Why the hell would this be flagged? Perfectly valid, debate-worthy and absolutely relevant in the context of many non-flagged submissions on this site. Again it would be nice if the HN admin stop letting any random orangutan flag anything they like out of their own shitty little naval-gazing ideological fixations.
Avoiding too much repetition is a core principle of this place [1]. To get a sense of how repetitive these discussions are, just look at the comments in the current thread—they could just as easily have been posted to the previous thread.
The way HN operates with respect to political stories is clear and stable, and has been for many years: some stories with political overlap are ok [2], but there isn't room on the frontpage for all of them (not even 5% of them, really). Frontpage space is the scarcest resource that exists here [3], and HN is not a current affairs site [4].
If you, or anyone, will familiarize yourselves with the explanations in these links, and then still have a question that I haven't answered there, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.
> Avoiding too much repetition is a core principle of this place
This principle is applied very selectively though: The homepage has been full of insignificant iterations of overly hyped tech products for years now.
It is very hard to imagine all these submissions of announcements of products with monthly release cycles gratifying anyone's intellectual curiosity. Yet it apparently does because they can stay in the homepage for 24 hours.
But for some reason, something as unprecedented as the United States government threatening Harvard with a xenophobic ban is deemed "repetitive"?
> insignificant iterations of overly hyped tech products for years now
HN's moderation system downweights those even more regularly than we downweight (some) political posts. Here's an explanation from a few years ago, which caused quite a stir if I remember correctly: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23071428 (May 2020).
In both cases—incremental product releases on the one hand, and political news on the other—some posts still make it through through to the front page, and in both cases the users who want more of that category feel like it's unduly suppressed, while users who want less of that category feel like HN is overrun with it.
I believe the issue is the type of discussions that can damage the fabric of the website. Repetitive discussions on tech products are not good but can't damage the site. But discussions of politics can be inflammatory and repetitive inflammatory discussions could damage the site since it dampens intellectual curiosity of people overall. I'm not a moderator or anything so I don't know but that's just my guess based on what dang has said in previous comments.
A lot of repetitive discussions of tech things get moderated all the time as well, you can just email them in and the moderators sort them out. There's a lot of mod commentary on how things like releases, feature updates, 'launch week' etc are handled, one recent example
"... a huge frontpage discussion about this topic just a few days ago"
The previous discussion was about an April 11, 2025 joint letter to Harvard President Alan Garber from the Commissioner of the Federal Aquisition Service, General Services Administration, the Acting General Counsel of the Department of Health and Human Services and the Acting General Counsel of the Department of Education.
Discussion of the April 11th letter occurred in stories submitted at 2025-04-14T18:40:22 and 2025-04-14T18:13:07
This discussion is about an April 16, 2025 letter to Maureen Martin at Harvard's International Office from the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.
This story was submitted 2025-04-17T10:42:01. Discussion of this letter on April 14th would have been impossible. It was not sent until April 16th.
As one might guess, the letters make different requests. The threatened consequences for not complying are also different.
Different letters, different senders, different recipients, different sets of requests, different types of potential consequences for noncompliance, e.g., cancelling funding versus refusing to grant student visas. Are these truly the same topic. Let the reader decide.
Is it possible the reason for these stories getting flagged is because HN users with flagging privileges do not want to them discussed. Not because of repetition but because the discussions are often low quality or offensive to them in some way.
One could argue HN routinely keeps having the same discussions about the same topics, even going so far as to allow HN users to resubmit stories for discussion. Hence, comments frequently note "past discussion".
For example, an HN Poll last year showed most HN readers who vote in polls thought "AI" was mostly hype. Comments have also suggested readers are tired of the hype. Yet they are still being forced to see/hide stories about "AI" every day on HN. Sometimes it feels like HN commenters are literally being forcefed the same tired, old topics and coaxed to repeat their same old opinions, or worse, their favourite memes, over and over again.
I am not suggesting there is anything HN can do about this problem. But I am inclined to agree with the GP comment; the current flagging behaviour mirrors the worst of HN commenting behaviour. It is a low quality, cowardly attempt at moderation that does not even seem to work. We are now consistently seeing flagged stories remain on page 1.
There is no "the" reader. There's a statistical cloud of readers with highly variant preferences.
You guys need to understand that the community is divided about these questions. I don't mean divided politically on partisan lines (though that as well), I mean divided around what sorts of topics are the best fit for the site.
There are those who feel like each letter to each government agency is a major new story that obviously deserves frontpage time; and there are those who feel like HN is overrun with this sort of thing already. Ditto for every major topic including, as you say, AI: some feel like there's too much, some feel like there's not enough.
There's no HN user, including me, who's satisfied with the balance of stories on the front page. The more passionate you (I don't mean you personally, but all of us) are about a particular topic, the more it feels like the topic is being unfairly and outrageously suppressed, whether by user flags or the mods or both.
This is ultimately all coming from the fundamentals of how HN works—from its initial conditions, if you like—and those aren't likely to change. Feelings about it do uptick during times of political intensity, such as now, but the underlying phenomenon is consistent and has been for many years.
Flagging does not remove stories. It does not always result in killng them to "[dead]" status. It may not even demote stories off page 1. Flagging is not a effective solution to the submission of stories that anyone believes are inappropriate for HN, i.e., it does not stop further submissions on similar topics. They still get submitted. If anything, flagging may be a means of stopping discussion. If it works. Meanwhile "[flagged]" status was removed from this story. Discussion continues.
NB. "The reader" is a figure of speech refering to the reader who is reading the comment, whomever that may be. The point of the comment is that "repetition" is probably not an adequate explanation for flagging. Unless readers are informed who is flaggging and for what purpose, then all anyone can do is guess. No one knows why stories are flagged except the people who flag them.
Whether some HN practice has always been the case or whether it will remain so for all time is irrelevant. What's relevant is that aggressive flagging is happening now. Commenters share their thoughts about it. Some disagree. Some agree. Discussion continues.
The point of the comment is that "repetition" is probably not an adequate explanation for flagging. [...] What's relevant is that aggressive flagging is happening now.
Why not? Why does only the flagging need to be explained but not, say, the aggressive reposting of stories that are typically, and by long-established practice, offtopic for HN? These are clearly two sides of the same phenomenon, it's not obvious that the flagging alone here should be treated as some sort of anomaly.
The linked discussion was on April 14th. Very few topics that narrow get two back to back megathreads on HN. Fundamentally, you're arguing this one should get three (or more) megathreads and that's a very uphill argument because it runs against the basic design fabric of the place.
Oh, I found /active just recently. And turned out many, if not most, interesting topics are censored. While some mediocre and irrelevant things are not. However, I’m not surprised, being a long time visitor, and seeing very dang questionable moderation practices.
There's no "non-political rule", as you'll see if you look at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, and in fact HN hosted a huge frontpage thread about this issue just a few days ago:
You guys should familiarize yourselves with how this site is operated, because it has been explained endlessly (to the limit of my patience, in fact) over many years, and the assumptions you're making do not match reality. If you want to do that, you'll find entrypoints into thousands of past explanations in my comment upthread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43724590.
> This site is owned by ycombinator, who have a motivation to "not rock the boat"…
I’d argue that leadership of ycombinator is glad where this boat is sailing. Just look who are they inviting to advertised AI startup school at the bottom of this site.
The founder of Gumroad works inside DOGE now. One of the founders of AirBNB works inside DOGE now. Musk founded DOGE. Peter Thiel's Palantir is generating the information for ICE now.
Some further context for anyone who reads this and thinks it's a fair indication of the factors that influence HN moderation:
- Gumroad is not a YC-funded company and its founder has no influence on YC or HN.
- Joe Gebbia is just one of more than ten thousand YC-backed founders and does not represent YC or influence HN.
- Of the other people named, none has any official role or influence at YC, and only one of them has ever had a formal role; a brief, minor role that ended nearly over seven years ago. At least two of those named have had very public, bitterly hostile relationships with past presidents of YC and founders of notable YC companies.
- The only person with any role/influence at YC and who publicly espouses any position on U.S. federal politics is Paul Graham, who tweets almost daily in staunch opposition to the current U.S. administration.
- HN moderators and YC management know that HN is only valuable if it is a place where people can find content and discussions that engage intellectual curiosity, and the surest way to destroy its value is to allow it to be influenced by particular ideological agendas.
I doubt they need to adjust the algorithim though to get rid of politics heavy posts specifically.
I’m pretty sure anything that gets more than twice as many comments than upvotes gets a huge downrank penalty, such that they would almost never hit the front page without moderator intervention.
I didn't mention Nazism, I said _fascist salute_. The fascist movement that was popular earlier in the 20th century and led to Nazism, but is not exclusively limited to it. The adoption of the "Roman" salute was from Italian fascism, which the Germans borrowed.
I agree, and there’s plenty of political discussion here. E.g. Navalny’s death / murder was discussed wildly here, but is completely irrelevant to tech. (If this resource pretends it’s about tech.) Politics is ok, unless it’s politics we don’t like you to talk about.
They did not. Very specifically, only flagged articles are the ones that paint current president or current republican leadership very badly while going into details.
That is only flagged kind of article. Other political articles are fine.
Decision to be non political would lead to different selection of articles to be banned.
If things like these happen, staying silent is — guess what — political.
If your neighbours are being taken away by state police there is no non-political move you can make. Helping the police is political, ducking away and pretending it is not helping is political and hiding them is political as well.
While I understand that this site tries to not drown in the flaming garbage site that online political discourse can be, if I — the exact demographic who startups would like to have working for them would list precisely this as my main concern stopping me from moving into the US it is a bit odd that it is verboten to discuss it.
Hackers historically were (and are) extremely critical of authority and for the freedom of knowledge, and now we can't discuss an direct attack at those very values on a site that calls itself Hackernews? Come on.
I flag American politics because it's boring and irrelevant to me. Nothing to do with ideological fixations, although it does please me that people like get so worked up about it.
> I flag American politics because it's boring and irrelevant to me.
Where on earth could you live that American politics are irrelevant to you? Boring sure, but irrelevant? Unless you live, well, on Jupiter these days, there's not an inch of the globe that's untouched by the effects of American politics.
This complaint went out the window when they started pulling all of their actions straight from the Nazi playbook.
Just because someone coined a law on the internet decades ago does not invalidate the comparison. Neither does you finding it repetitive and boring. If anything, you should be more concerned, not apathetic.
I'll be honest, I prefer it this way. Thanks people flagging the political stuff (I can't be bothered).
If you want the political stuff & the controversial stuff, you can add /active after the URL to HN main page.
The fact that there is an /active tab and flagged submissions can still be voted & commented on, tells me that while dang don't want it to be the face of HN, he's fine that people discuss it (as long as you comment with civility). If there was some tinfoil conspiracy, the tab would've been deleted.
I'm guilty that l now usually check /active and main page.
You know, some of the high-horse, HN readers are quick to say "social media, bad" and anything bashing social media (including blogs) sky rocket up to main page. "reddit sucks" is another common one. I mean I usually agree to that sentiment, but if you check /active posts, the comments, where things go, it resembles any other social media slop more than HN.
I spend more time on /active, sadly. Maybe those navel-gazing orangutans are actually the ones making sure this is not reddit or Facebook for techies rather than boomers
Please find a way to contribute more politely to HN. Regardless of whether I agree with you on whether this post should be flagged, calling your fellow HNers "random orangutans" that act out of "shitty little naval-gazing ideological fixations" is rude, mean, stupid, and wrong.
Cowing Harvard - one of the world’s greatest universities - would mark a pivotal victory for the dictatorship taking shape before our eyes. Dictatorships derive their power from the submission of a society’s key institutions. That’s what’s at stake here.
If this is for science it's cutting off the nose to spite the face: the scientists are the ones that need the billions that are getting cut off and who are shutting down their labs right now. The humanities people have miniscule research budgets: they maybe need a couple grand to travel to an archive from time to time and that's about it.
I have read lots of your comments over the years and you've had some great contributions, but I don't think this is one of them. What figure from the link supports your comment?
74% support deporting immigrants who are here illegally and have committed crimes.
That's a bit different than what you initially said
That poll has 74% support for "Deporting immigrants who are here illegally and have committed crimes".
It does not ask about "Trump's Deportations". I support deporting criminal immigrants. I even support deporting those with no criminal record who are here illegally (with some caveats). I don't support sending innocent people to brutal slave labor in a country not their own.
Supporting "Deporting immigrants who are here illegally and have committed crimes" is not the same as supporting "Trump's Deportations".
Good quote put pretty ironic coming from the guy that ruined France economically and demographically for the next 100 years, and left it to lag behind the UK and the other Empires of the 19th century.
A coalition of monarchies did gang up and wage war on the French republic, to stop their crazy ideas from spreading.
Kind of parallel to France demanding Haiti pay them compensation for slaves being freed.
In both cases we'd generally look more kindly on republics and freeing slaves from the modern perspective, and maybe put more blame on the people trying to undermine them.
The Empire was formed after Napoleon's success in the wars of the Republican era, which occurred exactly because "A coalition of monarchies did gang up and wage war on the French republic".
Napoleon did not just emerge from the head of Zeus as a fully-formed Emporer.
And, technically, Napoleon headed the French government first while it was still nominally a Republic, under the Consulate of the Constitution of Year VIII.
Ok but as a French, we don't really think as 1789-1804 as "Napoleon's time". His empire was and remains what he his most remembered for. He's literally referred to as "l'empereur" (the emperor).
I don't think I need to expand on how his Empire wasn't really democratic, or a republic.
That's not a "slight" nitpick. While we can be grateful to Napoleon to bring modern law and scientific advances to the rest of Europe, he certainly didn't conquer it in the interest of democracy.
The post I replied to said Napolean ruined France compared with nearby empires.
I said the nearby empires were hostile to revolution and so keen to keep a Franch Republic down.
Wikipedia says:
> As early as 1791, the other monarchies of Europe looked with outrage at the revolution and its upheavals; and they considered whether they should intervene, either in support of King Louis XVI to prevent the spread of revolution, or to take advantage of the chaos in France. Austria stationed significant troops on its French border and together with Prussia issued the Declaration of Pillnitz, which threatened severe consequences should anything happen to King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette.
Ok but did he have to go as far as Russia? Couldn't he just consolidate his forces instead of getting drunk on conquest and waging war all the way to eastern-most Europe?
That's probably exactly what the other "side" is thinking.
For example:
They think that allowing people with penises to to change in women's locker rooms just because they identify as women is wicked, so they aren't being silent about it.
Look I think we should disagree on fiscal and social policy, and be able to deliberate over these issues.
And have a system of government that allows for that kind of debate and representative vote.
But "one side" is dismantling everything that was still democratic about the United States and turning into a massively one-sided (even one-manned) system of control. So whatever your opinion or mine on social policy no longer matter, because it's all up to the whims of a single person, with no recourse for the rest of us.
A strongman. A Caesar. Someone to champion the cultural values and identity we believe in. You don't have to like it, agree with it or understand it for it to happen.
Honestly I am trolling a little bit(maybe a lot) but this is literally how people think and no amount of discussion is going to change their minds. They want outcome A, you want outcome B, and there are very little (perhaps 0) shared values to build a cohesive foundation on which to compromise.
> no amount of discussion is going to change their minds
It's a slow process. A MAGA extremist isn't going to read "LGBT rights are human rights!" and say "Ah, I didn't realize! Of course!" and become a liberal.
Maybe they argue with someone about how tariffs are going to be great for the country, and they don't change their mind. But a few months later their neighbor in trucking loses their job, and their friend in construction is talking about how hard it is now, and they start to have a few doubts. They think back to how the guy they were arguing with said this would happen.
And then they argue with someone that only illegal aliens are going to be deported, and they don't change their mind. But then when US citizens start being sent to the camps, they remember that they thought this wouldn't happen and even argued against it.
People do change their mind eventually. Even violent fanatics have changed their minds: the Maoist Red Guards lost steam, the IRA followed a peace process as did FARC in Colombia. If you love liberty, democracy, peace, and prosperity, then I think your best move is to persist in trying to convince MAGA extremists, while understanding that it will take a long time and potentially a lot of chaos and conflict.
One of the most important lessons I've learned is that minds are not changed overnight, and thinking you can will drive you crazy. One's goal in engaging with people whose mind you want to change shouldn't actually be to convince them right there and then, but rather to encourage them to think about their position over time.
cultural values you say? like rape, corruption, extreme pettiness and selfishness?
these people are in a cult. their sunk cost bias is overwhelming most of their sanity.
and of course the world is not going in the way they wish, so their conflict resolution is to write a blank check to said strongman. (and project everything on him.)
If that's what it takes to undo the moral decline of the last 30 years then so be it.
I'm sick of seeing insanity in schools, at work, and on the news everyday.
Our culture has been totally deconstructed and reversed where drag and pedophilia is celebrated, being diverse is more important than being skilled/having ability, being white is seen as tainted or somehow lesser than someone who has a diverse background. Beauty has been replaced with vulgarity and queerness.
The reversal has been a long time coming. We have had a silent majority that was too afraid to act because of the legal implications of going against powerful special interests.
But shipping people out of the country without due process, into a foreign high security prison, and ignoring a court order to bring him back, is a whole lot worse.
It's not destroying the US media industry like tv/movies/games. Why can I say that with confidence you ask? Simple! Because they have been doing that for ages before the current administration got to power ( * ´ ω ｀ * )
Have you seen the meadia landscape lately? It's filled with absolute garbage and generative AI is going to make to so much worse. They've also done everything they can to delegitimize every reliable source of truth. So I'd say they've done a great job destroying the media industry.
Lately as in since the election? Cause for me this has been happening for decades. I'm not even going to comment on the principles of scientific truth considering the nonsense people are peddling today is no better than the bible bashers on the right.
It certainly depends on what you optimize for. For example, about 1/3 of the 320 American Nobel Prizes in science have gone to immigrants.
Currently, US universities license around 3,000 patents, 3,200 copyrights and 1,600 other licenses to startups and companies. They spin out over 1,100 science-based startups yearly, creating countless products and tens of thousands of jobs.
This university/government partnership became the model other countries try to copy post WWII, though the current administration has walked away from it.
The genius of the US system was indirect cost reimbursement. The government not only paid researchers' salaries but also funded their facilities and administration costs. This was the secret sauce that built world-class university labs that attracted scientists globally, causing other countries to worry about "brain drain" to the decentralized, collaborative US ecosystem combining massive government funding for university research with private industry scaling the solutions.
Meanwhile, Britain tried a centralized approach with government labs, achieving breakthroughs but lacking the scale, integration and capital to compete in the post-war world.
also a commitment to a robust library system, and Federal research being publicly owned.. tolerance for varying ideas outside the current government paternalism might be part of it..
sad to see the current crop of agitating political firebrands embedding into stable and tolerant education infrastructure. Also sad to see the reactionary care and feeding of authoritarianism by the Feds.. this is why we cant have nice things?
As the partner of someone who works at Harvard, I have a slight insight into what's happening there. Disclaimer: I may have misunderstood my partner when she described Harvard admissions.
As a rule, foreign students usually pay the full cost of attending Harvard. Then there are legacy students. Many domestic students, primarily low-income or socioeconomically disadvantaged ones, get significant aid, including a full ride.
This is common for foreign students in many countries. They might benefit from a scholarship grant indeed, but that would come from their own government.
The school might have government grants so it can provide better services to all their students, but foreigners usually pay more for the same things.
Typically, empires attracted the top 10% of the peripheral/vassal nations. Look at Rome, for example. It is a sign of global standing that premier educational institutions of country X are flooded with the top performers of the other nations. Most importantly (and this is the reason this has been practiced by world powers throughout history) having the elite of a nation be educated in one's institutions guarantees a sizable cadre of influential men and women who go back home and create an 'Atlanticist' front.
It depends, at top level, what the intention is. What the US government thinks it is buying. Is it buying global improvement in research? If so, surely you just hire smartest people out there. In fact it will probably be mostly non-Americans, because even if they come from a much-better-than-average educational system, still, they are something like 4% of global population.
Ok, so let's say not this. Perhaps US govt is strictly buying (indirect) improvement to US economy. Well, a lot of these students will stay in the US, find startups, or simply become good taxpayers. Most developed countries struggle to grow or keep their societies steady, US has this funnel of highly skilled workforce - universities. Even better, since these immigrants, if they stay, won't have generated primary education costs, and if they eventually leave, also will cost less in adult life than people who stay in the US all their life.
This is about undergrads, really. Postgraduate students are more like hard, underpaid jobs. People come and go, and perform the service of churning out research for an American University.
Finally, not sure how much the US govt is paying for these foreign undergrads. Rich undergrads will have to lay a good chunk of their own fees - perhaps all, either via cash or loans they have to repay.
I'm not in any way endorsing this kerfuffle, but it's always good to be clear why you are paying for things, as sooner or later someone will challenge it.
Maybe I'm old fashioned, but at one time it was believed that there was a foreign policy angle: The people who come here end up liking our country and bringing that good will back home with them. They also learn the reality of what it's like here, which is often contrary to the propaganda that they've received at home.
They also spread the prestige of Harvard. If Harvard were to adopt US-only admissions, their reputation would go down, and the degree would be less valuable for the remaining American students.
What's the proper ratio? If you want the best and brightest, statistically the vast majority will be from outside the US. Doesn't it benefit us to capture those people into our economy?
I wonder what percentage of those students stay in the U.S. after graduation.
I think that buying goodwill across the globe is also important for those that do not stay in the U.S. after graduation. And having educated neighbors is also important.
Why wouldn't you want people who successfully graduate from Harvard to stay in US and become citizens? If anything, it's the other countries that should be complaining about brain drain.
Scalia's "American Anglo common culture" that makes him feel right at home in England is just a subset of the many cultures within central north america that have coexisted under the US flag for many generations.
It doesn't include the Chinese that brought rail to California, the multitudes of Latinos with ancestors under Viceroyalty of New Spain and elsewhere, the non Anglo Saxon Europeans that didn't ape the Anglo's after arriving at Ellis Island, etc.
Correct. But those cultures are the cultures of specific groups and communities, while Anglo-American culture and tradition is the basis of the whole country.
Excluding those groups that don't take on the whole cloth of "Anglo-American culture and tradition".
"America" consists of a venn diagram that isn't covered in whole with WASP's .. hence the existence of non-Anglo Americans as multi generational components of the USofA.
No thanks, I’ll continue to use the correct terminology for referring to the foundational culture and tradition of the United States. Nobody appointed you king of the historical revision commission.
Just when I think the Kool-aid can't get any worse, there's a new level of peak brain damage - another dispatch from the backwards bizarro world where all of the extreme benefits of global power are just taken for granted and forgotten about, with the remaining dynamics framed in terms of being liability and injustice instead.
In some sense the dynamic isn't surprising as it rhymes with how the left is often shouted down for criticizing while ignoring realpolitik, and maggots are coming from that place of self-centered entitlement cranked up to 11. It's still shocking though.
The "brain damage" is your hope-beyond-experience view that humans from different cultures are fungible, or that they somehow become American in beliefs and attitudes the moment they step foot on U.S. soil, or that somehow culture doesn't matter to a country.
Just because you can make up multiple straw men doesn't mean that I have to believe at least one of them.
The point is that the entire framing is backwards - treating "American elites" (and "spots at Harvard", for that matter) as some fixed quantity to be preserved. It ignores the overarching soft power dynamic of foreign students going back to their home country while remaining with some cultural ties to the US.
If foreign students want to then settle here and start climbing the US culture ladder to perhaps become part of "America's elites", that's a whole new process! And shamelessly professing aspects of their culture that go against American values will prevent them from climbing. Or at least I guess that was the case before they could find validation in the regressive anti-American maggot club.
I’m struggling to figure out what I said that you disagree with. You’re talking about what happens if they go back. I’m talking about what happens if they stay here.
Yes, I think America is pretty great and I want an elite that will perpetuate more of the same. You don’t have to agree. Which country’s culture would you rather import?
> Which country’s culture would you rather import?
The whole point is that this framing completely misses the larger overriding dynamic - Harvard is a means to export our culture! Foreign students come to Harvard because they (/their parents) want to partake in American culture.
Why is that the “larger overriding dynamic?” I don’t care about out there. I care about in here. And what’s more likely? That students will export, say, the quintessential American skepticism of book learning to India and China, or that students from those countries will import those societies’ excessive respect for academia to America’s elite professional class?
> I don’t care about out there. I care about in here
There's your misunderstanding. Our enviable lifestyles in here are largely supported by our foreign relations out there - in this context, that exporting of culture such that elites from other cultures still strive to send their kids to college in the United States! And while it would be theoretically possible to untangle in here from out there, doing so would require a team of surgeons rather than a gang of butchers.
As far as the specifics of culture, the example of the overemphasis on book learning is a bit rich in the context of our homegrown MBAs pathological love for living out Goodhart's law. I've certainly encountered my share of foreigners over reliant on rote memorization. The thing is as long as they stay that way, they don't get far in America - and this is obvious to their fellow students. They're not becoming members of the "elite professional class", and nobody is following their tack thinking it's a good way to learn.
