Why is he pardoning a drug trafficker?
It's better to ignore the rational reasons to oppose them and focus on the emotional ones. For starters, people are repulsed by their cruelty.
The Democrat agenda has far far higher approval ratings than Democrats, and that says a lot about the current state of affairs.
That is a good point. The problem isn't with the message, so this time they shot the messenger.
To anyone who voted for Trump because he said he'd be hard on drug dealers: how do you feel about him pardoning a top level drug dealer?
They want him to be hard on criminals who do things they don't like. The biggest drug dealers alive are the Sacklers or maybe McKinsey, and they're not in scope either.
Progressives aren't consistent either. No one is. For example, Dems keep screaming about being a country of laws when referring to GOP antics, but want to ignore certain immigration, anti-abortion, and drug laws (in some cases by just refusing to enforce them).
Unfortunately what's good for the goose is good for the gander, as they say.
The rise of the morally bankrupt in America.
People need to stop thinking of politicians as their friends and having parasocial relationships with them. They're public servants and should be treated as such.
On the other hand, it's clear to me that the correct amount of jail time wasn't zero either, given everything else he allegedly did.
[0] https://www.activism.net/cypherpunk/manifesto.html
[1] I think about this in the same way that we accept the possibility of bad things happening because people can have private conversations in their own home, or are able to have complete control over potentially dangerous tools and vehicles. IMO the risks are worth the trade-offs and these are important rights to protect in the relationship between people, technology, and government (or whoever wields power).
One does not need a gang and violence to sell drugs online. Selling drugs offline, gangs and violence will get involved.
according to Trump: "A promise made is a promise kept", he is keeping his promise to his constituents.
enjoy your CNN propaganda.
Societal taboos for example can create a division like this. You can see this divide between truly anonymous forums vs moderated conversations online.
Source?
And it seems people don't particularly like Trump, but vote on him because he seems to be the only one that wants to do something about illegal immigrants:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/18/us/politics/trump-policie...
And I understand that it's even frustrating for legal immigrants, who waited for years to get citizenship, that illegal immigrants don't have to do anything and get it right away.
Do they really? How? Asking for a friend.
What? In my experience his supporters literally never shut up about how they are the silent majority. The irony seems entirely lost on them.
Instead we think of “the average person” and project that on everyone.
You looked at the small libertarian interest group, and based on that projected how everyone is. Now you look at hacker news and you’re projecting how everyone is. This projection is where our reasoning fails.
So, either the old government is in power of the mainstream media, or people are secretly on the right and don't speak out about it. Or maybe a combination of the two.
You made a false dichotomy, but I’m sure you can figure that one on your own.
There’s also the other aspect where you align your views to the views of your group.
There are places in the US, where being a Republican is absolutely the core of what you are, and you will adopt and genuinely love any candidate from that party.
"We want competent people coming into our country. And H-1B, I know the programme very well. I use the programme. Maître d', wine experts, even waiters, high-quality waiters, you've got to get the best people. People like Larry, he needs engineers, NASA also needs... engineers like nobody's ever needed them"
A developer builds a platform like eBay but without censorship that can be used by the drug trafficker
It's not the same thing
The police finds my soap in the lab of someone who blew up a building. Some people died. Was it my fault, knowing how it was being used? Did I do anything illegal? Unethical? Immoral?
I am not sure about the legal standpoint, but from a moral one I would have felt bad running the business knowing it's regularly abused to harm others and I am not doing anything against it.
Or: I can remove that ingredient but it goes against my principle of not accepting constraints.
> Some people died. Was it my fault, knowing how it was being used? Did I do anything illegal? Unethical? Immoral?
The purpose of eBay isn’t to facilitate illicit transactions, doing so is abusing the platform.
SR was very much for illicit transactions.