So democracy is falling in the most militarily powerful country on earth, citizens are being executed and rights stripped… and you think it’s not OK to be angry?
You think we just shouldn’t discuss it at all because people are angry?
no, it’s perfectly fine to be angry, I would be very concerned with anyone’s mental health who isn’t angry about this.
> You think we just shouldn’t discuss it at all because people are angry?
Well, if we just want to discuss how angry we are, that’s just called venting. That’s fine, vent. But don’t confuse that with discussion. I don’t find venting about how angry something makes you to be all that compelling most of the time. Sometimes someone distills the issue at hand into something very poetic and poignant, and that can sometimes be cathartic, but other than that it’s just pure emotion being tossed around and it just amplifies hatred.
> Putting our heads in the sand will not help.
Not sure where you’re drawing this conclusion that I’m putting my head in the sand. Or that people posting their outrage on HN are somehow not sticking their head in the sand, as if the dispensing of internet hot takes is somehow “doing your part” (hint: it’s not.)
> That’s fine, vent. But don’t confuse that with discussion.
The idea that discussion should be dispassionate and analytical is just wrong. All that does is hides biases.
Discussion should be honest; often that means being messy and angry.
there are a lot of places to be angry on the internet. in fact, basically every single website other than HN is a place to be angry. HN is deliberately not that, or at least it aims to not be that.
But people on HN are angry in non-political threads all the time, to the point that there are several items in the guidelines about it (the latest being "don't be curmudgeonly".)
And not everyone in every political thread is simply expressing anger. The majority of comments in this very thread are reasonable. The ones that aren't have been flagged, which is proper.
But flagging all political threads for "anger," regardless of the actual anger on display, while being far more lenient towards it elsewhere (no one is flagging every thread where someone expresses rage about javascript or AI or the modern web) seems hypocritical.
If HN were only anger, then HN would suck in general, yes. The quality of discussion on this site generally coincides with how much people are able to separate their emotion from the facts at hand. For threads like these that basically drops to zero.
I haven’t really been able to find any comments here that are all that reasonable, other than the meta-discussion we’re having now (and trust me, I hate meta-discussion like this. Honestly I’m regretting even bringing any of this up at this point. I should have just flagged and moved on, and had a discussion with IRL friends or family about it instead. Or talked to a therapist, I dunno.)
It seems to me like you're the one with a strong negative emotional investment in this thread. I don't know what your bar for "reasonable" is but the entire top thread seems fine to me. It's certainly better than many discussions I've seen of LLMs or other controversial but technical subjects.
In any case, I disagree that this thread, much less all "political" threads, deserve to be flagged by default. This community's specific grudge against politics is weird given how much politics gets excused in "technical" contexts.
I have a strong emotional investment in what’s happening to my country. That’s why I’m getting upset. It has fuck all to do with HN. I’m getting upset about what’s happening with my country and predictably taking it out on other HN commenters, and other HN commenters are upset about what’s happening and are clearly taking it out on me. (I basically painted a big target on my forehead saying “I flagged this post” and people are talking to me as if I’m one of the ICE supporters or something.)
I’m not against politics on HN. I’m against anger-driven discussions on the internet in general. It’s not only bad discussion by this site’s standards, it’s bad for the world. As in, the internet causes us to hate each other more than we otherwise would, and those divisions are (I believe) directly responsible for the shape of the political landscape today. This is not a game… people talk online, they develop hatred for other people they wouldn’t otherwise have, and take that hatred to the voting booth.
And I don’t count myself as better than average here either: I’m just as likely to post flippant one-line hot take responses to someone else’s flippant one-line hot take responses. I’m just as angry as all of you. I’m not trying to ignore anything, I’m not trying to silence anyone. I’m only saying that arguing angrily at strangers on the internet is the opposite of constructive towards actually fixing any real problems, and we would be better off with “normal” journalism where we hear the news from experts and discuss it with people we generally trust.
Yes, you should discuss only what is allowed. If you use the technology to dissent against your rulers, then it should be switched off (until you come back to your sense and submit yourself to the mercy of mulas).
> it's easy to see the very real authoritarian bend of comfortable professionals who are smart but also in favor of, say, summary execution of people for protesting
There’s that rhetoric I’m talking about! Thanks for giving a perfect example.
For topics like these, the expectation is that everyone comes in here and expresses sufficient levels of outrage. After all, if you’re scrolling through all the posts showing these awful things, you should have built up the requisite level of outrage by now, so if you post anything other than “HN is obviously ok with executions”, you must be one of them and therefore further evidence that these comfortable professionals are complacent and pro-murder.