> Our enviable lifestyles in here are largely supported by our foreign relations out there - in this context, that exporting of culture such that elites from other cultures still strive to send their kids to college in the United States!
Seems unlikely, given that the U.S. has been among the per-capita richest countries in the world for almost its entire existence, including when we almost shut down immigration completely for almost half the 20th century. But I know we don’t see eye to eye about “soft power.”
> As far as the specifics of culture, the example of the overemphasis on book learning is a bit rich in the context of our homegrown MBAs pathological love for living out Goodhart's law. I've certainly encountered my share of foreigners over reliant on rote memorization. The thing is as long as they stay that way, they don't get far in America - and this is obvious to their fellow students. They're not becoming members of the "elite professional class", and nobody is following their tack thinking it's a good way to learn.
I’m talking about something more fundamental than that, which is a fundamental deference to the wisdom of the common man. To use an example, Anglo-American tradition not only gave us jury trials, but the general attitude that ordinary people are capable of understanding and resolving sophisticated disputes. The vast majority of Asians I’ve encountered in America, by contrast, have traditional asian deference for academic knowledge and academic credentials.
To use another example, consider Nixon’s Checkers speech: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-senator-ni.... I was thinking about this today and realized that my parents wouldn’t really get the speech. They’d understand the gist, but they wouldn’t really understand it the way it was meant to be understood, because it invoked various WASP norms that are alien to them.
- He mentions growing up in modest circumstances, which is valued in WASP culture but looked down upon in desi culture.
- He mentions military service, which is distinctly valued in WASP culture and not valued in desi culture.
- He says his wife “doesn’t have a mink coat,” but “she does have a respectable Republican cloth coat.” My parents would understand this to mean he’s saying he didn’t accept illicit money to buy a mink coat. Which isn’t really what he meant—he was a private practice lawyer he could’ve afforded to legitimately buy his wife a mink coat. He was conveying that they’re not *the kind of people who wear mink coats—an appeal to WASP austerity that is alien to desi culture.
The Checkers speech was, of course, meant to be understood in substance as well as subtext by the American public at large. It’s not clear to me that would be true today.
> unlikely, given that the U.S. has been among the per-capita richest countries in the world for almost its entire existence
Sure, but currently the wealth of the US depends on maintaining the world's reserve currency. As I said, the reliance on international interdependence could be untangled, but it would require a team of surgeons rather than a gang of butchers. The gang of butchers will merely destroy what we do have, leaving us with a broken society.
As far as the general argument about culture, I was using an example somewhere in the realm of what you were talking about to demonstrate how foreign cultures don't automatically inject themselves into US culture. You're straight up ignoring the many hurdles between being a college student and becoming a member of the "US elite".
I will also point out (and I generally hate arguments that start this way, but you dredged up the context), that WASP culture was most certainly not the only culture in the US at the time. So the appeal wasn't to the "American public at large" but rather to the subset that "mattered" to swing votes - the idea of some singular overarching culture was an illusion promulgated by broadcast mass media, and that illusion has now been shattered. That sea change has certainly upset a lot of people, but you can't claim it resulted from something as simple as student visas.
>Sure, but currently the wealth of the US depends on maintaining the world's reserve currency.
Where does this bizarre belief come from?
I'm not saying that the US does not benefit from the fact that business all over the world is denominated in US dollars, but that is a far cry from the assertion that US wealth depends on that fact: the US is wealthy for many reasons in addition to that fact.
It seems more likely to me that the fact that the US was so rich and continues to be so rich caused businesspeople all over the world to choose to do their transaction in US dollars.
In general, among the countries of the world, the US is among the least dependent on other countries for its continued economic prosperity. (Other relatively independent countries are Argentina, France and most of SE Asia. Countries highly dependent on other countries for their continued economic prosperity include China, Germany and most of the third world.)
Our current level of wealth straightforwardly depends on that fact, because we're currently trading devalueable IOUs for lots of real physical goods. The bizarre belief is the political talking point of taking those physical goods for granted (or even as a liability!) rather than bonus wealth.
Furthermore, the current state of our economy is that most everything depends on imports. Dedollarization would mean those things shoot up in price, with no readily-available domestic substitutes. And if you think we're going to set up domestic factories, where does that equipment come from? Sure we can start rubbing three flattish surfaces together, or let the price of already-existing machine tools shoot up to the point that only factories making more machine tools can afford them, but that does not happen overnight.
Maybe losing that first part is inevitable. And as I've said, it's certainly possible to untangle that second bit while avoiding collapse. It just requires the subtlety of a targeted approach - not blunt force butchering that doesn't do even the first step to analyze the situation. If the economic neoliberalism of the past thirty years is a steamroller that went over our industrial base, the Trumpist/destructionist answer is to simplistically put it in reverse.
I don't understand why thats a bad thing. oh.. the Cream of the crop from some other country wants to come here, PAY to get educated and STAY here contributing to the US economy??
I get it, it helps to have wealthy foreign donors and you don't have to give them aid.
I was more asking why is this acceptable? If its an American university, benefiting from American tax dollars, shouldn't it primarily benefit American students?
So many things we just accept at face value and don't question. I never really thought about it before, but it's weird now that I think about it. This is necessarily a scarce resource (by design). It doesn't have to be, they could vastly grow their class size without lowering standards. But they choose not to, to maintain elite status and make their donor class happy.
If they wanted to keep their class size the same, they could probably fund it entirely through their $53bn endowment, yet they still charge 50k+ a year.
And then they have the audacity to reject thousands of qualified American kids and give their seats to rich foreign kids? Come on
The taxpayer funding is for Harvard's research activities, not for its undergraduate teaching. The undergraduate teaching is funded by tuition (often paid in full by international students) and by returns on the endowment (including some earmarked for financial aid).
> they could vastly grow their class size without lowering standards
The issue isn't the quality of the students they are accepting, but the resources to educate and house them, including classroom space, dorms, and staff.
Also, the mentioned fast tracking to a US citizen will bring/create highly educated, skilled people to the country and will be a future tax payers, innovators, employers that the country gained with the tiniest amount of temporal investment and with some pretty standard monetary investment that other schools get.
> And then they have the audacity to reject thousands of qualified American kids and give their seats to rich foreign kids?
Most of the international students at Harvard are graduate students. You can't assume they are rich because a significant fraction of those are pursuing science PhDs. At Harvard science PhD programs are fully funded regardless of the nationality of the student.
But you said it your self, 3/4 of the students are American students primarily benefitting. How high does that ratio need to be? Possibly non-American students might bring some value to the school and students also? Lots to consider, maybe people are not taking things at face value but rather seeing the whole picture.
Harvard is looking for the best and americans make up less than 5% of the world. Why would all the best applicants be from the US/why should harvard give domestic students an admissions benefit?
Tangentially related, but at my university international students paid the most to attend - by far - than any other student. It has been rumored by some that universities may have an unfair preference for international students because of this. I wonder if this thinking is playing into the policy making.
Extortion is Trump's favorite tactic. He's been punishing Maine for standing up to him. The law firms too. Soon the democrats when he can get past deporting the criminal U.S citizens.
I don't think it's unreasonable to say people are the only option to change our trajectory. We haven't reached critical mass yet, but the next national protest is April 19th which lands on the 250th revolutionary war anniversary. Be there or be square.
Surely even if you tried to give them the benefit of the doubt the number of back trackings and self damaging actions taken without any given explanation would make you start to wonder? I would love to dislike their rationales for their decisions but it often seems like they genuinely haven't thought things through, which is even more frustrating.
The thinking was, "international students pay the most, contribute the most in tuition payments to the university budget, and therefore by cutting them off we hurt our enemies' budgets."
They almost certainly do. There were rumors of a Chinese student ban during Trump's last tenure and I remember reading news stories (https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/11/29/university-il...) about universities having insurance policies to protect themselves from revenue loss. There should be enough Americans to fill the empty seats so it makes you wonder if university finances rely on international student tuition. So you would expect that to translate into admissions changes.
Reading other comments on here it almost seems like people feel it would be bad if American universities like Harvard had more Americans. Like there is something morally wrong with that. So that's probably a factor also.
Well, I'll be darned—that's... quite something. I can understand why the university felt it had to take that step—perhaps even a wise move, all things considered - but I must say, it certainly doesn't look good.
Harvard is one of eleven American universities that practice need-blind admissions even for international students, meaning that students are admitted without regard for their financial status (i.e., no explicit preference toward richer students who can pay more tuition), and that financial aid covers full demonstrated need for all admitted students.
It feels like the early days of Covid right now, where everyone is still living their lives normally but you know things are about to rapidly change for the worse.
Important to note this isnt a majority: 30% of eligible voters chose the president; and even of those, hardly any are very engaged with his current policies and behaivour.
It's important not to so quickly cede the democractic ground here -- this isnt a democractic movement. It's a 49% election of a president, with 30% of the eligble voters, who collectively did not vote for the constitution to be suspended. They voted for a president, an office which exists by and within the framework of that constitution. There was no referendum on whether the constitution should be amended to allow for effectively unlimited presidental power.
The 'official' explanation that I got from Dang was that political posts hit automated software filters because of flagging and down voting which cause them to disappear from the front page.
Separately, sometimes the moderation team disables these filters on certain posts, but it's not often.
I have a hard time imagining this specific threat to be more than bluster. Would someone with relevant legal expertise be able to comment on how likely a ban on foreign enrollments would be to fly in the courts?
Surely the administration have a substantial degree of discretion with respect to student visas, but can they precipitate a blanket revocal on something as nakedly coercive (and speech-involved) as this?
(Edit: at a casual, non-expert glance it seems that a student can apply for a student visa at any SEVP-certified school, and the regulations governing SEVP certification seem to be at [0]. They list a lot of potential reasons to withdraw approval once it’s issued, but they all seem pretty specific: falsifying records, lying on your application, failing to keep proper records in relation to the students’ enrollment, and so on. Does it feel like maybe the mechanic here is claiming that tracking students’ speech is part of that essential record-keeping task?)
Control over federal funding is also the hook for Title VI’s application of non-discrimination laws to private universities.
The government also has the trump card up its sleeve that Harvard is almost certainly violating Title VI through extensive programs of race consciousness. It’s well established that the civil rights laws apply equally to whites as to non-whites. Harvard has many programs for non-whites where, if those programs were for whites instead, that would be a Title VI violation that would jeopardize Harvard’s federal funding. E.g. Harvard had various racially segregated graduation parties last year: https://www.nationalreview.com/news/harvard-university-to-of.... If you can’t have a “White Celebration” then you can’t have a “Black Celebration” either. If Harvard doesn’t settle they’ll get hit with a Title VI lawsuit and they’re going to lose it.
Your first link involves laws passed by Congress. But there is no relevant law that requires "viewpoint diversity" (whatever that means) or most of the other demands in the government letter, this is simply an executive diktat.
Your second link involves a change in IRS policy. But there was no such change, instead again we have an executive diktat, despite the fact that the law explicitly forbids the President or his office from targeting specific institutions for audits or investigations: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/7217
But it appears that there's a giant loophole - the Attorney General apparently can still do so:
> (2) any individual (other than the Attorney General of the United States) serving in a position specified in section 5312 of title 5, United States Code.
The affinity celebrations were open to all graduates according to the article's sources. The segregation claim originated seemingly from 1 student they interviewed whose comments about other aspects seemed speculative.
The celebrations were organized by students and hosted by alumni and community groups according to the university. The article did not contest this. Is there evidence students applied for and were denied recognition of a white celebration?
Doesn’t matter. A “white celebration” would be deemed to create a hostile learning environment. Any other race conscious affinity group is the same thing. Under a fair application of the civil rights laws, it would be improper to have any university sanctioned race consciousness.
The history of American white supremacy and these institutions is well-understood. They've had plenty of "white celebrations" in their past. A minority affinity group is not the same as the Klan, as much as being told you can't have your white racial supremacy hurts it is not the same thing as actually existing under structural oppression.
I am curious how you are suffering from not having a "white celebratation". I understand why there might want to be a protected space for certain groups that, up until recently, were systematically treated harmfully. Whites don't fall into that category. So, I don't understand how it harms you that you cannot have a white party. Can you explain what harms you suffer?
The civil rights act seeks to create a color blind society. If schools or employers racialize people and treat them differently in any way, that’s illegal discrimination. It doesn’t matter if you think that treatment is warranted for certain groups but not other groups. That’s not a proper consideration under the law.
This is racism. "I know you had it hard, but you're white, so your suffering is less relevant than black person's suffering". You might argue that this is the right thing to do anyway, but it's still racism.
> A “white celebration” would be deemed to create a hostile learning environment.
> Under a fair application of the civil rights laws, it would be improper to have any university sanctioned race consciousness.
Who would deem a white celebration would create a hostile learning environment? Harvard? Would courts not require evidence? Or courts? They had a double standard before but would not now?
Would this apply to all protected characteristics? Why not if not? Why did you discuss race only if so?
Programs which were largely created by both academics employed in educational institutions and by the paying students who wanted to learn about more than Western history and culture.
Where's the outrage when history classes center almost entirely on Western, white narratives? Or when English classes focus overwhelmingly on white authors? Why does concern about "race consciousness" only seem to surface in the face of efforts to include perspectives outside of white culture?
All this assumes that “white” is a single “race.” In reality, it is a broad umbrella covering a variety of ethnic groups. What would I — a first-generation Russian immigrant — have to celebrate in common with descendants of Spanish, Belgian, or South African immigrants? Our cultures and histories have little overlap. Frequently, we don’t even have the same skin tone! The only thing we unambiguously share is a racially dominant position in society, which is not something I want to revel in.
An interesting tidbit from Wikipedia:
> Description of populations as "White" in reference to their skin color is occasionally found in Greco-Roman ethnography and other ancient or medieval sources, but these societies did not have any notion of a White race or pan-European identity. The term "White race" or "White people", defined by their light skin among other physical characteristics, entered the major European languages in the later seventeenth century, when the concept of a "unified White" achieved greater acceptance in Europe, in the context of racialized slavery and social status in the European colonies. Scholarship on race distinguishes the modern concept from pre-modern descriptions, which focused on physical complexion rather than the idea of race. Prior to the modern era, no European peoples regarded themselves as "White"; instead they defined their identity in terms of their religion, ancestry, ethnicity, or nationality. Contemporary anthropologists and other scientists, while recognizing the reality of biological variation between different human populations, regard the concept of a unified, distinguishable "White race" as a social construct with no scientific basis.
Yes, but how is this relevant now that Harvard basically said "Screw you, we're going to do what we want even if it means going without your money." ?
How can they prevent students from attending, it's not like they are going to specifically target and refuse or void the visa of anyone known to be an Harvard student ?!? (Or I guess, yeah, this kind of arbitrary rule is the exact thing that can happen under fascism...)
* The rule of law
* Moral integrity
* Respect for traditions and institutions
There's a tension between those values and other values such as a sense of fairness. People could overlook a politician who fell short of these conservative values when there was a perception that these values were holding us back from getting to a more just society.
Today we have a president who openly defies the court orders, engages in blatant corruption, and undermines American institutions. The Trump administration's vehement rejection of all of these values highlights just how critical they really are.
It's time for American conservatives to vote Democrat.
It makes you wonder if the "rule of law" and "moral integrity" were ever conservative values at all, or simply an aesthetic they adopted, like "free speech absolutism" or "common sense".
We certainly thought those were conservative values. This were the values conservatives talked about. Either it was all bullshit, or they need to stop calling themselves conservative.
Given the ongoing pattern of bullying, power grabs, and disregard for the law - including the trampling of constitutional rights - dismissing this latest threat as mere bluster seems less like reason and more like denial.
I'm not sure how it was done legally, but when the Supreme Court ruled that Biden administration's student loan forgiveness was unconstitutional, Biden (or rather, his team) found another way to forgive loans.
I expect Trump's administration to similarly find legal workarounds.
At what point can we say that the US truly has fallen from being the leader of the world?
Each and every decision taken by the current administration is bringing the US closer to an age of darkness and idiocy.
I’m from Europe, I’m not saying the US was ever perfect but I don’t understand how it came to this.
My bet is a on a combination of extreme individualism due to a poor internalisation of the ideals of liberalism combined with a predatory capitalistic environment.
It’s sad to see what happens to a society that has the highest concentration of the brightest minds in world mostly working towards money related goals. So many great people that could work for the greater good and are dutifully tuning algorithms for the 0.01% capturing everyone’s attention and ideas.
Sad state of the world but I guess you can’t stop “progress”.
I'm sympathetic to your perspective that it's a broad cultural thing.
But from my point of view, it's more of a demonstration of the problem with governments that are designed to have a very strong executive. Eventually you get an executive that really sucks, and when that happens they can do a lot of damage.
One of the biggest influences on my thinking from listening to Dan Carlin's Hardcore History is a point he made about hereditary monarchy, that among its problems is that sometimes the next ruler in line is just a total dud, and you're just stuck with them.
Well, you can get a dud through voting as well. Ideally having fairly short terms mitigates this risk, but there is still a lot of damage that can be done in a short term, and there is a "who watches the watchmen" problem with the executive being required to fairly run the election to potentially replace them.
If we make it through this period with elections that remain fair and with successful transitions of power, I hope we'll find ways to weaken the presidency.
> it's more of a demonstration of the problem with governments that are designed to have a very strong executive
The system WASN'T design to have a very strong executive, quite literally the opposite. The other branches have simply bowed down and let him bulldoze them. And yes, this has been building up for decades, but these cases are and above any overreach of previous presidents.
The Federalist Papers show the thinking behind how and why the three branches are mostly co-equal but the executive is designed to be ever so slightly more potent.
A presidential system is a design that has a strong executive. I agree that the presidency has grown stronger then intended, but it was always strong relative to other kinds of systems.
> But from my point of view, it's more of a demonstration of the problem with governments that are designed to have a very strong executive. Eventually you get an executive that really sucks, and when that happens they can do a lot of damage.
The presidential system, widespread in Latin America, has an inherent tendency to produce caudillos. The US had the good fortune of escaping that fate for decade after decade, but maybe with Trump its luck has finally run out.
The parliamentary system, as used in the rest of the Anglosphere and most of Western Europe – it doesn't require a monarchy, see parliamentary republics such as Germany and Ireland – avoids this problem by putting greater limits on executive power – Prime Ministers derive their authority from the legislature and can be removed by it with a simple majority; while the US cabinet is essentially an advisory body to the President, Westminster cabinets are collegial bodies in which the Prime Minister is just one vote among many and can be outvoted by their colleagues.
> One of the biggest influences on my thinking from listening to Dan Carlin's Hardcore History is a point he made about hereditary monarchy, that among its problems is that sometimes the next ruler in line is just a total dud, and you're just stuck with them.
"Great Britain is a republic with a hereditary president, while the United States is a monarchy with an elective king" (The Knoxville Journal, 9 February 1896)
There's nothing about luck in this though, the "non-dud" ones were just able to push the problems under the rug and make it a problem of the people of the future.
The reason why you end up with a dud through election is that the rug can't cover all that anymore.
One facet of the strength of our presidency is the degree of consensus required for Congress to exert itself in opposition to the president. Both impeachment and veto overrides are high hurdles.
To be fair to W, some part of the world followed america into iraq. it wasn't like he did it all by himself. i think if these countries had not supported this war, there would have been a reckoning for the usa much sooner than trump. in much the same way that people now question, what could we have done differently with how we treated russia prior to 2014 when they started a war with ukraine, the world should ask itself how it should have responded differently to joining america in a war in iraq in 2003. but so far, i don't hear anyone having these conversations about how did the world allow america to arrive to now.
The capital class has been squeezing people for years (and it's gotten worse since covid made the serfs feel empowered by actually letting them breathe for a moment), so I don't know that people have time and space to _think_ about these things.
Social media has joined religion as the "opiate of the masses".
You see Eastern European countries who were grateful for NATO expansion or wanted future NATO membership. You see the UK and Australia which always follow the US. There are a couple of wildcards line Spain, Denmark and Italy.
Germany and France are absent and there was huge criticism of the Iraq invasion at the time.
In general, the whole EU was much more critical of the US in the 2000s than it was in 2020-2024. The current criticism is mostly Trump related and not fundamental. To summarize, in the 2000s the EU had an independent foreign policy which is now completely gone. How that evolved exactly is interesting. Has the US played off the Eastern European countries against heretics like France and Germany to achieve this goal? Is it a symptom of the international elites moving in lockstep?
The EU doesn't make foreign policy, that lies with the member states. And why do you think those don't have an independent foreign policy?
The US hasn't started an illegal war recently, which could explain why there is much less criticism of US foreign policy compared to the time of the Iraq war.
The US hasn't declared a war since WWII since executive privilege allows the President to pursue war without Congress declaring war. Does that mean that every time we take military action (which the US is doing daily, right now) we're pursuing what the founders of the country would (rightfully?) classify as an illegal war?
(I didn't take any political science, and I'm not really informed on constitutional law so I could have this partially wrong)
> The US hasn't declared a war since WWII since executive privilege allows the President to pursue war without Congress declaring war.
That's not correct. Congress no longer passes declarations of war, it passes authorizations of the use of military force (AUMF). The change was made starting in Vietnam because a declaration of war can only target a recognized sovereign nation, while an AUMF can target any state or non-state actor. The President is still heavily restricted from employing the US military without an AUMF.
I think the confusion about this stems from Congress having passed several, a couple of which are pretty broad, and never repealing them. This has allowed various Presidents to use one of the active AUMFs to justify actions, but for those who don't know or pay attention to the details it seems like the President is going around Congress.
> This has allowed various Presidents to use one of the active AUMFs to justify actions, but for those who don't know or pay attention to the details it seems like the President is going around Congress.
That is going around congress. It's not breaking the letter of the law, but authorizations not having a time limit is a mistake, and the involvement of congress is supposed to be needed for that kind of action.
Yeah everyone's reckoning needs to go back to bush and sept 11 2001 frankly. The consolidation of executive power, the labeling of "enemies" and "terrorists" as inherently applying to some groups which therefore do not have the same rights of due process, the torture prisons it didn't quite all start there but it was a massive turning point.
The way the wars fed back into american policing, the justifications for the drone assassination program (but not here! not quite yet). A lot of what we're seeing now is the natural endpoint of processes that were started under bush "in reaction" to sept 11 and expanded under obama and later biden.
The main stream of the republican party has been, first quietly but then openly, fantasizing about authoritarian control for 25 years. And through that whole time the democrats have made it one of their biggest priorities to help them construct the apparatus needed to accomplish it. And our allies have been eager to get their hands on these same powers & systems to apply to their own citizens.
Honestly looking back the biggest mistake I made was that I thought the things that are happening now would happen in bush's second term. When they didn't I took seriously the possibility that I was wrong about the bloodlust of the american right, sincerely spent many years convincing myself they were in working in good faith towards what they understood was best for the world. I had it right the first time. For there is no truth in their mouths; their hearts are destruction; their throats are open graves.
I think we were almost all lulled into a sense of "huh, I guess I slightly misread them..." fueled by the failures to capitalize, the little losses of momentum that almost gave the hopeful impression that maybe people had finally gotten over the bloodlust and the worst of the power grabs.
By the way, the ending of what you wrote is beautiful.
The danger of this both-sides approach is that Trump used it as cover and painted himself as anti-war (despite his recorded comments at the time) compared to both Democrats and Republicans before pivoting to talking about invading Canada and turning Gaza into a Trump Hotel resort.
Agreed, both side-ism is ridiculous. One party has pursued their personal wealth and power, concentrations of wealth for the elite class, and globalism and the other side has done the same, but also embraces fascism and theocracy as core tenants.
The former is the only choice, because democracy is still able to maintain a slight pulse under their "leadership".
I was trying to avoid both-sidesing here, sorry I failed. I only briefly mentioned democrats to point out that while the republicans were openly planning all along to implement an authoritarian regime, the democrats broadly supported building out the means to do it. The democrats have always considered their right flank colleagues and their left flank adversaries, have put a lot of energy into ignoring the fascist dreams of the republicans: this was the predicted outcome.
Don't just blame the reds here. The blues let their primaries get rigged 3 presidential elections in a row, and they still don't talk about it. I think most haven't even noticed, probably because their chosen information sources (social media and late-night comedians?) haven't told them.
> At what point can we say that the US truly has fallen from being the leader of the world?
It's easy to talk about the "decline" of the U.S. in abstract geopolitical terms, but let's be honest: the day the global tech community stops posting on Hacker News, stops building with U.S origin technologies, and stops looking to Silicon Valley as a benchmark, that's the day we can seriously start talking about America's fall from global leadership.
Until then, we're all still running our infrastructure on AWS, building apps with React, debating threads on HN, and watching YC Demo Day like it's the Super Bowl. The world may grumble, but it's still plugged in, literally and figuratively, to American innovation.
> the day the global tech community stops posting on Hacker News, stops building with U.S origin technologies, and stops looking to Silicon Valley as a benchmark, that's the day we can seriously start talking about America's fall from global leadership.
I guess that's the correct answer to the question as posed. But it does raise another question: if it happens, something undermined the foundations of America's prosperity long before the fall. What was it?
This post to HN describes what lead to the US becoming a science superpower: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43692360 I found it convincing. The post also speculated if those conditions were removed, it America's superpowers will wither.
