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Comment by dekhn | Hacker News Reader

I honestly don't care if my politicians have parties during covid. that seems like a really weird thing to complain about.

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I don't think anybody actually cares the politicians have a party. The average person cares that politicians didn't follow the rules they passed while enforcing / attempting to enforce the rules on the average Joe.

Right answer! This is about signalling more than it's about the actual health details and people (rightfully?) are unhappy because leaders who make rules should follow them (right....?)

Frankly I think our politicians deserve a break and should be able to have a party to blow off steam once in a while, and I tolerate fairly modest violations of the lockdown policy.

I think a lot of people in other professions were also working hard, deserved a break and wanted to blow off steam, are you advocating for them to be allowed to ignore the law set down during pandemic too?

How much harder is it going to be to convince the public to follow rules/guidelines if we announce that certain groups can ignore parts of them?

Do you live in the UK? We had harsh, cruel, extended lockdowns. Like - no talking to friends on the street lockdowns. For like months at a time. Johnson, who subjected us to this, was having house parties the whole time. Most Brits would push the creep in front of a bus at this point.

My perception is that that's a position that most people would find weird.

The politicians in the UK have just slapped the harshest restrictions on people's liberties since (I assume) the world wars, and then they completely ignored them themselves.

People weren't able to attend loved ones funerals, but the politicians where having parties in their offices.

I'm intrigued to find out why you don't think this is a bad thing?

I don't think it's a bad thing, because it is what I expected. (Edit: what I meant is that it confirmed my belief in how things work, and did not assert a need to reexamine my mental model of politicians) And if this revelation goes some way to shaking people out of the naivety and blind conformity that were needed to support lockdowns, then that is ultimately a good thing.

For democracy to survive, people must sharpen their political antennae.

  "Evil in the modern world is done neither by monsters not by bureaucrats, but by joiners. That evil originates in the neediness of lonely, alienated bourgeois people who live lives so devoid of higher meaning that they give themselves fully to movements" Helen Arendt after watching the Nazi trials.

I guess it boils down to how comfortable you are with hypocrisy and double standards.

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