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Comment by optforfon | Hacker News Reader

To me this is so bizarre. Now that I'm living in Asia (mainland China) it's even more bizarre. Because here ofcourse the government has the ability to look at everyone's communication - but no one has the ego to think they personally will be looked at. People appreciate that there are millions of people and no one actually cares about you unless you're really making waves.

Look back at the US, my home country, I feel like a lot of people are on the off-the-grid-survivalist spectrum of paranoia. The FBI NSA CIA don't care about 99.99% of you. They never will. Can you guys stop thinking we're an election or two away from a fascist dystopia?

Anyways.. just a different perspective from the other side of the globe

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I'm guessing that's what the jews and other "untermensch" in the netherlands thought before WWII, they had records of religious beliefs of every citizen. Just imagine what a NSA database full of information can do if/when a fascist is elected. Democracy is not a protection from fascism.

So everything was fine in countries that didn't keep such records when the Nazis invaded?

IIRC, there was less genocide, yes.

> Because here ofcourse the government has the ability to look at everyone's communication

Maybe that's the thing: in China, everybody expects the government to watch everything. People were born in this society, it is normal to us. In the US, people believed the government wasn't invading their privacy, Snowden's revelations is new information to them (I'm talking about the majority of course).

Yeah, just like people before Google Maps thought it was weird to have photos of everything - and now it's totally okay.

From my limited experience it's also true for Singapore and Japan - so I'm inclined to believer there is an East Asian cultural element to it. When I tried to explain to some Japanese colleagues that a lot of Americas believe we should have the right to have firearms so that people have a mechanism to overthrow the government they looked at me like I was insane (b/c why the hell would you want to overthrow the government? Are you a psycho?!)

> The FBI NSA CIA don't care about 99.99% of you. They never will. Can you guys stop thinking we're an election or two away from a fascist dystopia?

Sure, but for the people who are actually abused by the government it is extremely important. If everyone else just ignores the issue then it only ensures over time that more people's lives are ruined. And it's a pretty callous and inhumane stance to take to just not care about people's lives getting ruined simply because it's a minority of people.

Not to mention the fact that the impact of invasive surveillance on certain people is far more impactful than others. If the surveillance state is out there harassing the leaders of government accountability groups or civil rights protesters or EFF supporters that can have a huge negative effect on social and political outcomes.

I think you're reading something I didn't write. The point isn't to condoning these governments' behavior. I'm just pointing out that the fact that people are systematically altering their online behavior because the government has the ability to look at their activity just reeks of culturally induced inflated sense of self importance.

Hopefully that makes a bit more sense =)

>Can you guys stop thinking we're an election or two away from a fascist dystopia?

How long did it take Germany? Maybe 3 or 4 elections then.

Germany just lost the first world war, with a significant fraction (~20%, or 13M of 64M) of the population having directly experienced the horrors of that catastrophe. To add insult to injury, Germany in the interwar years was subject to incredibly punitive treaties and experienced significant hyperinflation. The U.S. is not subject to the same foreign influence, and our economy is stable enough to keep the masses from starving.

While we're certainly disillusioned here in the U.S., our bread and circuses aren't seriously threatened yet. Once that does appear imminent, I'll agree with these dire predictions.

It doesn't really matter how many elections you think it might take to transform into a fascist dystopia. If you say it will take at least N elections to get that far, there will be people out there that will argue that we are already N-1, N-2, or even N elections on the way down that path.

And until we have an election that signals a clear, unambiguous change in direction, the disillusionment will continue. The Bundy-style armed protesters will grow ever more convinced that time is running out, and those on the margins will view them less as crackpots and more as harbingers.

The "don't trust the feds; don't trust the cops" attitude is finally spreading to the median American. Our bread needs more butter, and our circuses need newer acts.

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