The nuanced takes are nowhere to be found, because people who might want to come into these discussions with it, see the rhetoric being tossed around, and think “nope, this is all toxic, no way I’m joining in”, flag it, and move on.
But you can look at that exact situation (people flagging the post) and conclude “yup, the person doing the flagging is okay with executions.” It’s wild.
The sad thing is that there is a nuanced discussion to be had here. In fact it’s critical to this country’s survival that we are able to navigate our way through this. But this discussion, this navigation, needs to happen in small groups, where we can actually engage face-to-face. When we can see each other’s humanity, and know that the other person isn’t a monster, and doesn’t want to see innocent people die any more than you do. Where we can dissect each other’s viewpoints carefully.
None of that is really possible in online forums, because the group think is real, and the rhetoric destroys nuance, destroys compassion, destroys the ability to find common ground. It’s sheer toxicity.
I dunno, I’m still really angry about what I'm seeing. If I had anything to say it’s probably something I’d regret later. I’m talking with my loved ones about it and trying to come to grips with what’s happening to my country. It’s not really time for an internet hot take right now.
Fair enough to be angry, for sure. I am lucky enough to have found a therapist a couple of weeks ago, mostly quit drinking, and ceasing FB doom scrolling.
It's hard.
If it helps, there are plenty of folks doing work. Specifically, get trained by whoever your local rapid response network is. That will put you in contact with actual humans in your local who are in similar situations- for me that has bein invaluable.
You might consider (though perhaps not agree) that no where in my post did I insinuate that "flagging" was the same as taking a position on the subject:
my statement was about why I do, indeed, find utility these conversations you don't find useful.
That a) says nothing about my take on your understanding/ position on the issues around protest or politics and b) is a request to understand my position and not, like, a statement about the morality of your position.
And further, to me "being okay with the summary execution of people for protesting" seems like a pretty specific sentiment, and one which I have heard echoed here quite a bit. I find it super useful to see demonstrated so frequently that a person with excellent technical chops in a domain may often have massive deficiencies in their reasoning, if for no other reason that it helps me understand the weakness of my own cognition.
So, perhaps consider that it's you, in projecting a statement I didn't make in a very short and fairly clear post who is "giving a perfect example" of the level of nuance-free assumptions that do (as you correctly point out) often run rampant- and not just on this site, but in discourse in general.
To push my point a bit further, I am not here to make moral judgements or change peoples' mind on these political topics; rather, over the decade during which I've been interacting on this site, it has= has been super informative to trace the nascent fascism that breed in many of the confluences of technology and capitalism.
That may, to you, sound like hyperbolic rhetoric that is dismissive of other folks' opinions; from my position you're not understanding that this examination of (what is to me) highly disagreeable and almost sociopathic political discourse -is- the process of finding nuanced and useful understandings of our political situation.
The whole thread here started with “why do we continue to ignore this”, to which I replied “who’s ignoring this”, and the answer is “anyone who’s flagging this post.”
The conversation in this particular thread has gone off the rails, in large part because I am very angry about what’s happening, and I tend to get heated in replies. So I apologize for letting my anger get the best of me in this particular instance.
My only point was to say “I flagged this, but not because I’m ignoring it.”
I flagged it because I truly believe to my core that anonymous online discussion about emotional political topics is causing this country’s descent into fascism. Whipping people into a frenzy against one another, causes hatred to amplify past where it would be if it were just about the story itself. The discussions are where people go to out-signal each other, even if nobody’s there to argue the other point. Then if someone does end up saying something like “hmm, looks like the protester was actually carrying a gun” (or something equally not-wrong but clearly not the expected expression of ICE-hatred we all expect), they’re now the target of everyone’s anger. All that brewing hatred is now pointed at that one person, because they’re the closest thing on the site to someone who is actually pro-ICE. Then we have people like you casually saying things about this site being full of tech bros who are just fine with executions… I just feel like we need to tone everything way down. We need to be calm, to be honest. I know it’s hard. I don’t really know what else to say… it’s hard to formulate thoughts clearly in times like these.
I don’t know you but I hope wherever you are you’re safe and have a good idea of what your next steps are going to be. I’m getting increasingly distraught over what’s happening myself. It’s starting to affect my family life and I’m having a lot of trouble coping.
Venting on the internet is a way for a lot of people to come to grips with what they’re seeing. I understand. If this is what helps you cope, I won’t stop you.
