Exactly. Consider the erosion of long-standing norms in the west over the last four years and how far society has slipped. These are the first, strong, signs that things are starting to go off the rails.
That is easily perceptible change. Consider instead the last 20 years. The US now has "papers please" air travel, the police are much more highly militarized, we're under constant electronic scrutiny of all kinds, and we the people have even less of a common understanding of the world, making us less likely to band together to defend ourselves.
1. It's fair to say the President was outmatched by the job. If he wanted to be a dictator, he was incompetent. But the damage to the immediate office of the president is worth considering. No honest person wants to work close to this man, and that's new.
2. The media, in new and unusual ways, has abandoned the goal of neutrality in reporting.
3. The university and corporate culture is overwhelmed with demands for every discipline to consider the "Whiteness problem." What does this description remind you of in American life right now?
"Then, suddenly, I was plunged into all the new activity, as the university was drawn into the new situation; meetings, conferences, interviews, ceremonies, and, above all, papers to be filled out, reports, bibliographies, lists, questionnaires. And on top of that were the demands in the community, the things in which one had to, was ‘expected to’ participate that had not been there or had not been important before. It was all rigmarole, of course, but it consumed all one’s energies, coming on top of the work one really wanted to do. You can see how easy it was, then, not to think about fundamental things. One had no time."
4. The restriction on liberties during the pandemic is new in its breadth and uniformity. It was one thing for un-modern medicine to act regionally in 1918. It's another thing to shut down a Country along the same lines in 2020. We're writing off two years of education for most kids, taking on huge amounts of debt, and shuttering small businesses -- based on a testing regime that seems little better than reading entrails.
We are a tired, angry, debt-laden people unable to agree on the facts. We distrust our formerly-shared institutions. We distrust science if it contradicts political norms.
> 2. The media, in new and unusual ways, has abandoned the goal of neutrality in reporting.
Which media are we talking about? There have always been left, neutral, and right-leaning media, but in the last four years the neutral media was painted as being biased against the president because they reported the facts. The facts, they're very unflattering. The president has brought the pro wrestling 'heel' character into national politics and reporting on that reality is not bias.
> It's another thing to shut down a Country along the same lines in 2020.
The actual mandated shutdowns were pretty weak and pretty temporary. The real damage to the economy has come from people being rational actors and voluntarily practicing social distancing, resulting in heavily stifled demand. See: Sweden. Famously not mandating lockdowns but their economy suffered nonetheless.
> Which media are we talking about? There have always been left, neutral, and right-leaning media, but in the last four years the neutral media was painted as being biased against the president because they reported the facts. The facts, they're very unflattering. The president has brought the pro wrestling 'heel' character into national politics and reporting on that reality is not bias.
I think it's more the way they are playing both sides. The best example being the New York Times — a well-beaten, but still-living horse. They get painted as biased for reporting the facts about Trump, but simultaneously they engage in palace intrigue journalism that softens the administration's image and run it well ahead of page 6. That's not neutrality, it's duplicity.
On media, the NYT predicament seems clear:
>“Philosophy schmosiphy,” wrote a researcher at the Times whose Slack avatar was the logo for the hamburger chain Jack in the Box. “We’re at a barricades moment in our history. You decide: which side are you on?”
The Times has always been liberal. But among liberals, employees at the Times think norms have eroded to a "barricades" moment, and perceive the old "he kept the paper straight" neutrality as a betrayal of progress.
They're liberal in the same way the democrats who endorsed the invasion of Iraq were liberal - that is to say, weakly centrist in right-leaning environment.
I don't think Trump damaged the office of the president or the institutions. He's actually a quality tester (or a malicious user), the flaws in the institutions were there before, he's the first to abuse them in this way.
Security and anti-terror laws, as well as propaganda for the Iraq war and other militant and jingoistic opinions were the beginning of this.
If the flaws aren't fixed, the US may get a competent dictator within our lifetimes.
People are rightly downvoting and flagging garden-variety political flamewar posts because they're off topic here.
The passionate partisans of every flavor also do their share of downvoting and flagging, of course. But you don't need to invoke that as an explanation when political battle posts are being flagged. This is not a site for political battle.
