Hacker News Reader

I did; before, during, and after doing just that.

The burden for some may be too much for leaving the country to be a more viable option than staying and fighting for change.

Also some would argue that you can't run forever.

I'm not running any more than someone who moved from e.g. Detroit to Manhattan (something I did in 2006).

Nations are terrible, leaky abstractions (intended to make you feel proud of things you have not done and hate people you have not met) and their use is discouraged.

Fighting for change against cowardly authoritarians themselves armed with machine guns and drones (like the Department of Homeland Security) is pointless without your own weapons, and I do not wish to take up arms. Anything less is ineffective, as Snowden and al-Awlaki and Nacchio (and perhaps Obama) have shown us.

Running from the USA would mean you run to another country which probably has the same proportion (or worse) of people that mindcrime is complaining about.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com