It seems kind of disengenuous to blame this on trump and right wing outlets. They definetely pushed distrust of the media along, but how long could the media really expect to keep getting away with things like Iraq wmds? It seems like things were going to reach this point sooner or later anyway when mainstream media started agreeing to become propaganda machines
One thing I hope is obliterated into history after this presidency is the notion that “both parties are the same”.
I’m seriously getting a laugh out of these conservatives who are struggling to make ends meet but have voted Mitch McConnell into office for 35 years. The same guy who just laughed in their face regarding $2k relief checks for them.
I remember reading a comment by someone that went something along the lines “I’ve voted for Mitch my entire life mostly because he opposes the democrat agenda” and I can’t help but get a little bit of joy when they get what they deserve.
Both parties are beholden to the wishes of corporations over natural persons. About 5% of the Democrats holding national office don’t fall into this category, but they’re so few in number they can be ignored when making a statement about the party as a whole.
Both parties don’t have politicians who are actively tweeting about their rights being infringed upon because they are being asked to simply wear a mask.
That’s true. But, it doesn’t make things any better knowing we have the choice between a bad party and a worse party. First past the post, the Electoral College, winner take all style contests, and campaign finance law all work together to keep them both in power.
Believe me, I’d love to get rid of the ultra right wing party and the slightly less right wing party.
Then you don’t see it. Middle East terrorism has been replaced as “the thing” and medical terrorism is what has replaced it. Global warming was too unconvincing, so it seems like TPTB picked this instead.
It’s not about the masks, it’s about being stuck with this for two decades as they try to frighten and terrorize everyone with medical diseases, which allows the government to do whatever they want unopposed. Non-compliance with the masks is usually people protesting this more than they are trying to be inconsiderate to other people. Also, if you think a crappy cloth mask is going to protect anyone else, then I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. (For the record, I would have a different opinion if our government had mobilized producing actual medical grade masks and mandated that.)
This crisis may be even scarier than the Middle East terrorism thing though, because it encourages self righteous dingbats to rat on their neighbors and use the state against their neighbors. It’s all in our own backyard now. And people are doing exactly what the party wants, and it looks to me like like how the neighbors and kids behaved in 1984.
And there’s endless obscure diseases they can highlight that everyone mostly just glossed over before. COVID-19 headlines starts to run flat? Just highlight a new strain of it to whip the fervor up again... oh wait.
You’ll surely call me a conspiracy theorist, even though I’m simply applying that I learned from the Middle East terrorism situation on to this one, but I don’t care. I have already seen this for what it is, a real disease but being hijacked as a tool to manipulate and control people, and have moved on. Don’t be fooled, there’s to be no “back to normal.” Ever. The mask non-comply-ers are simply having a hard time of letting go of the life they knew.
You have to be either incredibly base or willfully ignorant to not understand and have empathy with your fellow citizens.
Disengenous is correct and the media blows their credibility yet again every time they attempt to politicize this.
I read this and thought: oh, another article where the author attempts to say people that don't wholeheartedly trust the mainstream media and their fact checkers are overly emotional conspiracy theorists. This has continued to backfire spectacularly and push their audience away from them and will continue to do so. People aren't stupid.
The only thing missing (thanks to Big Tech censorship) is a strong independent media using actual journalism to deliver information instead of clearly biased reporting.
He's still lying about the results of the election. He claims repeatedly that it was a "rigged election", that the election was "the biggest SCAM in our nation’s history", and that really he "won big" "in a landslide". All of these claims are false.
Trump has demonstrated that he simply doesn't care what's true. It's banana republic stuff.
People have been pointing out the media lying before trump got in office. He definitely pushed that in a big way to the mainstream, and is lying about a lot of things himself, but the media couldnt have gotten away with creating narratives scot free forever.
Uh huh. And how many court cases about this supposedly fraudulent election have succeeded? You know, legal proceedings in which you must meet an actual standard of evidence.
And here's a quote from a recording that Biden did:
“We have put together, I think, the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics,” Biden said in a clip posted to Instagram Oct. 24.
His words, not mine!
BTW, you can "fact check" that all you want but whichever way you dice it, he's senile and will likely be quickly replaced by Harris.
And what's that got to do with Trump constantly lying and falsely claiming that the election was somehow "rigged"?
In the time since this article on disinformation was written Trump has incited a mob to invade the Capitol Building, again based on his false claims that the election was "stolen".
