Looks like my comment got flagged, would anyone care to point out where I was wrong or how my comment is any different from what is being discussed of the current situation in Japan?
I hadn't and wouldn't flag it; but FWIW, I found it presented no meaningful contribution, and they try to avoid that sort of thing on these forums.
Honestly, it sounded like you took any opportunity, no matter how remote, to put a couple of soundbites from a domestic politics menu. They may be your fervently held beliefs, that's great, but if your goal is to persuade,you need to provide backing and details and reason; if your goal is to contribute, it has to be connected to conversation at hand; if your goal is to rant, mission accomplished but not everybody is interested in this forum becoming a soundbite board.
There's an international audience here, and though we're all amply aware of US politics and have our own opinions, discussing Japanese demographics and as a non-sequitur injecting "Democrats are trying to bring in people to vote for them", well... if you cannot see your post from other people's eyes, you may be too deep into specific partisanship for a random person on the internet like me to aid.
(additional two points:
- I would react the same way no matter which side is picked; I don't like Michael Moore any more than Ann Coulter, Al Franken more than Glenn Beck. There's people who want to engage in meaningful discussion, and there's people who want to spew soundbits and propaganda.
- That being said, on average Hackernews audience does have an overall leaning, which your post may have gone against)
Your last line about the Dems was kind of lame and pointlessly inflammatory; it gave an excuse to delete.
However, a number of comments downthread have also been rapidly flagged to death. The speed of it suggests a moderator has decided that his morals are so much better than others' that he has the right to silence others' views despite those views not breaking any rules.
It's common in any thread like this on HN. I suggest reading with showdead on (you can turn it on in your profile settings). You get a wider variety of opinions that way. It's nice to break the filter bubble.
In case anyone wants to avoid their own flag/ban, the hidden but eagerly-enforced rules seem to include:
-- You are not allowed to speak roughly when making a point against San Francisco ethics position (you're allowed to speak roughly in favor of SF ethics). (This is the hidden rule you broke.)
-- You are not allowed to give any notion that different population groups have any sort of characteristics distinct from each other (especially not IQ). Note that it's accepted in mainstream science that ethnic IQ differences can be consistently measured, but there is disagreement whether the cause is genetic or environmental, with significant support among scientists for both positions [0]. Basically, for moral reasons, HN requires that you support one side of this ongoing debate. It may or not be actually correct (scientists still arguing about that) but it is certainly politically correct. (Some commenters downthread broke this hidden rule).
Suggesting that one political party "have become power hungry" is just not good optics. It's definitely the case though that R policies generally lead to more affordable child-rearing and household formation - and I just can't tell why some people here are bringing up "religiosity" as if it had any relevance to this basic fact. The affordances there are what's very different, regardless of any additional difference in inclination.
Looking at politics as a system, you can clearly observe that the victory (outsized) rewards for the progressive wing in US come from low income immigrants that the liberals bank on.
In fact thinking about it a little further, a California citizen would have been in a vastly better situation had it not been home to that many low income immigrants. Of course, that would've also meant hugely lower chances of progressive winning there.
To sum up, the progressives it appears import poverty when the region is doing rather well and then campaign on more taxes to alleviate this said increased poverty.
If this is not plain desire for political victory, what else could it be?
Honestly, it sounded like you took any opportunity, no matter how remote, to put a couple of soundbites from a domestic politics menu. They may be your fervently held beliefs, that's great, but if your goal is to persuade,you need to provide backing and details and reason; if your goal is to contribute, it has to be connected to conversation at hand; if your goal is to rant, mission accomplished but not everybody is interested in this forum becoming a soundbite board.
There's an international audience here, and though we're all amply aware of US politics and have our own opinions, discussing Japanese demographics and as a non-sequitur injecting "Democrats are trying to bring in people to vote for them", well... if you cannot see your post from other people's eyes, you may be too deep into specific partisanship for a random person on the internet like me to aid.
(additional two points: - I would react the same way no matter which side is picked; I don't like Michael Moore any more than Ann Coulter, Al Franken more than Glenn Beck. There's people who want to engage in meaningful discussion, and there's people who want to spew soundbits and propaganda. - That being said, on average Hackernews audience does have an overall leaning, which your post may have gone against)
...My 100 Croatian Kunas :)