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by Waterluvian 508 days ago
I wonder if we’d do better in discourse to stop pointing at an “administration.” It is a reflection of what a plurality, often majority, of people want.
6 comments

Democracy doesn't mean "accept what the current administration does with no criticism, because they were democratically elected"
It does make ones eyes glaze over when American politics is everywhere you look. In every thread, about every topic. And each comment thread has 50 highly emotional comments that you have to scroll through to find the 5 few thoughtful comments near the bottom discussing the article, without going off the rails.
Why wouldn't American politics be discussed in a thread about tuberculosis in an American state?
Look at the top thread with 50 comments and count how many are discussing tuberculosis in America. It's just another starting off point for everyone to go in a hundred directions ranting about US politics and ignore the topic
The thread is about a tuberculosis outbreak in the US. Subsequent comments include conversations about a US federal government department agency publishing (or not) data on that outbreak.

This is all taking place on an online forum hosted in the US and managed by US entities.

And you (and like minded individuals) expect to not see US politics?

I appreciate that the US has an outsized presence on the intertubez, but you also need to realize you're first of all talking in the midst of Americans.

You can read the MMWR reports, the OP linked to them: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/index.html

The ones that were published in the weeks prior to the current administration weren't talking about the Kansas tuberculosis outbreak either.

So we're not really discussing the "US federal government department agency publishing (or not) data on that outbreak." Someone's implying that's what happened, and then people are spinning off into political discussions without even looking into the link they provided to see if that was actually the case.

It's not just going off topic to discuss politics. People are actively spreading misinformation to justify going off topic to discuss politics, and lots of other people are joining in without bothering to check if what was claimed is actually true. Two-thirds of the comments now are using the claims about the MMWR to discuss politics, and it doesn't look like anyone actually looked at the MMWR to see what it actually is.

This is about medicine. How many people are claiming to separate medicine from politics? And how is this off the rails?
Oh, no that’s not my point. It’s that the administration is often used as a proxy when people should be angry at the diseased state of the population.
Around 20% of Americans voted Trump, and from polls most don’t like him, but always vote R. Die hard Trumpers are at best 10% of Americans. Trump didn’t even get 50% of the vote.

His views most certainly aren’t what a majority of people want, and he doesn’t try to expand by doing things the majority want. If anything he paints those not completely in his camp, which is the vast majority of Americans, as an enemy.

> His views most certainly aren’t what a majority of people want

I'm not sure what you gain by telling yourself that.

I could just as easily assert, without any evidence (i.e., like you), that every single person who didn't vote loves Trump and supports all his policies.

> If anything he paints those not completely in his camp, which is the vast majority of Americans, as an enemy.

That has nothing to do with whether people support him. 20 or more (exact number varies on the reporting) women say that he sexually assaulted them, he was convicted of one sexual assault, and yet white women still voted for him.

Experiments consistently and repeatedly show that when given practical descriptions of policy actions and outcomes, the majority of Americans do not choose the ones that republicans promote. BUT when told that they are Republican policies, then about half of Americans do support those policies.
Well then, liberal politicians aren't doing a very good job, are they?

This is like a cliche from the chess world, where the guy who lost the game, then does a postmortem to convince everyone that he was actually winning the whole time. "Except for that one little blunder."

The Dems keep losing losing losing, but rather than figure out how to fight better, you instead try to convince yourself that people support you. And then you go back to debating Israel v Palestine or trans pronouns while our own country descends into tyranny. (Literally - many progressives I know.)

Meanwhile, Trump owns the White House, both houses of Congress, and the Supreme Court!

The only lesson I get is that the segregation of education over 40-50 years or so is finally showing its consequences (well it did so 20 years ago. But it's only more polarized now). A chess player at least has the knowledge and willingness to improve and learn from lost matches. The average American... Not so much.

And you didn't really offer much feedback here. Which is part of the problems. I don't really care to bicker over single issue details like this.

Straight from “you don’t have any evidence!” to “well who even cares that’s not important”.
I have no idea what you're saying.
If 80% of Americans didn't vote Trump, you're trying to claim they just as likely love him as those who did, even when polling of those voting for him show many dislike him?

Yeah, I'm not the one unable to read evidence.

Polls also repeatedly show people dislike a large amount of his policies.

And it's a fact he didn't even get 50% of voters to vote for him.

> It is a reflection of what a plurality, often majority, of people want.

Maybe in countries with multiple parties, proportional representation (or the like), and mechanisms to encourage voting like a holiday for elections.

But, everywhere else? It's a crapshoot..low turnout also doesn't help.

Have you read Democracy for Realists?

TIL Most voters don't have well defined policy preferences. Nor can they correctly associate political parties with their stated policy positions.

Less than 31% of people voted for this administration. So no, it isn't.
The majority of people don't want this. 36 percent of americans didn't vote.

That doesn't mean they don't want services, that means that in addition to 74 million that voted against trump, 90 million more also didn't want him.

No, it means that over a third of people DGAF. They neither do want it nor don't want it.

(It's like NULL values in SQL, only much worse because it's in real life.)

An indifference implies that there was going to be no difference to their daily life regardless of who was in office.

If nothing else, I do hope this 2nd trump administration wakes those indifferent up. Yes your choice matters. And yes, choosing nothing is a choice.

Doesn't matter the reason. The fact is, if they wanted trump, they would have voted for him.
Nope, those people don't count. You may as well point out that 89.7M dogs didn't vote for Trump.

The majority of people wanted this.

They absolutely count. The fact that you don't think so, says more about you than about them.
How can someone who couldn't be bothered to vote possibly count in a discussion of how many people support this administration? Putting aside people who were unable to vote, everyone who chose not to, absolutely 100% gave up their relevance in terms of what the people want. They took themselves out of the equation.
It doesn't matter if they did or not. If they supported Trump they would have voted. Ergo the majority of people don't support him. Non voters are still people, last I checked.
No -- the people who chose not to vote supported the decision of the people who did.