He's not making America great, he's making it worse. He's trying as hard as he can to turn America into a banana republic.
It's not that it's a deliberate goal. It's worse than that. He simply doesn't care.
> And what's that got to do with Trump constantly lying and falsely claiming that the election was somehow "rigged"?
There's nothing I can say to convince you otherwise, so I am going to skip over this.
> He's not making America great, he's making it worse. He's trying as hard as he can to turn America into a banana republic.
I thought "America was never great." Whoops!
> In the time since this article on disinformation was written Trump has incited a mob to invade the Capitol Building, again based on his false claims that the election was "stolen".
Trump didn't incite them, they were already incited. You are being willfully ignorant if you think otherwise.
To me, this looks like a lot of people who are angry at the congress critters over the lockdowns, the hypocrisy of those who impose them not following their own rules, burning cities for months, and overall disenfranchisement.
Do you think these people would go to the capitol building for something like that if they felt like the system was working for them? I don't. The system no longer works, people feel disenfranchised on both sides, the regime went too far and became too oppressive. The public struck back.
If you have a conscious, the only people you would blame for the events of 2020 are the politicians at the federal, state and local levels, and not their disenfranchised constituents.
I keep saying this over and over again and for some reason people on here don't get it. Quit blaming powerless citizens!
> Do you think these people would go to the capitol building for something like that if they felt like the system was working for them?
So you're saying that it would have been better if Trump had been a competent president and had actually helped people instead of stroking his own ego. Instead, he is now unambiguously the worst president in America's history.
You're going to post stuff from CNN, and I really don't want to argue with their slanted fact checkers via you. You also won't understand anything you don't want to. There's no point. It hasn't mattered to your side that there is video evidence and testimony from postal workers.
Reality is, six states stopped counting votes on election night all at the same time. Very fishy.
At least admit you got what you wanted, and because of that, you're fine with the fraud.
> They disagree with you. To quote them, "Our president wants us here. We wait and take orders from our president":
Again they wouldn't have come if things were going well in the country. Also, I don't care about your links. I'm not a redditor.
> So you're saying that it would have been better if Trump had been a competent president and had actually helped people instead of stroking his own ego. Instead, he is now unambiguously the worst president in America's history.
> I blame Trump.
If trump is the only person you blame for all of this, you are going to be sorely disappointed with what comes next. Congress is the one who sat on the second covid relief bill.
I think this is an important topic, but couching it in this brief cultural moment or one political party is cutting scope a lot.
For example, rather than rants and raves about a particular ex-president or party, there are plenty of highly-auditable voting systems, which I remember being pretty vocal about 10 years ago. Things like paper trails matter a lot [1]. Theoretically, both sides should be in perfect agreement on the importance of that...
>>> “If only 20% of the population is like, ‘You’re not my president, I’m going to double down on my mask resistance,’ or ‘I’m going to continue to have parties over the holidays,’ that means we are going to be even less likely to bring this thing under control,”
No. I think this kind of whining is only giving/attributing power to the losing fraction. 30% of Americans still supported Nixon even AFTER he got caught at watergate. Certainly 30% of Americans were unhappy about desegregation in those areas. Too bad for them.
The difference here is that those 20-30% who resist public health measures to combat COVID have actual power to hurt the rest of us, by spreading the disease.
It's pretty well proven that even scientists don't change their minds when presented with new evidence. Instead, you have to wait for the existing people to literally die out. Then a new generation can have new ideas. Progress is a matter of time and attrition, like a glacier moving. It's not a matter of logic and openness and evidence and debate.
We need to wait for people who believe whatever Facebook/Fox shows them to die, they will never stop believing it as long as they draw breath.
Speaking as a scientist, this is absolutely true. It's hard for me to change opinion. I generally need multiple repeated exposures do different instances of evidence. Some people are more firm in their ideas and this is a concept I try to keep in mind.
The only trick I've found is to try not to have any opinion at all. I'd love to hear if anyone has a better idea, I hate the idea that people younger than me will just have to wait me out and politely tolerate my wrongness...
I HAVE adjusted my options on a few matters (BLM, gun rights, bail requirements). And I'm quite proud of that! I think I have a bit of a fear of empathy which holds me back, but enough of my self diagnosis!
I'm glad to hear that! I think keeping the idea in mind that we could be wrong is important, and not just about small things but we may be wrong about anything. I think keeping an opinion is okay, as long as it remains flexible. But then again, that's just my opinion :)
Sure but what will fix it is a tax payer funded, independent (like the courts), news organization. Almost every other liberal democracy has something like that. It's time for the US to get with the program.
