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Comment by elzbardico | Hacker News Reader

Well that's just one of lesser things that happens for a paranoid society that trades freedom and privacy for what the oppression apparatus calls security.

You don't have security, just a police-state, and to add insult to injury besides having less freedom now you also have less security too.

And yes, let's pretend that only China, Iran and Russia are police states, let's keep singing star spangled banner while we happily slip through this slope towards the gulags.

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>let's keep singing star spangled banner while we happily slip through this slope towards the gulags

You had a point until "gulags." You honestly think we're on the verge of becoming a Stalinist state that imprisons and murders political dissidents by the millions?

Maybe that's a tad alarmist?

I don't think so, America has a massive amount of political unrest. Both parties seem to adore violence on their political enemies these days, and most Americans think civil war is on the way.

>most Americans think civil war is on the way

Source?

Personally, if we survived the 60’s/70’s, I think we can survive this. They literally murdered college students in front of the world.

I’m also not sure how any of this translates into Stalin-era gulags. People throw that term around too lightly, like “nazi.” If you’ve actually studied any Russian/Soviet history you should know how insane those were, even for an era with rampant fascism.

Absolutely correct.

It seems in vogue to use words without understanding the actual meanings. Most people haven't read history and speak, loudly, of that which they don't know.

Right; I think at worst we're managing to rewind ourselves to the `90s, at this point. I think a lot of people don't remember how much social change there was starting in the early `00s through the early `10s. I'm not pleased with the retrogression; I think Project Red Map has really uncovered a large scale hack/flaw in the US electorate that needs to be fixed quickly, but the political situation is certainly nothing like the `60s/`70s.

My parents were activists in the 60s, and my grandparents were activists in the 20s & 30s. My parents mostly feared being beaten, with a background fear of being shot at. My grandparents feared being disappeared along with retribution to their extended family, friends, and neighborhoods.

Re: your grandparents, I really don't think people appreciate how easy it was to cross the government with your speech - especially in wartime - prior to late 20th century.

https://thehill.com/homenews/news/467143-voters-believe-us-t...

The advent of increased population, social media, technology, and major american hyper polarization make the current times very different than the 60s/70s.

> Both parties seem to adore violence on their political enemies these days

Let's stop with the both sides are the same bit, m'kay? Plenty to criticize on the left but please stick to facts.

I welcome valid examples that prove me wrong. The concern is legitimate, not hyperbole.

And as far as Civil War goes, I'd posit that it's already begun.

Well I think many of welcome valid sources showing that “most Americans think civil war is on the way.”

If a civil war has “already begun,” I guess I live somewhere else, because I don’t hear any gun shots. Frankly it feels a lot calmer around here than it did a year or two ago.

Just as we're no longer using muskets and cavalry, the method of warfare has changed in other ways. Perhaps meld in aspects of The Cold War as well.

A key change this time is not to split apart, but to simply grab all the marbles and declare the game to be over. I wish I could be sanguine about this and would love to be proven wrong, but it's looking grim.

This is what we call an hyperbole.

Pretty over-the-top example if you ask me

This is sort of a dodge, isn't it? The question wasn't, what rhetorical device are you employing? It's, do you truly believe the situation is as extreme as you imply? If the answer is "no", then there's an implied invitation to lay out what you actually believe. If the answer is "yes", there's an implied request to justify why you think that way.

Saying 'this is what we call hyperbole' seems to imply, 'my ideas stand so well on their own, I don't need to respond to your criticism; the problem is not with my ideas or how I've expressed them, it is with your inability to recognize a particular rhetorical device.' Which is both patronizing and wrong. Your use of hyperbole was recognized and is being interrogated.

You're under no obligation to respond to that challenge, no one here has a right to your time, but if you're going to, it would be more productive for everyone if you did so in good faith.

> Saying 'this is what we call hyperbole' seems to imply, 'my ideas stand so well on their own, I don't need to respond to your criticism; the problem is not with my ideas or how I've expressed them, it is with your inability to recognize a particular rhetorical device.'

Well. now this is a strawman.

