That's a likely motivation, but it's worth pointing out that it's against one of the HN community's other values: thinking things through properly, not just picking an option.
The hacker mindset values understanding how the moving parts fit together, and thinking about whether better strategies than the "received wisdom" exist. Politics is often a demand to pick a side, which is against that, but "we just don't do politically contraversial subjects here" is even more against that.
'The Iranian regime is unpredictable, as seen by its recent decisions to attack areas in the region without warning or provocations ...hmmm...remind me again: who started this without warning of provocation?
Hmm, what could have happened 47 years ago. Is that when the current islamist regime overthrew the dictator that the US & UK put into place by orchestrating a coup against the democratically elected government because they wanted to nationalize the oil industry? Seriously this 47 years ago BS needs to stop.
Strange how this argument keeps getting made but the obvious implication is never put into question. After all, the revolution "succeeded". So, tell me, now that students and socialists and ... put mullahs in power, and "kept" this great oil wealth, surely they're wealthy now? Has the oil wealth benefited them, or just the mullahs?
Oh wait ...
Because, people don't seem very happy about the result of the "success" of the revolution. Not at all. They also seem desperately poor, even if relatively successful. Only the massacring mullahs they brought to power look rich at all.
In fact now most people seem to wish that the evil oil companies would have won the revolution. Because, of course, they would have employed and helped the population.
Apparently the girl on the left was executed by the mullahs for protesting and the girl on the right was forced out of the country. Doesn't sound like this "overthrowing the dictator" was much of a success at all ...
Ohh, you mean when the CIA supported a coup d'état in Iran? No, sorry, that was 73 years ago. When the USA supported Iraq in attacking Iran including the use of chemical weapons in an 8 year long war? No, that was only 46 years ago. You mean when the Iranian people protested against their government and replaced the monarchy with a Islamic republic?
Wondering when did political discourse become so prevalent in hacker news? I have now become accustomed to it being normal, but I remember the hacker news of 10 years was not like this.
Why has this become so normal? I miss the days where this was focused on technology and, well, hacking.
Can we stop engaging this political commentary please.
The hacker community has always had a strong political element to it, what else is the GNU GPL but a statement of political intent? Anything which deals with the allocation of power and resources is political.