Me, it’s especially difficult to see how this hatred is so self-amplifying. I see a president whose primary method of getting to where he is, is to make people hate each other to a maximum degree. I watch liberals like myself fall for it. I see how he intentionally puts armed agents in locations where he knows people will protest, then I see how those protesters are killed in the most predictable way imaginable, because they’re seen as a threat by the people with guns. Then I see the hatred get worse, the protests get larger, with more innocent people joining in, and meanwhile Trump is shipping more armed agents to the same cities.
I wish I had an answer. The answer isn’t “don’t protest”, nor is the answer “let’s all put ourselves in a position to be killed” either. I hope on some level that the images of these people getting executed is seared into enough people’s minds that Trump pays an actual political cost, but then I remember what the BLM protests turned into, and how public support tanked for what should have been an obvious issue. So whatever is going to happen, I’m not sure any of our anger is actually going to help. But I don’t really have an answer. I’m sorry.
My reasons for flagging topics like this is it just fits a pattern of “administration does something abhorrent, people get mad, social media amplifies the anger, it turns into real world deaths.” I really don’t like seeing this happen. I don’t like the hatred amplification that the internet is doing to my country. I don’t know what else to say.
I don't hate you. I'm frustrated with your mental gymnastics. Because your entire thread here boils down to this
> it just fits a pattern of “administration does something abhorrent, people get mad, social media amplifies the anger, it turns into real world deaths
I need you to pay attention to how you're writing. You are laying the deaths of these people squarely on the left for how they react to abhorrence. And if you're going to blame people on the internet for these deaths, you should provide something concrete.
Please outline what bait you think the left took that caused the death of Renee Nicole Good. Explain what "Hatred" was leading us to this moment. Because her last words were "That's fine dude, I'm not mad at you." We must have a fundamental difference of opinion on cause and effect. Because what I'm seeing is a bunch of untrained goons getting frustrated with people and shooting them in anger, knowing that nobody can stop them, and most people making excuses for it.
The idea that the choice is up to us whether we get brutalized is insulting, and frankly, I've seen it being used to excuse political violence for far too long. The idea that the best thing for us now would be to bury these deaths as 6th page news is frustrating, because as someone actually close to this, I've talked with many victims of ICE, and universally, all of them are more upset with the silence and indifference than they are with ICE themselves.
Please, please, please tone it down. Really. This is the amplification I’m talking about. You say “I don’t hate you” and then spew a bunch of hate at me. I’m having a lot of trouble not getting extremely angry right now at your reply because you’re taking the least charitable possible interpretation of every fucking thing I’m saying. This is so fucking maddening. I’m going to reply but please understand this is fucking killing me.
> You are laying the deaths of these people squarely on the left for how they react to abhorrence
> Please outline what bait you think the left took that caused the death of Renee Nicole Good
> Explain what "Hatred" was leading us to this moment.
> The idea that the choice is up to us whether we get brutalized
> The idea that the best thing for us now would be to bury these deaths as 6th page news
I am going to reply to all of this in a chunk. And I want to picture in your mind that I’m someone in your life that you respect (friend, neighbor, loved one, doesn’t matter) talking. Because otherwise I’m just a handle on a forum, and faceless, like the car driving in front of you when you have road rage. It’s so easy to forget we are human beings having a conversation here. Please remember that.
The hate amplification is not causing these deaths. I never said that. I’m saying it leads to them, in a sense that it puts people in the position where it’s going to happen. A death can have nearly infinite things that can lead to it, in the sense that if any one of those things didn’t happen, things could have gone differently.
This is a very important distinction to make. It’s the difference between giving your daughter advice for “don’t dress like that when you go out, there are a lot of dangerous people out there” and saying “it was her fault she was raped”. The former is practical advice you might give to someone you care about, and the latter is the abhorrent victim blaming you’re casually accusing me of doing.
The hatred leads to deaths because there are armed men who are itching to kill liberals, and the hatred makes people think “I ought to go put my car in the way of them.” (I’m not referring to how Renee moved her car in obvious compliance with the officer telling her to, I’m talking about the fact that she had her car there in the first place.) Renee herself probably didn’t have any hatred in her heart at that moment, but I can nearly guarantee she had a lot of conversations just like the ones others are having here, where they look at what’s happening and, in an echo chamber, escalate the rhetoric they’re using. It may go from “ICE is wrong” to “ICE is kidnapping people” to “ICE is the gestapo” to “We need to stop them” to “let’s stop them” to “ok I’ll bring a gun just in case” in the blink of an eye (the gun part being something that’s more relevant to yesterday’s story than the Renee one.)