Looking at the US from the outside, it seems there are two increasingly separated views of what is true and what isn't. Each is in their own bubble. Both bubbles are around the same size.
This article is from an outlet in one bubble labeling everything from the other bubble as misinformation, and asking rethorically: 'can the divide be healed?' Without realizing they actually mean: 'how can we make them understand they are wrong?'
This happens on both sides. Until both bubbles will ask themselves: 'is it possible the other side has some points, so let's give it a good look', there will be NO healing at all.
And actually both sides are as often wrong as they are right on many issues.
That depends on your interests. Being from the Netherlands, where racism and slavery are less of a hot topic compared to the US, I was interested, and I can offer you some things that I personally found interesting. For example this interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFqVNPwsLNo (esp @24:00).
And Thomas Sowell's book on the history of slavery, here's an interesting part of the audiobook: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuAf8XL2xQI
I'll watch both eventually, but the first note from that interview at 24 minutes is that the breakdown of the black family is a huge issue in the US. That kids are much more likely to grow up and commit crimes if there's no father figure in the house. And he's right, it is. But he skips the reasons behind them, and comes to the incorrect conclusion that that's not a "white cop's fault".
1. Those families often don't have dads because they were arrested on minor drug offenses, or killed by said cops.
2. America's social safety net is packed full of means testing. That includes means testing on welfare, which leads to broken families because there will be significantly less public assistance if there's a father in the picture than if there isn't.
I would urge you to sit on your hands so to speak, and fact-check your own intuitive responses. For example (1) might be true, but how often? And Larry Elder seems to mean that 75% of black women is not married, how did that happen?
2) You're probably not wrong, but he frames it as: the government may be (inadvertently?) discouraging marriage, which backfires on black kids (boys mostly).
Anyway, listening to the right has certainly enriched my thinking in various aspects.
The most egregious as someone who is in the left bubble but acknowledges nuance on many issues I would say are:
identity politics: economic problems are economic and fixating on identity is never going to solve them but further alienate people. What this sounds like is disrupting meritocracy "we <insert combo of minority identities> president or engineer... etc" but in reality is nothing but an extension of confessionalism, which never works. Look at where such politics ends (Lebanon's current crisis <-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Pact, Iraq's current crisis <-- https://www.mei.edu/publications/nation-or-religion-iraqs-hy...). Increase representation by fixing the pipeline problem not instating qoutas without sunset deadlines or criteria
scientism: the usage of phrases such as "believe science" when talking about social issues like abortion
where worth is assigned to lives and even ignoring it completely when talking about puberty blockers. Never mind how anti-scientific "believe science" is.
American exceptionalism: A lot more subtle than the right's "shithole country" comments but no less dangerous, look no further than how Poland is talked about, or Hungary... etc. Can't fathom how different societies look at issues from other perspectives. This is a form of cultural imperialism.
All of the above are subject to your definition of left and are points of debate within the left too.
Decentralization / smaller government. Left often has an inexplicable urge to assume that Government Knows Best. Imagine the Fed government gets somebody like Trump at the top again, but smarter, with more effective political tactics and stays in power for a longer time.
Limiting what government can do puts the brakes on what such a person can accomplish. Leave things up to the states, of course you can still occasionally get problems at the state level, but that's only 1/50 as much of a problem.
Assuming anti-vax is a single movement. I have a normally reasonable friend who refused an STD vaccine for his newborn. Having a <1 year old baby vaccinated against STD's simply doesn't make sense. His experience opened my eyes: Some vaccines undoubtedly are genuine medical miracles that save lots of lives, but the necessity of others can be rather questionable. (The number of recommended vaccines for children has also exploded since my friend and I ourselves were kids, unless you have children yourself you might assume your childhood experience is still the norm, which it isn't.)
When you say "Why should I vaccinate my 0-year-old against an STD?" and the doctor can't give answer beyond "You won't be able to send them to school if you don't," it really does seem rather reasonable to conclude that it's medically unnecessary but Big Pharma's successfully lobbied the government to require this particular shot.
To be fair, my friend may be wrong. There may be sound medical reasons their doctor didn't know or didn't feel like explaining for the 1000th time.
