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Comment by luckylion | Hacker News Reader

That's very rare though. Usually, the impression is achieved by intentionally leaving out facts to make the picture look more clear cut. Once you go into the details, in most cases, clarity goes away and everything gets fuzzy and grey.

But nobody wants to read "it's complicated, here are some facts so you can figure out your thoughts on the matter", so we tend to cut away half and paint the rest in broad strokes to turn that into "This is reality, and here are the monsters who deny it".

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I'd love to hear these "details" that paint conservative-trump supporters and their quack-anon conspiracies as anything other than monsters.

Incentivizing people not to work leads to people not working.

That's a straw man argument based on your assumption of second or third-order consequences.

Edit: No politician anywhere ever introduced a bill with the intentions of "Incentivizing people not to work."

Even "shutting down the economy" has the intention of being able to get back to 100% sooner and thus maximizing total output/GDP/work over a period longer than the short-sighted days/weeks immediately ahead.

The point is that pretending "conservatives just hate the poor" is the broad brush. The moral hazards of vast government social programs are the part that gets fuzzy and grey: it has great benefits in the moment, keeping people housed and fed. But it also has great disadvantages: making them lose their motivation and agency and making them permanently dependent on those programs.

But if you zoom out and leave away the negatives: monsters!

Redlining, voter suppression, consistent attacks on important services (DMV, USPS, healthcare providers), drug testing for welfare recipients (despite the fact that these programs cost more than they save), anti-abortion crusades.

There is a long list of evidence for conservative attacks on the poor in the US, which is in no way limited to programs like where the criticisms you mentioned apply - although I don't believe those criticisms are made in good faith to begin with anyway.

It appears that you're not interested in the point I was trying to make, but just want to fight with somebody about your political convictions. I'm not that somebody, I don't care about your domestic problems.

I care about the behavior you're showing though, because that unfortunately isn't contained to the US. "The other side are all monsters" is common, that's why it's a problem. But you must get over "... but they really are monsters" to be able to see the problem, I'm afraid.

I responded to the point you tried to make; let's not pretend otherwise.

I have a lot of problems with your analysis. Your original comment argued that conservative policies towards the poor are out of some concern for the future unintended consequences. I replied because we have mountains of evidence that is not the case. You then go on to straw man me with a false dichotomy that the Right's policies are either done out of some genuine altruism or that "they're monsters". We can acknowledge the reality of the situation without resorting to such ridiculous reductionism.

And finally, I'm not looking for a fight about my political convictions. I'm correcting one more instance or a narrative that has plagued modern political discussions for decades. Both sides are not the same. And it's either ignorant or disingenuous to claim otherwise.

> correcting

I believe this is what they are trying to get at. No ill will intended, but it seems pretty futile to try to "correct" the way another person experiences the world since any viewpoint a correction comes from is inherently a property of observation at some place+time+culture. I think earlier societies' greater homogeneity tricked us all into thinking objective reality is a thing that exists.

Sorry, conservatives do hate the poor. That’s an objective fact born out by their behavior, not my bias.

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