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Comment by anigbrowl | Hacker News Reader

This sort of political courage is sorely lacking nowadays. Instead we get ersatz versions of it, where lawmakers claim ignorance of or incompetence to assess facts already in the public sphere, while damning their political opponents on the basis of documents whose existence is merely rumored by unspecified individuals whose whereabouts have been unknown for years.

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The Obama Administration absolutely persecuted the shit out of any and all whistleblowers and journalism sources. His use of the Espionage Act was absolutely unprecedented.

If you think people lack courage, you don't have to look far as to why.

Don't have to look far as to why indeed.

Reading Pegasus[0] about Nso groups 0 click exploits used against any dissident journalists in regimes like Morocco, saudi arabia, (was on khashoggi and his partners phones), mexico, france, everywhere. the only thing protecting any of us is those with enough money to purchase software like pegasus don't deem us worthy of the license fee.

Soon as anyone rises above that fee your phone is basically live reporting to anyone with enough money. Doesn't lead to a restful nights sleep that book. They fricken built a turing machine out of pdf interpreter components to escape the encapsulation/vm for incoming files.[1]

[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59808055

[1] https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2021/12/a-deep-dive-i...

Exactly. Now the system essentially filters out all the honest and/or courageous candidates before they even get to the primaries. Any candidate you hear about is almost certainly a compromised individual who can be 100% controlled by the corporate elite. The 'evil puppet' selection process is so pervasive, it has spread beyond government and through many large companies. I think many of us have experienced this. If you're an honest person, you will be punished for it. On the other hand, if you show that you're a cheater and a liar, you will be rewarded and will progress through the system.

I remember several moments in my career when a boss or an investor literally tested me to see if I was a cheater. I suspect I failed these tests and it's why I wasn't promoted and why I didn't receive funding.

It used to be that elite status was acquired through bravery, intelligence and integrity, but these days, not only are elites not self-made, they are actually selected for having the exact opposite characteristics.

I wouldn’t mythologize the elites of the past too much. FDR’s grandfather made his fortune selling opium in China.

Ok so in this case he was not a moral person but at least it sounds like he may have had the other two characteristics.

I think a major difference between now and then is that the world was a far more adverse and chaotic place for many reasons; people died frequently from all sorts of diseases, there were more wars and invasions, traveling to other countries was potentially life-threatening (e.g. you could be killed by the natives or succumb to previously unknown threats like exotic diseases, spiders, snakes, lions, tigers, poisonous plants, etc... Not to mention the substantial difficulties involved in communicating with locals in a foreign language). There really wasn't any support or fallback if one's plans failed; you would just die, no second chances.

The elite of today couldn't hold a candle to those who came before them. Today, they're mostly a bunch of spoiled brats who inherited a lot of wealth and never faced any real adversity in their lives (which wasn't of their own making to begin with)...

> FDR’s grandfather made his fortune selling opium in China.

Horrible as that sounds, think about it from the other side's perspective. The one-way trade of silver was putting huge strain on the global economy. Opium was the _only_ thing people in China would buy with silver (illegally, obviously). They didn't have alternatives as China wouldn't circulate silver back out of the country. What Warren Delano was doing was in most nations' interest at the time.

Heavy trade imbalances almost invariably lead to wars throughout history.

So is the current West living in a powder-keg? Our consumer economy relies on heavy trade imbalances.

They tend to be evened out in aggregate with different imports/exports. Also we're not talking an apples to apples comparison here.

Back then economies were extremely dependent on silver for international trade and only so much of it came from so many places every year. Trade depended on recirculation of silver.

The closest you could get to that today would be one country hoarding the shit out of US dollars and somehow the US being unable to print more.

If you look back to the 90s/00s when the US was heavily importing from China and China had no local buying power, the trade imbalance was combatted by the US Treasury creating debt instruments for exclusive buying by China. This diplomatic/economic tool benefited both sides at the time.

This kind of depends on US Dollar hegemony, doesn't it? What happens if the Dollar loses prominence?

>I remember several […]

Same thing happened to me with my boss literally winking sarcastically during a critical argument.

I was enraged to realize that this was how he operated (no wonder he was always heavy into office politics).

This experience reminded me of the opening scene in the movie Training Day when Denzel tested Ethan after they found money under the floor.

It's not binary: bosses and investors want to know who will obey the rules as you see them for a variety of reasons. They'll fund / promote based on the needs of the projects you will likely face.

