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Comment by onemoresoop | Hacker News Reader

Lies, deception, intimidation, what's next? Is this America of the 21st century?

Yes. 20th as well.

People seem to easily forget the American government reaction to the civil rights movement, anti-Vietnam War movement, and so much more. Violence, coercion, intimidation and breaking its own laws without consequence are the American modus operandi. How did fire-hosing, beating, jailing and murdering black people not prove this? How about tear gas and dogs being let loose on protesting students? The conduct of the FBI during the Red Scare? Iran Contra?

How about what Snowden revealed? Torture after 9-11?

A little time passes and people get back to calling anyone who thinks that a militarize police force isn’t a good thing un-American and kooky.

Yes, and it's a little... hypocritical? For a nation that is self-congratulatory to the point of nausea in it's rebellious origins, our institutions will repeatedly overextend themselves to prevent people from effecting positive disruptive change.

We need an “are we the baddies” moment.

yes.

Intimidation tactics like this is how these organizations operate in situations like this. It's been this way for a long time. Read up on the CIA and FBI getting in each other's way in the Hoover era. They pulled all sorts of crap like this. It's not every former administration has been standing in the way of behavior like this and now suddenly the floodgates are open and the departments in the executive branch feel empowered to oppress and intimidate anyone they see as a threat, they've been doing it all along. Maybe they're less subtle now, I dunno.

It's only now that we have a POTUS that everyone hates that people are taking notice how foul the rest of the executive branch really is.

Edit: I know that lunch hour in CA is exactly the wrong time to post something like this but please actually try and refute something I'm saying instead of mashing the downvote button like you're on Reddit. We're supposed to be able to have adult discussion around here.

Yeah, I'm not surprised by DHS at all here.

I do think it's less subtle as POTUS has made it very clear he has zero qualms with lying routinely about almost everything, and with strongarm tactics and intimidation. But the culture of secrecy, intimidation, and public misdirection has been there from the beginning, and not just by happenstance but by necessity. If you can convince yourself, as a member of DHS/CIA/FBI/etc. that whatever project you're working on (like, say, wiretapping MLK) is for National Security, then the ends justify the means.

>Edit: I know that lunch hour in CA is exactly the wrong time to post something like this but please actually try and refute something I'm saying instead of mashing the downvote button like you're on Reddit. We're supposed to be able to have adult discussion around here.

Not sure why you are sneering at CA. Californians are just as American as the rest of the country, and in this case the issue at hand was in California.

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