Respectfully disagree. GP's answer was also on my mind given how timely and relevant to the question it is.
Sometimes reality does make people look bad. That doesn't make that reality "garden-variety political flamewar." The results of the election have been universally reported and it's ridiculous to pretend that they haven't just because it offends the political sensibilities of some.
Political discussions on HN are already pretty questionable, but killing discussion because it might upset a certain crowd biases what we're allowed to talk about away from reality. That's never a good thing. This shouldn't be a bubble where we can't say something as simple and inoffensive as the statement that Donald Trump lost the election, has (along with some Republican colleagues) refused to concede, and that it epitomizes the way that norms have been eroded in our government over the past four years.
I will just point out this basically proves my point. The question was what norms changed. I said a candidate won an election and some people won't acknowledge that which goes against previous norms. This is a simple fact confirmed by basically every credible news org in the country, but it is now apparently enough to be considered a "garden-variety political flamewar post".
I swear I am not trying to be a jerk, but what were the many markers of a political flamewar that I used? I know politic topics have been getting heated on HN lately and I am probably more guilty of participating in that than the average user. However I do try to stay on the line of what is allowed here and I legitimately don't know what you are objecting to in my comment.
I also don't know how this is a disputed fact when basically every news source from MSNBC to Fox News and practically every world leader from Angela Merkel to Xi Jinping all agree on it. I don't think there is a single credible source that disagrees with the outcome of the US presidential election.
I don't think my comment would have been considered to have markers of a political flamewar or considered anything but a fact if I wrote it 4 years ago about Trump's victory over Clinton. That is basically the entire point of my original comment. Our standards have eroded in the last 4 years.
Please don't use HN for ideological flamewar, regardless of which ideology you favor. We ban this sort of account because it destroys the intended use of the site (curious conversation).
Last year has had a greater loss of norms of Western thought than we have seen since the dawn of the modern world in almost every Western country. Say what you want about the virus response, but powers that be don't give up newly founded power after they seized it once (the lockdowns never will truly end).
They did last time, and in the middle of the Palmer Raids at that. The necessary and proper use of pulic health orders during pandemics has been thourougly adjuticed in the US, and has a basis in precedent centuries old. This is hardly a regression.
Why don't you worry instead about whether we get a trial before we get shot or locked up?
The difference of today is our world's global businesses look up to the major Communist force of our world today instead of seeing it as a competitor, they have noted the methods of censorship and totalitarianism and have taken notes back-home.
I think the general point is correct but I don't think the businesses are influenced by China specifically. That puts too little blame on us.
Our home-grown flavor of fascism is influenced by Nazi Germany in particular but has far outpaced it by systematically co-opting and diluting any attempts to divert from the status quo. Pride parades are paid for by banks, Black Lives Matter is supported by companies with histories of racial discrimination, hell, the phrase "All Cops Are Bastards" was taken by Liberals to mean "some cops (not your friends) are bastards (but they're good people just forced to do some bad stuff)". The Right has convinced the populace that the Left wants to censor and restrict the people when in reality the opposite is true. Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.
I think China is still learning to ride the bike of authoritarianism. A truly totalitarian government will seem to its people to be completely democratic.
Jesus christ man, responding to a national health crisis in exactly the same way we did 100 years ago does not make us and authoritarian government. What's next, "the food rationing so our troops can keep fighting the actual nazis make us just as bad as them"?
"If I can afford it I should be able to buy more than 4 gallons of gas a week! We're a capitalist society, not socialist! Market forces will solve this! Down with rationing!"
Are the "powers to be" simple comic book villains motivated by something as simple as a hatred of freedom? Why would governments across the world nearly uniformly sabotage their own economies for something so intangible? And all acting in concert? Communist China and the capitalist USA are in this together?
Game theory alone tells you that if this were deliberate and unnecessary then there would be an immense payoff to any power that decided not to wreck their economy as this would catapult them ahead of their neighbors.
I am reading some unstated skepticism about the scope or severity of the pandemic in your response here, the so-called "Plandemic". I would urge you to look at this issue again, as you clearly are concerned about creeping authoritarianism, but feel you are making a serious attribution error here.