No, it’s not the left’s fault they’re getting brutalized. It’s the brutalizer’s fault. It’s not fault I’m referring to, it’s “if things would have happened differently this death may have been avoided.” One of those things that could have happened differently is for people to choose a different avenue than directly interacting with the armed men.
No, I don’t have a better alternative than that in mind at the moment, I’m sorry. I know people have to do something, but there has to be something that is less likely to result in deaths than directly interfering with the armed men themselves (yes, filming isn’t interfering, but I dunno, get a zoom lens and maybe do it from farther away. Because if you’re standing right in front of them it very much does seem like interfering. Or in Renee’s case, maybe don’t intentionally park your car in front of the ice agents.)
> Please, please, please tone it down. Really. This is the amplification I’m talking about. You say “I don’t hate you” and then spew a bunch of hate at me
Listen, I'm sorry if I caused you emotional distress, and I can tell you're a kind person, but I wish you led with this comment, because it's a very revealing response. If my comment was "hateful" to you, I don't think you should lecture people on their emotional responses to these situations.
I am going to reiterate that the victims of ICE are begging people to share their stories.
> I am going to reply to all of this in a chunk. And I want to picture in your mind that I’m someone in your life that you respect (friend, neighbor, loved one, doesn’t matter).
I'm talking to you exactly how I talk to anyone in my life that would say what you're saying. Just because I correctly pointed out the impact of your rhetoric, that doesn't mean I'm "spewing hate at you." I'm disappointed in you. I hear a lot worse from people I'm related to.
> This is a very important distinction to make. It’s the difference between giving your daughter advice for “don’t dress like that when you go out, there are a lot of dangerous people out there” and saying “it was her fault she was raped”. The former is practical advice you might give to someone you care about, and the latter is the abhorrent victim blaming you’re casually accusing me of doing.
No man. Open your eyes. You are doing the latter. Renee is dead, and you have 1 sentence condoning ICE, and multiple paragraphs explaining what SHE should have done differently. That is exactly like saying "If she dressed differently, this may not have happened." You have more energy for what she did than the categorically disproportionate escalation of violence.
I wouldn't tell my daughter what to wear, and limit her freedoms, because I know that wouldn't stop her from being harmed. I would tell her to be with people she trusts and lean on her friends for safety.
> One of those things that could have happened differently is for people to choose a different avenue than directly interacting with the armed men
That's great that you're able to do that. Some people do not have that choice. I hope you have a good day.
> No man. Open your eyes. You are doing the latter. Renee is dead, and you have 1 sentence condoning ICE, and multiple paragraphs explaining what SHE should have done differently
I am simply at a loss for words.
This comment thread is probably the least worst in the entire comment section of this post, and it’s still fucking awful. I’m being called someone who’s condoning ice because of my expression that I don’t want to see people die.
Others are being called literal nazis for expressing similar thoughts.
The nuance between “I don’t want people to die” and “I condone ICE” is the exact thing I was saying is getting thrown out.
This is precisely what I predicted would happen from the start, and the exact reason I flagged it. I don’t regret flagging at all, and this is just further proof that I will continue to flag similar threads where people like you lose their empathy and hurl accusations like these around.
If you have loved ones that are victims of ICE and are begging for people to share their story, I don’t think the HN comment section is what they have in mind. Please send it to a proper news outlet.
I wouldn’t say they’re ignoring it’s so much as cheering it on, and falling over each other to voice their support for it. It’s liberals getting killed after all, and they’re not Americans like republicans are Americans.
No, there’s people that love what ICE is doing, people that hate it, people who try and stop it, and the rest of us who look on in horror at the trainwreck and collapse happening in front of us…
But I can’t think of a single group of people who are ignoring it. Other than maybe for a lack of perceived other options and to keep from going insane.
Myself? I’m basically a coward. I have two young children. I don’t want to go protest ICE and get killed by one of these wannabe gestapos. I’m in a real state of fear for my children and the world they’re going to grow up in, but I literally don’t know what else I can do. Maybe I’ll help join the campaign if a democratic candidate this year and help them get elected.
But I’m not ignoring it. I can’t think of anyone who is.
If you're not doing anything about this, you're ignoring it. I don't say this as an insult. I say it as a wakeup call. I'm right there with you, only maybe a few degrees closer to not ignoring it. I have been to protests. I have been tear-gassed and seen people within a few yards of me bloodied up by the authorities, but in comparison to this man that is now dead, I have been ignoring this. For those of us that see that this is wrong, we all need to do more, for your children and mine.
