It's been building for a long time; it's not recent per se, just accelerated.
2025 showed that you can't just go "ok, it's over now, we'll go back to business as usual" (like I know the limp-wristed Dems will want to do) or it'll repeat after every other election until it's successful. You just cannot have this many people constantly being convinced they live in this alternate reality for much longer without civilization collapse.
But I think it's gone too far and we're witnessing the fall of the empire in real-time. I'm just hoping that fall won't screw up the rest of the world too much, but I'm pretty sure it will.
More to the point, it's the collapse of the carefully balanced entente around things like WMD and war crimes that will be our undoing.
Recent events have brought this into sharp focus.
This is really the glue that holds it all together -- that we and our allies haven't even had to think about these things for our entire lives up until now.
I hate to be hyperbolic, but I fear that fear of these things will soon become a looming presence in our lives. For the rest of our lives. And kids' lives. And grandkids' lives.
No we got to this point because the hope for a better future evaporated. People are thirsty for answers. Any answer to this question will have a big following.
Gambling, influencing, day trading, kick out the immigrants, anything works as long as it can promise to change your life for the better.
Quite the opposite actually. Democrats have been so complacent with the proto-fascists for so long, that republicans will now justify murdering a mother in broad daylight, filmed under 3 angles clearly showing she is fearing for her life. The solution to fascism is not compromise and weakness.
Please know there are people across the aisle that view it differently. When things calm down, talk with them and learn. Nobody wins when we insist the world is only as we alone view it.
It’s entirely possible to prosecute the heads of all of these horrific things into the stone age, comb through internal data and throw every agent who’s murdered someone in jail, and not punish everyday people who just cast a vote.
They already are. Playing nice and hoping the other side will come to their senses and return to normalcy doesn’t make sense when they’ve already shown you they will try to destroy you regardless.
I don't buy the 'both sides' POV except in the longest historical view. Right now it's just not true.
One team is a feckless collection of timid hesitators who is trying to defend a social welfare policy from 70 years ago, and the other team believes their volatile leader is infallible and will direct revenge at whatever they are pointed to by the latest 3am tweet.
>One team is a feckless collection of timid hesitators who is trying to defend a social welfare policy from 70 years ago
What is this referring to?
>and the other team believes their volatile leader is infallible and will direct revenge at whatever they are pointed to by the latest 3am tweet.
>It's just not the same.
What does this have to do with gp's claim about cycle of reprisals by both parties? It can be simultaneously possible to admit that the leader of one party is more sane than the other, and to observe that both parties are engaging in cycles of retaliation when they get in power, and that egging on even more retaliation is going to make the situation worse.
we just saw the biden admin not do that, and the polarization only grew. They very specifically slow walked their investigation into trump's treason, so they wouldnt have to Nuremberg him.
trump mind you, is nuremburging non-voters. they dont exactly have side beyond trying to work and eat
The two sides aren't remotely the same. One side has become authoritarian and shifted far to the right. The current administration is seeking to undermine liberal democracy to give the executive all the meaningful power to enact Christian nationalism. It's also a cult of personality where the president can do no wrong, and anyone who defies him gets sent death threats.
> most maximally vindictive candidates
I think that's how we got to this point today, tbh.
It's been building for a long time; it's not recent per se, just accelerated.
2025 showed that you can't just go "ok, it's over now, we'll go back to business as usual" (like I know the limp-wristed Dems will want to do) or it'll repeat after every other election until it's successful. You just cannot have this many people constantly being convinced they live in this alternate reality for much longer without civilization collapse.
But I think it's gone too far and we're witnessing the fall of the empire in real-time. I'm just hoping that fall won't screw up the rest of the world too much, but I'm pretty sure it will.
More to the point, it's the collapse of the carefully balanced entente around things like WMD and war crimes that will be our undoing.
Recent events have brought this into sharp focus.
This is really the glue that holds it all together -- that we and our allies haven't even had to think about these things for our entire lives up until now.
I hate to be hyperbolic, but I fear that fear of these things will soon become a looming presence in our lives. For the rest of our lives. And kids' lives. And grandkids' lives.
No we got to this point because the hope for a better future evaporated. People are thirsty for answers. Any answer to this question will have a big following.
Gambling, influencing, day trading, kick out the immigrants, anything works as long as it can promise to change your life for the better.
pussy-footing and reaching across the isle never did anyone of good conscience any good.
I think you and the GP are using completely different definitions of "revenge".
Quite the opposite actually. Democrats have been so complacent with the proto-fascists for so long, that republicans will now justify murdering a mother in broad daylight, filmed under 3 angles clearly showing she is fearing for her life. The solution to fascism is not compromise and weakness.
We live in different worlds, friend.
Please know there are people across the aisle that view it differently. When things calm down, talk with them and learn. Nobody wins when we insist the world is only as we alone view it.
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Cost of living and social media. Populists are a symptom.
Imprisoning fascists who break out laws and shoot people dead is good.
The fact that the fascists want to kill people for being brown doesn't change this.
Center/right voter here. I believe you are correct.
What if their maximally vindictive traits just makes them want to use the same invasive tools and techniques?
Like today?
It’s entirely possible to prosecute the heads of all of these horrific things into the stone age, comb through internal data and throw every agent who’s murdered someone in jail, and not punish everyday people who just cast a vote.
They already are. Playing nice and hoping the other side will come to their senses and return to normalcy doesn’t make sense when they’ve already shown you they will try to destroy you regardless.
Compared to the alternative of staying on our current path of American fascism and WW3?
I’ll take the odds for vindictiveness.
Yeah I get into a more Jacobin and less Girondin mindset every week that goes by.
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I don't buy the 'both sides' POV except in the longest historical view. Right now it's just not true.
One team is a feckless collection of timid hesitators who is trying to defend a social welfare policy from 70 years ago, and the other team believes their volatile leader is infallible and will direct revenge at whatever they are pointed to by the latest 3am tweet.
It's just not the same.
>One team is a feckless collection of timid hesitators who is trying to defend a social welfare policy from 70 years ago
What is this referring to?
>and the other team believes their volatile leader is infallible and will direct revenge at whatever they are pointed to by the latest 3am tweet.
>It's just not the same.
What does this have to do with gp's claim about cycle of reprisals by both parties? It can be simultaneously possible to admit that the leader of one party is more sane than the other, and to observe that both parties are engaging in cycles of retaliation when they get in power, and that egging on even more retaliation is going to make the situation worse.
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Only one side is using a federal police force to murder citizens.
And the other side teases prosecution and never follows through
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we just saw the biden admin not do that, and the polarization only grew. They very specifically slow walked their investigation into trump's treason, so they wouldnt have to Nuremberg him.
trump mind you, is nuremburging non-voters. they dont exactly have side beyond trying to work and eat
The two sides aren't remotely the same. One side has become authoritarian and shifted far to the right. The current administration is seeking to undermine liberal democracy to give the executive all the meaningful power to enact Christian nationalism. It's also a cult of personality where the president can do no wrong, and anyone who defies him gets sent death threats.
[dead]
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Careful, without any further qualification you just endorsed Stephen Miller.
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Please don't use abusive terms like this on HN. The guidelines make it clear we're trying for something better here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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