It certainly isn't a strawman, it's how I interpreted your statement. I continue to believe that it is what you intended, but feel free to correct me; I'm listening. If you're truly being misinterpreted as often as you seem to imply, consider communicating more plainly without sarcasm and hyperbole. I personally find them to be poor tools for communication in general and on the internet especially.

Don't forget that we very nearly had a successful coup, which would have spelled the end of American democracy. Are we on the verge of becoming a Stalinist state? No, not really. Could it happen? Absolutely, and we need to recognize that possibility to avoid becoming the next one.

Please forget whatever idea you came up with. America was never under a coup attempt. Hard to even attempt to call it a coup without weapons. Don't worry America is safe from farmers rallying at the white house.

Maybe they're referring to the attempts to invalidate the 2020 election? No weapons, but what is a better word for a coordinated attempt to undermine the government?

How about 'attempt to undermine the government'? That is much more accurate than coup.

Words have meanings, and using the words inaccurate/the wrong meanings is saying one thing but meaning another, and the word for that is lying.

This is the same verbal gymnastics confederate sympathizers use when trying to say that the civil war was about "states rights." All you have to do is follow the logic to its conclusion.

What was the civil war about? States rights. What rights, specifically? The right of states to allow their citizens to practice slavery. Therefore, the civil war was about slavery.

What was jan 6 about? It was about an attempt to undermine the government. An attempt to undermine what, specifically? The election process. Why did they seek to undermine the election process? So that the mob could extra-judicially install a leader of their preference. Another word for this is coup d'etat.

I can see where you're coming from.

AFAIK, in common use the word coup involves the military taking control of the government.

> AFAIK, in common use the word coup involves the military taking control of the government.

That is one common kind of coup, but distinguished from the broader category. That's why the phrase “military coup” exists to distinguish the kind of coup where the military (or some part of it) is the main actor in seizing control outside of normal bounds.

You’re using a much more narrow definition of what a coup d’état means.

> The sudden overthrow of a government by a usually small group of persons in or previously in positions of authority.

Or to use Wikipedia’s definition

> A coup d'état (French for "blow of state"), often shortened to coup in English (also known as an overthrow), is a seizure and removal of a government and its powers. Typically, it is an illegal seizure of power by a political faction, rebel group, military, or a dictator. Many scholars consider a coup successful when the usurpers seize and hold power for at least seven days.

Yes, the military can be involved in a coup, but the essential definition does not require their involvement. Different terms might be applied if the military is involved, and based on whether or not the military is the primary driver (as in Myanmar) or is backing one side.

>What was jan 6 about?

Jan 6th was about a small number of ignorant people who bought into a bunch of lies. A protest that got out of control. One that was far, far less violent, with far fewer casualties than dozens of protests that happened around the country the prior year. All mobs are bad, all riots are bad. Unfortunately different partisans have been trying to blow up the implications of one riot while downplaying all the others.

> All mobs are bad, all riots are bad.

Yet the GOP is sidelining and smearing the few among them who actually want to hold the insurrectionists accountable.

Insurrection is an absurdly inaccurate and hyperbolic term to refer to this crowd of misfits and deluded group of people. If you tried to destroy the planet by jumping up and down nobody intelligent would describe your antics as attempted planetary destruction no matter how devout your intent.

A mob that left multiple people dead and did widespread property damage/theft in an effort to overturn a democratic election after being egged on by the outgoing President, calling to hang the Vice President and “stop the steal,” rises to the level of insurrection. They literally attacked the Capitol, they were barely held off from getting their hands on Congress.

If they were able to successfully break into that room while Congress was still in there, what do you think would’ve happened? They would’ve invited them over for tea?

I don’t like engaging in speculation but I think it’s pretty obvious we would’ve had more casualties.

People involved have already been charged with seditious conspiracy. Sympathizers were found among the Capitol Police, members of the government openly supported a coup. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas may either be impeached or have to resign over his wife's pro-insurrectionist texts to Trump's chief of staff. There were plans. There were conspiracies. We have the receipts.

