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Comment by bloomingeek | Hacker News Reader

I agree and I'm from the states. History will be unkind to trump and the GOP, who are playing with people's lives and fire.

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It depends on who writes the history books in the states, and it's not looking good.

It also depends on whether book written is deemed illegal.

Winners create the 5-second infotainment TikTok historical summary.

We've always been at war with Eurasia.

history is full of books that were deemed illegal that won in the end.

And you’ll never know about the 100x other ones that ‘lost’.

do you know about the 100x other ones that "lost"? I ask because you seem pretty certain they exist.

So the library of Alexandria never burned? All the referenced lost works from Rome were made up? Or many, many other examples.

the discussion was about works that were declared illegal. The burning of the library of Alexandria under Theophilus has some connection to that idea, but it is I think wider. Every referenced lost work from Rome was not lost because they were declared illegal.

The discussion was ‘history is written by the victors’, which isn’t just making books illegal. It also includes making things (intentionally) irrelevant, destroying old copies, etc.

Hell, most early Bibles count, or do you think the council of Nicea resulted in something other than what is being described for large swathes of early church writings?

the comment I replied to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43296466

>It also depends on whether book written is deemed illegal.

the discussion may be wider than that comment, but my comment, even if one did not want to give it a charitable reading and was really intent on winning an HN argument today for some reason - which I understand, I been there - would really be most reasonably interpreted as a comment that making books illegal often has the exact opposite of the desired result.

With charity one might also conclude that there is an implied link between quality of the winners in these scenarios, but anyway you seem to have some particular problem and unwillingness to say "huh, well the guy replied to a comment regarding making books illegal and only seems to think that is what is under discussion, I guess no arguing him out of that" so I guess we should just stop rather than you throwing out examples in which books have been changed, under the mistaken assumption that I know nothing about this history (I have read the Apocrypha, the Pseudopigrapha, and the "forgotten books of Eden", so I believe I have a reasonable knowledge regarding your latest sally)

My comment was less about rules lawyering, and more about the meaning - I would think?

The Council of Nicea - for one example - definitely did NOT make all the alternatives more popular/less dead, right?

Sometimes the streisand effect is real and permanent, sometimes it’s just temporary and the bans/stamping out/destruction work. And unless we’re buried under a mountain of ‘all the others’ which I don’t see, there is a whole lot of it which just goes away through the passage of time because of those effects. Which looks to me like 100x’ish, due to the ‘reverse pyramid’ effect of history.

Or are you making another point i’m missing?

OK fair enough I guess, although not sure about how well the bans, stamping out, destruction works given distributed electronic information and mass printing technologies, most of the obvious examples of written content being destroyed come from before the printing press being widely distributed.

Most recent destroyed content is more likely to be prints of films, in other words things that had a higher cost of reproduction than written content.

Me neither - technology does change the game. Hopefully we won’t find out right away?

Go and ask the general populace of UK (you know what, focus on the school and college goers) and ask what their country and their His/Her Royal Fartnesses have done to a large part of this globe and revel in the genuine blanks they draw!

History writing my arse!

The majority of US voters disagree with you. I think the latest poll showed 70% of people like what Doge is doing for example.

That’s very misleading to state. If you look at all polls about DOGE and related topics, you will find DOGE approval is relatively low while the ostensible DOGE mandates have the approval closer to 70% that you’re talking about.

Yet these are not the same things. DOGE has done many things already which upset and discourage people. Come to Canada where the sentiment towards DOGE seems very negative, you will still see a great desire for improved government efficiency.

DOGE is not as well-loved as a poll about government efficiency will make it seem. Almost everyone wants improved efficiency. Many people think their public service needs cuts. Not everyone thinks the way DOGE does it makes sense.

Yes not everyone absolutely agrees on anything. And thats why we have elections and the winner of that election gets to decide.

Usually it seems like there’s a bit more democracy involved in the USA, but it’s getting hard to tell from here in Canada.

And then we get to criticize the living fuck out of whoever won, especially if they're incompetent.

And even if they're competent too but just on the other side...

Sure, but that's because they don't understand the bigger picture.

The UK with Brexit is a good example. The majority of the voters believed it was a good idea, due to campaigns not really based on facts. Now they're all angry because the results suck for them and the campaigns were mostly lies.

The same is going to happen with the US majority backing Trump's plans. They all believe a lot of lies he keeps telling. And in a few years they're going to be angry because they then face the consequences like high prices for everyday purchases and terrible healthcare for the working class.

It's just that today they don't understand yet what the results of Trump's policies are going to be. And shouting "Canada/Europe/China has been very bad for us" gets them excited, simple human nature, our group vs the other.

Or alternatively (and we can't rule this out), maybe it's the commenters on HN that "don't understand the bigger picture...".

The point being, we won't know until years from now the damage that's being done to both the states and the world stage.

Yes there's a level of trust with any new administration. When people voted for Biden they didn't realise they'd be getting a president in the early stages of dementia, leaving the actual decision-making to the extremists in the Democrat party. And of course, all the extraordinary damage that came with that...lawfare and the politicisation of the justice system, the censorship industrial complex, violent Venezualan gangs establishing a foothold in the US, massive amounts of fentanyl coming across the open border, billions of dollars of hard-earned taxpayer money spent on non-Americans in the country illegally etc.

"Sure, but that's because they don't understand the bigger picture."

And there it is! The info given by the current administration is as bewildering as it is incomplete. Russia, governmental agencies, Medicaid(!), medical researchers (who are shaking in their boots about their futures)...it's a long list with very little reasonable excuses. Musk? I'll stop here.

The point being, we won't know until years from now the damage that's being done to both the states and the world stage.

Just because you're bewildered doesn't mean other people are. I think most people understand the scale of the problem and the need for massive action to address it. And they also understand that mistakes will be made but they will be quickly resolved.

And I think most people are relieved that for the first time in a hundred years (ever?) somebody is actually doing something to address govt fraud, waste and abuse. Something more than lots of talk followed by no action which is what has always happened previously.

Meanwhile, Republicans are pushing for a $4T debt ceiling increase and $4.5T in tax cuts. The impoverished and ailing will suffer from missed social security checks, medical debt, and loss of EBT while the rich will be eating caviar on those “savings.”

If you’re looking for fraud, waste, and abuse, it’s right there.

Either that or they are able to make massive inroads on solving this problem and everyone benefits.

And just as a sidenote, the Democrats had 3 times the campaign funds of the Republicans at the last election (Nancy Pelosi herself is worth 100 million..something like that). So if you want to talk about wealthy people, lets talk about the Dems.

And we can also talk about the many people getting very wealthy from the Dem NGOs (USAid was a slush fund basically).

https://www.thefp.com/p/a-20-billion-slush-fund-nonprofits

I'm afraid your "off-topic and deflecting" slip is showing.

On topic and very relevant actually.

It will probably be kinder to him than to the neoliberals who thought that giving trillions to an authoritarian regime would somehow make them a liberal democracy.

Do tell! Give sources.

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