My take on the post is science has exponential return on investment over the very long term. But the return is random in that most scientific investigations fail to yield a return, and the time span so long that the usual capitalist incentives don't work. Or to put it another way, firms making investing in basic science get out-competed in the short term by others that don't make the investment. So you have to find a way to make societies at large pay for basic science, and give way what works to the capitalist engine. The USA found a way to do that. It's beginning to look like China has too. Now the USA is winding back the investment.
On the positive side, I suspect it will take a long time to kill the institutions that drive the USA's prosperity, I suspect many more than 4 years of madness. Putin pulled the same thing off, but it took him decades.
I find some Marxist-ish ideology always wants to blame these things on the material conditions, wealth. My personal network is a sea of trump worshipers (quite literally, like my cousins say a prayer for trump at every dinner since 2016), and I think the analysis that this is a wealth thing is wrong.
Everyone has pet theories. Mine is that a section US society, urban coastal highly educated elites, coalesced around one set of ideas (I’m not exactly sure why, but probably in part because this group is less religious and very urban) and formed a very powerful ideological block that wasn’t in the US pre 1980s. This Trump thing is a reaction of the people who don’t fit into this political block (religious, less educated, rural, culturally not urban) against them.
It’s fundamentally identity politics, not some material conditions thing. People have a hard time believing this, because some people think the world is all about money, and ideas and identity mean nothing to people, but I really think the money-only view of human politics is flat wrong.
I say this because of my personal network of family, friends, and acquaintances from my hometown. When I try to gently get to the bottom of it, what I really find is a deep deep hatred for the coastal elites. They feel belittled and marginalized, not monetarily but culturally. They feel no one from those backgrounds has any right to tell them what to do. They feel that a coastal expert has no right to contradict their feelings on a topic, because that expert is not “one of them”, not because that expert is wealthy.
The network I have does not feel this way because they are economically struggling. Europeans often imply this is the case, but in my experience after 40 years in America, it is just not. Many of the people you see wearing maga hats and waving maga flags at rallies have mansions, 5 trucks, a vacation home in Hawaii, etc. my extended family and network has plenty of money. But they feel anyone who is an educated, coastal liberal is out to destroy them. They feel so completely culturally and identity wise different from the coastal elites, that they bristle under the thought that someone with an “education” could know more about something than them.
I think Republicans gained power in the last few years because of the economy, and Trump gained control of the republicans because of identity. This isn’t going away by “solving” the wealth gap.
> It’s fundamentally identity politics, not some material conditions thing.
> deep deep hatred for the coastal elites. They feel belittled and marginalized, not monetarily but culturally.
i would argue that is still 'material conditions' because marginalized also implies economic disparity, also a lot of the 'angry internet' is rural people with not much material futures
> Republicans gained power in the last few years because of the economy
material conditions then
> This isn’t going away by “solving” the wealth gap.
'material conditions' is much more than just wealth gap/money in my understanding; our media and economic incentives (rage baiting, grifting) for it are a large part of it for example
You're exacly describing material forces. The various positions individuals adopted toward identity politics did not grow out of a vacuum. Their place of birth, the environments they were raised in, their socio-economic classes... Everything shaped them to make the choice they made last november. The profund discontent that was exploited by the GOP last election stems from ever-increasing socio-economical disparities among the population. This can and has been measured.
On a side note, funny that this group that supposedly defines themselves by their opposition to coastal elites rallied themselves behind... Trump, a prime representative of the east coast elite.
> But they feel anyone who is an educated, coastal liberal is out to destroy them.
The reverse of this was the prevailing attitude among many democrats. The approach of lots of people was "we won the culture war, everyone who doesn't agree with us will get cancelled and suffer, deal with it". When you hung out in online circles, and more importantly in offices of famous American companies, the general vibe was "if your friend doesn't have left political views, you shouldn't be friends with them". So it's not like the idea was born in republican circles, the only new thing is democrats finding themselves on the losing side of the culture war.
What you’re describing is only true to the extent that “be respectful to other, “don’t force me to follow your religion”, or “don’t pressure your subordinates for sex” are “left political views”. The myth of widespread cancellation has been heavily marketed but when you look at the handful of people who suffered any real consequences they came down to trying to force bigotry or sexual activities on unwilling participants.
> The myth of widespread cancellation has been heavily marketed but when you look at the handful of people who suffered any real consequences they came down to trying to force bigotry or sexual activities on unwilling participants.
Doesn't matter. The public perception was that you could get cancelled for having an opinion, and that's enough to radicalize a lot of people. Not to mention that the general "left" did nothing to ensure people they won't get cancelled.
It does matter, because it changes the concern from a real phenomenon to the right-wing lying for political gain. In the latter case, you can’t win by playing their game because the rules change whenever they want, with a multi-billion dollar media machine to reinforce the message.
Easy : when the dollar stops being the reserve currency of the world.
(Well, easy in retrospect, I guess it might be hard to realise that/when this is happening when you are in the middle of it ? Reading about the other times it happened might help ?)
Unfortunately us HNers have a lot to do with this, even though approximately none of us had this in mind when coding the relevant stuff.
This is how politics looks like when the radical fringes from social networks take over national parties and squeeze out the so-much-mocked "enlightened centrists" from their seats. Missing them yet?
The same problem in Europe is somewhat tamed by proportional voting systems, but various edgelords have invaded our politics as well. Slovakia, right next to Czechia, is a horrible political circus. AfD in Germany mostly built its electorate online etc.
AFAIK, there are no "enlightened centrists". Most of those so-called centrists (Lex Fridman, Joe Rogan, you name them) are now neutral to friendly with Trump. This state of affairs is not grassroots, it was deliberately manufactured by convservative media like Fox News or right-wing influencers, funded by a massive influx of cash from the top billionaires who are now the only ones currently profiting from the administration.
That's not who this person was talking about. They were talking about the boring institutionalists on both sides of the aisle that edgy people have been scoffing at as "The Blob" or "The Village".
Why does being "neutral to friendly" with Trump mean you're not a centrist? There are only two options in the US political system. Would being "neutral to friendly" with Kamala mean someone is more centrist somehow?
There's the assumption infused to a lot of these conversations that Trump is uniquely bad or uniquely extreme and so that "centrism" would still mean opposing him.
I also don't get what's particularly "grass roots" about support for the Democrats. During the Kamala campaign we had a string of celebrity endorsements including a cringey Avengers reunion zoom call. These are rich, privileged people from a specific social milieu - not grass roots by any means.
The last "grass roots" candidate was probably Bernie Sanders (someone Joe Rogan also supported, incidentally), but he was too dangerous to corporate profit margins for the DNC to let him win.
Between Trump and Harris, yes, Trump is uniquely bad and extreme. While I do not hold the democrats in my heart, their party holds much milder views that those of Trump.
Indeed, being friendly to Harris would make you "not a centrist", hence why I think it's weird how we're able to stick that label to obviously pro-Trump people.
The GOP received the lion share of financial aids during their last campaign, and it has been so for quite a while. Let's not even speak of dark money. That is not to say the democrats relied on 100% grassroots initiatives, far from it.
Can we stop this whataboutism and bothsideism from polluting the discourse? It is hardly relevant.
The reason why you don't understand the American perspective on the world and on life, is because everybody in Europe who didn't think exactly like you think moved to America, and everybody who thinks exactly like you think stayed in Europe.
No matter if you think the European or the American mindset is better, there was an enormous split of nations with the mass migration of Europeans to America. And it was a certain kind of person who would stay and a certain kind of person who would go. It's still that way.
Where are those people who two days ago insisted the administration was fighting for "bringing back" merit-based admission to colleges? Are foreign student all incapable or merit or was it simply a lie, like everything else?
In the UK the equivalent to the IRS was the Inland Revenue, so when attempting to reverse the abbreviation they probably arrived there. I've made that exact same mistake myself.
This would be a poor name for the US IRS considering they do not only tax inland revenue. They are the only country in the world that taxes its citizen's income regardless of where those citizens live or work.
What's gonna be next? Banning Ukrainian students to help combat "Russophobia"?
This is just so weird. How do people support this stuff only to then go on and complain about "free speech" the second you tell them something they said was kind of a little bit mean?
Because it was never about free speech. It was only ever a rhetorical cover to be able to do things like defend professors calling people the n-word without defending it directly. The actual goal has always been the re-entrenchment of "natural" hierarchies. Man over woman. White over black. Straight over gay.
Foreign students interested in a US education have diverse motivations and Universities in/of other countries have done well selling programs that compete with the US' institutions for students that don't have that motivation. Soon that may also be almost all of them.
The universities could have expanded campuses and opened up new ones at any time. Harvard could easily double or triple their class size with no negative effects in terms of student body. They choose not to because it would dilute their brand and they're more about an exclusive club than educating students or doing research. Their doner class that finds their hedge fund doesn't like that.
You said they should now build foreign campuses. I said they won't because it would dilute their brand. And they could have done so in the US or abroad before this.
Harvard’s openly defiant response to the Supreme Court’s SFFA decision,[1], gave the administration the ammo it needed for this fight. It’s great that Harvard is fighting this, the discovery in the federal government’s lawsuit against it will be amazing.
The question asked how your life experiences will enable you to contribute to Harvard. Presumably expecting students to have done things in life is not also "woke" now.
That question is fine as long as Harvard isn’t using it as a backdoor for race consciousness. The administration is betting, quite reasonably, that Harvard is doing that.
If they were betting that, they could file an appropriate lawsuit against Harvard for violating the terms of Students for Fair Admissions. But of course they are not doing that, because the goal is ideological control of the universities by the executive, not colorblind admissions.
Nothing at all this administration is betting on is reasonable at all. I do not understand how anyone can believe or trust a single thing they do or say.
Tangentially related question: Why do universities like Harvard (who has a ~$60bn endowment) get federal funding at all? Between tuition and donors are they not profitable?
Alice is a professor at Harvard. She wants to research some topic. She applies to the NSF for a grant. The NSF says "wow that research sounds awesome and aligned with our priorities" and funds her lab to perform that research. She and the lab perform the research and share it with the scientific community for free.
That's what federal funding for universities looks like.
> She and the lab perform the research and share it with the scientific community for free.
I remember that people advocated quite hard a few years ago to make that last part mandatory, because at the time it wasn't. Universities can claim ownership and patent the discovery. The research was also usually locked behind for-profit publications, thus limiting the research to only those that can afford to pay.
The initiative that I remember asked that government funded research must be published in open access, and that no patents (or other IP) may be created in direct relation to such research.
The journals are often behind paywalls, though more and more research is published open access.
Regardless, researchers share their research with other researchers for free and a huge amount of paywalled papers are actually just available for free on the authors' websites.
Research grants, laboratories, partnerships. Government funding of universities are usually not handouts but investments.
For example:
| Sarah Fortune, a professor and chair of the department of immunology and infectious diseases at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, woke up Tuesday to a stop-work order for a large contract focused on unraveling how the immune system fights tuberculosis, with the goal of creating better detection and vaccines.
It's not funding for student tuitions, rather Harvard research labs bid on research grants just like all universities do. Government sponsored university research since WW2 has been a primary driver of innovation in the US and a key element in the US becoming and maintaining its position as the #1 economy.
I had been somewhat neutral on trump -- the grievances of the american right were real and under served. Major civil institutions of power and culture had been monopolised by the left; there had been a "default preference" for wealth over income, capital over labour. Immigration had been treated as a purely economic question, with little regards to the suddenness of population and cultural changes metered out on communities which took on the highest levels.
I had thought the leftwing reaction to accuse this of authoritarianism, overblown. Many of the actions that had been taken were taken by previous leftwing administrations, just with less publicity (, and so on).
However I think the rubicon has been crossed. The president now believes he has impunity to engage in extrajudicial rendition to enslave people, including citizens, in foreign prisons. He attacks the centres of civil power: universities, law firms, (likekly soon, ) the mass media. And rival state power: ignoring the supreme court, congress (ie., reorganising federal gov beyond his power), and the institional professional class in the executive.
All the while, increasingly I see people on the centre-right in the mass media credulously believing the president's account of his actions. Identifying with the president as an expression of their power, and believing likewise, that the whole of civil society is legitimately brought under state ideological control. That the presidency is the state, that state is society, and that society must "for democratic reasons" be brought to the state's heel.
The next phase of this will be very dangerous for the american people. I think civil resistance will be target for at best, imprisonment -- perhaps even rendition to a foreign prison. All one needs to say is that the resistance protestors are domestic terroists, and trump has a wide base of people credulously willing to believe it -- no doubt looting and other things will occur. It is very easy to imagine state elections being brought under "federal control" and a process of election rigging soon following.
As far as I can see there are two forces acting against the possibility of an american tyranny: trump's own desire to perform what's he's doing completely destabilises his plans (eg., on the economy especially). Secondly, the federalism of the american system.
It seems now plausible to me to imagine a future in which a democractic state violently expels federal forces, esp., eg., if ICE are used to rendition american citizens. It will be almost an obligation of states to suspend federal police presense. This, in the end, may make totalisation of federal state power difficult.
> Major civil institutions of power and culture had been monopolised by the left; there had been a "default preference" for wealth over income, capital over labour.
I am not from the US, and I watch with mild amusement its slide into full blown banana republic dictatorship with a sprinkle of last century European fascism - I mean, at this point ICE is basically a secret police that disappears people, not unlike Stasi or Gestapo from years past.
But you thought that Trump was an answer to "wealth over income" or "capital over labor"? Even without knowing that much about the intricacies of US politics this sounds pretty naive.
Well the tarrifs do very much show that Trump has no "default preference" for the capitalised class -- he's very willing to wreck the american stock market.
Whether his solution works or not isnt relevant to whether Trump's real preferences aren't, "by default", the american corporate owner.
It's very unhelpful to reduce trump down to basic evil motivations, and to call any ascription of a non-evil one, "naive". It has been this manner which has made the left entirely unable to communicate beyond its self.
> Well the tarrifs do very much show that Trump has no "default preference" for the capitalised class
His preference seems to be to favor those that suck up to him.
I mean, that is why all the top billionaires are all very cozy to him nowadays. They may be assholes, but they are smart assholes. Psychopathically smart.
> It's very unhelpful to reduce trump down to basic evil motivations
I didn't reduce him to evil motivations. I just said it was naive to think he would somehow benefit labor and not capital or wealth.
> Well the tarrifs do very much show that Trump has no "default preference" for the capitalised class -- he's very willing to wreck the american stock market.
Yes, Marxist-Leninist governments also wreck their local stock markets. That doesn't mean they, or Trump, are engaged in building a superior economic system for prioritizing labor over capital.
Write down on a sticky note "if the government sends a US citizen to CECOT I will..." and fill in the rest of this sentence. Put it somewhere you see it everyday.
I'm personally absolutely sick of the "oh it is not a problem until..." lines moving basically daily. Everybody defending this administration needs to commit to a line otherwise I fully expect to see posts saying what you are saying here with ever more brutal and violent outcomes from the state for the rest of time.
The problem is that there's no mechanism to prevent that. And there's a pretty clear route to it happening: first mistaken immigrants, then mistaken murders, then mistaken "domestic terrorists" -- and you have the federal gov. disappearing political opponents.
The issue with these extrajudicial renditions to foreign prisions is the extrajudicial part. The rest of it is just immoral -- the former part, a catastrophe.
The extrajudicial part has been around since the Clinton administration[1]. Somehow neither Obama nor Biden chose to get rid of this policy.
> Within days of his 2009 inauguration, Barack Obama signed an executive order opposing rendition torture and established a task force to provide recommendations about processes to prevent rendition torture. His administration distanced itself from some of the harshest counterterrorism techniques but permitted the practice of rendition to continue
The new part here is that it's foreign nationals being taken from US soil instead of another country's soil.
Yes, the new part is that it's extrajudicial. The rendition of foreign citizens can be done without a court, because they aren't covered by the US constitution. Only those "under the power of the united states government" are granted due process by US courts.
The line being cross in taking persons unknown to courts from the united states, to a forieng country, isnt "a new part". It's to suspend the constitution and grant the president the power not merely to arbitarily detain, but to do so in a foreign prison.
It's hard to understate how serious this is. If it were only this, and nothing else, we might hope it will stay bounded by the "hopefully" diligient ICE. But coupled with the assault on all rival systems to presidental power, there's nothign to be hopeful about.
The constitution has been suspend, the president has sequestered the force of the federal government to bring under his private power the whole of american society, begining with the most powerful rivals: the courts, the media, the universities, the law first, and so on.
He will next suspend the broadcasting licence for media outlets.
Optimistically, the supreme court could suspend his emergency powers -- as they ought, since there is no war or emergency. This may make the federal government unable to execute his wishes -- but if they've replaced enough workers there already, it might be too late.
> Do you have an example of ICE "disappearing" a US citizen
I mean, once they start disappearing people that are completely legal in the country, disappearing citizens is just a minor step forward.
By all means, I am not in the US, I'll keep enjoying my popcorn from afar. I wonder if when the ovens are turned on in some Central American death camp you will move the goalposts to "but, but we don't even have gas showers yet".
> cry wolf
The wolf has been here for a while buddy, we are just discussing what color and size it is.
Trump has already publicly alluded to shipping citizens to El Salvador, aka "disappearing". That means its already a possibility in his mind, which brings us pretty close to it happening.
Other factors to consider in the "states versus federal" conflicts that could occur are that each state has its own National Guard forces and equipment which are under the state governor's control. The National Guard are under dual control in that they can respond to the state's needs or to federal needs. But they are still citizens of that state who put on the uniform when needed.
This could lead to National Guard versus federal forces stand-offs as was seen in the 1960s over Civil Rights disagreements between state and federal governments:
Another factor that differentiates the United States in conflicts of the people against their government is how heavily armed and resourceful the US populace is. In the War on Terror, US Armed Forces faced insurgency militias in Iraq and Afghanistan. If similar insurgency militias were to arise in the United States in response to illegal federal government actions, it would probably have similar results.
Indeed. That law and several others grant the president expanded powers to handle emergency situations. However, who determines what is an emergency and if the expanded powers are needed? In many cases, it is the president himself (or herself).
The underlying assumption is that the president would use such powers judiciously and that the expanded powers would enable emergency situations to be handled quickly since it would probably take more time for congress to respond and get things done.
The question now is: what if such powers are not used judiciously? What recourse is there?
> who determines what is an emergency and if the expanded powers are needed?
Congress. But so far they're letting Trump declare emergencies left and right. All of his tariffs are being enacted under an "emergency" to bypass Congress (since under non-emergency situations, Congress sets tariffs).
Had the Democrats won control of the House/Senate, a lot of this nonsense wouldn't be happening (or even if conventional Republicans had control, which is why Trump 1.0, when conventional GOP held the senate, Trump couldn't go off the rails as he has now).
There's also State Guard / State Defense Forces, which are solely under state jurisdiction. But in many states, and especially in blue states, it has devolved into a uniformed and militarized but unarmed organization.
However, this entire line of thought presupposes that those people (whether in NG or SDF) would align themselves with the state and against the feds, and that's not given at all. I know from personal experience of close interaction with my local right-wing militias in WA state that quite a few members are in NG or WSG.
The same goes for armed populace. It's true that there's a lot of weaponry in private hands, and we're not just talking your stereotypical AR-15, but stuff like say .50 BMG anti-materiel rifles, grenade launchers, and even privately owned tanks and artillery in some cases. However, they are disproportionally in hands of people who lean far right, so in event of open conflict I would expect them to work with the feds. There are some of us on the left who are heavily armed precisely so as to counterbalance that, but we are outnumbered by an order of magnitude. Then there's the issue of training - right-wing militias actually get together and train, and while it is derided as LARPing - often for good reasons - it's still better than nothing. More importantly, it's not just training but also networking - those people know each other and have plans to get together and coordinate "when it's time".
Indeed, a particularly nasty possibility is that Trump wouldn't even need to issue any kinds of explicit orders to federal troops, but rather just let the right wing paramilitaries loose by simply not doing anything to stop them (and making it widely known that there will be no consequences).
Is there a mea culpa here? This was all clear for a decade during which you were "somewhat neutral on Trump" and everyone was telling those of us warning people about it that we were hysterical and deranged.
But now I see posts like this and it's like "how could we have known this was going to happen?". Well, you could have! At least maybe you can update your priors on how seriously to take warnings that a political movement is dangerous?
I went the other way - 2016-2020 I truly believed the US was sliding into dictatorship, but the constant cries of "Nazi" and "fascism" followed by nothing of the sort taking place have completely desensitized me to these accusations. I've also taken time to listen to the opinions of supposed "fascists" like Jordan Peterson and found them reasonable even if I don't always agree with them. The vaguely dictatorial vaccine mandate policy pursued by the Democrats and the way the trucker convoy was handled didn't help either.
Now I read every comparison to the Nazis with a huge grain of salt and I'm "somewhat neutral" on Trump.
Out of curiosity, what would your rubicon[1] be in the current circumstance? I've found it useful to draw specific internal lines instead of trying to pull apart tit-for-tat reactions between two belligerents.
Yeah, and as of a month ago, I was in exactly the same position.
The extrajudicial enslavement of legal immigrants into foreign prisons, "crosses the rubicon". You cannot have presidential power operating in this way. It's not the immigrant part, it's the extrajudicial part. If trump has this power against anyone, he then has it against everyone.
Against that backdrop you have the targeting of law firms that have represented political opponents of the president; the attempt to totalise control of universities, and so on.
The whole thing is now tettering on the edge of what was previously just hysteria.
Perhaps the final nail in the coffin for me has been seeing online how credulous the right has been about the government's propaganda. This tells me that the conditions for totalitarianism are here in the people -- a mass of people identify with trump, uncritically believe the propaganda. The dismantling of rival power centres in all of american society and government is taking place whilst a large number of people applaud.
People havent yet seen the transition that has taken place within the Trump government. Before the Musk programme, the deportations, etc. were all on the extreme-side of constitutional presidental power.
We are actually now past that, and his supporters are operating as if we're not. They don't realise they're applauding what they will severely come to regret. They think they're applauding the end of DEI, of elite power, of the stock-owning class. When in fact, it's pretty clear now, these are just the grievances benig used to establish unlimited intrusion of the presidency into all aspects of civil and political life.
The next mass protest will precipitate a crisis of the legitimacy of the federal monopoly on violence in the US. Unless some means can be deployed soon to constrain the president, america is in a very dangerous position.
What, exactly, do you think the left has been doing for the last ~10 years? The universities are basically captured by one party and their ideology and I suspect Trump's hamfisted attempts to counter that will only make a small dent.
Universities are at a point where getting a job often requires including a DEI statement in your CV[1]. In my opinion, this is not compatible with academic freedom.
The overall feeling I get is one of despair. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are fundamentally interested in "freedom". They just choose to nibble away at different corners of the constitution.
The problem becomes when the president does it; and how he does it.
Since the president has vast formal and informal powers, any use of his power to achieve a totalisation of his ideology into society is "alarms going off territory".
When he has taken down the law firms, suspended the licenes of the media companies, sequestered the national guard against protestors, and deported political opponents --- at that stage, what will be left to protect you?
The president, as one man, cannot wield the full power of governmenrt -- this is tyranny. And, esp. cannot weild it against civil society, this is totalitarianism.
>Universities are at a point where getting a job often requires including a DEI statement in your CV[1]. In my opinion, this is not compatible with academic freedom.
>The universities are basically captured by one party and their ideology and I suspect Trump's hamfisted attempts to counter that will only make a small dent
How were they captured? What evidence do you have?
>Democrats nor the Republicans are fundamentally interested in "freedom".
>What, exactly, do you think the left has been doing for the last ~10 years?
Which single person is "the Left" here? You're basically proposing establishing a personalist dictatorship to combat a bureaucratic para-party. Your solution to authoritarianism is intensified authoritarianism.
The thing with the US Presidency is that in the first term, you have to be at least somewhat motivated to doing things that could get you a second term...
The second term rolls around, and now you can do whatever you like, because you're done at the end of that. At least in theory.
The Nazi / Hitler comparison was always a poor fit, in my view. But what most people were actually saying was just "this person does not care about the laws and values that keep our government from being a tyranny".
And what happened is like Y2K: People who recognized the risks successfully worked to mitigate the worst of them. It's not really surprising, but it is frustrating, that just like with Y2K, many people thus concluded that it was not necessary to mitigate the risks.
For many people, mitigating risks provides evidence that there were never any risks in the first place. (You can probably think of more examples of this.)
But unfortunately, people were correct when they identified that Trump's character combined with increasing control over one of the two political parties could pose a that to our system. And now it's harder to mitigate the problem, because the control over the party has advanced significantly further.
Suppose they are not Nazis nor fascists, but mere authoritarians like Putin. Does that make it any better?
I grew up in Russia at the time when we had a brief stint with democracy. I remember how people elected Putin because he was supposed to fix everything that was wrong, and how they laughed at those of us who said that it would be a dictatorship before soon.
I guess for all my dislike of what liberalism has become, I was still to liberal in my thinking. Ie., that the presidency "by construction" is quite a powerless office, everything has to go through congress, the courts stop half of what any president wants to do.
