And don’t get me wrong. I agree that corruption is horrible. I live in a country where corruption was and still is rampant. Political discussions related more closely to, let’s say, AI companies such as OpenAI or Anthropic when it comes to the Pentagon do spark interest, since they are somewhat more directly connected to decisions we can make as tech professionals in other countries, whether for moral, ethical, or practical reasons. That is not really the case for posts like these, however. To your point, I would love to see the tech/hacker community come up with ideas about solving corruption, even if it’s just philosophical discussion.

If my point still doesn’t make sense, imagine seeing posts about corruption cases from any other non-US country being posted on HN. What would you think about those?

Yes, that's bad.

It's not even remotely the same.

Biden pardoned his son to protect him from being hounded for the rest of his life by rabid Republicans that still can't shut up about Hillary's emails (despite Trump doing 10x worse with the top secret files in his toilet), Benghazi (with 4 deaths, far less than the current Iran boondogle), etc...

Trump has weaponised the pardon power, which was previously used by other presidents to pardon people who didn't deserve their punishment. Non-violent drug crimes like possession of a bit of weed, life imprisonment over a technicality, that kind of thing.

Trump instead enables rampant corruption coupled with blind obedience with the promise of a pardon as the get-out-of-jail-free card.

He's also made pardons pay-for-play, letting out crypto scammers, drug lords, and anyone else willing to pay him a few million each.

It's obscene. It's corrosive. It's destroying your democracy, so very very visibly that the rest of the world is staring with slack-jawed horror.

Seriously.

Over here on the other side of the little pond we call the Pacific, we're worried about you yanks.