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Comment by kmlx | Hacker News Reader

i was born in a communist country and lived thru the downfall of the USSR. the level of censorship and control that we have now is nothing compared to what the soviets were doing. that's why my impression of the paper is very negative. we're the generation that has the most access to information in history, we can travel like no other human generation travelled in history. and we have so much money and access that obesity is a thing. and yet people still prefer to believe in myths and propaganda. i wonder how will this pan out once we colonise other planets. i imagine the disconnect between planets will be much much greater than the disconnect we now have between countries/cities/etc

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The fact that kmix was downvoted indicates with the problem with a LOT of the youth today. I grew up in the 80's during the cold war. I remember the freedoms we "had" in the USA, and how people defected from the communist "utopia" of the USSR. When I was young I learned that our constitutional republic is based on the assumption that people in power are corrupt. And believed in quotes such as "When the government fears the people there is liberty, when the people fear the government there is tyranny", which gives a rather obvious interpretation to the second amendment. You can have the type of weapons that will cause the government to think twice before taking away our rights. Or "People who give up liberty for safety and security will have nor deserve neither" A deliberate nod to the fourth amendment. The war on drugs is due to completely ignoring fact that the federal government has enumerated powers. Probation in the 1920's was only legal because a constitutional amendment had to be made. We have things like "Enhanced Interrogation" and Prison Rape, a deliberate ignoring of the law against "cruel and unusual punishment" which is just accepted with out second thought today. I could go on and on, but it's become clear that something that my dad told me years ago is true. In a Democracy, you get the government you deserve.

i learned the hard way that it doesn't matter if it happened yesterday, people will 100% forget about it.

Stalin? Misunderstood. USSR killed more people than the nazis? Impossible.

I'm glad you're doing well but please, speak for your self. My apartment building is surrounded by people sleeping in doorways and alleys. They are not fat, and cannot travel the world or outer space.

That's what the Soviet citizens were saying about the citizens of the Western block too. The reality is, it's probably all the same. There are very subtle differences of course, which tend to be exaggerated.

having lived in those times i cannot believe that comments such as yours exist.

things were Horrible. i had relatives who were killed in the streets because they didn't aspire to the latest communist trend. and no travelling outside the country, or even outside your city in some circumstances. at least not without being part of the party.

what about food? queue for 2 hours for a pint of milk, and meat only once per month because the party doesn't want to be indebted to capitalist countries.

the famine and the pain that the communists brought is in a different world than the massive opportunities that we have today (and food, food is available everywhere now).

i guess this teaches us something very important: history needs to be taught since the first school years.

in order to picture what is coming (I think it'll have get worse before there's any real pushback) imagine that "evil soviets" from the USSR had the today's internet at their disposal.

Why are the "evil soviets" or "evil whoever" the only ones who have the internet at their disposal in these thought experiments? What about the good guys? Where are the John Adams and Lincoln's and Gandhi's? Are they on vacation?

Invoking fear and doubt in people's heads doesn't produce imagination, curiosity or empathy. And those are the tools that produce new solutions. What fear and doubt produces is defensiveness and mindless reactions.

I feel your pain, but I wouldn't underestimate our current situation. This is much much bigger than we think it is. Forget about fake news, election interferences or Russian propaganda. The reality is much more chaotic, complex and dreadful than that.

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