If trump had been in this straightjacket I had expected, I would not mind that "on this go around" the american right, with its grievances, has them heard by american society.
The problem of american politics, over the last decade or two, has been the complete cultural maginalisation of the right (from centres of civil power). Something had to give. The universities, the corporate culture, the internet mass media -- had all been monpolised by a "consensus moralism" which was replusive to a lot of people.
I didnt feel able to continue to deny those people their representation. However, I hadn't seen how easily the straighjackets of the constituion were this easy to disregard if you only have enough people at the top to do it.
> The problem of american politics, over the last decade or two, has been the complete cultural maginalisation of the right (from centres of civil power). Something had to give. The universities, the corporate culture, the internet mass media -- had all been monpolised by a "consensus moralism" which was replusive to a lot of people.
I see this offered a lot as an example of a "missing middle", that conservative ideals are systematically underrepresented in e.g. universities or popular culture, and the explanation offered by conservative thinkers is that there's some shadowy force at play.
Could it not just be that these ideals are unpopular? The classic tale of a kid going off to college and coming back with more liberal politics is offered as an example of brainwashing or "consensus moralism," but maybe it's because they were genuinely convinced to shift their worldview.
>he problem of american politics, over the last decade or two, has been the complete cultural maginalisation of the right (from centres of civil power). Something had to give. The universities, the corporate culture, the internet mass media -- had all been monpolised by a "consensus moralism" which was replusive to a lot of people.
How can you have been neutral on Trump until just now and then wrote that? This both-sides-ism looks a bit ludicrous. Neither side is perfect but one is a propagandistic cult and the other is a reasonable status quo party. One wants to throw hand grenades into every room of the government out of spite and out of desire to enrich and empower the billionaire class. And you’re now having this huge intellectual reckoning? Where were you the last 9 years of Trump?
Trump is very effective at selling people their grievances; at identifying problems, "with the right emotional tone", and so on. Obviously, he's completely unable to solve any of them -- and mostly lacks the interest in doing so.
Since I sympathised with the people who sympathised with him, I did not regard him as an inherently "evil" -- which seemed to be the left's take. And it's a pretty dangerous one. Because when people identify with trump, if you call him evil, so to them. And the left's habit of just opposing whatever he says renders their side seemingly at least as callous as him: which is why so many polls believe trump understands their problems better than the other side.
I think it's more accurate to say trump is a complex individual who could, with the right social environment, express quite different politics. What I hadn't anticipated is that his social environment has become so radicalised, professionalised, and totalitarian. (As someone else put it: the last trump was "Jared's" and this one is Don Jr's. Trump, I think, can be both. That's over now.)
In any case, I think it's a moot point. I was wrong. This latent rage of the right against their cultural marginalisation is now a smokescreen for the totalising of the presidency. It's a real problem.
>Trump is very effective at selling people their grievances; at identifying problems
What are some of the problems he identified? Because his speeches just seem to tap into vague insecurities and the general claim things were better in the past
I for one think better late than never. There's no shame in falling for a movement this big, if you eventually realize it's built on a mountain of lies and decide to take a step away from it.
> How can you have been neutral on Trump until just now and then wrote that? This both-sides-ism looks a bit ludicrous.
Devil's advocate, I think it's easy if you don't directly feel impact from his policies. I've been losing my marbles about Trump at family dinners for a while, but for a chunk of my family he's a check against "radical" liberalism (read: gender ideology, spending money on things that don't serve everyday americans) and a path to lower tax bills.
Similarly, I think it's easy (from a conservative perspective) to dismiss all the seemingly emotional reactions to something Your Guy is saying because that's just politics; that's the expected behavior of politicians. It's not a problem if Your Guy is caught in a lie because they all do it.
I'm straw-manning a bit, but I'm just trying to sketch anecdotes of how I've seen otherwise rational, empathetic, intelligent people routinely offer (to me) unreasonably calm takes on Trump's activities and behavior.
I share the frustration of many commenters that you're just now coming to believe that Trump is a dangerous threat to our entire system. It's bewildering to hear people say some variation of "how could we have known??", when it has all seemed so obvious to many of us for years that this is the road we were going down.
That said, I do deeply appreciate your willingness to change your mind, and to talk about it publicly. The reality is that a third of our society is in Trump's thrall. At my best, I don't want those people to disappear, or suffer in powerlessness for years. I want them to change their mind, and I know how hard that can be. So thank you!
I’m a foreigner who was U.S.-educated, spent a substantial part of my life there (left a little while ago), and still have family there. I’m seriously advising prospective students from pursuing a college education in the U.S. now. A partial education is now a very real concern under this mad man, especially for someone with the “wrong” nationality/ethnicity, which could completely upend one’s life and torpedo a lot of career prospects. Not to mention concerns for personal safety.
As an aside, I faced casual racism plenty of times in the country; pretty sure no one ever gave a shit. Trump country would cheer for it, actually.
Especially after the recent actions canceling visas for legal, free speech and minor traffic violations, I cannot in good conscience recommend anyone to come to the US to study. It's the US's loss more than anything else - a good portion of the cutting edge research that happens in US Schools is done by international grad students.
This is exactly what dictatorships do: comply with our demands or we will bring you down. Harvard might be able to stand up to them, but many other less wealthy universities will fold immediately.
But if the universities don't bind together and take a stand now, it will be too difficult and too late to do so later. Poor Columbia--now that Trump knows they will cower, he can make whatever demands he wants.
If you want to familiarize yourself with how the site actually works, you'll find links to thousands of past explanations in my comment upthread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43724590.
I wasn't accusing you or the moderators of Hackernews of anything. Downvoting is a function for users (after certain initial conditions are met). Flagging is also a user function.
There's a recent post [2] where a reply to me in a political argument, I don't remember the specific words [1], was some generalization or BS to support Trump. I continued the discussion but later the comment was flagged.
I was fine with arguing the points. There were also many more comments with similar content that weren't flagged.
I was previously a user for years and a reader for more than 15. I even directly conversed with you when I wanted to deleted my account, you asked if I was sure [3] so I'm familiar with the gist of the rules. I've also seen comments from you similar to.
[Para]"This isn't directly related to tech but it's of great interest so it's allowed"
[1] I thought this was possible in the past but I can't seem to do it now, however if I'm just not seeing the option then that's my fault.
[2] link upon request
[3] I'm not implying any relationship or that I'm some special "old soul"
Universities are not fast food restaurants, the reputation resides in the faculty, and they’re not replicable like fast food recipes or supply chains. “Harvard London” will be a completely different school with its own reputation (with a little bit of halo effect from the brand of course), just like no one mistakes UC Riverside for Berkeley. Unless you’re advocating for some remote teaching sort of deal.
Edit: In addition, some people only attend Harvard and co. for the networking opportunities.
"Unless you’re advocating for some remote teaching sort of deal."
I naturally expected that this would be the case. At the very least, record the lectures in 8K and stream them to other campuses (there would be major timezone differences).
> I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical a*hole like Nixon who wouldn't be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he's America's Hitler. How's that for discouraging?
1. It's a quote, not an expression of the poster's opinions directly.
2. We wouldn't even be talking about that industrial scale genocide this early on Hitler's term, which I don't say to suggest he's going to be Hitler 2 but rather to point out how it can be quite valid to be concerned before someone's getting into full swing with atrocities.
He mostly had standard GOP appointees last time who weren't on board. This time he has staffed his administration with loyalists, which is why so many have so little experience. They are there to do what they're told.
This is hard to overstate. Successful coups are sort of always legal by definition. Trump v. US made failed coups by the President legal. The self preservation incentive is gone.
Better preparation most likely. He had a staff of about 1,000 already hired before being sworn in. Some of them had probably been working on this stuff since 2020.
In 2016 Trump had not remolded the GOP yet. He was surrounded by "traditional" republicans who weren't fully on board with his insane, vindictive, authoritarian impulse. Republicans in Congress were also skeptical of him, making resistance from the legislature much more likely.
In 2024 the entire Republican Party had evicted the non-MAGA people. Trump could staff everything with absolute sycophants. And there is no way that the Republicans in Congress will lift a finger to change anything.
Further, Trump had years of vindictive rage bottled up after losing in 2020. Every organization and institution he spent years raging about on Truth Social suddenly becomes his target. No actual governance. Just revenge.
Now he doesn’t have anything to lose anymore. He’s very old, he had to run again to avoid prison and bankruptcy. He will do anything he can to remain in power until he dies. This is my very personal opinion
There was a handful of adults in the room the first time around. Now, only loyalists and sycophants. Plus, he saw that he can get away with anything (Jan 6, storing boxes of classified shit in his bathroom) and the Supreme Court backed him up.
There are no guard rails, there is no emergency stop this time.
Last time they lost their majority in Congress in the mid-terms and were a little kneecaped after that. It seems they've learned from that episode and are trying to achieve as much as possible before it happens again.
This has nothing to do with Israel or even antisemitism. The administration just doesn't like Harvard and they'll use whatever justification they think has the best chance of of holding up in court
There are definitely people in the admin who are full-throated supporters of the current Israeli government and its war, and I find it hard to believe that it didn't enter into the equation.
It doesn't have to be either-or. There's both generic anti-intellectualism, and specifically revenge for the protests.
That has nothing to do with it. They made the same demands of Colombia, who agreed to their demands; the result was just more demands. This is about exercising power and establishing dominance, not about Israel.
You get what you pay for.
Capitalism 1.0 -- just unveiled being like it ever was.
That's what happens when a (pseudo-) democracy never gets fixed, because everyone in the upper class thinks to get away best _with_ all the loopholes.
A president reigning at will, no court being able to really stop the shit show and undoing former president's pardons while using pardons as a tool to side-track courts.
The whole construct didn't -- and doesn't -- make sense, if you still aim for anything not being despotism.
Let’s be real. This has nothing to do with Qatar. It’s just the Trump administration retaliating against any institution that doesn’t fall in line. That’s the only thing these people care about: loyalty and control, plain and simple.
I was commenting to OP blaming the situation on AIPAC, which is not even in the top 10 list of donors, and has much less impact than most people believe.
It basically made criticising Israel automatically "anti-Semitic".
While someone who has previously said that the Jews are importing immigrants to intentionally undermine the USA who gave multiple Seig Heils was an ambiguous situation that they didn't want to rush to judgement on.
They basically destroyed all their credibility by becoming an advocate for Israel not for Jewish people.
They consider being anti-zionist to be antisemitic. This one section alone. The remainder is fine but I believe this shows they can't disconnect Israel from Jewishness
"Examples of when such critiques cross into antisemitism include when they ostracize and vilify Zionists and Zionism"
It's perfectly fine to criticize the government of any country. But is anyone in the UK, or Syria, or Iraq (my birthplace) saying those countries don't have a right to exist? Why just Israel?
When you have a standard that exists for one country or people that doesn't exist for anyone else, isn't that the definition of bigotry in all its forms?
I hope people realize that protesting or being angry at Trump/Republicans is pointless.
The power is bestowed upon them by Republican voters and they are to blame. Voting for one issue, lack of education, or desire to tune out politics isn't a reasonable excuse.
Edit
I have no issue with downvotes but offer up arguments why voters aren't responsible.
Protesting is not for Trump. Nobody there expects him to step down just because enough people showed up. People are showing how many got fed up enough to be loud and encourage/enable others.
I can't personally but this doesn't invalidate my argument. Maybe Bernie or AOC could help, pundits could slowly start redirecting people's anger to MAGA supporters.
What is the point of this post? There are a lot of people to be angry at here. Demonstrating displeasure to elected officials is our first amendment right.
I think that was possibly the case in the days of print newspapers. But I'm not sure I can blame individuals that are targeted all day every day by global corporations messaging them.
They are getting brainwashed by Twitter, Facebook, "News" websites, Televisions.
Billions are being spent every day to mould your thoughts to their desires.
How does a single individual fight that?
It's like saying "Jesus and personal responsibility" will save you from your heroin addiction.
I should have been clearer than I was, you're not wrong, I just find nearly everything is more nuanced than we allow for in discourse these days, and I have sympathy for people because I, too, found it hard to eat healthy and exercise enough when I was an executive with an 11 hour work day due to a 2:45 hour combined daily commute.
>I have sympathy for people because I, too, found it hard to eat healthy and exercise enough when I was an executive with an 11 hour work day
So you were overweight and/or ate poorly..But you wanted to be healthy?
This analogy, along with the drug addict one, doesn't work because 1. They don't believe they are doing something wrong 2. Aren't trying to fix the issue.
>nuanced
Then let's get deeper here. Offer up an argument with some nuance. My viewpoint isn't (I hope) contingent on ignoring the complexities of the situation
It absolutely is, but don't expect it to actually change anything.
The usual avenues to air grievances that modern Americans are used to, like writing your representative or even peaceful mass protests, only work in a political culture where they are universally perceived as detrimental to government's legitimacy and that matters. We are past this point now, and, arguably, have been for a while.
To put it bluntly, Trump and people who elected him don't give a fuck about "whiny libs". If you want to convince them to change course, you need to cause them actual measurable harm. Starting with economic - mass strikes etc - but be prepared that government would escalate to physical and match in kind.
This post shouldn't be downvoted. Just as it's well known that a majority of the Russian population supports the invasion of Ukraine, not solely due to misinformation. So too must the majority of U.S. voters who elected the current, legitimately constituted administration bear collective responsibility for their choices and the consequences that follow.
31.5% of eligible voters voted for the current administration. 49.8% of voters who voted were in favor of the current administration.
Clearly the way people vote matters. But I bristle at the sentiment that protesting against it is “pointless”. Such protests are as much a signal to those who voted as it is to those who didn’t and those who hold power. It’s an ecosystem reacting in the way it should react when threatened.
> Are there people who weren't aware of how much people dislike him?
I don’t understand the framing of this question. People are protesting because of actions taking place now. Even many of his supporters have buyer’s remorse and didn’t expect many of the things we’ve seen from this 2nd iteration. Whether or not many people are already “aware” of the existence of dislike seems entirely irrelevant.
When the immune system reacts, it does so because of a present threat. The fact that the immune system has memory of some threats doesn’t make it less necessary to react. And I don’t think it’s fair to claim that the wrong target has been chosen. Most people are protesting against the symptom and the disease. And there’s a case to be made that the administration is both.
>Even many of his supporters have buyer’s remorse and didn’t expect many of the things we’ve seen from this 2nd iteration.
This is true for Elon Musk. At least in a few polls I saw a while back. Trump approval rating however is extremely high among Republicans. Of course there are always a few but this is a discussion of the masses.
I'll consider myself wrong based on the midterm election results but if Republicans keep voting Republican then any talk of disapproval or buyer's remorse is just talk
1. Quantify racist behavior
2. Show it's increasing
3. Show that Democrats are responsible or that electing Harris, who is half black, would cause it to increase
> open borders
Define an open border.
>There are voters who would vote for dems no matter what, even with there education
True and while foolish of them they were still on the better side.
>nuclear..
What real chance? Russia wants some or all of Ukraine as a territory, nukes make no sense. It would also make it harder politically for European right wing governments to tone down their help of Ukraine
"never ending war with real chances of tactic nuclear strikes"
Do you really think that Trump will somehow stop the Russo-Ukrainian war? Hasn't worked out well so far, right? He has some leverage on the Ukrainians, but far from decisive one, and basically no leverage at all on the Kremlin.
This seems like a relatively empty threat considering many international folks don’t want to come here anyhow. There are some parallels here to when my toddler tries to give me consequences for doing things she doesn’t like.
60 Universities, the only reason Harvard is interesting here is the revelation its administration are just another average bunch of crayon munching racist idiots.
Down vote all you want, wont make blocking students from class because they are Jewish and hiring people based on their race or sexual preferences any less moronic.
What's 'burning' is the hospitals, military research, medical research and the vast array of technical R&D that congress has requested harvard to perform.
This is just an attack on americans. Harvard is secure regardless of what destruction the presidency does to the projects congress has asked of it.
Our lawyer attended Harvard as a postgrad and this idiocy makes him ashamed he did so, so much he took it off his linkedin profile so as not to be associated with them. Don't know how much he paid for it, but cant imagine it was cheap.
About as close to personal as it gets, other than having zero respect for racist crayon munching idiots.
Why the hell would this be flagged? Perfectly valid, debate-worthy and absolutely relevant in the context of many non-flagged submissions on this site. Again it would be nice if the HN admin stop letting any random orangutan flag anything they like out of their own shitty little naval-gazing ideological fixations.
Most probably the users who flagged it are tired of the repetition, because HN had a huge frontpage discussion about this topic just a few days ago:
Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43684536 - April 2025 (1399 comments)
Avoiding too much repetition is a core principle of this place [1]. To get a sense of how repetitive these discussions are, just look at the comments in the current thread—they could just as easily have been posted to the previous thread.
The way HN operates with respect to political stories is clear and stable, and has been for many years: some stories with political overlap are ok [2], but there isn't room on the frontpage for all of them (not even 5% of them, really). Frontpage space is the scarcest resource that exists here [3], and HN is not a current affairs site [4].
If you, or anyone, will familiarize yourselves with the explanations in these links, and then still have a question that I haven't answered there, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
[3] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
[4] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
> Avoiding too much repetition is a core principle of this place
This principle is applied very selectively though: The homepage has been full of insignificant iterations of overly hyped tech products for years now.
It is very hard to imagine all these submissions of announcements of products with monthly release cycles gratifying anyone's intellectual curiosity. Yet it apparently does because they can stay in the homepage for 24 hours.
But for some reason, something as unprecedented as the United States government threatening Harvard with a xenophobic ban is deemed "repetitive"?
It's inconsistent but I wouldn't necessarily call that selective, because randomness plays a major role.
It's not possible for moderation to be consistent because we don't read, or even see, most of what gets posted here. There's far too much.
There are other, less obvious factors affecting this too. Here's a post where I went into this a few months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42787306.
Btw, regarding this:
> insignificant iterations of overly hyped tech products for years now
HN's moderation system downweights those even more regularly than we downweight (some) political posts. Here's an explanation from a few years ago, which caused quite a stir if I remember correctly: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23071428 (May 2020).
In both cases—incremental product releases on the one hand, and political news on the other—some posts still make it through through to the front page, and in both cases the users who want more of that category feel like it's unduly suppressed, while users who want less of that category feel like HN is overrun with it.
I believe the issue is the type of discussions that can damage the fabric of the website. Repetitive discussions on tech products are not good but can't damage the site. But discussions of politics can be inflammatory and repetitive inflammatory discussions could damage the site since it dampens intellectual curiosity of people overall. I'm not a moderator or anything so I don't know but that's just my guess based on what dang has said in previous comments.
A lot of repetitive discussions of tech things get moderated all the time as well, you can just email them in and the moderators sort them out. There's a lot of mod commentary on how things like releases, feature updates, 'launch week' etc are handled, one recent example
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43129444
"... a huge frontpage discussion about this topic just a few days ago"
The previous discussion was about an April 11, 2025 joint letter to Harvard President Alan Garber from the Commissioner of the Federal Aquisition Service, General Services Administration, the Acting General Counsel of the Department of Health and Human Services and the Acting General Counsel of the Department of Education.
https://www.harvard.edu/research-funding/wp-content/uploads/...
Discussion of the April 11th letter occurred in stories submitted at 2025-04-14T18:40:22 and 2025-04-14T18:13:07
This discussion is about an April 16, 2025 letter to Maureen Martin at Harvard's International Office from the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.
https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/documenttools/60233385...
This story was submitted 2025-04-17T10:42:01. Discussion of this letter on April 14th would have been impossible. It was not sent until April 16th.
As one might guess, the letters make different requests. The threatened consequences for not complying are also different. Different letters, different senders, different recipients, different sets of requests, different types of potential consequences for noncompliance, e.g., cancelling funding versus refusing to grant student visas. Are these truly the same topic. Let the reader decide.
Is it possible the reason for these stories getting flagged is because HN users with flagging privileges do not want to them discussed. Not because of repetition but because the discussions are often low quality or offensive to them in some way.
One could argue HN routinely keeps having the same discussions about the same topics, even going so far as to allow HN users to resubmit stories for discussion. Hence, comments frequently note "past discussion".
For example, an HN Poll last year showed most HN readers who vote in polls thought "AI" was mostly hype. Comments have also suggested readers are tired of the hype. Yet they are still being forced to see/hide stories about "AI" every day on HN. Sometimes it feels like HN commenters are literally being forcefed the same tired, old topics and coaxed to repeat their same old opinions, or worse, their favourite memes, over and over again.
I am not suggesting there is anything HN can do about this problem. But I am inclined to agree with the GP comment; the current flagging behaviour mirrors the worst of HN commenting behaviour. It is a low quality, cowardly attempt at moderation that does not even seem to work. We are now consistently seeing flagged stories remain on page 1.
> Let the reader decide.
There is no "the" reader. There's a statistical cloud of readers with highly variant preferences.
You guys need to understand that the community is divided about these questions. I don't mean divided politically on partisan lines (though that as well), I mean divided around what sorts of topics are the best fit for the site.
There are those who feel like each letter to each government agency is a major new story that obviously deserves frontpage time; and there are those who feel like HN is overrun with this sort of thing already. Ditto for every major topic including, as you say, AI: some feel like there's too much, some feel like there's not enough.
There's no HN user, including me, who's satisfied with the balance of stories on the front page. The more passionate you (I don't mean you personally, but all of us) are about a particular topic, the more it feels like the topic is being unfairly and outrageously suppressed, whether by user flags or the mods or both.
This is ultimately all coming from the fundamentals of how HN works—from its initial conditions, if you like—and those aren't likely to change. Feelings about it do uptick during times of political intensity, such as now, but the underlying phenomenon is consistent and has been for many years.
Flagging does not remove stories. It does not always result in killng them to "[dead]" status. It may not even demote stories off page 1. Flagging is not a effective solution to the submission of stories that anyone believes are inappropriate for HN, i.e., it does not stop further submissions on similar topics. They still get submitted. If anything, flagging may be a means of stopping discussion. If it works. Meanwhile "[flagged]" status was removed from this story. Discussion continues.
NB. "The reader" is a figure of speech refering to the reader who is reading the comment, whomever that may be. The point of the comment is that "repetition" is probably not an adequate explanation for flagging. Unless readers are informed who is flaggging and for what purpose, then all anyone can do is guess. No one knows why stories are flagged except the people who flag them.
Whether some HN practice has always been the case or whether it will remain so for all time is irrelevant. What's relevant is that aggressive flagging is happening now. Commenters share their thoughts about it. Some disagree. Some agree. Discussion continues.
The point of the comment is that "repetition" is probably not an adequate explanation for flagging. [...] What's relevant is that aggressive flagging is happening now.
Why not? Why does only the flagging need to be explained but not, say, the aggressive reposting of stories that are typically, and by long-established practice, offtopic for HN? These are clearly two sides of the same phenomenon, it's not obvious that the flagging alone here should be treated as some sort of anomaly.
The linked discussion was on April 14th. Very few topics that narrow get two back to back megathreads on HN. Fundamentally, you're arguing this one should get three (or more) megathreads and that's a very uphill argument because it runs against the basic design fabric of the place.
Oh, I found /active just recently. And turned out many, if not most, interesting topics are censored. While some mediocre and irrelevant things are not. However, I’m not surprised, being a long time visitor, and seeing very dang questionable moderation practices.
Woah! I’m genuinely shocked. It has changed what I think of this website.
It wouldn't matter if it were flagged or not. It would be removed from the front page because HN downranks posts with a lot of comments.
HN is designed to hide political discussions. If it weren't, the front page would be nothing but political discussions.
> HN is designed to hide political discussions.
unless they're PG political posts, ahem
> … posts …
They are called “essays”. /s
HN mods/leadership appear to have taken the stance that this is a non-political site.
Why it's being flagged? People hiding behind the non-political rule are suppressing information and discussion.
This site is owned by ycombinator, who have a motivation to "not rock the boat", so such suppression is ignored.
I guess in time we'll see whether that's a good decision for them or not.
There's no "non-political rule", as you'll see if you look at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, and in fact HN hosted a huge frontpage thread about this issue just a few days ago:
Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43684536 - April 2025 (1399 comments)
You guys should familiarize yourselves with how this site is operated, because it has been explained endlessly (to the limit of my patience, in fact) over many years, and the assumptions you're making do not match reality. If you want to do that, you'll find entrypoints into thousands of past explanations in my comment upthread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43724590.
> This site is owned by ycombinator, who have a motivation to "not rock the boat"…
I’d argue that leadership of ycombinator is glad where this boat is sailing. Just look who are they inviting to advertised AI startup school at the bottom of this site.
The founder of Gumroad works inside DOGE now. One of the founders of AirBNB works inside DOGE now. Musk founded DOGE. Peter Thiel's Palantir is generating the information for ICE now.
https://www.404media.co/leaked-palantirs-plan-to-help-ice-de...
David Sacks is the country's official Crypto czar now.
Chamath Palihapitiya brags that he's happy that his money can now buy access/influence /power. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-do...
Some further context for anyone who reads this and thinks it's a fair indication of the factors that influence HN moderation:
- Gumroad is not a YC-funded company and its founder has no influence on YC or HN.
