Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit
Ok, let's take the nuanced route. Not all are stupid.

They're just more uneducated than ever, more conservative than ever, and idolizing dehumanization and evil totalitarians more than ever.

The root of everything is social insecurity and bad education, caused by the USA actually not being a country for its people but for corporations and billionaires.

I'm sorry but if you want a pathological liar, criminal and an overall horrible human being as a president of the (probably) most powerful and influential country in the world, you're just scum. Keep the downvotes coming.

The inequality in a nation must have a huge effect on the nature of the people in that nation. That a treatise on inequality has won a Nobel prizes for economics would tend to support your thesis [1]. That another Nobel prize winner has also written on inequality should clinch it [2].

Fix inequality.

[1] https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2015/dea... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stiglitz

> I'm sorry but if you want a pathological liar, criminal and an overall horrible human being as a president of the (probably) most powerful and influential country in the world, you're just scum. Keep the downvotes coming.

This is precisely what I'm talking about. You really think this comment is going to do anything but push even more people to vote for the right? Because why would they side with your camp when you just called them scum, because you don't understand their intentions for voting for him/the party?

Which is extra unfortunate, because your comment up until that part was pretty good.

I understand their intentions. I understand that these votes come out of a place of fear. They are unhappy and a lying demagogue is pointing them to a solution and fuels them with hate. [1]

I also understand that they willfully choose to ignore massive red flags and are a bunch of hypocrites. These people have no shame and need to be shamed. It is the key emotion that leads to change and motivates to action.

Sadly, due to electoral interference by totalitarian regimes, media outlets, Musk, and the internet in general, these people who would otherwise be ostracized by the community due to their antisocial behaviours have been normalized.

Once you're set up like that, it's extremely difficult to get out of. I am afraid that the US has check-mated itself for at least an entire generation. The only thing that can drive a change is hope and basic human decency, ethics and morality.

Which brings us back to people wilfully being the exact opposites of those values. We've had lying oppressive demagogues probably since the dawn of humanity. Most certainly in the last century.

However, despite being afraid and frustrated, many people sided against such leaders. And this is why I consider not doing so a personal moral failing.

[1] https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/11/trump-voters-li...

> These people have no shame and need to be shamed. It is the key emotion that leads to change and motivates to action.

> these people who would otherwise be ostracized by the community due to their antisocial behaviours have been normalized.

The Internet (or global communication in general) does indeed mean shame won't work, because people can just ignore you and go find people who support them - whether that's Trump, Musk, or some randoms on the Internet is irrelevant.

So let's double down on the shame thing, which has worked out so well lately?

> The only thing that can drive a change is hope and basic human decency, ethics and morality.

I think the crux of many social issues is that people have different ideas about what 'basic human decency, ethics and morality' even mean.

loading story #42060550