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757 points headalgorithm | 4 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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majgr ◴[] No.42959854[source]
Living in Poland ruled by trumpists for 8 years I have these experiences:

- Get subscription of high value newspaper or magazine. Professionals work there, so you will get real facts, worthy opinions and less emotions.

- It is better to not use social media. You never know if you are discussing with normal person, a political party troll, or Russian troll.

- It is not worth discussing with „switched-on” people. They are getting high doses of emotional content, they are made to feel like victims, facts does not matter at all. Political beliefs are intermingled with religious beliefs.

- emotional content is being treated with higher priority by brain, so it is better to stay away from it, or it will ruin your evening.

- people are getting addicted to emotions and victimization, so after public broadcaster has been freed from it, around 5% people switched to private tv station to get their daily doses.

- social media feels like a new kind of virus, we all need to get sick and develop some immunity to it.

- in the end, there are more reasonable people, but democracies needs to develop better constitutional/law systems, with very short feedback loop. It is very important to have fast reaction on breaking the law by ruling regime.

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1. MaxGripe ◴[] No.42960933[source]
What do you mean by “trumpists” precisely? In Poland, two centrist parties take turns in power. One uses more conservative and pro-American rhetoric, while the other is more liberal and pro-European. However, if you focus on what these parties actually do, there is no fundamental difference between them. Both raise taxes, expand bureaucracy, and limit freedom. And neither of them represents Polish interests.

And yet, people supporting one or the other party are furious at each other. It’s like a battle between warring tribes.

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2. throwaway290 ◴[] No.42960966[source]
How do they limit freedom and what kind? Is it like blocking websites and police searches or like "you can't drink booze outside"?
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3. MaxGripe ◴[] No.42961179[source]
I'm referring to actions that can be observed in the vast majority of countries. There are two main cases here, which, surprisingly, are rarely discussed in the media.

The first case is when the state openly violates certain rights concerning individuals or groups, often under some pretext. An example could be a situation where you run an independent political website, and suddenly, it gets taken down by your ISP because they have received an ORDER from the intelligence agency, claiming that what you write is dangerous propaganda. Meanwhile, your constitution guarantees you freedom of speech. Another example might be someone being imprisoned for several months without a verdict or a concrete charge. Simply because they have fallen out of favour with the wrong people and are punished for it. I know this may sound like something that only happens in a 3rd-world country, but it is occurring in nearly all Western nations - it's just that the media choose not to report on it.

The second case is when a law is introduced, usually under a very appealing name - something like "The Environmental Protection Act". After all, who wouldn't want to protect the environment? Then, you suddenly discover that you are not allowed to build a private hydroelectric power plant on your own land because it is deemed illegal. This is happening in almost every country. When was the last time you heard about a law that removed restrictions? One that expanded civil liberties? Probably a long time ago. And yet, new laws are constantly being introduced.

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4. throwaway290 ◴[] No.42961322{3}[source]
OK. I mean not to excuse the arbitrary enforcement or bad laws but seems logical that your freedom stops where my freedom begins and as time passes more edge cases are found along those lines. Ditching unneeded/bad restrictions is good and not adding restrictions is good but in total idk if I expect the number of restrictions to go down unless people stop being selfish jerks