- Joe Gebbia is just one of more than ten thousand YC-backed founders and does not represent YC or influence HN.
- Of the other people named, none has any official role or influence at YC, and only one of them has ever had a formal role; a brief, minor role that ended nearly over seven years ago. At least two of those named have had very public, bitterly hostile relationships with past presidents of YC and founders of notable YC companies.
- The only person with any role/influence at YC and who publicly espouses any position on U.S. federal politics is Paul Graham, who tweets almost daily in staunch opposition to the current U.S. administration.
- HN moderators and YC management know that HN is only valuable if it is a place where people can find content and discussions that engage intellectual curiosity, and the surest way to destroy its value is to allow it to be influenced by particular ideological agendas.
it seems they are in cahoots
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLhHuOPAXZQ&ab_channel=AdamM...
I doubt they need to adjust the algorithim though to get rid of politics heavy posts specifically.
I’m pretty sure anything that gets more than twice as many comments than upvotes gets a huge downrank penalty, such that they would almost never hit the front page without moderator intervention.
Yes, the admins have apparently manually added this post back to the /news feed, and it's currently ranked #59.
[flagged]
[flagged]
I didn't mention Nazism, I said _fascist salute_. The fascist movement that was popular earlier in the 20th century and led to Nazism, but is not exclusively limited to it. The adoption of the "Roman" salute was from Italian fascism, which the Germans borrowed.
[dead]
"we don't talk about politics"
translation: "we have a vested stake in the status quo."
active silencing on political issues is in and of itself a political stance.
I agree, and there’s plenty of political discussion here. E.g. Navalny’s death / murder was discussed wildly here, but is completely irrelevant to tech. (If this resource pretends it’s about tech.) Politics is ok, unless it’s politics we don’t like you to talk about.
They did not. Very specifically, only flagged articles are the ones that paint current president or current republican leadership very badly while going into details.
That is only flagged kind of article. Other political articles are fine.
Decision to be non political would lead to different selection of articles to be banned.
If things like these happen, staying silent is — guess what — political.
If your neighbours are being taken away by state police there is no non-political move you can make. Helping the police is political, ducking away and pretending it is not helping is political and hiding them is political as well.
While I understand that this site tries to not drown in the flaming garbage site that online political discourse can be, if I — the exact demographic who startups would like to have working for them would list precisely this as my main concern stopping me from moving into the US it is a bit odd that it is verboten to discuss it.
Hackers historically were (and are) extremely critical of authority and for the freedom of knowledge, and now we can't discuss an direct attack at those very values on a site that calls itself Hackernews? Come on.
But … It’s news ycombinator!
Then change it in the h1 title
Won’t be that appealing to the general public, since the YC part would be too obvious. Right now, it’s easier to pretend it’s _hacker_ news.
[flagged]
Flagging is at 30 or 31 karma, it’s downvoting that is locked behind 500.
> Educate yourself
[dead]
[flagged]
These days I go to https://news.ycombinator.com/active And search for [flagged] items first.
That’s what I do too.
Id assume to prevent hn from becoming a tiny version of reddit.
[dead]
I flag American politics because it's boring and irrelevant to me. Nothing to do with ideological fixations, although it does please me that people like get so worked up about it.
> I flag American politics because it's boring and irrelevant to me.
Where on earth could you live that American politics are irrelevant to you? Boring sure, but irrelevant? Unless you live, well, on Jupiter these days, there's not an inch of the globe that's untouched by the effects of American politics.
I can assure you that Harvard foreign student enrolments are absolutely irrelevant to my day to day life.
I was actually thinking about tariffs even I wrote my comment.
The decline of the last democratic world superpower into fascism that it represents is absolutely relevant to you, I promise.
"Meh, I don't care what Nazi Germany is up to, it's irrelevant to me"
You lot really can't go five minutes without invoking Hitler or Nazis when discussing your politics. And you wonder why we find it boring.
This complaint went out the window when they started pulling all of their actions straight from the Nazi playbook.
Just because someone coined a law on the internet decades ago does not invalidate the comparison. Neither does you finding it repetitive and boring. If anything, you should be more concerned, not apathetic.
I won’t be even surprised if this guy is American, you know.
> boring and irrelevant to me.
come on, probably 75% of all the posts on HN are boring and irrelevant to me; that doesn't mean I go downvoting them all
I look for the stuff I'm interested in, and ignore the rest.
I'll be honest, I prefer it this way. Thanks people flagging the political stuff (I can't be bothered).
If you want the political stuff & the controversial stuff, you can add /active after the URL to HN main page.
The fact that there is an /active tab and flagged submissions can still be voted & commented on, tells me that while dang don't want it to be the face of HN, he's fine that people discuss it (as long as you comment with civility). If there was some tinfoil conspiracy, the tab would've been deleted.
I'm guilty that l now usually check /active and main page.
You know, some of the high-horse, HN readers are quick to say "social media, bad" and anything bashing social media (including blogs) sky rocket up to main page. "reddit sucks" is another common one. I mean I usually agree to that sentiment, but if you check /active posts, the comments, where things go, it resembles any other social media slop more than HN.
I spend more time on /active, sadly. Maybe those navel-gazing orangutans are actually the ones making sure this is not reddit or Facebook for techies rather than boomers
Please find a way to contribute more politely to HN. Regardless of whether I agree with you on whether this post should be flagged, calling your fellow HNers "random orangutans" that act out of "shitty little naval-gazing ideological fixations" is rude, mean, stupid, and wrong.
Economic, educational, reputational ... it's hard to think of a dimension that the current administration is not destroying the US on.
Cowing Harvard - one of the world’s greatest universities - would mark a pivotal victory for the dictatorship taking shape before our eyes. Dictatorships derive their power from the submission of a society’s key institutions. That’s what’s at stake here.
[flagged]
If this is for science it's cutting off the nose to spite the face: the scientists are the ones that need the billions that are getting cut off and who are shutting down their labs right now. The humanities people have miniscule research budgets: they maybe need a couple grand to travel to an archive from time to time and that's about it.
Ah yes, Harvard Business and Harvard Law, classic STEM institutions.
[flagged]
Where did you get those numbers? That's a little inflated by what pew gathered.
https://www.pewresearch.org/race-and-ethnicity/2025/03/26/am...
Unfortunately that account just regularly makes shit up.
[flagged]
I have read lots of your comments over the years and you've had some great contributions, but I don't think this is one of them. What figure from the link supports your comment?
74% support deporting immigrants who are here illegally and have committed crimes.
That's a bit different than what you initially said
That poll has 74% support for "Deporting immigrants who are here illegally and have committed crimes".
It does not ask about "Trump's Deportations". I support deporting criminal immigrants. I even support deporting those with no criminal record who are here illegally (with some caveats). I don't support sending innocent people to brutal slave labor in a country not their own.
Supporting "Deporting immigrants who are here illegally and have committed crimes" is not the same as supporting "Trump's Deportations".
Who responds to polls? Old people, people with an ideological motive, and people who get paid. They mean almost nothing.
[flagged]
This never happened, of course. On the single occurrence of it happening at UCLA, it was covered extensively.
That’s a very big claim. What evidence do you have of that happening?
Speak for yourself. From a hiring standpoint, having gone to Harvard is a massive red flag.
Why?
“A nation is not lost because of the actions of the wicked, but because of the silence of the just.” — Napoleon Bonaparte
Good quote put pretty ironic coming from the guy that ruined France economically and demographically for the next 100 years, and left it to lag behind the UK and the other Empires of the 19th century.
A coalition of monarchies did gang up and wage war on the French republic, to stop their crazy ideas from spreading.
Kind of parallel to France demanding Haiti pay them compensation for slaves being freed.
In both cases we'd generally look more kindly on republics and freeing slaves from the modern perspective, and maybe put more blame on the people trying to undermine them.
Slight nitpick, but France was no longer a Republic in Napoleon's time. It had become the First French Empire.
The Empire was formed after Napoleon's success in the wars of the Republican era, which occurred exactly because "A coalition of monarchies did gang up and wage war on the French republic".
Napoleon did not just emerge from the head of Zeus as a fully-formed Emporer.
And, technically, Napoleon headed the French government first while it was still nominally a Republic, under the Consulate of the Constitution of Year VIII.
Napoleon was a French military officer from 1785 to 1800.
During that time, France was a monarchy and republic, before becoming an empire when he rose to political power and directed its military as ruler.
So, all of the above in his time?
Ok but as a French, we don't really think as 1789-1804 as "Napoleon's time". His empire was and remains what he his most remembered for. He's literally referred to as "l'empereur" (the emperor).
I don't think I need to expand on how his Empire wasn't really democratic, or a republic.
That's not a "slight" nitpick. While we can be grateful to Napoleon to bring modern law and scientific advances to the rest of Europe, he certainly didn't conquer it in the interest of democracy.
It's an incorrect nitpick.
The post I replied to said Napolean ruined France compared with nearby empires.
I said the nearby empires were hostile to revolution and so keen to keep a Franch Republic down.
Wikipedia says:
> As early as 1791, the other monarchies of Europe looked with outrage at the revolution and its upheavals; and they considered whether they should intervene, either in support of King Louis XVI to prevent the spread of revolution, or to take advantage of the chaos in France. Austria stationed significant troops on its French border and together with Prussia issued the Declaration of Pillnitz, which threatened severe consequences should anything happen to King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette.
Ok but did he have to go as far as Russia? Couldn't he just consolidate his forces instead of getting drunk on conquest and waging war all the way to eastern-most Europe?
That's probably exactly what the other "side" is thinking.
For example:
They think that allowing people with penises to to change in women's locker rooms just because they identify as women is wicked, so they aren't being silent about it.
> the locker room situation with Thomas, who although she has transitioned to being female hormonally and identified as a woman, still has male body parts https://www.swimmingworldmagazine.com/news/lia-thomas-teamma...
The pendulum eventually swings to the other side.
(I'm somewhere in the middle with I suspect a majority of people - it's the extremists that are the loudest.)
So both-sides then?
Look I think we should disagree on fiscal and social policy, and be able to deliberate over these issues.
And have a system of government that allows for that kind of debate and representative vote.
But "one side" is dismantling everything that was still democratic about the United States and turning into a massively one-sided (even one-manned) system of control. So whatever your opinion or mine on social policy no longer matter, because it's all up to the whims of a single person, with no recourse for the rest of us.
The biggest problem is that everyone has their own version of good and bad, so all need to get up and action, to form sort of equilibrium.
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> The democratic process is failing the majority of people so the people are replacing it
I see. And what is it that you are replacing it with?
A strongman. A Caesar. Someone to champion the cultural values and identity we believe in. You don't have to like it, agree with it or understand it for it to happen.
Honestly I am trolling a little bit(maybe a lot) but this is literally how people think and no amount of discussion is going to change their minds. They want outcome A, you want outcome B, and there are very little (perhaps 0) shared values to build a cohesive foundation on which to compromise.
> no amount of discussion is going to change their minds
It's a slow process. A MAGA extremist isn't going to read "LGBT rights are human rights!" and say "Ah, I didn't realize! Of course!" and become a liberal.
Maybe they argue with someone about how tariffs are going to be great for the country, and they don't change their mind. But a few months later their neighbor in trucking loses their job, and their friend in construction is talking about how hard it is now, and they start to have a few doubts. They think back to how the guy they were arguing with said this would happen.
And then they argue with someone that only illegal aliens are going to be deported, and they don't change their mind. But then when US citizens start being sent to the camps, they remember that they thought this wouldn't happen and even argued against it.
People do change their mind eventually. Even violent fanatics have changed their minds: the Maoist Red Guards lost steam, the IRA followed a peace process as did FARC in Colombia. If you love liberty, democracy, peace, and prosperity, then I think your best move is to persist in trying to convince MAGA extremists, while understanding that it will take a long time and potentially a lot of chaos and conflict.
One of the most important lessons I've learned is that minds are not changed overnight, and thinking you can will drive you crazy. One's goal in engaging with people whose mind you want to change shouldn't actually be to convince them right there and then, but rather to encourage them to think about their position over time.
cultural values you say? like rape, corruption, extreme pettiness and selfishness?
these people are in a cult. their sunk cost bias is overwhelming most of their sanity.
and of course the world is not going in the way they wish, so their conflict resolution is to write a blank check to said strongman. (and project everything on him.)
If that's what it takes to undo the moral decline of the last 30 years then so be it.
I'm sick of seeing insanity in schools, at work, and on the news everyday.
Our culture has been totally deconstructed and reversed where drag and pedophilia is celebrated, being diverse is more important than being skilled/having ability, being white is seen as tainted or somehow lesser than someone who has a diverse background. Beauty has been replaced with vulgarity and queerness.
The reversal has been a long time coming. We have had a silent majority that was too afraid to act because of the legal implications of going against powerful special interests.
> these people are in a cult
yeah and I propose that "othering" anyone is the root of a problem, in itself. Don't become the thing you hate.
Othering is bad, sure.
But shipping people out of the country without due process, into a foreign high security prison, and ignoring a court order to bring him back, is a whole lot worse.
Let’s keep our eyes on the ball.
> You don't have to like it, agree with it or understand it for it to happen.
Sure but the problem is: he's going to fail the majority as well, which means they're going to step in and replace him next.
> which means they're going to step in and replace him next.
Or discover they can't. The thing about strongmen dictators is they aren't that easy to just replace.
Is it the democratic process failing, or it being destroyed by monied interests?
Oh yes the country is going to shit but let's focus on fairness in sports that's really what matters
Yea, there's like 10 Trans NCAA athletes out of 10,000 so let's stop everything and focus on that.
Why aren't we laughing all day at the right because they're a bunch of fucking clowns?
(I identify as an independent).
>I'm somewhere in the middle with I suspect a majority of people - it's the extremists that are the loudest
Trump is the loudest and he represents his supporters
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Well, so far, they have just waffled on whether or not to drastically defund the military.
It's not destroying the US media industry like tv/movies/games. Why can I say that with confidence you ask? Simple! Because they have been doing that for ages before the current administration got to power ( * ´ ω ｀ * )
Have you seen the meadia landscape lately? It's filled with absolute garbage and generative AI is going to make to so much worse. They've also done everything they can to delegitimize every reliable source of truth. So I'd say they've done a great job destroying the media industry.
Lately as in since the election? Cause for me this has been happening for decades. I'm not even going to comment on the principles of scientific truth considering the nonsense people are peddling today is no better than the bible bashers on the right.
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It certainly depends on what you optimize for. For example, about 1/3 of the 320 American Nobel Prizes in science have gone to immigrants.
Currently, US universities license around 3,000 patents, 3,200 copyrights and 1,600 other licenses to startups and companies. They spin out over 1,100 science-based startups yearly, creating countless products and tens of thousands of jobs.
This university/government partnership became the model other countries try to copy post WWII, though the current administration has walked away from it.
The genius of the US system was indirect cost reimbursement. The government not only paid researchers' salaries but also funded their facilities and administration costs. This was the secret sauce that built world-class university labs that attracted scientists globally, causing other countries to worry about "brain drain" to the decentralized, collaborative US ecosystem combining massive government funding for university research with private industry scaling the solutions.
Meanwhile, Britain tried a centralized approach with government labs, achieving breakthroughs but lacking the scale, integration and capital to compete in the post-war world.
also a commitment to a robust library system, and Federal research being publicly owned.. tolerance for varying ideas outside the current government paternalism might be part of it..
sad to see the current crop of agitating political firebrands embedding into stable and tolerant education infrastructure. Also sad to see the reactionary care and feeding of authoritarianism by the Feds.. this is why we cant have nice things?
As the partner of someone who works at Harvard, I have a slight insight into what's happening there. Disclaimer: I may have misunderstood my partner when she described Harvard admissions.
As a rule, foreign students usually pay the full cost of attending Harvard. Then there are legacy students. Many domestic students, primarily low-income or socioeconomically disadvantaged ones, get significant aid, including a full ride.
This is common for foreign students in many countries. They might benefit from a scholarship grant indeed, but that would come from their own government.
The school might have government grants so it can provide better services to all their students, but foreigners usually pay more for the same things.
> Foreign students usually pay the full cost of attending Harvard
That's what I have always understood as well.
Typically, empires attracted the top 10% of the peripheral/vassal nations. Look at Rome, for example. It is a sign of global standing that premier educational institutions of country X are flooded with the top performers of the other nations. Most importantly (and this is the reason this has been practiced by world powers throughout history) having the elite of a nation be educated in one's institutions guarantees a sizable cadre of influential men and women who go back home and create an 'Atlanticist' front.
Reasonable question.
It depends, at top level, what the intention is. What the US government thinks it is buying. Is it buying global improvement in research? If so, surely you just hire smartest people out there. In fact it will probably be mostly non-Americans, because even if they come from a much-better-than-average educational system, still, they are something like 4% of global population.
Ok, so let's say not this. Perhaps US govt is strictly buying (indirect) improvement to US economy. Well, a lot of these students will stay in the US, find startups, or simply become good taxpayers. Most developed countries struggle to grow or keep their societies steady, US has this funnel of highly skilled workforce - universities. Even better, since these immigrants, if they stay, won't have generated primary education costs, and if they eventually leave, also will cost less in adult life than people who stay in the US all their life.
This is about undergrads, really. Postgraduate students are more like hard, underpaid jobs. People come and go, and perform the service of churning out research for an American University.
Finally, not sure how much the US govt is paying for these foreign undergrads. Rich undergrads will have to lay a good chunk of their own fees - perhaps all, either via cash or loans they have to repay.
I'm not in any way endorsing this kerfuffle, but it's always good to be clear why you are paying for things, as sooner or later someone will challenge it.
Maybe I'm old fashioned, but at one time it was believed that there was a foreign policy angle: The people who come here end up liking our country and bringing that good will back home with them. They also learn the reality of what it's like here, which is often contrary to the propaganda that they've received at home.
They also spread the prestige of Harvard. If Harvard were to adopt US-only admissions, their reputation would go down, and the degree would be less valuable for the remaining American students.
What's the proper ratio? If you want the best and brightest, statistically the vast majority will be from outside the US. Doesn't it benefit us to capture those people into our economy?
I wonder what percentage of those students stay in the U.S. after graduation.
I think that buying goodwill across the globe is also important for those that do not stay in the U.S. after graduation. And having educated neighbors is also important.
It’s because Harvard profits from selling fast-track access to american immigration.
Why wouldn't you want people who successfully graduate from Harvard to stay in US and become citizens? If anything, it's the other countries that should be complaining about brain drain.
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"Only white people allowed to run things" is a take, I suppose.
White people don't own Anglo-American culture.
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Here is a non-Anglo explaining what the term means. https://www.facebook.com/share/v/169CpBxje3/?mibextid=wwXIfr
Scalia's "American Anglo common culture" that makes him feel right at home in England is just a subset of the many cultures within central north america that have coexisted under the US flag for many generations.
It doesn't include the Chinese that brought rail to California, the multitudes of Latinos with ancestors under Viceroyalty of New Spain and elsewhere, the non Anglo Saxon Europeans that didn't ape the Anglo's after arriving at Ellis Island, etc.
Correct. But those cultures are the cultures of specific groups and communities, while Anglo-American culture and tradition is the basis of the whole country.
Excluding those groups that don't take on the whole cloth of "Anglo-American culture and tradition".
"America" consists of a venn diagram that isn't covered in whole with WASP's .. hence the existence of non-Anglo Americans as multi generational components of the USofA.
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No thanks, I’ll continue to use the correct terminology for referring to the foundational culture and tradition of the United States. Nobody appointed you king of the historical revision commission.
So basically feudalism because not very many poor people end up at Harvard.
Feudalism is the very mentality that foreign elites bring to America from their home countries.
The administration in power in America also wants feudalism so maybe it's a perfect fit! /s
Just when I think the Kool-aid can't get any worse, there's a new level of peak brain damage - another dispatch from the backwards bizarro world where all of the extreme benefits of global power are just taken for granted and forgotten about, with the remaining dynamics framed in terms of being liability and injustice instead.
In some sense the dynamic isn't surprising as it rhymes with how the left is often shouted down for criticizing while ignoring realpolitik, and maggots are coming from that place of self-centered entitlement cranked up to 11. It's still shocking though.
The "brain damage" is your hope-beyond-experience view that humans from different cultures are fungible, or that they somehow become American in beliefs and attitudes the moment they step foot on U.S. soil, or that somehow culture doesn't matter to a country.
Just because you can make up multiple straw men doesn't mean that I have to believe at least one of them.
The point is that the entire framing is backwards - treating "American elites" (and "spots at Harvard", for that matter) as some fixed quantity to be preserved. It ignores the overarching soft power dynamic of foreign students going back to their home country while remaining with some cultural ties to the US.
If foreign students want to then settle here and start climbing the US culture ladder to perhaps become part of "America's elites", that's a whole new process! And shamelessly professing aspects of their culture that go against American values will prevent them from climbing. Or at least I guess that was the case before they could find validation in the regressive anti-American maggot club.
I’m struggling to figure out what I said that you disagree with. You’re talking about what happens if they go back. I’m talking about what happens if they stay here.
Yes, I think America is pretty great and I want an elite that will perpetuate more of the same. You don’t have to agree. Which country’s culture would you rather import?
> Which country’s culture would you rather import?
The whole point is that this framing completely misses the larger overriding dynamic - Harvard is a means to export our culture! Foreign students come to Harvard because they (/their parents) want to partake in American culture.
Why is that the “larger overriding dynamic?” I don’t care about out there. I care about in here. And what’s more likely? That students will export, say, the quintessential American skepticism of book learning to India and China, or that students from those countries will import those societies’ excessive respect for academia to America’s elite professional class?
> I don’t care about out there. I care about in here
There's your misunderstanding. Our enviable lifestyles in here are largely supported by our foreign relations out there - in this context, that exporting of culture such that elites from other cultures still strive to send their kids to college in the United States! And while it would be theoretically possible to untangle in here from out there, doing so would require a team of surgeons rather than a gang of butchers.
As far as the specifics of culture, the example of the overemphasis on book learning is a bit rich in the context of our homegrown MBAs pathological love for living out Goodhart's law. I've certainly encountered my share of foreigners over reliant on rote memorization. The thing is as long as they stay that way, they don't get far in America - and this is obvious to their fellow students. They're not becoming members of the "elite professional class", and nobody is following their tack thinking it's a good way to learn.
> Our enviable lifestyles in here are largely supported by our foreign relations out there - in this context, that exporting of culture such that elites from other cultures still strive to send their kids to college in the United States!
Seems unlikely, given that the U.S. has been among the per-capita richest countries in the world for almost its entire existence, including when we almost shut down immigration completely for almost half the 20th century. But I know we don’t see eye to eye about “soft power.”
> As far as the specifics of culture, the example of the overemphasis on book learning is a bit rich in the context of our homegrown MBAs pathological love for living out Goodhart's law. I've certainly encountered my share of foreigners over reliant on rote memorization. The thing is as long as they stay that way, they don't get far in America - and this is obvious to their fellow students. They're not becoming members of the "elite professional class", and nobody is following their tack thinking it's a good way to learn.
I’m talking about something more fundamental than that, which is a fundamental deference to the wisdom of the common man. To use an example, Anglo-American tradition not only gave us jury trials, but the general attitude that ordinary people are capable of understanding and resolving sophisticated disputes. The vast majority of Asians I’ve encountered in America, by contrast, have traditional asian deference for academic knowledge and academic credentials.
To use another example, consider Nixon’s Checkers speech: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-senator-ni.... I was thinking about this today and realized that my parents wouldn’t really get the speech. They’d understand the gist, but they wouldn’t really understand it the way it was meant to be understood, because it invoked various WASP norms that are alien to them.
- He mentions growing up in modest circumstances, which is valued in WASP culture but looked down upon in desi culture.
- He mentions military service, which is distinctly valued in WASP culture and not valued in desi culture.
- He says his wife “doesn’t have a mink coat,” but “she does have a respectable Republican cloth coat.” My parents would understand this to mean he’s saying he didn’t accept illicit money to buy a mink coat. Which isn’t really what he meant—he was a private practice lawyer he could’ve afforded to legitimately buy his wife a mink coat. He was conveying that they’re not *the kind of people who wear mink coats—an appeal to WASP austerity that is alien to desi culture.
The Checkers speech was, of course, meant to be understood in substance as well as subtext by the American public at large. It’s not clear to me that would be true today.
> unlikely, given that the U.S. has been among the per-capita richest countries in the world for almost its entire existence
Sure, but currently the wealth of the US depends on maintaining the world's reserve currency. As I said, the reliance on international interdependence could be untangled, but it would require a team of surgeons rather than a gang of butchers. The gang of butchers will merely destroy what we do have, leaving us with a broken society.
As far as the general argument about culture, I was using an example somewhere in the realm of what you were talking about to demonstrate how foreign cultures don't automatically inject themselves into US culture. You're straight up ignoring the many hurdles between being a college student and becoming a member of the "US elite".
