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Comment by futhey | Hacker News Reader

If you believe the government is an omnipotent institution then everything is a conspiracy, CIA, etc.

This used to be more true than today. So do we collectively perceive US institutions as weaker?

US institutions are more constrained by notions of due process and human rights than comparable Russian or Chinese institutions. Which is probably a good thing for Americans, in general.

Due process and “human rights” do not apply when the government has resolve or perceives the transgression to be beyond the pale. The law or constitution does not matter then as well. Just ask Eugene Debs. Or see Julian Assange. Or Korematsu. Or Joseph Nacchio who refused to violate the law and do illegal surveillance on US citizens for the government without a court order.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debs_v._United_States

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korematsu_v._United_States

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nacchio

> Eugene Debs. Or see Julian Assange. Or Korematsu. Or Joseph Nacchio

they didn't have billions to hire army of lawyers and make huge noise in media. Larry Page has those billions, so law and constitution actually protects him.

I don't think that's even a little bit true. Consider CIA "black sites" where prisoners are brutally tortured at the government's behest, nominally legal because we have contractors in some other country conduct the torture rather than our own agents. Or, widespread warrantless surveillance of American citizens that the head of the intelligence community will brazenly lie about to Congress without consequences.

If the government doesn't particularly care about an issue, like did Page rape children, then it will abide by the law. If the government does care, then the law doesn't matter. The government might take some efforts to conceal their crimes, but they don't even try very hard to do that, because it doesn't matter when their wrongdoing is exposed.

> I don't think that's even a little bit true.

Not even a little bit? The comparisons here are quite stark.

Russia's shadow government can just murder important people with no repercussions, they can jail whoever they want, and they commit plenty of warcrimes that are never recorded in such detail as the American ones.

China has internment camps for millions on it's soil as part of a campaign of cultural genocide, and it's government can also just disappear people if it wants to.

America is in no way perfect, or even objectively good or anything like that. But it is relatively better, just a little bit.

I think it's moreso the assumption/collective perception that foreign totalitarian governments are more nefarious in their actions towards their own people. Whether or not that's true is a different argument.

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