Debate used to be the staunchest form of resistance. This last decade, racing to call the opposition a crybaby and declare it activism seems to be more in vogue.
I was just referring to this thread. Outside of that, sure. For a bunch of people who would like to be seen as strong men, this opposition seems rather thin-skinned.
I assumed it apparent Trump and his renaming of the Gulf of Mexico was what the original comment opposed. Perhaps an error on my part as not everyone sees that view the opposition here, but certainly for the one I was replying to at least.
No, sorry, that’s a strawman. You’re framing this as if we were talking about some nuanced policy issue, which it isn’t. The concrete situation is a president unilaterally renaming a geographical feature for no other defensible reason than hubris, in disagreement with the rest of the region.
I agree with GP - there is no debate to be had over this, only rejection.
I wholeheartedly stand behind pushing back on & rejecting these kinds of decisions and policies. Please don't mistake "not wanting the comments here to jump straight to name calling" as "wanting people who disagree with Trump to instead say nothing here".
I voted for Jill Stein, that Trump won even though he says vile things should not be an excuse for us to normalize it even further. There are a lot of reasons he gets away with things which need to be dealt with, people getting riled up by him enough to act the same way instead is precisely what he wants.
The very same Jill Stein who infamously attended a dinner in Moscow and sat next to Vladimir Putin?
The Jill Stein that was investigated because she was clearly in bed with foreign powers hell bent on keeping Hillary Clinton out of the White House? That Jill Stein?
You may as well have voted for Trump.
You effectively did when you voted against the sane, rational choice. You voted against a stateswoman who tried to stop precisely the kind of behaviour that is pushing us to the brink of a new world war.
A presidential candidate having sat next to Putin at a dinner and having someone investigate them for being set on keeping the other candidates out of the white house being what you lead with sure makes them sound good compared to the usual. That said, I don't think she's a perfect saint either - just less awful and the most aligned with my policy views of the choices.
Regardless, my vote for president has never come anywhere close to mattering yet, but I always do it anyways. The state I lived in last election could have had something like 50x all 3rd party candidate votes go to Kamala and she still wouldn't have received the electoral votes from it. Besides, don't you think it a bit odd that instead of steering 1% of Trump voters farther left the problem is supposed to be 100% of green party voters didn't steer farther right? I suppose maybe not to those sitting to the right. At least the same author sees to blame the democrats for the democrats not being popular enough in their much newer articles https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/07/democr...
I certainly would like some ranked choice voting or the like for the choice of president though! Congress too, only 2 states ordinarily have such for that and I don't think it can really do much until at least ~half do. Beyond being exhausted with what 2 party politics has given us the last 2 decades, forcing parties to work with more than just themselves to succeed might be the only thing to break this massive divide growing ever stronger each year. I think foreign interest love to play the 2 party battle as well - some rile up the left, others rile up the right. In the end, everyone here is more divided and the ones out there feel all the better for helping "fix" the world for however they see that being. Can't blame 'em though, the US has no better a track record in history.
In Australia we used ranked choice combined with mandatory voting, which fixes most of the issue plaguing the US.
For example, "our" Trump is Pauline Hanson, a vile, racist, anti-immigration candidate. She is likely to get a lot of votes because immigration is a problem -- the two major parties are in bed with big businesses, which are making billions of dollars of profit (each), most of which is directly or indirectly caused by high immigration.
In the US, people felt they had no choice but to vote someone like Trump in to get "change".
Here, the current party in power (Labor) has immediately committed to lowering immigration numbers and has also started working on related crises.
Why?
Because of they don't, then One Nation will make preferential voting pacts with their opposition and they'll lose seats next election even if One Nation wins zero seats.
This forces parties to negotiate, even outside of the peak of the election cycle.
You can't just ignore a "minority interest" where there minority is actually just shy of half the population, like can happen with first-past-the-post.
Similarly, "Vote Splitting" doesn't really work, because two similar candidates will recommend each other in the preferential voting.
From the first entry in Cambridge Dictionary (though there may certainly be more than one valid definition to consider, this is the one I have been using):
> (a) serious discussion of a subject in which many people take part
The debate I'm referring to is here, the discussion between commenters on HN about which name should be used (I'm well on the side of Gulf of Mexico as well). One does not need to see multi-sided nuance on the topic itself to engage in debate, they just need to engage in discussion about it. We can certainly choose to not have serious discussion, skipping straight to the name calling summaries instead. I'd consider that a great loss of one of the last open places on the internet where you could avoid that jump whenever something political comes up.
I agree the rename has no good reasons, causes upset & confusion, and was seemingly done out of nothing but hubris & political tactics. I disagree the way to communicate that is just by replying the president is a crybaby instead of seriously discussing these points directly. Please don't mistake that as saying we shouldn't push back or "both sides are right". It's purely about what was on the original tin - can we still have serious discussion here instead of jumping straight to how much we don't like someone as the only reason why.
There is no serious discussion on this point. There was never intended to be. There is only the bullying, and now the tone policing. But we all have better things to do with our time.