My point is, there are shades and shades of anti-vax. We use the same term to describe (a) the irrational nutjob who rejects all vaccines and denies all historical reports of how bad things like smallpox were as some kind of elaborate hoax, and (b) reasonable people who are trying to reasonably evaluate whether a given medical product is a reasonable step for their health situation, and sometimes reasonably comes to the conclusion that it's not (as in the case of a parent who decides it doesn't make sense to vaccinate a newborn against STD's.)
Liberals want things like less military spending, more peaceful approaches to international politics, no more proxy wars, and no more hawkish behavior (like us shooting down Iran's drones). There's so much war weariness from the Middle East that liberals have it in their mind that the US is the bad guys, that we are the militaristic aggressors, that we cause all the problems.
I don't really like hawkish behavior either. Of course I want free healthcare and to not have to worry about war. Obviously reducing our presence in the ME would be great. But the reality is that China is essentially re-inventing colonialism, rapidly making military advances towards Taiwan, gobbling up islands, viciously oppressing their citizens, inventing new and terrifying surveillance technology, slipping their malware in front of our children as apps and games, and just generally bullying other members of the world stage. The Russian government is killing political opponents, working on their own Great Firewall/retreating into their own Internet, systematically trying to weaken Western democracy with what is basically psyops, hacking the shit out of everyone they can, and building ASAT/hypersonic weapons specifically designed to attack American resources.
Basically, the enemies of the US seem like they're spending massive amounts of time and resources trying to destroy us on every front. Meanwhile America, still can't get electronic voting right four years later, and was close to defunding its critical defense infrastructure: https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2020/07/01/next-gen-icb...
America has a lot of problems but compared to this kind of behavior, we are definitely not the bad guys. Nearly all of the anti-patriotic sentiment I've seen ("America is third-world", "America is stupid and racist", "I'm moving to Canada because I hate the government", "Everyone else does it better", "I would never work for the government", etc) is coming from the Left. They should be more honest with themselves about both the good and bad things about America, because we need to fix race relations, healthcare, education, etc. but we definitely also need military spending. Cause fuck China.
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[ 5.4 ms ] story [ 119 ms ] threadI’m seriously getting a laugh out of these conservatives who are struggling to make ends meet but have voted Mitch McConnell into office for 35 years. The same guy who just laughed in their face regarding $2k relief checks for them.
I remember reading a comment by someone that went something along the lines “I’ve voted for Mitch my entire life mostly because he opposes the democrat agenda” and I can’t help but get a little bit of joy when they get what they deserve.
Believe me, I’d love to get rid of the ultra right wing party and the slightly less right wing party.
It’s not about the masks, it’s about being stuck with this for two decades as they try to frighten and terrorize everyone with medical diseases, which allows the government to do whatever they want unopposed. Non-compliance with the masks is usually people protesting this more than they are trying to be inconsiderate to other people. Also, if you think a crappy cloth mask is going to protect anyone else, then I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. (For the record, I would have a different opinion if our government had mobilized producing actual medical grade masks and mandated that.)
This crisis may be even scarier than the Middle East terrorism thing though, because it encourages self righteous dingbats to rat on their neighbors and use the state against their neighbors. It’s all in our own backyard now. And people are doing exactly what the party wants, and it looks to me like like how the neighbors and kids behaved in 1984.
And there’s endless obscure diseases they can highlight that everyone mostly just glossed over before. COVID-19 headlines starts to run flat? Just highlight a new strain of it to whip the fervor up again... oh wait.
You’ll surely call me a conspiracy theorist, even though I’m simply applying that I learned from the Middle East terrorism situation on to this one, but I don’t care. I have already seen this for what it is, a real disease but being hijacked as a tool to manipulate and control people, and have moved on. Don’t be fooled, there’s to be no “back to normal.” Ever. The mask non-comply-ers are simply having a hard time of letting go of the life they knew.
You have to be either incredibly base or willfully ignorant to not understand and have empathy with your fellow citizens.
I read this and thought: oh, another article where the author attempts to say people that don't wholeheartedly trust the mainstream media and their fact checkers are overly emotional conspiracy theorists. This has continued to backfire spectacularly and push their audience away from them and will continue to do so. People aren't stupid.
The only thing missing (thanks to Big Tech censorship) is a strong independent media using actual journalism to deliver information instead of clearly biased reporting.
Why? Trump's posts to Twitter are mostly lies. Have a look:
https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump
He's still lying about the results of the election. He claims repeatedly that it was a "rigged election", that the election was "the biggest SCAM in our nation’s history", and that really he "won big" "in a landslide". All of these claims are false.