>It used to be that elite status was acquired through bravery, intelligence and integrity

It used to be that people tried to manipulate public perception to appear brave, intelligent, ...

Very little has actually changed about the quality of politicians in the US. People are just prone to forgetting the bad. Not that long ago - the 1970s - the south was overflowing with ignorant, racist politicians that were outright fans of the KKK and aggressively pro segregation. And so on it goes if you keep going backwards in time.

What has primarily changed is the quantity of levers and how massive the levers are at their disposal. The surface area of potential corruption has radically expanded in the US over the post WW2 era (part of that expansion of power was the military industrial complex and the superpower bureaucracy that went along with it). The larger and more complex the government, the more laws it has on the books to utilize, the greater the corruption, inevitably.

Oh, and now every idiot has easy access to an epic scale bullhorn via social media. That's amplifying the stupid, which would not have received much press time or public discourse time in past generations.

Power corrupts with 99% of the people.

I might catch heat for this, but I disagree. I am an investigative reporter who covers law enforcement and crime. While I have uncovered and exposed serious wrongdoing, my general experience is that an overwhelming majority of those in power are decent human beings who are trying their best to improve the communities they serve.

I often receive tips from police officers regarding what they perceive to be misconduct. I always investigate those tips.

Sometimes, it's bad. And sometimes it's really bad. But oftentimes, it turns out that everything was fine, and the tipster didn't have all the information necessary to understand what was happening. I'd be happy to share an example if you'd like.

I am not an apologist for bad actors. I have exposed them and I am will continue to do so. But I have to acknowledge my full experience. I interact with government officials and agencies every day, and the more insight I have into government, the more confident I am that power does not corrupt nearly as much as some people think.

I think the more accurate way to interpret that proverb is: The pursuit of power corrupts.

It's a warning that if your goal is having power and nothing else then you are susceptible to corruption. It's also a warning that having power tends to reveal how useful it is and thus tempt you to schedule more of it.

I think it's more likely to be the case that only the corrupted are given any power so it is an inversion of cause and effect. The idea that power corrupts is probably just a narrative to demoralize people so that they don't bother revolting... No point changing the system because, look, whoever you give power to will become corrupted and it will all have been pointless. It's nonsense. If it were the case, then the degree of corruption would be proportional to the degree of power held by various governments... Yet clearly it is not.

What probably happens though is that there are some very corrupt people in power who attentively watch any political movement and they take steps to corrupt them by infiltrating them up with corrupt individuals under their control... That way when these political movements reach their climaxes, they have completely deviated from their original course and have become totally ineffective as a political tool for change.

I think that's oversimplification. The chase for power and then continued effort to hold one might, but there are very few cases where some perfectly honest individual is suddenly given massive amount of power.

Even inheritance can be argued as the kid was most likely raised by corrupted individual in the first place.

Ellsberg initially stood to spend the rest of his life in prison, with the max penalty for what he was charged with of being 115 years. And with something this big, the possibility of him never even making it to trial would certainly have crossed his mind. And he had no way of really knowing how any of this would work out. Courage is about doing something because it's right, in spite of potentially severe consequences. Without that latter component, you're just being a decent human being.

Ellsberg himself has commented on this extensively as well. Wiki [1] mentions moment where he finally decided to do it:

--------------

[Ellsberg] experienced an epiphany attending a War Resisters League conference at Haverford College in August 1969, listening to a speech given by a draft resister named Randy Kehler, who said he was "very excited" that he would soon be able to join his friends in prison.[12]

Ellsberg described his reaction: And he said this very calmly. I hadn't known that he was about to be sentenced for draft resistance. It hit me as a total surprise and shock, because I heard his words in the midst of actually feeling proud of my country listening to him. And then I heard he was going to prison. It wasn't what he said exactly that changed my worldview. It was the example he was setting with his life. How his words in general showed that he was a stellar American, and that he was going to jail as a very deliberate choice – because he thought it was the right thing to do. There was no question in my mind that my government was involved in an unjust war that was going to continue and get larger. Thousands of young men were dying each year. I left the auditorium and found a deserted men's room. I sat on the floor and cried for over an hour, just sobbing. The only time in my life I've reacted to something like that.[citation needed]

Decades later, reflecting on Kehler's decision, Ellsberg said: Randy Kehler never thought his going to prison would end the war. If I hadn't met Randy Kehler it wouldn't have occurred to me to copy [the Pentagon Papers]. His actions spoke to me as no mere words would have done. He put the right question in my mind at the right time.

--------------

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ellsberg#Disaffection_w...

