America's gun culture is very closely tied to its settler culture. Most right wing gun nuts are barely able to conceal their fears/hopes for a race war in all but name.
That said, there are plenty of examples of progressive forces arming themselves. The Black Panthers are a good example. Without their armed militancy I think the US government would have been a lot less likely to capitulate to the demands of the peaceful civil rights activists.
How you are getting downvotes is beyond me. People are finally waking up to the idea that the whole point of the Trump admin is to privatize the government, but haven't woken up to the fact that we are entering an era of state terror. Keep your heads buried HN, you'll be dragged kicking and screaming into reality in a few months anyways.
It's extremely frustrating and something I've thought a lot about over the years where we were pretty obviously building towards this outcome. A couple things:
First the "average" american is softly but ideologically committed to liberalism¹ & democracy as fundamental values. From that perspective the mind kind of recoils from accepting this. If this is really what's happening, what does civic obligation demand of me? How does that reconcile with my inability to keep my family safe in the face of a motivated & powerful state that wishes to harm me through them? Easier to believe this isn't what is happening, I don't need to take action yet. A powerful example of motivated reasoning.
Second a significant part of the userbase here, as with the general population, supports some or all of these actions. Simple as.
¹ Like in the traditional sense, ie "a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality, the right to private property, and equality before the law" from wikipedia.
> Second a significant part of the userbase here, as with the general population, supports some or all of these actions. Simple as.
People support what they claim to do doing and are naive enough to believe they are doing what they say without asking questions about why they seem to be going out of there way to avoid transparency or providing any real evidence to their claims.
If the administration was even remotely competent, this would be scary. There is EASILY a list of things that they could do if they truly cared about going full authoritarian.
But when they start doing stuff like tarrifs for no reason what so ever, to the point where even Musk thinks its stupid, the situation is sad more than scary. US has lost its edge for literally nothing in return.
I mean, scary is a relative term. Its just as scary as Trump being legally immune to anything he does, as granted by Supreme Court.
The Republicans are basically still at the mercy of the economy - Trump backed of tariffs real quick when Japan started selling off US debt on the cheap. So I don't think its going to get levels of Saddam Hussein authoritarian. But time will tell.
The thing is, just like in Russia, smart people will know when to leave, and will leave, which is good. As soon as it becomes economically better to work in EU, you will have lots of talented people immigrating there which will bolster their economy.
They're downvoting it because it feels bad. And well, it does! This sucks major ass.
Part of me is sympathetic to them because a lot of these people are people who live privileged lives and have never before been in any political pressure. These people have previously been able to just detach from politics because they knew, no matter what, they would end up on top. And now, that assumption is no longer true and they have the enter a world that a variety of minority groups have already been living in. They have to face the reality that politics isn't just something on the TV, but something that affects their lives.
You are probably gonna get downvoted for lack of empathy but I completely agree. I feel bad for OP, but simultaneously if you are a technocrat who thinks they are somehow insulated or not part of the larger system, you need a reality check.
> I was supposed to help with the developer keynote, ensuring things matched reality and were beautiful. Gone.
Maybe I am too much of a jaded asshole but anyone who writes something like this needs perspective.
> Maybe I am too much of a jaded asshole but anyone who writes something like this needs perspective.
This is clearly a person who loved their job, and took it seriously. They had worked hard on something and were looking forward to sharing it. That, frankly, seems healthy. It's the only way to give your everyday life worth and meaning as an employee. It's certainly something that Google cultivated and encouraged. And it's shocking to have it vanish so abruptly.
If you take a more cynical, realistic view, you could never seriously engage with your work. You realize the company doesn't care about you, and you return the sentiment. That might be a more realistic way of viewing your situation, but it's empty of meaning or satisfaction. You'd be correct but unhappy all day every day.
I was always kinda jealous of people who could drink the kool-ade. And even if there's a certain satisfaction in seeing them get a reality check, it's also a shame that somebody who thought they had found meaning and purpose in a community suddenly realize they were just a tool the whole time.
I think its possible to hold 2 conflicting views simultaneously. I put on my profit optimization hat and take it off when I leave work.
I take no satisfaction in seeing someone who has drank the kool-ade getting a wakeup call, it's just a shocking realization that there are people out there who still dont get it.
Well as long as they're not a white man, the only 2 privileges that I was afforded on the way up, then they're welcome to try absolutely any punishment they see fit. They're surely welcome to hate me. It is their right.
Therapy isn't so much telling you that your feelings are wrong. Feelings arise from many factors that are beyond your immediate control.