I will also point out (and I generally hate arguments that start this way, but you dredged up the context), that WASP culture was most certainly not the only culture in the US at the time. So the appeal wasn't to the "American public at large" but rather to the subset that "mattered" to swing votes - the idea of some singular overarching culture was an illusion promulgated by broadcast mass media, and that illusion has now been shattered. That sea change has certainly upset a lot of people, but you can't claim it resulted from something as simple as student visas.
>Sure, but currently the wealth of the US depends on maintaining the world's reserve currency.
Where does this bizarre belief come from?
I'm not saying that the US does not benefit from the fact that business all over the world is denominated in US dollars, but that is a far cry from the assertion that US wealth depends on that fact: the US is wealthy for many reasons in addition to that fact.
It seems more likely to me that the fact that the US was so rich and continues to be so rich caused businesspeople all over the world to choose to do their transaction in US dollars.
In general, among the countries of the world, the US is among the least dependent on other countries for its continued economic prosperity. (Other relatively independent countries are Argentina, France and most of SE Asia. Countries highly dependent on other countries for their continued economic prosperity include China, Germany and most of the third world.)
Our current level of wealth straightforwardly depends on that fact, because we're currently trading devalueable IOUs for lots of real physical goods. The bizarre belief is the political talking point of taking those physical goods for granted (or even as a liability!) rather than bonus wealth.
Furthermore, the current state of our economy is that most everything depends on imports. Dedollarization would mean those things shoot up in price, with no readily-available domestic substitutes. And if you think we're going to set up domestic factories, where does that equipment come from? Sure we can start rubbing three flattish surfaces together, or let the price of already-existing machine tools shoot up to the point that only factories making more machine tools can afford them, but that does not happen overnight.
Maybe losing that first part is inevitable. And as I've said, it's certainly possible to untangle that second bit while avoiding collapse. It just requires the subtlety of a targeted approach - not blunt force butchering that doesn't do even the first step to analyze the situation. If the economic neoliberalism of the past thirty years is a steamroller that went over our industrial base, the Trumpist/destructionist answer is to simplistically put it in reverse.
I don't understand why thats a bad thing. oh.. the Cream of the crop from some other country wants to come here, PAY to get educated and STAY here contributing to the US economy??
make it make sense!!
All universities are doing this, why is only Harvard targeted?
We are only 3 months in, they are going for the giants first.
A more neutral reading would be that Harvard lets foreign students (paying full tuition) to subsidize education for US-based students.
But of course you already know this. You just hate Harvard because you now support Trump and Trump hates Harvard.
I get it, it helps to have wealthy foreign donors and you don't have to give them aid.
I was more asking why is this acceptable? If its an American university, benefiting from American tax dollars, shouldn't it primarily benefit American students?
So many things we just accept at face value and don't question. I never really thought about it before, but it's weird now that I think about it. This is necessarily a scarce resource (by design). It doesn't have to be, they could vastly grow their class size without lowering standards. But they choose not to, to maintain elite status and make their donor class happy.
If they wanted to keep their class size the same, they could probably fund it entirely through their $53bn endowment, yet they still charge 50k+ a year.
And then they have the audacity to reject thousands of qualified American kids and give their seats to rich foreign kids? Come on
The taxpayer funding is for Harvard's research activities, not for its undergraduate teaching. The undergraduate teaching is funded by tuition (often paid in full by international students) and by returns on the endowment (including some earmarked for financial aid).
> they could vastly grow their class size without lowering standards
The issue isn't the quality of the students they are accepting, but the resources to educate and house them, including classroom space, dorms, and staff.
Also, the mentioned fast tracking to a US citizen will bring/create highly educated, skilled people to the country and will be a future tax payers, innovators, employers that the country gained with the tiniest amount of temporal investment and with some pretty standard monetary investment that other schools get.
> And then they have the audacity to reject thousands of qualified American kids and give their seats to rich foreign kids?
Most of the international students at Harvard are graduate students. You can't assume they are rich because a significant fraction of those are pursuing science PhDs. At Harvard science PhD programs are fully funded regardless of the nationality of the student.
But you said it your self, 3/4 of the students are American students primarily benefitting. How high does that ratio need to be? Possibly non-American students might bring some value to the school and students also? Lots to consider, maybe people are not taking things at face value but rather seeing the whole picture.
> Why should mostly wealthy foreign students benefit from US taxpayers funding?
Because it gets elites from across the globe to send their children to the US, including lots of money.
Harvard is looking for the best and americans make up less than 5% of the world. Why would all the best applicants be from the US/why should harvard give domestic students an admissions benefit?
Part of it is money but also part of it is, in my opinion, a view that nationalism is evil and leads to Nazism.
> Here's maybe a dumb question
serious question, why did you think your question might be dumb?
Tangentially related, but at my university international students paid the most to attend - by far - than any other student. It has been rumored by some that universities may have an unfair preference for international students because of this. I wonder if this thinking is playing into the policy making.
Based on the previous actions of this administration, I can with 100% confidence say that absolutely no thinking played into this policy making.
You can be confidently wrong. It seems like you just don't like the thinking/reasons they did.
It seems really clear that the order as operations is as follows:
1. Administration makes demands of Harvard to change the way it's operating to fall in line.
2. Harvard stands up against these demands.
3. Administration is using every means possible to punish Harvard for daring taking a stand against it.
This is what dictatorships look like.
Extortion is Trump's favorite tactic. He's been punishing Maine for standing up to him. The law firms too. Soon the democrats when he can get past deporting the criminal U.S citizens.
I don't think it's unreasonable to say people are the only option to change our trajectory. We haven't reached critical mass yet, but the next national protest is April 19th which lands on the 250th revolutionary war anniversary. Be there or be square.
Washington State too. "Oh, you had cyclones and asked FEMA for money? Denied! Because, uh, hm, wasn't really an emergency."
Surely even if you tried to give them the benefit of the doubt the number of back trackings and self damaging actions taken without any given explanation would make you start to wonder? I would love to dislike their rationales for their decisions but it often seems like they genuinely haven't thought things through, which is even more frustrating.
Nah brah.
It's pretty clear these guys are morons. They're all impulse and no follow-up. It's the panic of the hour with them. No longer term than past lunch.
The thinking was, "international students pay the most, contribute the most in tuition payments to the university budget, and therefore by cutting them off we hurt our enemies' budgets."
They almost certainly do. There were rumors of a Chinese student ban during Trump's last tenure and I remember reading news stories (https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/11/29/university-il...) about universities having insurance policies to protect themselves from revenue loss. There should be enough Americans to fill the empty seats so it makes you wonder if university finances rely on international student tuition. So you would expect that to translate into admissions changes.
Reading other comments on here it almost seems like people feel it would be bad if American universities like Harvard had more Americans. Like there is something morally wrong with that. So that's probably a factor also.
Well, I'll be darned—that's... quite something. I can understand why the university felt it had to take that step—perhaps even a wise move, all things considered - but I must say, it certainly doesn't look good.
Harvard is one of eleven American universities that practice need-blind admissions even for international students, meaning that students are admitted without regard for their financial status (i.e., no explicit preference toward richer students who can pay more tuition), and that financial aid covers full demonstrated need for all admitted students.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Need-blind_admission
So, are you guys realizing that this is _already_ a dictatorship?
It feels like the early days of Covid right now, where everyone is still living their lives normally but you know things are about to rapidly change for the worse.
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If we elect somebody who then completely flaunts the law to harm people he hates, what's the difference?
Should the lawfully elected president have the right to just order somebody to shoot me in the head apropos of nothing?
The Constitution protects us from the whims of the majority.
Important to note this isnt a majority: 30% of eligible voters chose the president; and even of those, hardly any are very engaged with his current policies and behaivour.
It's important not to so quickly cede the democractic ground here -- this isnt a democractic movement. It's a 49% election of a president, with 30% of the eligble voters, who collectively did not vote for the constitution to be suspended. They voted for a president, an office which exists by and within the framework of that constitution. There was no referendum on whether the constitution should be amended to allow for effectively unlimited presidental power.
The 'official' explanation that I got from Dang was that political posts hit automated software filters because of flagging and down voting which cause them to disappear from the front page.
Separately, sometimes the moderation team disables these filters on certain posts, but it's not often.
I have a hard time imagining this specific threat to be more than bluster. Would someone with relevant legal expertise be able to comment on how likely a ban on foreign enrollments would be to fly in the courts?
Surely the administration have a substantial degree of discretion with respect to student visas, but can they precipitate a blanket revocal on something as nakedly coercive (and speech-involved) as this?
(Edit: at a casual, non-expert glance it seems that a student can apply for a student visa at any SEVP-certified school, and the regulations governing SEVP certification seem to be at [0]. They list a lot of potential reasons to withdraw approval once it’s issued, but they all seem pretty specific: falsifying records, lying on your application, failing to keep proper records in relation to the students’ enrollment, and so on. Does it feel like maybe the mechanic here is claiming that tracking students’ speech is part of that essential record-keeping task?)
[0] https://www.ice.gov/sevis/schools/reg#2144
The Supreme Court has held that the government can use its control over funds to condition speech in ways it couldn’t directly: https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/government-funding-a...
The Supreme Court has also held that the government can revoke tax exempt status of a private organization where it furthers a compelling government policy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Jones_University_v._United...
Control over federal funding is also the hook for Title VI’s application of non-discrimination laws to private universities.
The government also has the trump card up its sleeve that Harvard is almost certainly violating Title VI through extensive programs of race consciousness. It’s well established that the civil rights laws apply equally to whites as to non-whites. Harvard has many programs for non-whites where, if those programs were for whites instead, that would be a Title VI violation that would jeopardize Harvard’s federal funding. E.g. Harvard had various racially segregated graduation parties last year: https://www.nationalreview.com/news/harvard-university-to-of.... If you can’t have a “White Celebration” then you can’t have a “Black Celebration” either. If Harvard doesn’t settle they’ll get hit with a Title VI lawsuit and they’re going to lose it.
Your first link involves laws passed by Congress. But there is no relevant law that requires "viewpoint diversity" (whatever that means) or most of the other demands in the government letter, this is simply an executive diktat.
Your second link involves a change in IRS policy. But there was no such change, instead again we have an executive diktat, despite the fact that the law explicitly forbids the President or his office from targeting specific institutions for audits or investigations: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/7217
But it appears that there's a giant loophole - the Attorney General apparently can still do so:
> (2) any individual (other than the Attorney General of the United States) serving in a position specified in section 5312 of title 5, United States Code.
Whether Congress does it or the executive does it isn’t relevant to the first amendment question, which is what I’m responding to above.
> Harvard had various racially segregated graduation parties last year: https://www.nationalreview.com/news/harvard-university-to-of.... If you can’t have a “White Celebration” then you can’t have a “Black Celebration” either.
The affinity celebrations were open to all graduates according to the article's sources. The segregation claim originated seemingly from 1 student they interviewed whose comments about other aspects seemed speculative.
The celebrations were organized by students and hosted by alumni and community groups according to the university. The article did not contest this. Is there evidence students applied for and were denied recognition of a white celebration?
Doesn’t matter. A “white celebration” would be deemed to create a hostile learning environment. Any other race conscious affinity group is the same thing. Under a fair application of the civil rights laws, it would be improper to have any university sanctioned race consciousness.
The history of American white supremacy and these institutions is well-understood. They've had plenty of "white celebrations" in their past. A minority affinity group is not the same as the Klan, as much as being told you can't have your white racial supremacy hurts it is not the same thing as actually existing under structural oppression.
> in their past
But people don't live in the past. "Your grandfather did wrong so now you must suffer" wow so much equality
I am curious how you are suffering from not having a "white celebratation". I understand why there might want to be a protected space for certain groups that, up until recently, were systematically treated harmfully. Whites don't fall into that category. So, I don't understand how it harms you that you cannot have a white party. Can you explain what harms you suffer?
The civil rights act seeks to create a color blind society. If schools or employers racialize people and treat them differently in any way, that’s illegal discrimination. It doesn’t matter if you think that treatment is warranted for certain groups but not other groups. That’s not a proper consideration under the law.
> Whites don't fall into that category.
This is racism. "I know you had it hard, but you're white, so your suffering is less relevant than black person's suffering". You might argue that this is the right thing to do anyway, but it's still racism.
> A “white celebration” would be deemed to create a hostile learning environment.
> Under a fair application of the civil rights laws, it would be improper to have any university sanctioned race consciousness.
Who would deem a white celebration would create a hostile learning environment? Harvard? Would courts not require evidence? Or courts? They had a double standard before but would not now?
Would this apply to all protected characteristics? Why not if not? Why did you discuss race only if so?
> extensive programs of race consciousness
Programs which were largely created by both academics employed in educational institutions and by the paying students who wanted to learn about more than Western history and culture.
Where's the outrage when history classes center almost entirely on Western, white narratives? Or when English classes focus overwhelmingly on white authors? Why does concern about "race consciousness" only seem to surface in the face of efforts to include perspectives outside of white culture?
All this assumes that “white” is a single “race.” In reality, it is a broad umbrella covering a variety of ethnic groups. What would I — a first-generation Russian immigrant — have to celebrate in common with descendants of Spanish, Belgian, or South African immigrants? Our cultures and histories have little overlap. Frequently, we don’t even have the same skin tone! The only thing we unambiguously share is a racially dominant position in society, which is not something I want to revel in.
An interesting tidbit from Wikipedia:
> Description of populations as "White" in reference to their skin color is occasionally found in Greco-Roman ethnography and other ancient or medieval sources, but these societies did not have any notion of a White race or pan-European identity. The term "White race" or "White people", defined by their light skin among other physical characteristics, entered the major European languages in the later seventeenth century, when the concept of a "unified White" achieved greater acceptance in Europe, in the context of racialized slavery and social status in the European colonies. Scholarship on race distinguishes the modern concept from pre-modern descriptions, which focused on physical complexion rather than the idea of race. Prior to the modern era, no European peoples regarded themselves as "White"; instead they defined their identity in terms of their religion, ancestry, ethnicity, or nationality. Contemporary anthropologists and other scientists, while recognizing the reality of biological variation between different human populations, regard the concept of a unified, distinguishable "White race" as a social construct with no scientific basis.
Yes, but how is this relevant now that Harvard basically said "Screw you, we're going to do what we want even if it means going without your money." ?
How can they prevent students from attending, it's not like they are going to specifically target and refuse or void the visa of anyone known to be an Harvard student ?!? (Or I guess, yeah, this kind of arbitrary rule is the exact thing that can happen under fascism...)
These are conservative values:
There's a tension between those values and other values such as a sense of fairness. People could overlook a politician who fell short of these conservative values when there was a perception that these values were holding us back from getting to a more just society.Today we have a president who openly defies the court orders, engages in blatant corruption, and undermines American institutions. The Trump administration's vehement rejection of all of these values highlights just how critical they really are.
It's time for American conservatives to vote Democrat.
It makes you wonder if the "rule of law" and "moral integrity" were ever conservative values at all, or simply an aesthetic they adopted, like "free speech absolutism" or "common sense".
We certainly thought those were conservative values. This were the values conservatives talked about. Either it was all bullshit, or they need to stop calling themselves conservative.
Given the ongoing pattern of bullying, power grabs, and disregard for the law - including the trampling of constitutional rights - dismissing this latest threat as mere bluster seems less like reason and more like denial.
NAL but we’re in uncharted territory here with the administration ignoring court orders.
Uncharted for the US. Well known in other regimes.
Not entirely uncharted.
I'm not sure how it was done legally, but when the Supreme Court ruled that Biden administration's student loan forgiveness was unconstitutional, Biden (or rather, his team) found another way to forgive loans.
I expect Trump's administration to similarly find legal workarounds.
Yeah, they found another way. The Court said they couldn't do it one way, so they found legal ways to cancel debt. That's not ignoring a court order.
false equivalency
> found another way to forgive loans
finding another _legal_ way to do something is not at all the same as ignoring a court order or breaking the law
>found another way to forgive loans.
Yes, and?
The supreme court ruled how the loans were canceled, not on Biden's desire to cancel loans
At what point can we say that the US truly has fallen from being the leader of the world?
Each and every decision taken by the current administration is bringing the US closer to an age of darkness and idiocy.
I’m from Europe, I’m not saying the US was ever perfect but I don’t understand how it came to this.
My bet is a on a combination of extreme individualism due to a poor internalisation of the ideals of liberalism combined with a predatory capitalistic environment.
It’s sad to see what happens to a society that has the highest concentration of the brightest minds in world mostly working towards money related goals. So many great people that could work for the greater good and are dutifully tuning algorithms for the 0.01% capturing everyone’s attention and ideas.
Sad state of the world but I guess you can’t stop “progress”.
I'm sympathetic to your perspective that it's a broad cultural thing.
But from my point of view, it's more of a demonstration of the problem with governments that are designed to have a very strong executive. Eventually you get an executive that really sucks, and when that happens they can do a lot of damage.
One of the biggest influences on my thinking from listening to Dan Carlin's Hardcore History is a point he made about hereditary monarchy, that among its problems is that sometimes the next ruler in line is just a total dud, and you're just stuck with them.
Well, you can get a dud through voting as well. Ideally having fairly short terms mitigates this risk, but there is still a lot of damage that can be done in a short term, and there is a "who watches the watchmen" problem with the executive being required to fairly run the election to potentially replace them.
If we make it through this period with elections that remain fair and with successful transitions of power, I hope we'll find ways to weaken the presidency.
> it's more of a demonstration of the problem with governments that are designed to have a very strong executive
The system WASN'T design to have a very strong executive, quite literally the opposite. The other branches have simply bowed down and let him bulldoze them. And yes, this has been building up for decades, but these cases are and above any overreach of previous presidents.
The Federalist Papers show the thinking behind how and why the three branches are mostly co-equal but the executive is designed to be ever so slightly more potent.
A presidential system is a design that has a strong executive. I agree that the presidency has grown stronger then intended, but it was always strong relative to other kinds of systems.
> But from my point of view, it's more of a demonstration of the problem with governments that are designed to have a very strong executive. Eventually you get an executive that really sucks, and when that happens they can do a lot of damage.
The presidential system, widespread in Latin America, has an inherent tendency to produce caudillos. The US had the good fortune of escaping that fate for decade after decade, but maybe with Trump its luck has finally run out.
The parliamentary system, as used in the rest of the Anglosphere and most of Western Europe – it doesn't require a monarchy, see parliamentary republics such as Germany and Ireland – avoids this problem by putting greater limits on executive power – Prime Ministers derive their authority from the legislature and can be removed by it with a simple majority; while the US cabinet is essentially an advisory body to the President, Westminster cabinets are collegial bodies in which the Prime Minister is just one vote among many and can be outvoted by their colleagues.
> One of the biggest influences on my thinking from listening to Dan Carlin's Hardcore History is a point he made about hereditary monarchy, that among its problems is that sometimes the next ruler in line is just a total dud, and you're just stuck with them.
"Great Britain is a republic with a hereditary president, while the United States is a monarchy with an elective king" (The Knoxville Journal, 9 February 1896)
Yep, you put my thoughts much better than I could have. And great quote! Hadn't ever come across that.
There's nothing about luck in this though, the "non-dud" ones were just able to push the problems under the rug and make it a problem of the people of the future.
The reason why you end up with a dud through election is that the rug can't cover all that anymore.
Except the legislative branch could keep him in check, they are simply choosing to go along with it.
One facet of the strength of our presidency is the degree of consensus required for Congress to exert itself in opposition to the president. Both impeachment and veto overrides are high hurdles.
>At what point can we say that the US truly has fallen from being the leader of the world?
When a ridiculous, obtuse con man was elected President in 2016 and his party lost whatever little desire they had left for a functional government?
Of course, I would argue it was when "W" was elected for the second term.
To be fair to W, some part of the world followed america into iraq. it wasn't like he did it all by himself. i think if these countries had not supported this war, there would have been a reckoning for the usa much sooner than trump. in much the same way that people now question, what could we have done differently with how we treated russia prior to 2014 when they started a war with ukraine, the world should ask itself how it should have responded differently to joining america in a war in iraq in 2003. but so far, i don't hear anyone having these conversations about how did the world allow america to arrive to now.
The capital class has been squeezing people for years (and it's gotten worse since covid made the serfs feel empowered by actually letting them breathe for a moment), so I don't know that people have time and space to _think_ about these things.
Social media has joined religion as the "opiate of the masses".
How did covid allow a respite?
> since covid made the serfs feel empowered by actually letting them breathe for a moment
...the irony
This link contains a map of the coalition of the willing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_of_the_willing_(Iraq...
You see Eastern European countries who were grateful for NATO expansion or wanted future NATO membership. You see the UK and Australia which always follow the US. There are a couple of wildcards line Spain, Denmark and Italy.
Germany and France are absent and there was huge criticism of the Iraq invasion at the time.
In general, the whole EU was much more critical of the US in the 2000s than it was in 2020-2024. The current criticism is mostly Trump related and not fundamental. To summarize, in the 2000s the EU had an independent foreign policy which is now completely gone. How that evolved exactly is interesting. Has the US played off the Eastern European countries against heretics like France and Germany to achieve this goal? Is it a symptom of the international elites moving in lockstep?
The EU doesn't make foreign policy, that lies with the member states. And why do you think those don't have an independent foreign policy?
The US hasn't started an illegal war recently, which could explain why there is much less criticism of US foreign policy compared to the time of the Iraq war.
>US hasn't started an illegal war
The US hasn't declared a war since WWII since executive privilege allows the President to pursue war without Congress declaring war. Does that mean that every time we take military action (which the US is doing daily, right now) we're pursuing what the founders of the country would (rightfully?) classify as an illegal war?
(I didn't take any political science, and I'm not really informed on constitutional law so I could have this partially wrong)
> The US hasn't declared a war since WWII since executive privilege allows the President to pursue war without Congress declaring war.
That's not correct. Congress no longer passes declarations of war, it passes authorizations of the use of military force (AUMF). The change was made starting in Vietnam because a declaration of war can only target a recognized sovereign nation, while an AUMF can target any state or non-state actor. The President is still heavily restricted from employing the US military without an AUMF.
I think the confusion about this stems from Congress having passed several, a couple of which are pretty broad, and never repealing them. This has allowed various Presidents to use one of the active AUMFs to justify actions, but for those who don't know or pay attention to the details it seems like the President is going around Congress.
> This has allowed various Presidents to use one of the active AUMFs to justify actions, but for those who don't know or pay attention to the details it seems like the President is going around Congress.
That is going around congress. It's not breaking the letter of the law, but authorizations not having a time limit is a mistake, and the involvement of congress is supposed to be needed for that kind of action.
There's only less criticism if you live in a post trump columbia bubble ;)
Yeah everyone's reckoning needs to go back to bush and sept 11 2001 frankly. The consolidation of executive power, the labeling of "enemies" and "terrorists" as inherently applying to some groups which therefore do not have the same rights of due process, the torture prisons it didn't quite all start there but it was a massive turning point.
The way the wars fed back into american policing, the justifications for the drone assassination program (but not here! not quite yet). A lot of what we're seeing now is the natural endpoint of processes that were started under bush "in reaction" to sept 11 and expanded under obama and later biden.
The main stream of the republican party has been, first quietly but then openly, fantasizing about authoritarian control for 25 years. And through that whole time the democrats have made it one of their biggest priorities to help them construct the apparatus needed to accomplish it. And our allies have been eager to get their hands on these same powers & systems to apply to their own citizens.
Honestly looking back the biggest mistake I made was that I thought the things that are happening now would happen in bush's second term. When they didn't I took seriously the possibility that I was wrong about the bloodlust of the american right, sincerely spent many years convincing myself they were in working in good faith towards what they understood was best for the world. I had it right the first time. For there is no truth in their mouths; their hearts are destruction; their throats are open graves.
I think we were almost all lulled into a sense of "huh, I guess I slightly misread them..." fueled by the failures to capitalize, the little losses of momentum that almost gave the hopeful impression that maybe people had finally gotten over the bloodlust and the worst of the power grabs.
By the way, the ending of what you wrote is beautiful.
That's because it was written by the author of Psalms. haha.
It's from psalms. We're not the first to go through this.
The danger of this both-sides approach is that Trump used it as cover and painted himself as anti-war (despite his recorded comments at the time) compared to both Democrats and Republicans before pivoting to talking about invading Canada and turning Gaza into a Trump Hotel resort.
Agreed, both side-ism is ridiculous. One party has pursued their personal wealth and power, concentrations of wealth for the elite class, and globalism and the other side has done the same, but also embraces fascism and theocracy as core tenants.
The former is the only choice, because democracy is still able to maintain a slight pulse under their "leadership".
I was trying to avoid both-sidesing here, sorry I failed. I only briefly mentioned democrats to point out that while the republicans were openly planning all along to implement an authoritarian regime, the democrats broadly supported building out the means to do it. The democrats have always considered their right flank colleagues and their left flank adversaries, have put a lot of energy into ignoring the fascist dreams of the republicans: this was the predicted outcome.
Don't just blame the reds here. The blues let their primaries get rigged 3 presidential elections in a row, and they still don't talk about it. I think most haven't even noticed, probably because their chosen information sources (social media and late-night comedians?) haven't told them.
Yeah I thought W 2.0 was bad. But this is even worse (at least for Americans).
