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by throwaw181ay 3433 days ago
> We lead the free world

i sincerely hate when people from anywhere say that. During the second half of the 20th century, the american government was directly or indirectly responsible for at least half of the conflicts on that planet. Americans need to wake up, they are as much the beacon of tyranny than they are the beacon of the "free world". It's just that most Americans don't care about what their own government does abroad. And it didn't start with Bush II.

> And we do it by taking the higher moral ground,

I absolutely hate that too, this is so arrogant. There is really a disconnect between how some Americans view themselves and how the rest of the world see them for what their government actually is: playing war-games on a constant basis and selling the PAX AMERICANA as something just.

I'm sorry but i'm extremely disappointed by Jeff here, this is just wrong and insulting for the rest of the world.

For all the bad that Trump does, I hope that at least it will tone down this sense of superiority coming from Americans, because that's the source of many problems.

> how negligent and dangerous Trump is as the leader of the free world.

You're not the leader of the free world, not according to most of the rest of the world, because of your foreign policy post WWII. You supported dictatorships, rigged democratic elections, trained death squads in south america, killed millions in Vietnam, spoiled their land with agent orange, invaded countries like Iraq that did nothing to you, all in the name of "freedom" ... freedom for whom?

1 comments

Please stop creating throwaway accounts to post purely political rants.
Why does it matter? He (mostly) isn't wrong in his political rant
Because HN is a community where people have discussions with each other. Pseudonyms are fine. The community benefits from consistent accounts that others can relate to as members of the community. Otherwise there are effectively no users and no community, which is a very different place.
You should care about the message itself not who is saying it.

There are SJW mobs who downvote every comment that hurts their narrative. You can write factually correct and appropriate comments, they will still downvote it if they disagree. If you don't want to lose your HN points, you either self censor, and let the SJWs win or you make your statement from a throwaway account.

If you're worried about points, I think your focus is wrong. They're just points (as far as you don't lose so many you can no longer comment).

That said, you can use them as a tool to figure out how to craft your comments in a way that's actually read and understood, rather than reflexively responded to. The point should be discussion, not speaking the truth, brutal as it may be, you just have to listen to me.

Please don't read that as me assuming that's what you're doing. I do see a lot of people complain that they're getting down voted when their tone and word choice is very abrasive, or at least not couched in a way that's easy to respond to. Looking at your comment above, labelling people as SJWs is going to create a reaction, just as labels like racist or misogynist are likely to. For example, your comment would be just as effective if you had reworded it "There are mobs" and remove the "and let the SJWs win". Those parts are needlessly inflammatory (even if you think they're true).

Factual and appropriate may be fine for neutral topics; for contentious ones it's not enough. This is all assuming you're not just here for ideological battle, but rather to understand (though perhaps not agree) and be understood.

Believe me, this is something I struggle with myself, and remind myself of nearly every time I write a comment on a contentious topic. Two references I return to from time to time are:

- Rapoport's Rules: https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/03/28/daniel-dennett-rapo...

- The Principle of Charity: http://philosophy.lander.edu/oriental/charity.html

As for crappy voting behavior, I see that happen on all sides. Not a lot you can do about it, other than shrug it off and try to write even better comments. Any time I get dinged I reread my comment and ask myself how I could have written it better. While there truly might be no way I could have prevented it, the only thing I really can control is how I write the comment.

Anyway, I hope you find this useful. It's intended to be. I want HN to be a place where people can talk about difficult topics constructively and positively.