And stuff is still coming out about Trump. A mysterious seven hour gap in the White House communications logs. A Federal judge ruling that it's "more likely than not" that Trump "corruptly attempted to obstruct Congress" attempting to overturn the election results. He called it a "coup in search of a legal theory." Yes, that's not "beyond a reasonable doubt," but it's also not nothing.

You're right that it was far less violent, and had far fewer casualties, but it wasn't just a riot, nor were there just a small number of ignorant people involved. To think that at this point, or to dismiss all concerns as partisan hyperbole, is kind of ridiculous.

It was a little more than some randos protesting. That was a sideshow. There were actual members of our government trying to overturn election results.

> How about 'attempt to undermine the government'? That is much more accurate than coup.

No, attempted coup (specifically, attempted self-coup) is much more accurate.

> Words have meanings

Yes, they do. And the precise political science terms for the coordinated attempts by the 45th President and his allies to extend his powers beyond their lawful duration by extralegal means is “self-coup” or “auto-coup” (in the original French, “autogolpe”), which is a form of coup carried out by or on behalf of the existing leader.

> and using the words inaccurate/the wrong meanings is saying one thing but meaning another, and the word for that is lying.

Yes, that is exactly what you are doing when you explicitly refuse to use the correct term in attempt to minimize the act.

Just because it wasn't a very good or well organised coup attempt doesn't mean it wasn't a coup attempt.

The 'without weapons' implies it wasn't violent, which seems a stretch to me when a police officer was beaten to death and plenty of others were injured

First I'm hearing of this, do you have a source about the officer being beaten to death?

They're probably referring to this: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/08/us/brian-sicknick-police-...

oh looks like fake news, even the ny times article says.

"New information has emerged regarding the death of the Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick that questions the initial cause of his death provided by officials close to the Capitol Police."

Wikipedia says

"The cause of Sicknick's death was first thought to be from injuries, but months later the medical examiner reported there were none."

"The District of Columbia chief medical examiner found that Sicknick had died from stroke, classifying his death as natural"

The original commenter said some officer was beaten to death. Maybe another officer, or were they just mistaken?

>The 'without weapons' implies it wasn't violent

There is no such implication at all. "Without weapons" means "without weapons". The vast majority of people at that riot were gun owners, and none of them were armed or fired a shot. I can assure you, people who own guns and are committed to violently overthrowing the government bring those guns and shoot them. For evidence see any of the numerous coups that occur in countries around the world.

That’s a lot of talk about guns considering - which you pointed out - there weren’t guns (that we know of) used by the insurrectionists.

Do you acknowledge it was violent?

Of course it was violent, all riots are violent by definition. It is absurd hyperbole to call this an insurrection just like it would have been absurd to call the far more violent riots during the Trump inauguration an insurrection.

I was personally at trump’s inauguration filming the protests and I can assure you they were not nearly as destructive as the January 6th insurrectionists trying to overturn an election. A few smashed windows and some flipped over trashcans is not a mob attacking the capitol chanting “HANG MIKE PENCE.”

>when a police officer was beaten to death

Not single LEO was beaten to death on Jan 6th. You are literally spreading misinformation and fake news lol. SCP Officer Brian Sicknick died after having two strokes aka natural causes.

>America was never under a coup attempt

Oh come now. "Hang Mike Pence." "Stop the steal." The former president calling election officials telling them to "find the votes." I don't care what your politics are, what we saw this last election was like nothing we've ever seen before in this country. It was a failed attempt to overturn a democratic election on the basis of a lie.

From your words, it seems that history rewriting is in full swing right now.

An attempt to overturn the results of the election? Yes. A coup? Not really; doesn't fit the definition, though it was far closer than I thought I would ever see. "Very nearly successful"? No.

A failed coup, since "overturn the results of the election" is pretty much what we may call a coup.

Hmm. I went to dictionary.com, looked up coup d'état, and it said:

> a sudden and decisive action in politics, especially one resulting in a change of government illegally or by force.

So, I stand corrected. It does meet the definition of "attempted coup".

Yes, many people are under the impression that a coup is only the result of military or generalized revolt. In fact most modern coups are staged as a political mechanism to avoid the results of the democratic norm.