Trump has demonstrated that he simply doesn't care what's true. It's banana republic stuff.
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/04/politics/donald-trump-geo...
“We have put together, I think, the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics,” Biden said in a clip posted to Instagram Oct. 24.
His words, not mine!
BTW, you can "fact check" that all you want but whichever way you dice it, he's senile and will likely be quickly replaced by Harris.
In the time since this article on disinformation was written Trump has incited a mob to invade the Capitol Building, again based on his false claims that the election was "stolen".
He's not making America great, he's making it worse. He's trying as hard as he can to turn America into a banana republic.
It's not that it's a deliberate goal. It's worse than that. He simply doesn't care.
There's nothing I can say to convince you otherwise, so I am going to skip over this.
> He's not making America great, he's making it worse. He's trying as hard as he can to turn America into a banana republic.
I thought "America was never great." Whoops!
> In the time since this article on disinformation was written Trump has incited a mob to invade the Capitol Building, again based on his false claims that the election was "stolen".
Trump didn't incite them, they were already incited. You are being willfully ignorant if you think otherwise.
To me, this looks like a lot of people who are angry at the congress critters over the lockdowns, the hypocrisy of those who impose them not following their own rules, burning cities for months, and overall disenfranchisement.
Do you think these people would go to the capitol building for something like that if they felt like the system was working for them? I don't. The system no longer works, people feel disenfranchised on both sides, the regime went too far and became too oppressive. The public struck back.
If you have a conscious, the only people you would blame for the events of 2020 are the politicians at the federal, state and local levels, and not their disenfranchised constituents.
I keep saying this over and over again and for some reason people on here don't get it. Quit blaming powerless citizens!
Yes, you have no answer for it. It's too stark to be explained away. Trump lies constantly. He always has, he always will.
> Trump didn't incite them
They disagree with you. To quote them, "Our president wants us here. We wait and take orders from our president":
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/us/capitol-rioters.html
> Do you think these people would go to the capitol building for something like that if they felt like the system was working for them?
So you're saying that it would have been better if Trump had been a competent president and had actually helped people instead of stroking his own ego. Instead, he is now unambiguously the worst president in America's history.
> Quit blaming powerless citizens!
I blame Trump.
You're going to post stuff from CNN, and I really don't want to argue with their slanted fact checkers via you. You also won't understand anything you don't want to. There's no point. It hasn't mattered to your side that there is video evidence and testimony from postal workers.
Reality is, six states stopped counting votes on election night all at the same time. Very fishy.
At least admit you got what you wanted, and because of that, you're fine with the fraud.
> They disagree with you. To quote them, "Our president wants us here. We wait and take orders from our president":
Again they wouldn't have come if things were going well in the country. Also, I don't care about your links. I'm not a redditor.
> So you're saying that it would have been better if Trump had been a competent president and had actually helped people instead of stroking his own ego. Instead, he is now unambiguously the worst president in America's history. > I blame Trump.
If trump is the only person you blame for all of this, you are going to be sorely disappointed with what comes next. Congress is the one who sat on the second covid relief bill.
There was no fraud. People like Trump depend on people like you being unwilling to accept the practical reality.
The title of the article linked to in this Hacker News thread is "Facts won't fix this". And it's true. You are the proof of it.
For example, rather than rants and raves about a particular ex-president or party, there are plenty of highly-auditable voting systems, which I remember being pretty vocal about 10 years ago. Things like paper trails matter a lot [1]. Theoretically, both sides should be in perfect agreement on the importance of that...
>>> “If only 20% of the population is like, ‘You’re not my president, I’m going to double down on my mask resistance,’ or ‘I’m going to continue to have parties over the holidays,’ that means we are going to be even less likely to bring this thing under control,”
No. I think this kind of whining is only giving/attributing power to the losing fraction. 30% of Americans still supported Nixon even AFTER he got caught at watergate. Certainly 30% of Americans were unhappy about desegregation in those areas. Too bad for them.
1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_auditable_voting_sy...
We need to wait for people who believe whatever Facebook/Fox shows them to die, they will never stop believing it as long as they draw breath.
https://news.mit.edu/2019/life-science-funding-researchers-d...
I HAVE adjusted my options on a few matters (BLM, gun rights, bail requirements). And I'm quite proud of that! I think I have a bit of a fear of empathy which holds me back, but enough of my self diagnosis!
