alt Hacker NewsWe are a republic of 50 states, who are only willing to work together because they are represented. I’ve lived in NY, MO, CA and TX. The cultures and beliefs are different in each, and the people you seem to call “idiots” I have never found to be idiots. They just don’t prioritize nearly the same things you do, and may have radically different values
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They might not be idiots, but I am afraid that many of them are politically illiterate. How else would you explain that Donald Trump became president again?
Why doesn’t California, the largest state, simply eat the other 49?
Can you say more?
smcin: Oh, he has said a lot more already. It is all on the record in his posting history for anyone to read.
jdross: This is important context you strategically neglected to mention. You previously wrote:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42999628
>These are people I personally know working “at DOGE” (appointed in departments, but under DOGE umbrella)
You defended DOGE based on what those friends told you and contrasted their account with:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42993746
>Versus whatever the media is reporting
You have said those particular friends were not working on USAID, and I am not claiming they personally made those cuts. But you publicly defended the DOGE operation and discounted reporting about it based on your personal access to its operatives.
So this is not a disinterested anthropological observation based on having lived in four states. Invoking Texas as evidence of your cultural breadth does not make the aggressively racist and coercive policies enacted by its government and repeatedly endorsed by its voters morally neutral "different values".
You are defending your own personal and professional network and its political-religious program-cum-pogrom: Project 2025.
Your profile says:
https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jdross
>I take the side of people who build.
DOGE dismantled USAID programs whose loss is projected to cause 14 million preventable deaths, including 4.5 million children under five. Meanwhile, Trump demolished the historic East Wing to build his ballroom and is planning a 250-foot triumphal arch which he says honors "Me".
What, precisely, are the "radically different values" that make any of that defensible?
Agreed. The unbearable smugness of the coastal elites is so pervasive, a person will dismiss “those people” but tie themselves in knots to avoid criticizing even the least the current protected class of the month
They are at best deeply, deeply misinformed.