We'll get our own flavor of gulags. The USA already has a pretty nasty and oppressive prison system. We have pro-authoritarian politicians in office, in the police forces, and now throughout the court system. So it doesn't seem alarmist to me.

I'm pretty sure the police could get away with murdering political rivals right now. But a few key court decisions are all we need to formalize that capability for the next 100 or so years.

> "I wanted to tell everyone that there is a cancer within the government and when I tried to weed it out, I got fired," Gilmore wrote. "It was just easier for government management to get rid of me rather than to deal with the underlying issue."

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2022/03/13/classified-us...

Yet again I find myself in between rather detached perspectives. I agree with you regarding the trajectory because it is clear as day by all objective measures where this is all heading, yet I am left befuddled by your parroting of tropes about the “pretty nasty and oppressive prison system” that the very people are pushing who are leading us to the state where an equivalent of gulags will be created.

The American prisons are not full of thought criminals just because you are being denied all the footage and proof of the violent crimes the people in US prisons commit, constantly. I realize that most people live in a negative bubble, where they have no idea what is happening because the truth has been withheld from them, but that does not change the reality most people are at least unwittingly ignorant of.

But yes, the gulag system actually already exists in America, and the political prisoners in the USA right now already know that. Assange is also in that gulag system and can probably be considered the first, Prisoner #1 of the American Empire’s Gulag Equivalent System, even though it is on foreign soil.

There are tons of reports of officers being disciplined punished or jailed for using a gun when the other person was violently resisting arrest.

Police across the country are letting criminals run rampant due to fear of prosecution for doing their job.

>Police across the country are letting criminals run rampant due to fear of prosecution for doing their job.

Police are "letting criminals run rampant" because they throw tantrums the moment money or accountability is discussed. Just watch how they behave the moment a city even whispers "pension" despite the fact that police pensions are crushing city budgets across the nation.

https://www.bridgemi.com/michigan-government/pension-costs-b...

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-pensions-policeandfir...

https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-me-pension-squeeze/

> Police are "letting criminals run rampant" because they throw tantrums the moment money or accountability is discussed. Just watch how they behave the moment a city even whispers "pension" despite the fact that police pensions are crushing city budgets across the nation.

What? I see no-one throwing 'tantrums' in the articles you linked. I see some people trying to keep the pensions they have earned. Do you expect ordinary Americans to jump to take a pension cut after working all their lives?

And this in the hope that magically that money will go to the right places and reduce crime?

Where that money goes is not what’s up for debate.

We have conservatives non-stop calling for “reduced spending” and “tightening the belt” who are all too happy to cut everything they feel “their people” don’t need, but the big ticket items - military, pensions, etc. - are arbitrarily sacrosanct. Well, it’s not actually arbitrary. It’s because they want to hurt “the right people.”

Reduced spending will never be fair to the people on the receiving end.

America elected Trump and then Congress knowingly rejected evidence that he colluded with Putin to defraud voters and steal the election. He then occupied that office for four years, while additional evidence continued to mount against the increasingly obviousness of Russian interference.

Not only did a sitting President betray people and killed millions with anti-masker/anti-vaccine rhetoric, he did so to aid a foreign country that is known for murdering political dissidents, and did so during WW2, during the Cold War, and the post-Soviet era that exists today; but also our Congress, most of those still occupying those seats today, aided and abetted him. What Trump and his Congress did is terrorism without being formally charged with it, and is hardly any different than the pre-Stalin era of Soviet Russia and the pre-Kristallnacht era of the Nazi occupation of Germany.

So, please, I'd like you to tell me why you think people shouldn't be seriously alarmed? You sound like all the deniers in the history books: "Oh, the Nazis wouldn't kill Jews and political dissidents", "Oh, Stalin wouldn't (also) kill Jews and political dissidents", "Oh, Chairman Mao wouldn't just starve tens of millions to gratify his own ego". People keep saying this, it keeps not being true.

History is a goddamned broken record.

Congress knowingly rejected evidence that he colluded with Putin to defraud voters and steal the election.

You shouldn’t let your personal animosity towards Trump lead to believing misinformation.

