[guildwriter]

Sentiments like yours do not help the current situation where everyone is talking past each other. Demonizing and labeling people like others is not the solution. Characterizing the motivations of 60+ million people as racist is the epitome of mental weakness. How do you expect to solve xenophobic behavior when you are employing the exact same mental processes? All you are doing is perpetuating the cycle of hatred.

Empathy takes time and effort, especially in an age where we don't have to exercise it at all. The easy path is to disregard those we disagree with in order to preserve our own sense of moral righteousness.

[helpfulanon]

You make a noble point, but it will not change anything at this stage. I am human. As are all of us. My well of empathy for Trump's people has gone completely bone dry. I am past the tipping point.

They elected an egotistical reality TV star, backed by a hostile foreign government, to the White House and he's taking a wrecking ball to every institution of federal government exactly as one would have expected him to. Any assertion that tears should be shed or some level of respect should be offered to Trump's people or duped Republicans, is absurd nonsense. The only feeling I have left for these people is rage and it grows with every passing day.

Things are going to get very very ugly soon

[rpiguy]

No Republican was duped. He's doing exactly what he said he was going to do. Temporary ban on immigration, build a wall, take an axe to the bloated federal government, can the TPP, next week we should get our first conservative supreme court nominee. Even better it is driving leftists into a rage, showing everyone where the real bullying and violence comes from - the Left! I have never been more hopeful about the future!

[cplanas]

> Temporary ban on immigration [...] I have never been more hopeful about the future!

I was curious about you -there are not many that support your positions in HN- and I checked your past comments. You seem to be an immigrant too, as you define yourself as a "Valley startup expat". If that's the case, how can you support a ban on immigration -even if it's temporary- being an immigrant yourself? Don't get offended, I'm genuinely curious.

[rpiguy]

I am not offended, no worries. A temporary ban on immigration for the purpose of security is a reasonable proposition to me. Every country has the right to secure itself and define who can and can't enter the country. It is fundamental to the concept of being a nation. India, China, Japan, Korea, even Mexico all have very restrictive immigration policies and I have yet to see anyone work themselves into a rage over it on Hackernews. India even started building a wall between itself and Bangladesh (I have no idea if they completed it honestly, but again I don't remember an outcry at the time).

Historically the US has gone through times of very low immigration and also times of very high immigration. It will swing back in twenty or thirty years.

Specifically in reference to this article, there are very few PhD seats for advanced physics in the US and the universities are so prestigious if someone is denied a visa from a temporarily banned country, another person of equal brilliance from another country will take that seat.

[helpfulanon]

The pendulum swings both ways, and right now it is swinging faster and harder than ever before in this country. When it swings back, in a tsunami of the unrelenting rage and profound hatred for the other side, there will be blood. That is the future.

[rpiguy]

Possibly. Remember it is the right wingers with all the guns :-)

[helpfulanon]

You can troll your way into a civil war, but you can't troll your way out of it.

[rpiguy]

I think the person saying there will be blood is the troll and the aggressor. I was just pointing out who has the guns and the police.

[moomin]

People have been racist throughout history. The majority of people. When did the majority suddenly stop? There's no mental weakness involved in describing things as they are.

In practice, this isn't the case. Racism just became something to be ashamed of, so now we can't discuss racism openly for fear of offending racists. At least the "rednecks" are honest about it.

And I hate to tell you, they're not interested in dialogue. They've got enough numbers, districting advantages and voter suppression laws that they don't care what you think.

[guildwriter]

So one of the things I've learned as time has progressed as a software engineer is that the more time I spend programming, the more I realize how incompetent I am. The amount which I do not know just seems to grow and grow and grow.

For me the same thing has come from politics. I've spent a lot of time reading and listening to not only NPR, the NY Times, The New Yorker, but also right leaning sites like Drudge, Instapundit, NRO and so on. The more I read both sides, the less I am absolutely certain of my view of reality and that my answers are necessarily the best answers. You really begin to appreciate just how much difference there can be with no intentional malice at all.

One commonality I see between both sides is a belief that neither side wants to listen. There is no shortage of idiots on either side, but you'd also be surprised how many thoughtful people on both sides exist. I've read a lot of right wing bloggers state that they have no problem with gay marriage, and yet they get lumped into the same barrel as fervent Christians. Same with Robert Spencer. I've seen a lot of resentment from writers who have attacked him but they're treated like they're all Nazis just because they are both "right wing".

I feel like the problem isn't racism so much as the problem is we've created linguistic weapons that were appropriate 30-40 years ago for a much different conflict. What I mean by that is the weight of calling someone a racist evokes thoughts of fire hoses and dogs and church burnings. But is that the right word for someone who flippantly calls an Asian person "Ling Ling"? Is it racially insensitive? Absolutely! But does it merit automatically going to the nines and unloading on someone with full abandon? Why do we take several malformed sentences as immediate evidence and license to publicly shame a stranger we know nothing about?

The internet has allowed so many people of different backgrounds and makeups to communicate with each other directly. But what I think this has shown is how bad we are at it. How many people in the Bay Area can say they actually know and communicate regularly and productively with a conservative? The problem in my minds is not right or left. It is that we haven't learned the right way to talk to each other that does not increase factionalism and strife. I'm worried it may do irreparable damage before long.

None of this is to say racism is a solved problem in America. Many people alive still remember what segregation truly meant. Those things don't just go away. I am not addressing actual racists either. There is however a large nebulous area where people may have ill formed beliefs, but not because of hatred. What I am saying is that I fully believe that most things that people attribute to malice come mostly from ignorance or fear. If our goal is to unite us all under the commonality of the US Flag, then assuming hostility is the worst way to go.

No one is immune to the words of others. Except sociopaths.

[akamaozu]

Case in point:

Some fervent Christians don't have a problem with gay marriage.

Nobody meets God's standard; feels pointless to wage war on anyone else who doesn't when we don't either.

[moomin]

The thing a lot of conservatives miss here is that, for a lot of progressives, gay marriage is a moral imperative. Not caring isn't good enough if you're still happy to vote for someone like Mike Pence.