>I’m from Europe, I’m not saying the US was ever perfect but I don’t understand how it came to this
Because 30+ different countries were able to wage information war on a population for 15+ years with unrestricted access and no recourse.
30+ different countries waging information war? Nah, it was Fox News.
> At what point can we say that the US truly has fallen from being the leader of the world?
About six weeks ago.
> At what point can we say that the US truly has fallen from being the leader of the world?
It's easy to talk about the "decline" of the U.S. in abstract geopolitical terms, but let's be honest: the day the global tech community stops posting on Hacker News, stops building with U.S origin technologies, and stops looking to Silicon Valley as a benchmark, that's the day we can seriously start talking about America's fall from global leadership.
Until then, we're all still running our infrastructure on AWS, building apps with React, debating threads on HN, and watching YC Demo Day like it's the Super Bowl. The world may grumble, but it's still plugged in, literally and figuratively, to American innovation.
> the day the global tech community stops posting on Hacker News, stops building with U.S origin technologies, and stops looking to Silicon Valley as a benchmark, that's the day we can seriously start talking about America's fall from global leadership.
I guess that's the correct answer to the question as posed. But it does raise another question: if it happens, something undermined the foundations of America's prosperity long before the fall. What was it?
This post to HN describes what lead to the US becoming a science superpower: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43692360 I found it convincing. The post also speculated if those conditions were removed, it America's superpowers will wither.
My take on the post is science has exponential return on investment over the very long term. But the return is random in that most scientific investigations fail to yield a return, and the time span so long that the usual capitalist incentives don't work. Or to put it another way, firms making investing in basic science get out-competed in the short term by others that don't make the investment. So you have to find a way to make societies at large pay for basic science, and give way what works to the capitalist engine. The USA found a way to do that. It's beginning to look like China has too. Now the USA is winding back the investment.
On the positive side, I suspect it will take a long time to kill the institutions that drive the USA's prosperity, I suspect many more than 4 years of madness. Putin pulled the same thing off, but it took him decades.
I find some Marxist-ish ideology always wants to blame these things on the material conditions, wealth. My personal network is a sea of trump worshipers (quite literally, like my cousins say a prayer for trump at every dinner since 2016), and I think the analysis that this is a wealth thing is wrong.
Everyone has pet theories. Mine is that a section US society, urban coastal highly educated elites, coalesced around one set of ideas (I’m not exactly sure why, but probably in part because this group is less religious and very urban) and formed a very powerful ideological block that wasn’t in the US pre 1980s. This Trump thing is a reaction of the people who don’t fit into this political block (religious, less educated, rural, culturally not urban) against them.
It’s fundamentally identity politics, not some material conditions thing. People have a hard time believing this, because some people think the world is all about money, and ideas and identity mean nothing to people, but I really think the money-only view of human politics is flat wrong.
I say this because of my personal network of family, friends, and acquaintances from my hometown. When I try to gently get to the bottom of it, what I really find is a deep deep hatred for the coastal elites. They feel belittled and marginalized, not monetarily but culturally. They feel no one from those backgrounds has any right to tell them what to do. They feel that a coastal expert has no right to contradict their feelings on a topic, because that expert is not “one of them”, not because that expert is wealthy.
The network I have does not feel this way because they are economically struggling. Europeans often imply this is the case, but in my experience after 40 years in America, it is just not. Many of the people you see wearing maga hats and waving maga flags at rallies have mansions, 5 trucks, a vacation home in Hawaii, etc. my extended family and network has plenty of money. But they feel anyone who is an educated, coastal liberal is out to destroy them. They feel so completely culturally and identity wise different from the coastal elites, that they bristle under the thought that someone with an “education” could know more about something than them.
I think Republicans gained power in the last few years because of the economy, and Trump gained control of the republicans because of identity. This isn’t going away by “solving” the wealth gap.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxist_cultural_analysis
You're exacly describing material forces. The various positions individuals adopted toward identity politics did not grow out of a vacuum. Their place of birth, the environments they were raised in, their socio-economic classes... Everything shaped them to make the choice they made last november. The profund discontent that was exploited by the GOP last election stems from ever-increasing socio-economical disparities among the population. This can and has been measured.
On a side note, funny that this group that supposedly defines themselves by their opposition to coastal elites rallied themselves behind... Trump, a prime representative of the east coast elite.
> But they feel anyone who is an educated, coastal liberal is out to destroy them.
The reverse of this was the prevailing attitude among many democrats. The approach of lots of people was "we won the culture war, everyone who doesn't agree with us will get cancelled and suffer, deal with it". When you hung out in online circles, and more importantly in offices of famous American companies, the general vibe was "if your friend doesn't have left political views, you shouldn't be friends with them". So it's not like the idea was born in republican circles, the only new thing is democrats finding themselves on the losing side of the culture war.
What you’re describing is only true to the extent that “be respectful to other, “don’t force me to follow your religion”, or “don’t pressure your subordinates for sex” are “left political views”. The myth of widespread cancellation has been heavily marketed but when you look at the handful of people who suffered any real consequences they came down to trying to force bigotry or sexual activities on unwilling participants.
> The myth of widespread cancellation has been heavily marketed but when you look at the handful of people who suffered any real consequences they came down to trying to force bigotry or sexual activities on unwilling participants.
Doesn't matter. The public perception was that you could get cancelled for having an opinion, and that's enough to radicalize a lot of people. Not to mention that the general "left" did nothing to ensure people they won't get cancelled.
It does matter, because it changes the concern from a real phenomenon to the right-wing lying for political gain. In the latter case, you can’t win by playing their game because the rules change whenever they want, with a multi-billion dollar media machine to reinforce the message.
> In the latter case, you can’t win by playing their game
We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas
A less hasty reading suggests alternatives.
Easy : when the dollar stops being the reserve currency of the world.
(Well, easy in retrospect, I guess it might be hard to realise that/when this is happening when you are in the middle of it ? Reading about the other times it happened might help ?)
Unfortunately us HNers have a lot to do with this, even though approximately none of us had this in mind when coding the relevant stuff.
This is how politics looks like when the radical fringes from social networks take over national parties and squeeze out the so-much-mocked "enlightened centrists" from their seats. Missing them yet?
The same problem in Europe is somewhat tamed by proportional voting systems, but various edgelords have invaded our politics as well. Slovakia, right next to Czechia, is a horrible political circus. AfD in Germany mostly built its electorate online etc.
AFAIK, there are no "enlightened centrists". Most of those so-called centrists (Lex Fridman, Joe Rogan, you name them) are now neutral to friendly with Trump. This state of affairs is not grassroots, it was deliberately manufactured by convservative media like Fox News or right-wing influencers, funded by a massive influx of cash from the top billionaires who are now the only ones currently profiting from the administration.
That's not who this person was talking about. They were talking about the boring institutionalists on both sides of the aisle that edgy people have been scoffing at as "The Blob" or "The Village".
Isn't Nate Silver who wrote about "The Village" a classic enlightened centrist?
Has the far-right hijacked and ruined yet another useful phrase?
Precisely. MAGAs call them "cucks".
Why does being "neutral to friendly" with Trump mean you're not a centrist? There are only two options in the US political system. Would being "neutral to friendly" with Kamala mean someone is more centrist somehow?
There's the assumption infused to a lot of these conversations that Trump is uniquely bad or uniquely extreme and so that "centrism" would still mean opposing him.
I also don't get what's particularly "grass roots" about support for the Democrats. During the Kamala campaign we had a string of celebrity endorsements including a cringey Avengers reunion zoom call. These are rich, privileged people from a specific social milieu - not grass roots by any means.
The last "grass roots" candidate was probably Bernie Sanders (someone Joe Rogan also supported, incidentally), but he was too dangerous to corporate profit margins for the DNC to let him win.
You can have a grassroots campaign while also having celebrities endorse you. They are two different things
Between Trump and Harris, yes, Trump is uniquely bad and extreme. While I do not hold the democrats in my heart, their party holds much milder views that those of Trump.
Indeed, being friendly to Harris would make you "not a centrist", hence why I think it's weird how we're able to stick that label to obviously pro-Trump people.
The GOP received the lion share of financial aids during their last campaign, and it has been so for quite a while. Let's not even speak of dark money. That is not to say the democrats relied on 100% grassroots initiatives, far from it.
Can we stop this whataboutism and bothsideism from polluting the discourse? It is hardly relevant.
The reason why you don't understand the American perspective on the world and on life, is because everybody in Europe who didn't think exactly like you think moved to America, and everybody who thinks exactly like you think stayed in Europe.
No matter if you think the European or the American mindset is better, there was an enormous split of nations with the mass migration of Europeans to America. And it was a certain kind of person who would stay and a certain kind of person who would go. It's still that way.
Where are those people who two days ago insisted the administration was fighting for "bringing back" merit-based admission to colleges? Are foreign student all incapable or merit or was it simply a lie, like everything else?
for some reason the article has IRS as Inland Revenue Service (at this time)?
In the UK the equivalent to the IRS was the Inland Revenue, so when attempting to reverse the abbreviation they probably arrived there. I've made that exact same mistake myself.
Also familiar with the UK system. I actually only just now realised that's not the official name for the IRS - it's almost never used expanded.
This would be a poor name for the US IRS considering they do not only tax inland revenue. They are the only country in the world that taxes its citizen's income regardless of where those citizens live or work.
The US isn't the only country. See pink countries on map:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_taxation#Taxatio...
That doesnt sound very internal either!
thanks, figured it was something like that.
Internal Revenue Service for anyone else wondering!
What's gonna be next? Banning Ukrainian students to help combat "Russophobia"?
This is just so weird. How do people support this stuff only to then go on and complain about "free speech" the second you tell them something they said was kind of a little bit mean?
Because it was never about free speech. It was only ever a rhetorical cover to be able to do things like defend professors calling people the n-word without defending it directly. The actual goal has always been the re-entrenchment of "natural" hierarchies. Man over woman. White over black. Straight over gay.
Next is to make sure every Top 500 company has a MAGA approved member on the board, or you will be barred from selling to the US government.
Chris Krebs, director of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency was forced to resign from SentinelOne Inc - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-17/ex-cyber-...
They're making strong moves on putting in political officers into the army
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/head-of-greenland-base-van...
https://www.newsweek.com/air-force-special-ops-fired-militar...
The purge is progressing faster than anyone expected
Universities had better hurry up with opening up their foreign campuses.
American universities are in demand among foreigners because they are a gateway to network and life in the US.
If it's a choice between say Princeton in the US and Harvard outside the US, Princeton will be the choice for many.
Foreign students interested in a US education have diverse motivations and Universities in/of other countries have done well selling programs that compete with the US' institutions for students that don't have that motivation. Soon that may also be almost all of them.
not only, they're seen as the top institutions and even if you don't plan to stay in the us having a harvard or mit degree is enticing by itself.
The universities could have expanded campuses and opened up new ones at any time. Harvard could easily double or triple their class size with no negative effects in terms of student body. They choose not to because it would dilute their brand and they're more about an exclusive club than educating students or doing research. Their doner class that finds their hedge fund doesn't like that.
So let's not pretend these institutions are noble
Let's not pretend that was the topic.
What is the topic?
You said they should now build foreign campuses. I said they won't because it would dilute their brand. And they could have done so in the US or abroad before this.
What am I missing here?
> So let's not pretend these institutions are noble
If only the noble deserve a reasonable state then welcome to hell.
That's like saying that knowledge could be distributed by printing words on paper. Just ridiculous.
Harvard’s openly defiant response to the Supreme Court’s SFFA decision,[1], gave the administration the ammo it needed for this fight. It’s great that Harvard is fighting this, the discovery in the federal government’s lawsuit against it will be amazing.
[1] https://www.city-journal.org/article/harvards-attempt-to-dod...
The defiant response of... asking students how they will contribute to Harvard in admissions essays??
An applicant’s race is immaterial to how they would “contribute to Harvard.”
The question asked how your life experiences will enable you to contribute to Harvard. Presumably expecting students to have done things in life is not also "woke" now.
That question is fine as long as Harvard isn’t using it as a backdoor for race consciousness. The administration is betting, quite reasonably, that Harvard is doing that.
If they were betting that, they could file an appropriate lawsuit against Harvard for violating the terms of Students for Fair Admissions. But of course they are not doing that, because the goal is ideological control of the universities by the executive, not colorblind admissions.
Nothing at all this administration is betting on is reasonable at all. I do not understand how anyone can believe or trust a single thing they do or say.
Tangentially related question: Why do universities like Harvard (who has a ~$60bn endowment) get federal funding at all? Between tuition and donors are they not profitable?
Alice is a professor at Harvard. She wants to research some topic. She applies to the NSF for a grant. The NSF says "wow that research sounds awesome and aligned with our priorities" and funds her lab to perform that research. She and the lab perform the research and share it with the scientific community for free.
That's what federal funding for universities looks like.
> She and the lab perform the research and share it with the scientific community for free.
I remember that people advocated quite hard a few years ago to make that last part mandatory, because at the time it wasn't. Universities can claim ownership and patent the discovery. The research was also usually locked behind for-profit publications, thus limiting the research to only those that can afford to pay.
The initiative that I remember asked that government funded research must be published in open access, and that no patents (or other IP) may be created in direct relation to such research.
Did such initiative win and become law?
The journals are often behind paywalls, though more and more research is published open access.
Regardless, researchers share their research with other researchers for free and a huge amount of paywalled papers are actually just available for free on the authors' websites.
Research grants, laboratories, partnerships. Government funding of universities are usually not handouts but investments.
For example:
| Sarah Fortune, a professor and chair of the department of immunology and infectious diseases at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, woke up Tuesday to a stop-work order for a large contract focused on unraveling how the immune system fights tuberculosis, with the goal of creating better detection and vaccines.
How is this related? The issue is government overreach.
Who said they aren't profitable
They are already spending billions a year from the endowment, which is around the maximum that can be spent from it sustainably.
It's not funding for student tuitions, rather Harvard research labs bid on research grants just like all universities do. Government sponsored university research since WW2 has been a primary driver of innovation in the US and a key element in the US becoming and maintaining its position as the #1 economy.
It's investment, not charity.
I had been somewhat neutral on trump -- the grievances of the american right were real and under served. Major civil institutions of power and culture had been monopolised by the left; there had been a "default preference" for wealth over income, capital over labour. Immigration had been treated as a purely economic question, with little regards to the suddenness of population and cultural changes metered out on communities which took on the highest levels.
I had thought the leftwing reaction to accuse this of authoritarianism, overblown. Many of the actions that had been taken were taken by previous leftwing administrations, just with less publicity (, and so on).
However I think the rubicon has been crossed. The president now believes he has impunity to engage in extrajudicial rendition to enslave people, including citizens, in foreign prisons. He attacks the centres of civil power: universities, law firms, (likekly soon, ) the mass media. And rival state power: ignoring the supreme court, congress (ie., reorganising federal gov beyond his power), and the institional professional class in the executive.
All the while, increasingly I see people on the centre-right in the mass media credulously believing the president's account of his actions. Identifying with the president as an expression of their power, and believing likewise, that the whole of civil society is legitimately brought under state ideological control. That the presidency is the state, that state is society, and that society must "for democratic reasons" be brought to the state's heel.
The next phase of this will be very dangerous for the american people. I think civil resistance will be target for at best, imprisonment -- perhaps even rendition to a foreign prison. All one needs to say is that the resistance protestors are domestic terroists, and trump has a wide base of people credulously willing to believe it -- no doubt looting and other things will occur. It is very easy to imagine state elections being brought under "federal control" and a process of election rigging soon following.
As far as I can see there are two forces acting against the possibility of an american tyranny: trump's own desire to perform what's he's doing completely destabilises his plans (eg., on the economy especially). Secondly, the federalism of the american system.
It seems now plausible to me to imagine a future in which a democractic state violently expels federal forces, esp., eg., if ICE are used to rendition american citizens. It will be almost an obligation of states to suspend federal police presense. This, in the end, may make totalisation of federal state power difficult.
> Major civil institutions of power and culture had been monopolised by the left; there had been a "default preference" for wealth over income, capital over labour.
I am not from the US, and I watch with mild amusement its slide into full blown banana republic dictatorship with a sprinkle of last century European fascism - I mean, at this point ICE is basically a secret police that disappears people, not unlike Stasi or Gestapo from years past.
But you thought that Trump was an answer to "wealth over income" or "capital over labor"? Even without knowing that much about the intricacies of US politics this sounds pretty naive.
Well the tarrifs do very much show that Trump has no "default preference" for the capitalised class -- he's very willing to wreck the american stock market.
Whether his solution works or not isnt relevant to whether Trump's real preferences aren't, "by default", the american corporate owner.
It's very unhelpful to reduce trump down to basic evil motivations, and to call any ascription of a non-evil one, "naive". It has been this manner which has made the left entirely unable to communicate beyond its self.
> Well the tarrifs do very much show that Trump has no "default preference" for the capitalised class
His preference seems to be to favor those that suck up to him.
I mean, that is why all the top billionaires are all very cozy to him nowadays. They may be assholes, but they are smart assholes. Psychopathically smart.
> It's very unhelpful to reduce trump down to basic evil motivations
I didn't reduce him to evil motivations. I just said it was naive to think he would somehow benefit labor and not capital or wealth.
> Well the tarrifs do very much show that Trump has no "default preference" for the capitalised class -- he's very willing to wreck the american stock market.
Yes, Marxist-Leninist governments also wreck their local stock markets. That doesn't mean they, or Trump, are engaged in building a superior economic system for prioritizing labor over capital.
> I mean, at this point ICE is basically a secret police that disappears people, not unlike Stasi or Gestapo from years past.
Do you have an example of ICE "disappearing" a US citizen or murdering someone? If not, they're nothing like the Stasi or the Gestapo.
It's a bad idea to cry wolf this much, because the wolf might actually come.
Please do me a favor.
Write down on a sticky note "if the government sends a US citizen to CECOT I will..." and fill in the rest of this sentence. Put it somewhere you see it everyday.
I'm personally absolutely sick of the "oh it is not a problem until..." lines moving basically daily. Everybody defending this administration needs to commit to a line otherwise I fully expect to see posts saying what you are saying here with ever more brutal and violent outcomes from the state for the rest of time.
The problem is that there's no mechanism to prevent that. And there's a pretty clear route to it happening: first mistaken immigrants, then mistaken murders, then mistaken "domestic terrorists" -- and you have the federal gov. disappearing political opponents.
The issue with these extrajudicial renditions to foreign prisions is the extrajudicial part. The rest of it is just immoral -- the former part, a catastrophe.
The extrajudicial part has been around since the Clinton administration[1]. Somehow neither Obama nor Biden chose to get rid of this policy.
> Within days of his 2009 inauguration, Barack Obama signed an executive order opposing rendition torture and established a task force to provide recommendations about processes to prevent rendition torture. His administration distanced itself from some of the harshest counterterrorism techniques but permitted the practice of rendition to continue
The new part here is that it's foreign nationals being taken from US soil instead of another country's soil.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_rendition
Yes, the new part is that it's extrajudicial. The rendition of foreign citizens can be done without a court, because they aren't covered by the US constitution. Only those "under the power of the united states government" are granted due process by US courts.
The line being cross in taking persons unknown to courts from the united states, to a forieng country, isnt "a new part". It's to suspend the constitution and grant the president the power not merely to arbitarily detain, but to do so in a foreign prison.
It's hard to understate how serious this is. If it were only this, and nothing else, we might hope it will stay bounded by the "hopefully" diligient ICE. But coupled with the assault on all rival systems to presidental power, there's nothign to be hopeful about.
The constitution has been suspend, the president has sequestered the force of the federal government to bring under his private power the whole of american society, begining with the most powerful rivals: the courts, the media, the universities, the law first, and so on.
He will next suspend the broadcasting licence for media outlets.
Optimistically, the supreme court could suspend his emergency powers -- as they ought, since there is no war or emergency. This may make the federal government unable to execute his wishes -- but if they've replaced enough workers there already, it might be too late.
> Do you have an example of ICE "disappearing" a US citizen
I mean, once they start disappearing people that are completely legal in the country, disappearing citizens is just a minor step forward.
By all means, I am not in the US, I'll keep enjoying my popcorn from afar. I wonder if when the ovens are turned on in some Central American death camp you will move the goalposts to "but, but we don't even have gas showers yet".
> cry wolf
The wolf has been here for a while buddy, we are just discussing what color and size it is.
Non-citizens are also human beings with natural rights, just FYI.
Trump has already publicly alluded to shipping citizens to El Salvador, aka "disappearing". That means its already a possibility in his mind, which brings us pretty close to it happening.
Other factors to consider in the "states versus federal" conflicts that could occur are that each state has its own National Guard forces and equipment which are under the state governor's control. The National Guard are under dual control in that they can respond to the state's needs or to federal needs. But they are still citizens of that state who put on the uniform when needed.
This could lead to National Guard versus federal forces stand-offs as was seen in the 1960s over Civil Rights disagreements between state and federal governments:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Rock_Nine#National_Guar...
Another factor that differentiates the United States in conflicts of the people against their government is how heavily armed and resourceful the US populace is. In the War on Terror, US Armed Forces faced insurgency militias in Iraq and Afghanistan. If similar insurgency militias were to arise in the United States in response to illegal federal government actions, it would probably have similar results.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurrection_Act_of_1807
Is not optimistic reading
Indeed. That law and several others grant the president expanded powers to handle emergency situations. However, who determines what is an emergency and if the expanded powers are needed? In many cases, it is the president himself (or herself).
The underlying assumption is that the president would use such powers judiciously and that the expanded powers would enable emergency situations to be handled quickly since it would probably take more time for congress to respond and get things done.
The question now is: what if such powers are not used judiciously? What recourse is there?
> who determines what is an emergency and if the expanded powers are needed?
Congress. But so far they're letting Trump declare emergencies left and right. All of his tariffs are being enacted under an "emergency" to bypass Congress (since under non-emergency situations, Congress sets tariffs).
Had the Democrats won control of the House/Senate, a lot of this nonsense wouldn't be happening (or even if conventional Republicans had control, which is why Trump 1.0, when conventional GOP held the senate, Trump couldn't go off the rails as he has now).
There's also State Guard / State Defense Forces, which are solely under state jurisdiction. But in many states, and especially in blue states, it has devolved into a uniformed and militarized but unarmed organization.
However, this entire line of thought presupposes that those people (whether in NG or SDF) would align themselves with the state and against the feds, and that's not given at all. I know from personal experience of close interaction with my local right-wing militias in WA state that quite a few members are in NG or WSG.
The same goes for armed populace. It's true that there's a lot of weaponry in private hands, and we're not just talking your stereotypical AR-15, but stuff like say .50 BMG anti-materiel rifles, grenade launchers, and even privately owned tanks and artillery in some cases. However, they are disproportionally in hands of people who lean far right, so in event of open conflict I would expect them to work with the feds. There are some of us on the left who are heavily armed precisely so as to counterbalance that, but we are outnumbered by an order of magnitude. Then there's the issue of training - right-wing militias actually get together and train, and while it is derided as LARPing - often for good reasons - it's still better than nothing. More importantly, it's not just training but also networking - those people know each other and have plans to get together and coordinate "when it's time".
Indeed, a particularly nasty possibility is that Trump wouldn't even need to issue any kinds of explicit orders to federal troops, but rather just let the right wing paramilitaries loose by simply not doing anything to stop them (and making it widely known that there will be no consequences).
Is there a mea culpa here? This was all clear for a decade during which you were "somewhat neutral on Trump" and everyone was telling those of us warning people about it that we were hysterical and deranged.
But now I see posts like this and it's like "how could we have known this was going to happen?". Well, you could have! At least maybe you can update your priors on how seriously to take warnings that a political movement is dangerous?
I went the other way - 2016-2020 I truly believed the US was sliding into dictatorship, but the constant cries of "Nazi" and "fascism" followed by nothing of the sort taking place have completely desensitized me to these accusations. I've also taken time to listen to the opinions of supposed "fascists" like Jordan Peterson and found them reasonable even if I don't always agree with them. The vaguely dictatorial vaccine mandate policy pursued by the Democrats and the way the trucker convoy was handled didn't help either.
Now I read every comparison to the Nazis with a huge grain of salt and I'm "somewhat neutral" on Trump.
Out of curiosity, what would your rubicon[1] be in the current circumstance? I've found it useful to draw specific internal lines instead of trying to pull apart tit-for-tat reactions between two belligerents.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YFdwfNh5vs
Yeah, and as of a month ago, I was in exactly the same position.
The extrajudicial enslavement of legal immigrants into foreign prisons, "crosses the rubicon". You cannot have presidential power operating in this way. It's not the immigrant part, it's the extrajudicial part. If trump has this power against anyone, he then has it against everyone.
Against that backdrop you have the targeting of law firms that have represented political opponents of the president; the attempt to totalise control of universities, and so on.
The whole thing is now tettering on the edge of what was previously just hysteria.
Perhaps the final nail in the coffin for me has been seeing online how credulous the right has been about the government's propaganda. This tells me that the conditions for totalitarianism are here in the people -- a mass of people identify with trump, uncritically believe the propaganda. The dismantling of rival power centres in all of american society and government is taking place whilst a large number of people applaud.