Mueller finds no collusion with Russia, leaves obstruction question open

https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/aba-news-archives/2...

You should take this opportunity to consider what other things you know to be true about Trump may also be misinformation.

The Washington Post corrects, removes parts of two stories regarding the Steele dossier

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/media-washing...

It’s also looking like some of the Bidens are going to jail for what they were accusing Trump.

The entire Trump Russia gate was to divert attention from what Hillary / Biden were doing.

Oh a laptop was found with solid evidence showing collusion between the Bidens and various countries. Well naturally the same response is to sensor anyone that wants to talk about it and to impeach Trump.

https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/03/mainstream-media-outle...

Oh please, no one is going to jail. This idea that someone is going to jail is just a boogeyman to create votes come election time.

> You shouldn’t let your personal animosity towards Trump lead to believing misinformation.

I don't have to. I witnessed several Republican congressmembers go out of their way to announce that no matter what evidence presented is, they had already decided to ignore it and vote against the removal of Trump from office.

Now, I can't tell you why they decided to announce their criminal enterprise shortly before enacting it, but a quick Google tells me their names are Cindy Hyde-Smith, Roger Wicker, Thom Tillis, Rob Portman, James Inhofe, Mike Rounds, and Jerry Moran.

> Mueller finds no collusion with Russia, leaves obstruction question open

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report is a well cited article.

"On March 27, 2019, Mueller reportedly wrote to Barr in a letter, as stated in the New York Times "expressing his and his team's concerns that the attorney general had inadequately portrayed their conclusions".[226] This was first reported on April 30, 2019. Mueller thought that the Barr letter "did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance" of the findings of the special counsel investigation that he led.[227] "There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation". Mueller also requested Barr release the Mueller report's introductions and executive summaries.[228][229]"

What you linked to covers Barr's misleading summary of the Muller report.

> The Washington Post corrects, removes parts of two stories regarding the Steele dossier

Again, Wikipedia has a well cited article on the subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steele_dossier

It is well-known that nowhere in the mueller report does he exonerate the president. He leaves it to Congress to determine how to move forward. He explicitly wrote that his investigation did not find him innocent.

I'd encourage you to consider that Democrats and Republicans work in parallel as much as they'd like you to think otherwise to coerce Americans into subscribing to a two-party system. It will continue as long as people believe that if they don't subscribe to it that Democracy will fail and the only thing preventing it from happening is to vote for one of the two-party candidates that fits their propaganda news network approved message.

Also, it is funny how when it comes to politics Republicans have moved so far right that now center-right is considered the left party.

You say "Democrats and Republicans work in parallel". And then you say "Republicans have moved so far right". Which is it?

Also, some Republicans have moved far right. Some Democrats have moved pretty far left, too. I will admit that more Republicans moved than Democrats. But both parties have sections near the center, and both have extreme parts. And both are having trouble maintaining unity in the face of that tension.

The GOP has been sidelining or primarying out the few they still have near the center tbh.

Don't get me wrong, I agree with this.

Many Democrats also decided to join the Putin-backed coup attempt, and also voted to not impeach during one or both trials. Many Democrats also tried to claim Hunter Biden, while working for a natural gas company in Ukraine, somehow was up to something and using his dad's appointment as VP for something.

Funny how Biden became President, and now Russia is invading Ukraine to maintain their stranglehold on Europe's energy supply, and all the pro-Russian bot accounts on Twitter and Facebook that were repeating the "Hunter's Laptop" and "But Her Emails" stories to divide and conquer, suddenly vanished.

I am a socialist, and what both parties do is disgusting, and, honestly, anti-American. Our government has been rapidly degrading my entire lifetime, and the only reasonable action is to ring the alarm bell and hope other people wake up and start fighting the fascism that is threatening to destroy our nation.

>Funny how Biden became President, and now Russia is invading Ukraine to maintain their stranglehold on Europe's energy supply, and all the pro-Russian bot accounts on Twitter and Facebook that were repeating the "Hunter's Laptop" and "But Her Emails" stories to divide and conquer, suddenly vanished.

