Comment by cowfriend | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cowfriend | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I respect that you have been a HN member since 2016, making it unlikely that this is a troll account.

However, your views read like propaganda.

The "internal resistance" you refer to is simply people trying to follow the law, while being constantly whipsawed by changing political winds. We see similar stories here on HN about work in large corporations. What do you think it is like in an org with 2.2 MILLION employees, where their actions have the power of government behind them often including access to extremely sensitive information?

HN talked about leaking any Youtuber's contact information for 10K, with suggestions that Google should better protect people's data.

HN frequently talks about the dangers of non-accountability for police. Would you like that same non-accountabilty spread to all aspects of the Federal government? (if so, merry christmas because now you have it)

If you cannot find any steel-man arguments against DOGE, may I suggest that you read the remainder of this HN article?

Why would you even suspect this is a troll account? These are clearly genuinely held opinions, stated plainly and without the normal wild rhetoric I typically hear in comments in such threads, yet you read it as propaganda.

This is why I flag all articles on DOGE/etc, because genuine conversation is assumed to be in bad faith.

Expecting someone to read an article having an obvious propaganda hit-piece title like "DOGE as a National Cyberattack" is silly.

Would you read an article titled "technology is the mark of the beast" and take your time to debate its merits?

I personally hold the belief that DOGE and president Trump are acting in good-faith to keep his campaign promises as best as they're able, in a messy and tumultuous environment.

At the same time, I have a lot of empathy for the great number of people that are afraid and hurting right now for a multitude of reasons. People are facing food/job/business insecurity, genuine threats to various core ideological beliefs, an environment of fear and uncertainty for many affected people, threats to the desired direction of our laws and societal moral compass, etc. I hurt for those affected, and I do what I can within my spheres of influence to help.

I don't see why we can't have an honest conversation with each other without assuming that the other is operating in bad-faith. I think BOTH sides should stop using propaganda, and start LISTENING to each other, that eventually we might determine paths forward together without cancelling each other.

Why is it silly? Is it reasonable to hold the opinion that DOGE should not have been given access to these systems (note: this doesn't mean that the opposite view isn't also reasonable)? If it's a reasonable position to hold, then getting access to these systems can be reasonably construed as an attack, can it not?

I don't really think this argument merits a comparison to "technology is the mark of the beast" or that the only people that can be opposed to DOGE suffers from "personality derangement" or "glorifies bureaucratic power"

> Is it reasonable to hold the opinion that DOGE should not have been given access to these systems

"We audited ourselves" typically doesn't fly, so no, I'd say not a reasonable position. Someone external has to do it, and DOGE is the one tasked by the president to do so.

Audit are already conducted by outsiders, but the objection to DOGE is less the concept of auditing but how they’re doing it by bypassing all kinds of policies. Normally auditors would be qualified, have passed background checks, and agree to follow the same security and privacy policies.

The outrage is because they’re taking a lot of risk and clearly treating it as a political exercise when it shouldn’t be.

Hurt people hurt people. That's all this is.

Same with ICE raids. People are upset because they built their house on sand and have to start again. Businesses are upset because they can't get around labour laws

I find it funny that you're getting downvoted though. Maybe in a few years it'll all blow over

>I don't see why we can't have an honest conversation with each other without assuming that the other is operating in bad-faith.

>I think BOTH sides should stop using propaganda

Well you proved it right here. You're "both sides"-ing this when the responsibiliry and power at the moment is horribly disproprtionate. It isn't at all. We can throw all the links we want, but I've yet to see any "liberal propaganda" posted in response to suggest that Democrats are "playing dirty".

If we can't even talk about objective facts like "Musk retaliated on Judges who gave him court order", then we can't talk much. We're not in the same reality and facts like that aren't even denied by Musk. You're defending someone who is outright saying "I want to take down the courts". He isn't even defending himself.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com