This article is from an outlet in one bubble labeling everything from the other bubble as misinformation, and asking rethorically: 'can the divide be healed?' Without realizing they actually mean: 'how can we make them understand they are wrong?'
This happens on both sides. Until both bubbles will ask themselves: 'is it possible the other side has some points, so let's give it a good look', there will be NO healing at all.
And actually both sides are as often wrong as they are right on many issues.
1. Those families often don't have dads because they were arrested on minor drug offenses, or killed by said cops.
2. America's social safety net is packed full of means testing. That includes means testing on welfare, which leads to broken families because there will be significantly less public assistance if there's a father in the picture than if there isn't.
Anyway, listening to the right has certainly enriched my thinking in various aspects.
identity politics: economic problems are economic and fixating on identity is never going to solve them but further alienate people. What this sounds like is disrupting meritocracy "we <insert combo of minority identities> president or engineer... etc" but in reality is nothing but an extension of confessionalism, which never works. Look at where such politics ends (Lebanon's current crisis <-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Pact, Iraq's current crisis <-- https://www.mei.edu/publications/nation-or-religion-iraqs-hy...). Increase representation by fixing the pipeline problem not instating qoutas without sunset deadlines or criteria
scientism: the usage of phrases such as "believe science" when talking about social issues like abortion where worth is assigned to lives and even ignoring it completely when talking about puberty blockers. Never mind how anti-scientific "believe science" is.
American exceptionalism: A lot more subtle than the right's "shithole country" comments but no less dangerous, look no further than how Poland is talked about, or Hungary... etc. Can't fathom how different societies look at issues from other perspectives. This is a form of cultural imperialism.
All of the above are subject to your definition of left and are points of debate within the left too.
Limiting what government can do puts the brakes on what such a person can accomplish. Leave things up to the states, of course you can still occasionally get problems at the state level, but that's only 1/50 as much of a problem.
Assuming anti-vax is a single movement. I have a normally reasonable friend who refused an STD vaccine for his newborn. Having a <1 year old baby vaccinated against STD's simply doesn't make sense. His experience opened my eyes: Some vaccines undoubtedly are genuine medical miracles that save lots of lives, but the necessity of others can be rather questionable. (The number of recommended vaccines for children has also exploded since my friend and I ourselves were kids, unless you have children yourself you might assume your childhood experience is still the norm, which it isn't.)
When you say "Why should I vaccinate my 0-year-old against an STD?" and the doctor can't give answer beyond "You won't be able to send them to school if you don't," it really does seem rather reasonable to conclude that it's medically unnecessary but Big Pharma's successfully lobbied the government to require this particular shot.
To be fair, my friend may be wrong. There may be sound medical reasons their doctor didn't know or didn't feel like explaining for the 1000th time.
My point is, there are shades and shades of anti-vax. We use the same term to describe (a) the irrational nutjob who rejects all vaccines and denies all historical reports of how bad things like smallpox were as some kind of elaborate hoax, and (b) reasonable people who are trying to reasonably evaluate whether a given medical product is a reasonable step for their health situation, and sometimes reasonably comes to the conclusion that it's not (as in the case of a parent who decides it doesn't make sense to vaccinate a newborn against STD's.)
I don't really like hawkish behavior either. Of course I want free healthcare and to not have to worry about war. Obviously reducing our presence in the ME would be great. But the reality is that China is essentially re-inventing colonialism, rapidly making military advances towards Taiwan, gobbling up islands, viciously oppressing their citizens, inventing new and terrifying surveillance technology, slipping their malware in front of our children as apps and games, and just generally bullying other members of the world stage. The Russian government is killing political opponents, working on their own Great Firewall/retreating into their own Internet, systematically trying to weaken Western democracy with what is basically psyops, hacking the shit out of everyone they can, and building ASAT/hypersonic weapons specifically designed to attack American resources.
Basically, the enemies of the US seem like they're spending massive amounts of time and resources trying to destroy us on every front. Meanwhile America, still can't get electronic voting right four years later, and was close to defunding its critical defense infrastructure: https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2020/07/01/next-gen-icb...
America has a lot of problems but compared to this kind of behavior, we are definitely not the bad guys. Nearly all of the anti-patriotic sentiment I've seen ("America is third-world", "America is stupid and racist", "I'm moving to Canada because I hate the government", "Everyone else does it better", "I would never work for the government", etc) is coming from the Left. They should be more honest with themselves about both the good and bad things about America, because we need to fix race relations, healthcare, education, etc. but we definitely also need military spending. Cause fuck China.