Tribalism. "Look! This person disagrees with you on this other unrelated topic. He's with the enemy, all his opinions are invalid!"
Kind of a sad state of affairs, but that's where we're at right now with political discourse in the United States. (And probably the whole world, to some extent. It's human nature.)
I'd argue reddit is more of an amplified hive mind of the communities that use the internet, of which some become toxic due to ineffective moderation policies or squelching of dissent.
The elephant in the room is that large subreddits tend to avoid deep analysis if it disagrees with the hive mind, and cross-brigading from smaller subreddits happens all the time. Add influence peddling by sovereign states to that.
Only if politically and economically convenient. I've seen people openly condoning torture and rape as long as they happen to unsympathetic victims. The subreddits fostering this behavior won't get banned unless it threatens reddit's advertising. In practice it means only politically incorrect communities get banned.
One thing you have to remember with Reddit (and Facebook & co.) is that they're international. I think for Reddit about half the audience is American. A small subset of those are willing to leave Reddit for political problem, say, 5%.
Even though the rest of the world is literally flooded with US political news (less so now that Trump is gone), most of the rest of the world doesn't really care about those things Americans are super passionate about.
Reddit can remain huge even if half its US userbase leaves it.
This point is even more salient for Facebook outrage, BTW.
Just because someone votes for Trump doesn't mean they aren't sick of his incompetence/dishonesty/corruption. It just means they prefer him to the alternative.
It really shouldn't. It's just meant to inflame. There's no legal basis for postponing an election. As others have pointed out, it'd require acts of congress, and possibly also changes to the constitution. It's pretty silly at this point.
Trump infuriates everyone with bombastic statements, that he often can't even implement legally, that sometimes grab members of his base.
On top of that, other presidents have made crazier statements, but with him they're turned up to 11.
There was talk of "Continuance of Government" with the Bush/Cheney era and fear he'd try to stay in past two terms. Nothing ever happened though. This is pure fluff.
I don't hate Trump or Trump supporters like a lot of people, but he just needs to shut up. He does nothing to calm the America people, he just gives everyone fuel to scream and more than anything, this is a big nothing burger. It's not tech news. It's not even good pol news. I will probably drop off the HN front page in an hour or less.
> Trump infuriates everyone with bombastic statements, that he often can't even implement legally, that sometimes grab members of his base.
That reminds me of something that I've often thought - the Left seems to think that Trump's crazy statements are intended to gain support for his base. They don't; the vast majority of Trump voters also think what he says is nuts most of the time.
I don't know anyone that voted for Trump because they agree with what he says. I know lots of people who voted for him because of what the other side has said and done in response to what Trump says.
That's why Trump voters by and large hand-wave away any criticism of his statements. They don't expect them to be reasonable in the first place, and the believe their purpose is to get the left to speak and act. They do believe the left is earnest in what they're saying.
I voted for Trump because I believed the alternative posed a far greater threat that a loud mouth, neophyte, billionaire. And unless something really dramatically goes crazy, I'm going to vote for him again for the same reason.
