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Comment by thanatropism | Hacker News Reader

This is one of the better side-effects of Trump.

We wouldn´t be having this conversation if Hillary or Bernie had used these powerful resources to tilt the odds and get elected.

Because almost no one with a platform likes Trump, it gets exposed. If this happened under Obama (like, uh, Assange and Snowden and Manning and massive data centers in Utah happened), it would be completely swept under the rug in favor of a feel-good progress narrative that's completely impossible in current conditions.

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Maybe this was Thiel's true play: a shit government is a watched government, a hostilized-against government, a true Libertarian's government.

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"massive data centers in Utah" was absolutely a Bush Administration thing.

If Obama didn't stop it, it was due to the toxic political climate and congressional domination by TeaParty/GOP. The current Democratic Party lineup, and over the past 15 years, has also been shifted pretty far to the right, but that has been a result of the effort by the extreme right since the Clinton presidency; since Newt Gingrich, and FoxNews to slant the electorate to the right.

I doubt that most Republicans or any Democrats would have supported that kind of horrible breach of the 4th Amendment in the 1990's or 80's. And trying to hang that around Obama's neck is ridiculously dishonest.

It was within Obama's reach to break the mold and pardon Snowden. That kind of sticking-his-neck-out could have been era-defining.

Until Democrats face up to the fact they are now the party of the spies and advertisers they will continue to bumble into this.

Obama absolutely expanded the surveillance state to levels Bush II could only dream of.

I'm not sure I agree that it would be swept under the rug, seeing that you can mention those earlier issues without explaining them. Outrage and discussion occurred the same way they are now, and just like in those cases, not much is going to happen concerning facebook and its use of personal data. What I'm saying is that your assertion that it has anything to do with progressive/conservative narrative is false, because the result is going to be the same.

So Thiel is playing 5d chess too? How about this: He has shitty political opinions and enough money to put them into action.

Your wishful thinking is just delusional.

It's not really 5D chess. Republicans have been saying "starve the lion" (e.g. taking huge deficits and then proposing budget cuts) since Reagan. I wouldn't be surprised if Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom" (which I never read, I just know the blurb) proposes this meta-strategy en passant somewhere.

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