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Comment by freefruit | Hacker News Reader

I understand someone having the viewpoint of America first, look after home first and don't get involved in foreign wars. He however, seems to go way beyond this.

His latest tweet connecting the terrorist attack to Ukraine, with no evidence. Is just repeating the Kremlin talking points. For someone who should analytical, it is just strange.

The All -In pod, often tease him about being a robot. I genuinely believe he is on the spectrum.

I have never heard or read his words showing empathy, even for the terror attacks in Israel and he is Jewish.

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> I understand someone having the viewpoint of America first, look after home first and don't get involved in foreign wars. He however, seems to go way beyond this.

It's interesting how often this happens. People start from a reasonable premise and then slowly but surely move to an extreme version.

I sometimes think the only way to avoid this kind of derangement is to maintain an attitude of ironic detachment towards politics/current events. Almost everyone I know who deviates from that -- including smart, good people -- is a little bit crazy.

If people were able to do that we wouldn't have e.g. stock market bubbles. The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent is basically a statement about human nature. Irrational at best of times. Now isn't exactly the best of times, we've been pounded by Covid, the economy, climate, wars. Politics seeks to leverage this irrationality to gain power. Kind of depressing on all fronts.

There are a lot of people in the west that are aligned with the Kremlin talking points. It's sort of a continuation of the post-truth society we live in. It's like people that think Biden isn't president or some other random stuff. Social media and traditional media letting people create their own reality. Reminds me of visiting the US circa 2018 IIRC and flipping my TV between CNN and Fox News.

Interesting enough wasn't it President Obama who started reducing the US involvement and taking more of a home first policy vs. the previous Republicans that viewed the US as the World's Policeman? IMO leaving both the US and the world in a much worse situation. The attacks against Obama also paved the roads to some of the techniques we see used today across the board. I don't know if this is just my impression but it seemed that was an inflection point, along with many other factors, in creating what are essentially fake realities for different people.

> I have never heard or read his words showing empathy, even for the terror attacks in Israel and he is Jewish.

He is supposedly big fan of Kissinger and Kissinger worked for Nixon who was famously a huge antisemite and also cemented the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by intentionally torpedoing the deal that was on the table. All while being holocaust refugee.

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