People havent yet seen the transition that has taken place within the Trump government. Before the Musk programme, the deportations, etc. were all on the extreme-side of constitutional presidental power.
We are actually now past that, and his supporters are operating as if we're not. They don't realise they're applauding what they will severely come to regret. They think they're applauding the end of DEI, of elite power, of the stock-owning class. When in fact, it's pretty clear now, these are just the grievances benig used to establish unlimited intrusion of the presidency into all aspects of civil and political life.
The next mass protest will precipitate a crisis of the legitimacy of the federal monopoly on violence in the US. Unless some means can be deployed soon to constrain the president, america is in a very dangerous position.
> the attempt to totalise control of universities
What, exactly, do you think the left has been doing for the last ~10 years? The universities are basically captured by one party and their ideology and I suspect Trump's hamfisted attempts to counter that will only make a small dent.
Universities are at a point where getting a job often requires including a DEI statement in your CV[1]. In my opinion, this is not compatible with academic freedom.
The overall feeling I get is one of despair. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are fundamentally interested in "freedom". They just choose to nibble away at different corners of the constitution.
[1] https://freebeacon.com/campus/study-diversity-statements-req...
The problem becomes when the president does it; and how he does it.
Since the president has vast formal and informal powers, any use of his power to achieve a totalisation of his ideology into society is "alarms going off territory".
When he has taken down the law firms, suspended the licenes of the media companies, sequestered the national guard against protestors, and deported political opponents --- at that stage, what will be left to protect you?
The president, as one man, cannot wield the full power of governmenrt -- this is tyranny. And, esp. cannot weild it against civil society, this is totalitarianism.
>Universities are at a point where getting a job often requires including a DEI statement in your CV[1]. In my opinion, this is not compatible with academic freedom.
Why?
>The universities are basically captured by one party and their ideology and I suspect Trump's hamfisted attempts to counter that will only make a small dent
How were they captured? What evidence do you have?
>Democrats nor the Republicans are fundamentally interested in "freedom".
Which one is less interested in freedom?
>What, exactly, do you think the left has been doing for the last ~10 years?
Which single person is "the Left" here? You're basically proposing establishing a personalist dictatorship to combat a bureaucratic para-party. Your solution to authoritarianism is intensified authoritarianism.
The thing with the US Presidency is that in the first term, you have to be at least somewhat motivated to doing things that could get you a second term...
The second term rolls around, and now you can do whatever you like, because you're done at the end of that. At least in theory.
The Nazi / Hitler comparison was always a poor fit, in my view. But what most people were actually saying was just "this person does not care about the laws and values that keep our government from being a tyranny".
And what happened is like Y2K: People who recognized the risks successfully worked to mitigate the worst of them. It's not really surprising, but it is frustrating, that just like with Y2K, many people thus concluded that it was not necessary to mitigate the risks.
For many people, mitigating risks provides evidence that there were never any risks in the first place. (You can probably think of more examples of this.)
But unfortunately, people were correct when they identified that Trump's character combined with increasing control over one of the two political parties could pose a that to our system. And now it's harder to mitigate the problem, because the control over the party has advanced significantly further.
Suppose they are not Nazis nor fascists, but mere authoritarians like Putin. Does that make it any better?
I grew up in Russia at the time when we had a brief stint with democracy. I remember how people elected Putin because he was supposed to fix everything that was wrong, and how they laughed at those of us who said that it would be a dictatorship before soon.
Incidentally, I rolled my eyes whenever people called fascism/Nazism during 2016-2020.
There was some political fuckery, but nothing out of the ordinary for a populist srong man type politician.
What happened then is definitely not what is happening now.
I guess for all my dislike of what liberalism has become, I was still to liberal in my thinking. Ie., that the presidency "by construction" is quite a powerless office, everything has to go through congress, the courts stop half of what any president wants to do.
If trump had been in this straightjacket I had expected, I would not mind that "on this go around" the american right, with its grievances, has them heard by american society.
The problem of american politics, over the last decade or two, has been the complete cultural maginalisation of the right (from centres of civil power). Something had to give. The universities, the corporate culture, the internet mass media -- had all been monpolised by a "consensus moralism" which was replusive to a lot of people.
I didnt feel able to continue to deny those people their representation. However, I hadn't seen how easily the straighjackets of the constituion were this easy to disregard if you only have enough people at the top to do it.
> The problem of american politics, over the last decade or two, has been the complete cultural maginalisation of the right (from centres of civil power). Something had to give. The universities, the corporate culture, the internet mass media -- had all been monpolised by a "consensus moralism" which was replusive to a lot of people.
I see this offered a lot as an example of a "missing middle", that conservative ideals are systematically underrepresented in e.g. universities or popular culture, and the explanation offered by conservative thinkers is that there's some shadowy force at play.
Could it not just be that these ideals are unpopular? The classic tale of a kid going off to college and coming back with more liberal politics is offered as an example of brainwashing or "consensus moralism," but maybe it's because they were genuinely convinced to shift their worldview.
>he problem of american politics, over the last decade or two, has been the complete cultural maginalisation of the right (from centres of civil power). Something had to give. The universities, the corporate culture, the internet mass media -- had all been monpolised by a "consensus moralism" which was replusive to a lot of people.
Can you elaborate on this?
How can you have been neutral on Trump until just now and then wrote that? This both-sides-ism looks a bit ludicrous. Neither side is perfect but one is a propagandistic cult and the other is a reasonable status quo party. One wants to throw hand grenades into every room of the government out of spite and out of desire to enrich and empower the billionaire class. And you’re now having this huge intellectual reckoning? Where were you the last 9 years of Trump?
Trump is very effective at selling people their grievances; at identifying problems, "with the right emotional tone", and so on. Obviously, he's completely unable to solve any of them -- and mostly lacks the interest in doing so.
Since I sympathised with the people who sympathised with him, I did not regard him as an inherently "evil" -- which seemed to be the left's take. And it's a pretty dangerous one. Because when people identify with trump, if you call him evil, so to them. And the left's habit of just opposing whatever he says renders their side seemingly at least as callous as him: which is why so many polls believe trump understands their problems better than the other side.
I think it's more accurate to say trump is a complex individual who could, with the right social environment, express quite different politics. What I hadn't anticipated is that his social environment has become so radicalised, professionalised, and totalitarian. (As someone else put it: the last trump was "Jared's" and this one is Don Jr's. Trump, I think, can be both. That's over now.)
In any case, I think it's a moot point. I was wrong. This latent rage of the right against their cultural marginalisation is now a smokescreen for the totalising of the presidency. It's a real problem.
>Trump is very effective at selling people their grievances; at identifying problems
What are some of the problems he identified? Because his speeches just seem to tap into vague insecurities and the general claim things were better in the past
I for one think better late than never. There's no shame in falling for a movement this big, if you eventually realize it's built on a mountain of lies and decide to take a step away from it.
> How can you have been neutral on Trump until just now and then wrote that? This both-sides-ism looks a bit ludicrous.
Devil's advocate, I think it's easy if you don't directly feel impact from his policies. I've been losing my marbles about Trump at family dinners for a while, but for a chunk of my family he's a check against "radical" liberalism (read: gender ideology, spending money on things that don't serve everyday americans) and a path to lower tax bills.
Similarly, I think it's easy (from a conservative perspective) to dismiss all the seemingly emotional reactions to something Your Guy is saying because that's just politics; that's the expected behavior of politicians. It's not a problem if Your Guy is caught in a lie because they all do it.
I'm straw-manning a bit, but I'm just trying to sketch anecdotes of how I've seen otherwise rational, empathetic, intelligent people routinely offer (to me) unreasonably calm takes on Trump's activities and behavior.
[flagged]
I share the frustration of many commenters that you're just now coming to believe that Trump is a dangerous threat to our entire system. It's bewildering to hear people say some variation of "how could we have known??", when it has all seemed so obvious to many of us for years that this is the road we were going down.
That said, I do deeply appreciate your willingness to change your mind, and to talk about it publicly. The reality is that a third of our society is in Trump's thrall. At my best, I don't want those people to disappear, or suffer in powerlessness for years. I want them to change their mind, and I know how hard that can be. So thank you!
[dead]
I’m a foreigner who was U.S.-educated, spent a substantial part of my life there (left a little while ago), and still have family there. I’m seriously advising prospective students from pursuing a college education in the U.S. now. A partial education is now a very real concern under this mad man, especially for someone with the “wrong” nationality/ethnicity, which could completely upend one’s life and torpedo a lot of career prospects. Not to mention concerns for personal safety.
As an aside, I faced casual racism plenty of times in the country; pretty sure no one ever gave a shit. Trump country would cheer for it, actually.
Especially after the recent actions canceling visas for legal, free speech and minor traffic violations, I cannot in good conscience recommend anyone to come to the US to study. It's the US's loss more than anything else - a good portion of the cutting edge research that happens in US Schools is done by international grad students.
They're also threatening to pull their tax-exempt status [0]
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/16/us/politics/trump-irs-har...
This is exactly what dictatorships do: comply with our demands or we will bring you down. Harvard might be able to stand up to them, but many other less wealthy universities will fold immediately.
But if the universities don't bind together and take a stand now, it will be too difficult and too late to do so later. Poor Columbia--now that Trump knows they will cower, he can make whatever demands he wants.
Don Corleone would be proud.
Why is this flagged?
[flagged]
That has zero to do with how we moderate HN.
If you want to familiarize yourself with how the site actually works, you'll find links to thousands of past explanations in my comment upthread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43724590.
I wasn't accusing you or the moderators of Hackernews of anything. Downvoting is a function for users (after certain initial conditions are met). Flagging is also a user function.
There's a recent post [2] where a reply to me in a political argument, I don't remember the specific words [1], was some generalization or BS to support Trump. I continued the discussion but later the comment was flagged.
I was fine with arguing the points. There were also many more comments with similar content that weren't flagged.
I was previously a user for years and a reader for more than 15. I even directly conversed with you when I wanted to deleted my account, you asked if I was sure [3] so I'm familiar with the gist of the rules. I've also seen comments from you similar to.
[Para]"This isn't directly related to tech but it's of great interest so it's allowed"
[1] I thought this was possible in the past but I can't seem to do it now, however if I'm just not seeing the option then that's my fault. [2] link upon request [3] I'm not implying any relationship or that I'm some special "old soul"
Sorry! I'm prone to misinterpreting comments that way.
I don't understand the latter part of your comment, I'm afraid, but if there are specific links you want us to take a look at, we'd be happy to.
Earlier, unflagged: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43712855
This comment is not meant to defend this sort of blackmail, rather a tangential thought that struck me.
Most successful franchises try to expand abroad. Why not build a Harvard branch in London, Dubai, Sydney, Mumbai or Tokio?
Each of those would likely be subject to some pressures over time, but those times and pressures would vary.
Nowadays it is a "all eggs in one basket" situation.
Universities are not fast food restaurants, the reputation resides in the faculty, and they’re not replicable like fast food recipes or supply chains. “Harvard London” will be a completely different school with its own reputation (with a little bit of halo effect from the brand of course), just like no one mistakes UC Riverside for Berkeley. Unless you’re advocating for some remote teaching sort of deal.
Edit: In addition, some people only attend Harvard and co. for the networking opportunities.
I can think of one university that went the fast-food style franchise route: DeVry
"Unless you’re advocating for some remote teaching sort of deal."
I naturally expected that this would be the case. At the very least, record the lectures in 8K and stream them to other campuses (there would be major timezone differences).
Isn't there already plenty of that out there? If all you want is recorded lectures, you can have that today.
It's fairly common for UK universities to have overseas campuses.
Not the internationally known ones
"... he's America's Hitler"
-- JD Vance, Vice president of USA on Trump, President of USA.
(Before JD became VP)
The full quote:
> I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical a*hole like Nixon who wouldn't be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he's America's Hitler. How's that for discouraging?
Do you think it is appropiate to compare Trump with Hitler? I think industrial-scale genocide is a bit of a different league than Trump.
Please forward this question to the current vice-president
1. It's a quote, not an expression of the poster's opinions directly.
2. We wouldn't even be talking about that industrial scale genocide this early on Hitler's term, which I don't say to suggest he's going to be Hitler 2 but rather to point out how it can be quite valid to be concerned before someone's getting into full swing with atrocities.
Well, his VP thought it was appropriate so it ought to be fair for the rest of to talk about it.
Hitler was still Hitler in 1933.
And yes, I believe that we are at substantial risk for mass death at a scale resembling the holocaust within the next decade.
Give it time.
> compare Trump with Hitler?
not with 1939 Hitler, but with 1933 Hitler after the Nazi party won the elections? that's not farfetched
Do you understand it was a quote from JD Vance?
anyone know why trump didn't do any of these betwee 2016-2020 when he ran on exact same platform. But this time he hit the ground running.
What's different this time?
He mostly had standard GOP appointees last time who weren't on board. This time he has staffed his administration with loyalists, which is why so many have so little experience. They are there to do what they're told.
yea no "leaks" this time which was a constant feature of his last term
One reason is the ruling by the Supreme Court on July 1st 2024 that says Agent Orange has legal immunity for most actions he does as a president.
This is hard to overstate. Successful coups are sort of always legal by definition. Trump v. US made failed coups by the President legal. The self preservation incentive is gone.
Mango Mussolini's first term was a trial run for fascism but few on his team were onboard. Now he's back with full team of loonies.
Better preparation most likely. He had a staff of about 1,000 already hired before being sworn in. Some of them had probably been working on this stuff since 2020.
The sycophancy - within the administration itself, and in Congress - is pretty much universal now, which it was not in the last administration.
In 2016 Trump had not remolded the GOP yet. He was surrounded by "traditional" republicans who weren't fully on board with his insane, vindictive, authoritarian impulse. Republicans in Congress were also skeptical of him, making resistance from the legislature much more likely.
In 2024 the entire Republican Party had evicted the non-MAGA people. Trump could staff everything with absolute sycophants. And there is no way that the Republicans in Congress will lift a finger to change anything.
Further, Trump had years of vindictive rage bottled up after losing in 2020. Every organization and institution he spent years raging about on Truth Social suddenly becomes his target. No actual governance. Just revenge.
Now he doesn’t have anything to lose anymore. He’s very old, he had to run again to avoid prison and bankruptcy. He will do anything he can to remain in power until he dies. This is my very personal opinion
1. Revenge 2. Term limits so there's no reason for him to care what voters think
There was a handful of adults in the room the first time around. Now, only loyalists and sycophants. Plus, he saw that he can get away with anything (Jan 6, storing boxes of classified shit in his bathroom) and the Supreme Court backed him up.
There are no guard rails, there is no emergency stop this time.
Last time they lost their majority in Congress in the mid-terms and were a little kneecaped after that. It seems they've learned from that episode and are trying to achieve as much as possible before it happens again.
Putin demanded results this time.
The president, getting involved with the petty operations of private companies seems anti-capitalist.
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This has nothing to do with Israel or even antisemitism. The administration just doesn't like Harvard and they'll use whatever justification they think has the best chance of of holding up in court
There are definitely people in the admin who are full-throated supporters of the current Israeli government and its war, and I find it hard to believe that it didn't enter into the equation.
It doesn't have to be either-or. There's both generic anti-intellectualism, and specifically revenge for the protests.
That has nothing to do with it. They made the same demands of Colombia, who agreed to their demands; the result was just more demands. This is about exercising power and establishing dominance, not about Israel.
You get what you pay for. Capitalism 1.0 -- just unveiled being like it ever was. That's what happens when a (pseudo-) democracy never gets fixed, because everyone in the upper class thinks to get away best _with_ all the loopholes.
A president reigning at will, no court being able to really stop the shit show and undoing former president's pardons while using pardons as a tool to side-track courts. The whole construct didn't -- and doesn't -- make sense, if you still aim for anything not being despotism.
Always has been. Many such cases.
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>Universities that Qatar donated money to have 3x the number of antisemitic incidents
Proof?
It was referenced in the Wikipedia article I linked to. Did you read the article?
Let’s be real. This has nothing to do with Qatar. It’s just the Trump administration retaliating against any institution that doesn’t fall in line. That’s the only thing these people care about: loyalty and control, plain and simple.
I was commenting to OP blaming the situation on AIPAC, which is not even in the top 10 list of donors, and has much less impact than most people believe.
Antisemitic by whose definition? The ADL's?
What's wrong with the ADL definition of antisemitism?
It basically made criticising Israel automatically "anti-Semitic".
While someone who has previously said that the Jews are importing immigrants to intentionally undermine the USA who gave multiple Seig Heils was an ambiguous situation that they didn't want to rush to judgement on.
They basically destroyed all their credibility by becoming an advocate for Israel not for Jewish people.
They consider being anti-zionist to be antisemitic. This one section alone. The remainder is fine but I believe this shows they can't disconnect Israel from Jewishness
"Examples of when such critiques cross into antisemitism include when they ostracize and vilify Zionists and Zionism"
https://www.adl.org/resources/tools-and-strategies/what-anti...
It's perfectly fine to criticize the government of any country. But is anyone in the UK, or Syria, or Iraq (my birthplace) saying those countries don't have a right to exist? Why just Israel?
When you have a standard that exists for one country or people that doesn't exist for anyone else, isn't that the definition of bigotry in all its forms?
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Let's drop the pretense that Trump's actions have anything to do with anti-semitism; it's crystal clear that's just a cover.
If students did illegal activities on campus, charge the students according to the law.
_This_ is a Soviet-style government crackdown.
I hope people realize that protesting or being angry at Trump/Republicans is pointless.
The power is bestowed upon them by Republican voters and they are to blame. Voting for one issue, lack of education, or desire to tune out politics isn't a reasonable excuse.
Edit
I have no issue with downvotes but offer up arguments why voters aren't responsible.
Protesting is not for Trump. Nobody there expects him to step down just because enough people showed up. People are showing how many got fed up enough to be loud and encourage/enable others.
That's fair but then it needs to cast a wider net based on political ideology.
If you figure out how to efficiently co-ordinate millions of people in political messaging, give it a go...
I can't personally but this doesn't invalidate my argument. Maybe Bernie or AOC could help, pundits could slowly start redirecting people's anger to MAGA supporters.
What is the point of this post? There are a lot of people to be angry at here. Demonstrating displeasure to elected officials is our first amendment right.
I see many of these kinds of posts these days, and I honestly suspect they are bots seeking to demoralize the opposition into inaction.
1.I'm not a bot
2. How am I demoralizing the opposition? I'm directing them to a more ideal target.
>Demonstrating displeasure to elected officials is our first amendment right
It has no purpose and you're not going after the source
I think the point was: Trump is just a symptom, not the disease...
For all of us who have "lost" family members to propaganda, I worry that Fox "News" is the disease.
Let's be real "Fox News" isn't a spinning black and white wheel that hypnotizes you or has some other movie like power.
People are responsible for their views. Especially if they don't look into other viewpoints, consider it they are being lied to, etc.
I think that was possibly the case in the days of print newspapers. But I'm not sure I can blame individuals that are targeted all day every day by global corporations messaging them.
They are getting brainwashed by Twitter, Facebook, "News" websites, Televisions.
Billions are being spent every day to mould your thoughts to their desires.
How does a single individual fight that?
It's like saying "Jesus and personal responsibility" will save you from your heroin addiction.
>It's like saying "Jesus and personal responsibility" will save you from your heroin addiction.
Is the heroin addict seeking help?
I should have been clearer than I was, you're not wrong, I just find nearly everything is more nuanced than we allow for in discourse these days, and I have sympathy for people because I, too, found it hard to eat healthy and exercise enough when I was an executive with an 11 hour work day due to a 2:45 hour combined daily commute.
And I was a distance runner for 20 years.
>I have sympathy for people because I, too, found it hard to eat healthy and exercise enough when I was an executive with an 11 hour work day
So you were overweight and/or ate poorly..But you wanted to be healthy?
This analogy, along with the drug addict one, doesn't work because 1. They don't believe they are doing something wrong 2. Aren't trying to fix the issue.
>nuanced
Then let's get deeper here. Offer up an argument with some nuance. My viewpoint isn't (I hope) contingent on ignoring the complexities of the situation
Trump is a disease, the tools he uses are the opportunities given to adapt Putin's template for the American Empire.
Trump is the one in power and he's following an autocratic takeover playbook. So by all means push back.
It absolutely is, but don't expect it to actually change anything.
The usual avenues to air grievances that modern Americans are used to, like writing your representative or even peaceful mass protests, only work in a political culture where they are universally perceived as detrimental to government's legitimacy and that matters. We are past this point now, and, arguably, have been for a while.
For an example of how well such tactics work in a different culture, look at e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011%E2%80%932013_Russian_prot...
To put it bluntly, Trump and people who elected him don't give a fuck about "whiny libs". If you want to convince them to change course, you need to cause them actual measurable harm. Starting with economic - mass strikes etc - but be prepared that government would escalate to physical and match in kind.
They are in the chain of responsibility but they are not the proximate cause of the issue.
Can you elaborate on what the cause is?
The person making the decisions
“The Buck Stops Here”
Harry S. Truman
>The person making the decisions
Exactly, the decision on who to vote for
This post shouldn't be downvoted. Just as it's well known that a majority of the Russian population supports the invasion of Ukraine, not solely due to misinformation. So too must the majority of U.S. voters who elected the current, legitimately constituted administration bear collective responsibility for their choices and the consequences that follow.
31.5% of eligible voters voted for the current administration. 49.8% of voters who voted were in favor of the current administration.
Clearly the way people vote matters. But I bristle at the sentiment that protesting against it is “pointless”. Such protests are as much a signal to those who voted as it is to those who didn’t and those who hold power. It’s an ecosystem reacting in the way it should react when threatened.
>Such protests are as much a signal to those who voted as it is to those who didn’t and those who hold power.
Non-voters is a good point but I'm not sure the affect with Trump. Are there people who weren't aware of how much people dislike him?
It is an ecosystem, like I get why it's happening but I disagree with the target.
> Are there people who weren't aware of how much people dislike him?
I don’t understand the framing of this question. People are protesting because of actions taking place now. Even many of his supporters have buyer’s remorse and didn’t expect many of the things we’ve seen from this 2nd iteration. Whether or not many people are already “aware” of the existence of dislike seems entirely irrelevant.
When the immune system reacts, it does so because of a present threat. The fact that the immune system has memory of some threats doesn’t make it less necessary to react. And I don’t think it’s fair to claim that the wrong target has been chosen. Most people are protesting against the symptom and the disease. And there’s a case to be made that the administration is both.
>Even many of his supporters have buyer’s remorse and didn’t expect many of the things we’ve seen from this 2nd iteration.
This is true for Elon Musk. At least in a few polls I saw a while back. Trump approval rating however is extremely high among Republicans. Of course there are always a few but this is a discussion of the masses.
I'll consider myself wrong based on the midterm election results but if Republicans keep voting Republican then any talk of disapproval or buyer's remorse is just talk
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>flourishing black racism
1. Quantify racist behavior 2. Show it's increasing 3. Show that Democrats are responsible or that electing Harris, who is half black, would cause it to increase
> open borders
Define an open border.
>There are voters who would vote for dems no matter what, even with there education
True and while foolish of them they were still on the better side.
>nuclear..
What real chance? Russia wants some or all of Ukraine as a territory, nukes make no sense. It would also make it harder politically for European right wing governments to tone down their help of Ukraine
"never ending war with real chances of tactic nuclear strikes"
Do you really think that Trump will somehow stop the Russo-Ukrainian war? Hasn't worked out well so far, right? He has some leverage on the Ukrainians, but far from decisive one, and basically no leverage at all on the Kremlin.
This seems like a relatively empty threat considering many international folks don’t want to come here anyhow. There are some parallels here to when my toddler tries to give me consequences for doing things she doesn’t like.
A lot of international people go to Harvard. Like the article mentions, it’s 27% of all students.
There is near infinite demand for western universities. As I've been experiencing personally in Australia
yea i laugh when someone says no one wants to immigrate to usa anymore. most of these colleges are conduits for immigration in usa.
A lot of people who talk about student migration clearly haven't been to a university campus in the last 15 years...
every college grad in my neighborhood in india is planning to go to usa after graduation.
its seen as something odd when someone decides not to.
60 Universities, the only reason Harvard is interesting here is the revelation its administration are just another average bunch of crayon munching racist idiots.
Down vote all you want, wont make blocking students from class because they are Jewish and hiring people based on their race or sexual preferences any less moronic.
Breath of fresh air to see that idiocy burn.
Harvard isn't burning. It has 60bn.
What's 'burning' is the hospitals, military research, medical research and the vast array of technical R&D that congress has requested harvard to perform.
This is just an attack on americans. Harvard is secure regardless of what destruction the presidency does to the projects congress has asked of it.
Quite vitriolic. I wonder if you have any personal biases you might be bringing into this discussion?
Our lawyer attended Harvard as a postgrad and this idiocy makes him ashamed he did so, so much he took it off his linkedin profile so as not to be associated with them. Don't know how much he paid for it, but cant imagine it was cheap.
About as close to personal as it gets, other than having zero respect for racist crayon munching idiots.
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