You can be obsessed with a diet and never lose weight. We are talking about two different things. Being productive and making change has very little to do with making something your entire personality.
Try being in a relationship with someone who may become a target of the administration due to their status as a resident (but not citizen) of the USA and tell me the outcomes don't change.
You're right. I need to calm down. It's all theater that doesn't impact real people. We can just go about our merry way because no one has been kidnapped by federal agents in defiance of judicial orders.
There was a massive protest in the US this past weekend. Millions of people standing in solidarity. This was the 3rd such protest, each larger than the last.
What has changed?
One of these days the US will realize that emoting together with costumes and posterboards, bitching online, and loudly talking about how "my team is right!" is not effective.
So, in what ways is it effective to give a fuck about national politics? I haven't found any, and I'm emotionally tapped out. The government gets none of my attention.
Local government participation might yield small results, maybe. Not enough for me to give a shit. Seems like twice a week a state-or-lower politician gets rung up for bribes, corruption, etc. I have no desire to play that game, personally.
It's fair to expect people to pay attention to political issues that can affect them.
It's not fair to expect everyone to be intimately aware of every political gaffe, and instantly make the connection when you repeat it so they know not to reply to the comment seriously -- as the original comment was doing.
FFS, just put it in quotes so people know you're quoting someone. (Or if it's not a direct quote, mention that it's from the mentality of the person you're mocking.) Is that so hard? Is it so important that you feel special as someone who knows about that incident that you just have to provoke a confused flamewar?
The head of the DoJ, being questioned about the president of the United States' involvement in (one of) the highest profile child sex trafficking ring in US history and it's subsequent cover up using the FBI itself, yelling about the economy and that nobody cares about child sex trafficking... Is not exactly a normal "political gaffe".
I would, in fact, say it's a huge deal that anyone remotely aware of what's happening in politics should know about. It was headlined and broadcast on most major networks.
Nor do I see anybody upset that it was misinterpreted or that someone didn't know. Just people who didn't know about it name-calling anyone who did. So not sure how their little joke "provoked" a flamewar, vs people being sensitive and lashing out that they aren't in on the joke immediately.
... and comments requiring the reader to be that way too should be downvoted/flagged. Look at the replies it produced: troll mission accomplished, "productive conversation" not so much.
At the very least, they could have put the comment in quotes to indicate they're quoting someone and it shouldn't be read at the object level.
Edit: Seriously? Am I wrong here? Are you all really okay with Poe's Law-ifying HN, where people post comments that are easy to read as serious when they were intended as ridicule of the person who said them, and the comments erupt in confusion and flames? That's not what we should be expecting out of HN.
As opposed to posting on HN complaining about reddit, which is where the real money's at? Nah, this shit was dank enough to make it into popular culture. We have:
1. The shamelessness absurdity of using "market is up" to deflect from a pedo scandal
2. The fact that the market said "nope" and tanked immediately after Bondi tried to lean on it