HN user
Please elaborate on how this comment is a political or ideological battle? A person asked a specific question about US history, and I replied with relevant historical documentation.
How could I have answered their question in a way that does not destroy HN?
I'm more concerned with what that implies about the content of their character, rather than color
"The National Museum of African American History & Culture wants to make you aware of certain signs of whiteness: Individualism, hard work, objectivity, the nuclear family, progress, respect for authority, delayed gratification, more."Oh, and emphasis on scientific methods.
What does that say about the life works of Frederick Douglass, Booker T Washington, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.?
Yep, it's definitely not easy. Nothing worth doing is.
Many prefer poisonous fast food to a healthy home cooked meal, just as many prefer to read twitter comments and click bait than to read a book
Studying human history and philosophy provides much greater insights into human affairs than reading click bait or partisan propaganda
As a thought experiment: are there any examples that you can personally think of where self proclaimed liberals used hate and fear to shape public discourse?
alternative that does the work of collective discovery.
The library
How do I tell the difference between an honest citizen journalist, a propagandist, a liar, a lunatic, or a troll?
Critical thinking skills, independent research, and open dialogue
How many examples would it take to convince you?
And do you think it's possible for humans to claim they are driven by altruistic, while actually being primarily hateful, deceitful, divisive, and destructive?
Maybe if there weren't already countless other supporting, self-evident examples in recent history
You're assuming a false dichotomy in which one obscurely defined group is subjectively deemed to be marginally better than the other excuses the synergistic absurdity of both
Not surprising considering the extreme consolidation of mass media corporations over the past 50 years.
The irony is inherent in the ideology. This is just one of many examples of that irony on full public display, cannibalizing itself.
it would be VERY hard to convince me that they have done it at the same level of concerted effort.
What exactly would it take to convince you of that?
What's silly, precisely? Seat belts are cool, so no, you're wrong.
Homemade masks (as opposed to N95) and handkerchiefs are only marginally effective against reducing transmission. Having a strong immune system is a scientifically proven way to reduce your health risk significantly.
What is silly is all the people who are content to do the absolute bare minimum, easiest possible thing to attempt to protect people's health: merely putting a piece of cloth on their face; while at the same time neglecting to put in the work to improve their overall health, and thus their risk to others of spreading the virus.
Why doesn't the state also mandate exercise, diet, and sleep?
18 of those will have permanent heart damage for the rest of their lives.
Adding critical context: Nearly half of americans are obese and/or have heart disease, and ~650,000 are killed by it each year.
How much lower would all those numbers be if americans simply exercised and ate healthy on a regular basis?
That jackboot that has been stomping my face in, I wonder if it fits me?
"If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart? During the life of any heart this line keeps changing place; sometimes it is squeezed one way by exuberant evil and sometimes it shifts to allow enough space for good to flourish. One and the same human being is, at various ages, under various circumstances, a totally different human being. At times he is close to being a devil, at times to sainthood. But his name doesn't change, and to that name we ascribe the whole lot, good and evil.
Socrates taught us: "Know thyself."
Confronted by the pit into which we are about to toss those who have done us harm, we halt, stricken dumb: it is after all only because of the way things worked out that they were the executioners and we weren't.
From good to evil is one quaver, says the proverb.
And correspondingly, from evil to good."
-Gulag Archipeligo
Why do you focus so narrowly on "fighting" speech, rather than the ongoing actions that are dehumanizing humans of all types?
Nature abhors monoculture
Can you see how the former is a link in the same "chain of destruction"[1] as the latter?
[1]https://youtu.be/c8N0TDsjpkE
You may be disinclined to watch this short video, but perhaps you would be surprised to see that it actually gives strong credence to the problems which you are seemingly arguing against, and which I too care deeply about.
It's funny (and quite stupid) how people try to define slavery and racism as a uniquely white American problem from the past, and not a human problem of the present.
Slavery still exists. There are more people living in slavery now than ever before in history.
There is a comical irony to how those roles have flip flopped over these recent decades. Evidence of how we humans do in fact have so much more in common than we give ourselves credit for -- all the while these groups hyper focus only on our differences.
I really don't understand this idea that speech doesn't have consequences that cause disparate impact.
It seems you are tilting at windmills. Where in this discussion has anyone claimed that words do not have effects?
Perhaps a paradigm shift from a "thing" oriented society to a "person" oriented society.
"We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered" -MLK
How do you get Americans to care about the health and welfare of other Americans?
First, you have to get them to care about their own health. 42% of Americans are obese and heart disease kills ~650,000 Americans every year even though it is largely preventable.
Except that Google’s stock price is both in the hands of its employees and directly benefits its employees. They have a clear stake in it.
Again, the same is true for democratic governments.
the ad industry can disappear overnight, and I don’t think life would get worse without it
If you're concerned about extreme materialism and the effect it has on the environment and mental health, then it seems life would not get worse, it would get better.
The other way to think about how to steel man the idea would be to think about how the government measures its success which is most likely by whether or not those in power keep staying in power?
The same is true for Google or any corporation, their success is primarily measured by their stock price, not by how well they achieve their ideals
Tech companies have a defined purpose, and they’re a vehicle for achieving that purpose. Google wants to organize the world’s information, and turning a gigantic profit while doing so is one of their operating constraints...
But the U.S. government doesn’t have a defined purpose, just a long list of functions, and those functions aren’t regularly interrogated. It’s uncomfortable for modern Americans to ask what the ultimate goal of the government is.
Aside from the fact that this an "apples to oranges" comparison, I dont think the author is aware of the Preamble to the Constitution.
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."