will see a weirdly large amount of people supporting that here because a large number of people have conditioned morality out of their ideology. Or reduced it to a very superficial level, completely subservient to the almighty dollar. "Greed is good", "the ECONOMY", "my peers do it so it's okay". And in and on and on.

In short, many would be doing the same thing in the same position and they can't see just how amoral that is. And how it reflects the utter rot that is our culture.

I'm familiar with at least one company where the execs are downright excited about the new way of doing business. No longer do you have to carefully study laws and regulations, you just have to make sure one guy likes you! It's a nice deal if you can get it, which is why I'm so aggressive about saying that the people who are getting it need to go to prison when constitutional governance is restored.

Why? Tech has plenty of win at all costs people. Some of the most prominent people who openly don't believe in democracy are tech people.

I know it is a cliche at this point but there are clear parallels to what happened in Nazi Germany.

Many people don't know is that the Nazi party was voted democratically into the government. They didn't win the majority but got most votes. They were majority in the Reichstag (Congress). One of the selling point was that Weimar Republic had lost World War I and the reparations paid to the Allied powers was a slap in the face and the country has fallen (aka country was no longer great, people were laughing at them etc ). Hilter wasn't even elected, he was appointed by the Nazi Party.

The Nazi Party then went on a spree - twisting arms, illegal detention etc to get what they want. Lot of people were complicit in their rise. As Martin Niemöller wrote:

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

At this point there is no dearth of fools who think because they are above the "left" because their party is in power. If they continue to align or voraciously defend these intimidation tactics and tariffs etc they are going to be better off.

If there is a big learning to had here - History repeats itself. Mostly because people think they are better than people who came before them. People believe that the can get along with a person who cares nothing but for power. At this point, there is nothing which can be said or done to help them because they believe their enemies being better off is the win.

Look man, dems have tried the whole "democracy is on the ballot" thing and lost two elections to trump. They have lost to him twice! Maybe instead of campaigning on how bad the other guy is (disclaimer: i fully agree that he is bad), they could actually do things that make people want to vote for them? I say this as someone who would really like to republicans lose forever after this, but who fears that the dems won't ever win again because they won't change.

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