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Comment by userbinator | Hacker News Reader

The main problem is that it's explicitly pushing a certain political agenda.

Where is it explicitly pushing a "certain political agenda"? Is there a footnote somewhere that says "these documentation requirements were sponsored by <x> for congress"? You surely mean implicit. What obligation does Google have to be apolitical anyway? To make you feel more comfortable?

It's definitely more explicit than NOT having such requirements, which would be the expected norm for technical things.

Google has a HUGE amount of power over people's lives now, arguably more than the government. It has effectively become a form of government itself, but one we didn't vote for. Do you not see a problem with that?

Google a ton of dangerous unchecked power, absolutely. But it's a documentation style guide that sets off your alarms? Get over yourself.

The alarms have been going for a long time. This is just the frog-boiling water getting a little hotter.

OK, we'll tell George Orwell to get over himself. He was the one who warned us about giving excessive amounts of power to people who want to control the language.

Free speech absolutism is also a certain political agenda. At some point, everything is political and if you don't like it, you'll need to go off grid and definitely stay offline.

No one said a word about free speech "absolutism."

That doesn't refute my point, does it? One can ride a bike without saying a word about riding bikes, after all.

> At some point, everything is political

No. Football is a-political. Thanksgiving dinner is a-political. My javascript library is a-political. My silicon design is a-political.

What's happened is an extremely small subset of people have decided to push politics where it doesn't belong. Everything must become a political weapon, because everything must serve the goal of some arbitrary progress. Merely existing without putting on badges in support of The Latest Thing(TM) is offensive -- because you have implicitly not taken a side, which explicitly means you are supporting the enemy. And if that goal requires sacrifice of thanksgiving dinner and family, than so be it.

It's done wonders to improve society's polarization problem, I tell you.

Football is apolitical? Not even close. My school had a rival school, and yelling "go [rival team]!" or even wearing the wrong color during playoffs would invite physical violence, especially after folks had a few beers. The "do we build/upgrade a stadium" question is hotly contested in every city I've lived in during such a referendum. Some people, it turns out, hate football and don't want it to be in their city. That's politics. Hell, when I grew up, even mentioning football would get you booed out of any respectable nerdspace. Thanksgiving is, depending who you ask, a celebration of genocide, try again. Are you still using JavaScript? Typescript, my friend, is the way. Does your silicon design use variable names? Politics entered the chat!

No, everything is political. If you're offended, you're welcome to not participate. Polarization sucks, yes, but pretending it doesn't exist typically means you see one side as right and the other as wrong. Not helpful.

I dunno, you seem to be conflating culture and politics. Politics implies it's about power in some kind of hierarchy, culture doesn't necessarily imply that, it just implies a state of being. Is 'being vegetarian' political to a Buddhist, for example? Does anything think Buddhists are being political when they refuse meat?

I mean, everything is political just because humans do it is a funny perspective but so general that it really loses all meaning.

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