It's not "funny." It makes complete sense. Services for .ru accounts are being suspended around the world.

Just letting you know that 'funny' in this sense is sarcasm and they are fully aware of what you just stated.

I understood how they used funny, but we drew different conclusions. They're alluding to a conspiracy.

The funny thing about Hunter Biden is that it was genteel corruption, in that he brought nothing to his role but a family connection. But the attention about it was also corrupt -- there was no interest in "how do we have less of this", but only about smearing a rival.

The sad thing is that after the Trumps any lesser level of nepotism is going to be acceptable.

There's many sad things. Partisanship is destroying this country; we should be united in being against corruption even if it's one of our own, so to speak.

Democrats hold their own accountable for more than Republicans, even if it isn’t enough (it isn’t). The GOP couldn’t even kick Roy Moore to the curb.

Comparatively speaking, yes. There's definitely opportunities for improvement there.

But I'm vexed that it's not even possible to talk about these things here in a policy and goals context because the fucking tribalism is out of control. I can haz such disappoint.

The right has moved further right, and the left has moved further left.

Moreover, the left has moved further left than the right has moved right. https://jabberwocking.com/if-you-hate-the-culture-wars-blame...

I see your downvotes brother, and feel your pain.

The tribalism of politics is fierce, and even a forum with as much collective intelligence as HN is not immune from that force.

We should be able to discuss policy and actions on their own merits without it being taken as a personal affront. I wish I could find the magical incantation that would allow that dialog to manifest.

Total US death count from Covid is up to 975k according to the CDC[1].

[1] https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#datatracker-home

There are influential media personalities calling for the jailing people who aren't towing the line on the war drum beat on ukraine/russia... that any narrative deviation is treasonous and thus a jailable offense. Yeah, so what if our gulags have rainbow flags and black fists murals.

> There are influential media personalities calling for the jailing people who aren't towing the line on the war drum beat on ukraine/russia

Source on these influential media personalities? I assume they're not fringe in any way, since you called them "influential".

https://twitter.com/KeithOlbermann/status/150346748957292134...

It is worth pointing out that the American penal system is already distressingly close to the scope of the gulag system in Stalinist Russia. The gulag system hit a high of 1.5m prisoners in the 1940s out of a population of 168m (pre war), or about 0.89%. America’s prison population peaked in 2009 at an estimated 0.754%. If you include parole that shoots up to 3.1%, but I’m not sure how to compare that to the gulag system

Wildly different death tolls though. Our best estimate is that the gulag system had an 8.88% death rate, with that varying wildly on a year by year basis. Meanwhile the US prison system as of 2018 kills 344 per 100,000, or .344%. But unfortunately those numbers are getting worse, not better. I think the difference here is less about our system being more humane, and more the fact that food and antibiotics are cheap. Heck, just look at how the prison system responded to covid.

I honestly think we’re a lot closer to a gulag system than people think. We’ve already built the majority of the machinery to actually implement such a system, and politically making the system harsher and less humane is very popular. There is also a bipartisan consensus that what we need is to fund the system even more. All that we’re missing is the jump to directly imprisoning political opponents, and we’ve already seen some calls for that although it isn’t quite mainstream yet.

>It is worth pointing out that the American penal system is already distressingly close to the scope of the gulag system in Stalinist Russia

What do you know about the gulag system? Serious question, not baiting or anything. What are the broad strokes of what you understand to be "The Gulags"? Because like you, I am VERY concerned with the US penal system, but to compare the two is...a stretch for me.

There's more than one road to hell.

All or nothing nihilism, that makes no major distinction between the US & china, Russia and Iran is also a road to totalitarian hell. It's a favoured rhetoric style if Putin and many reactionary extremists.

Spotify records all the songs I listen to. Last week 10 songs. This week 100. Next week 200. The week after? PRISON IN A FROZEN WASTE! I suffer endlessly from the data they have collected. Cold bits are thrown upon me every morning; I've lost my toes to frostbyte due to data in cold storage; I have made friends, nay fellow sufferers, in the bitcoin mines, as we hash out issues together.

If only I could have seen this last week. L'horreur! L'horreur!

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