Therapy helps provide better context for, introspection into, and understanding of those feelings, and more importantly, alternative ways of responding to, expressing and acting upon them.
At the very least, expressing them less aggressively while still getting across your point.
Not trying to invalidate your feelings, but stewing in resentment is like drinking poison daily. Therapy can help you acquire the psychological tools and habits needed to help you and those around you live happier lives
Just like you're assuming the OPs feelings are wrong. They are not.
I remember my dad lamenting the bourgeoisie to a family friend who recently immigrated to the US. His answer was, "To us, you are the bourgeoisie"
There's always someone richer than you, you can hate it, but what's the point? You just make yourself miserable and don't enjoy whatever you can carve out of life for yourself
Inflation is gonna eat the cash. Now, if you think you are smart and invest, they pull the rug on all of it.
Honestly, where are the incentives to save up, to build something for yourself? I mean, the outlook wasn't that great even without this bullshit. It's all so damn bleak.
> A particular worry in the Treasury market is that a doom loop could arise from the “basis trade”. This is popular with hedge funds and has minted fortunes at some of America’s largest. It attempts to profit from the difference in price between Treasury bonds and Treasury futures contracts, caused by high demand for the futures from asset managers. Traders exploit this by buying Treasuries and selling futures contracts. To amplify the returns, they borrow using the Treasuries they have bought as collateral, then recycle the cash into even more Treasuries. Thanks to this procedure, hedge funds are short some $1trn-worth of Treasury futures.
Every few years some dumb shit like this blows up and then the "experts" hem and haw about why reform actually can never be done and "we MUST keep gambling with instruments you see!" it's just so transparently stupid at this point.
> then the "experts" hem and haw about why reform actually can never be done
The reforms were done. Glass-Steagall, for instance [1]. They’re then undone [2]. Idiots just keep voting the guys who caused the problem into office [3].
This is basically a tautology. The question is what’s actually being funded in the name of public health. Wasting money in pursuit of public health which doesn’t help the public is bad actually,
How do you define waste? If research isn't harmful, but doesn't produce results, is that waste? Are inconclusive results wasteful? What ratio of public utility to cost would you consider non-wasteful spending? What about the benefits of effectively subsidizing your biotech sector by keeping biologists in-demand?
There is more upside (globally) to public health spending than maintaining a global empire that deals death and destruction. Trying to nitpick is missing the point entirely.
I get that there's a discussion here over the minutae to be had in good faith. I am not qualified enough for that discussion. My point is that funding a genocidal empire is inherently bad whereas public health funding can have inefficiencies but is overall a net good.
The discussion is moot however because the agencies aren't being gutted over concerns of efficiency, but because of an ideological commitment to free market shock therapy. It's like arguing if you should order the fish or chicken while the Titanic is sinking. Sure there's an argument to be had, it's just not relevant right now.
China has outlined plans to reduce their environmental impact in their 5-year plan. One can say "wow do you really trust the CCP?" but at least they have a publicly available plan.
It took 30 years between Lenin's brother being executed by the state, and the Russian revolution. History has momentum, and the gains from the New Deal are still enough that many Americans dont feel comfortable putting their bodies on the line. People's dispositions are a function of their material reality and the reality is that most people haven't internalized the damage yet.
Also Americans have always allowed government over reach and corruption on the assumption that the AR-15 they have a pretty good grouping on at weekends is what'll solve the problem if it gets "really bad".
I call it the violence event horizon: a whole lot of people's critical thinking just stops, as though an actual war will make things so much simpler.
As I look at it, rhetorically, when is the point for a US citizen where taking up arms against the US government seems less dangerous than business as usual? I’d say it’s still quite a ways off for most.
EVs are not the solution, they just shift the emissions elsewhere and perpetuate a car-based society which is a much larger issue. Policies like NYCs congestion pricing and light rail are infinitely more impactful.
The electricity grid is going emissions free faster than the transportation infrastructure. So the emissions from the production of both gasoline & electric vehicles are going down quickly.
That doesn't solve the environmental impacts of: tire usage, EV production, battery degradation, road maintenance, charging infrastructure, and all the costs downstream of suburban development built around cars like:
- millions of miles of electrical lines
- millions of sq ft of parking lots
- wastewater management infrastructure
- sewage infrastructure
- high municipal debt to service all of the above
That said, there are plenty of examples of progressive forces arming themselves. The Black Panthers are a good example. Without their armed militancy I think the US government would have been a lot less likely to capitulate to the demands of the peaceful civil rights activists.