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Comment by raw_anon_1111 | Hacker News Reader

It amazes me that so many people blame the politicians and not the people who elected them.

Well we can’t recall the voters, so there is no point in addressing them. They are a problem because in the US there used to be an FCC rule that said “if you call yourself a news program, you must tell the truth,” and that was overridden by the Supreme Court during Reagan’s term.

No there was never a rule about “telling the truth” the rule was “equal time”. So if one party said “vaccines keep people from dying” and the other party said “vaccines would cause you to grow extra limbs” you had to allow them both on.

Second, it had nothing to do with the Supreme Court. The theory was that the airwaves belong to the public and the FCC has jurisdiction. It never applied to cable channels like FoxNews

Third, the current FCC is going after broadcast networks for not being fair under the rule

> The theory was that the airwaves belong to the public and the FCC has jurisdiction.

Now most things go over the shared network (InterNet) so that problem should have fixed it self, no?

Airwaves are limited resource - especially spectrum suitable for broadcast. Two companies can’t share the same broadcast spectrum.

The Internet is not a limited resource and not owned by the public and licensed to broadcasters. More than one company can lay cable.

Do you really want the government policing what can be said on the internet?

It does already. Section 230 in the US isn't an unlimited get out of jail free card. Other countries have varying amount of policing, with differing levels of success and corruption. Spain, the UK, and China all come to mind here.

Section 230 only has to do with defamation in this context not “misinformation”.

Blaming voters for being stupid is not widely accepted yet.

The voters aren’t stupid. They are actively malignant and cheer what the administration is doing.

Okay but what solution lies down that road?

That's the problem. People don't want to blame the voters because there's no solution. We are grasping for something that is possible to fix that isn't just "Somehow americans are especially bad at doing very basic things for no reason"

Well, I personally am making the “Ben Kenobi” choice. I’m hoping to leave the US and retire and die and make it the next generation’s problem.

I’ve done my part, I have voted for “progressive”/safety net policies and the US has gone in the opposite direction. This isn’t some shrill unthought out plan.

I’m actually in the country now I plan to retire to for six weeks and I’m coming back for a month in the summer, part of the ex-pat community and meeting people, my wife and I have been learning Spanish and I speak it okay and I know the processes for establishing residency here

I’m over dealing with the American people. As a minority, I find the entire attitude outside of the US refreshing even as the only Black couple in our expat group. For reference, my still living parents grew up in the segregated South.

The large citizenries that later (19th century) forced administrations into constitutions and participation in policy started out with state mandated education and a class consciousness that is based on being knowledged and sophisticated. You need to make the next generation as smart as possible as you can, optimally also on topics concerning the society and economics.

The late 19th century was also when “Separate but Equal” was enshrined as the law of the land by the Supreme Court and a few decades later there were Japanese internment camps…

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