I'd like to learn more. Sources I can refer to?

The New Yorker has a short overview[1]. The ACLU has a more complete list[2]. The American Prospect and Cato Institute have some articles if you search around, but I'm not a huge fan of their work.

1: https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/obama-leaves-tr... 2: https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/leak-prosecutions-obam...

Binging “obama whistleblower crackdown” returns some pretty conservative leaning and conspiracy looking websites.

The top hits for 'Obama whistleblowers' for me are from Time, Politico, The New Yorker and The Nation. I don't see a conservative-leaning site (Cato) until the middle of the third page of results...

Even The Atlantic and HuffPo come up higher.

When progressive documentarians Brave New Films even saw fit to make a documentary film about the issue (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Whistleblowers:_Free_Pr...), you know the situation is dire.

Well, we all get different results. Here's my top three:

Obama's Crackdown on Whistleblowers | The Nation https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/obamas-crackdown-w...

Obama's War on Whistleblowers - CounterPunch.org counterpunch.org

Obama’s Plan to Crack Down on Whistleblowers Leaked https://truthout.org/articles/obamas-plan-to...

Obama’s Legacy: A Historic War On Whistleblowers - LI … https://www.longislandpress.com/2017/01/14/obamas...

it's really interesting where this comes from, and why this seems to some such an easy "gotcha".

first off, that these come up doesn't mean they're wrong, though it does likely mean they're shallow.

more deeply, this is an old, well-known dynamic often decried by the left. the left will dig deeper into often pretty obvious social dysfunctions and pioneer a social critique, analyzing the political and economic structures and systems that underpin it, and turn it into a challenge to existing authorities. This challenge is complicated, it hinges on teaching you political economy first, before it can even start to tell you what the systemic problem actually is. but it touches on real problems people feel every day.

The conservatives make a media thing out of it. Now, mass media, forever, has made their money by selling your prejudices back to you; from entertainment to news, they all basically work this way. Conservatives work this way as well (making for that sweet synergy between the two): it takes a run-down, stripped-down, dumbed-down version of the criticism, strips all political economy analysis from it (can't have them blame capitalism!), frinds some easy scarecrow figures - Gates, Soros, whoever (not that they're not horrible people, but that's not the point really), ascribes "debauchery and corruption" to them (because then the SYSTEM is fine).

In the end, when people then google the problems, they find these easy stories, which makes them associate the identification of the problem with these dumbed-down assaults. Then even mentioning the problem becomes that.

I agree that the "Obama war on whistleblowers" is shallow, and that is a more accurate statement of what I was trying to convey. A "red-meat" "feels good to hate" story than any actual news.

The same happens in reverse:

Conservatives will document how a lack of principles means that a mechanism in society will converge to something damaging, to have Progressives shout about how they’re “istaphobes” without that even being a relevant complaint.

They’re particularly vicious about that when conservatives point out that the proposed systemic solution converges to a breakdown in society or worsening of the situation — eg, trying to use systemic bigotry to “solve” systemic bigotry.

These shallow bullying articles get spread around a network of blogs, small media outlets, YouTube channels, etc. and then dominate search results.

I'm curious, what would be some examples where conservatives warned that some "lack of principles" would lead to a "breakdown of society," and were actually correct? Certainly not same sex marriage, abortion, or any thing that conservatives have fought against during my lifetime.

It sounds, to me, a lot like the "degenerate" label that the Nazis loved to throw around.

I gave one in my post — using systemic racism to “fix” historic damage from racism hasn’t worked and has worsened the problem over the past few decades: the failure to follow principles (ie, equality) has resulted in bad outcomes. We see the same problem with systemic misandry in education: sexism in schools is now worse than when Title IX was enacted.

They were also correct about the problems with social welfare destroying families and lax enforcement leading to a breakdown of cities, eg Seattle and San Francisco downtowns.

> It sounds, to me, a lot like the "degenerate" label that the Nazis loved to throw around.

Implying that I’m a Nazi while failing to address the specific example in my original post is exactly the bad faith responses we’re discussing in this thread. That kind of shallow ad hominem is corrosive to meaningful dialog.

Thank you for exemplifying.

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[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Recently Chomsky talked about Ellsberg in response to a question "Who has been the single greatest public figure of your lifetime?"

https://youtu.be/TQ-Crh3rdQA?t=1946

(BTW - the whole interview is well worth watching).

In what sense? Chomsky is generally not worth listening to for a variety of reasons (dishonesty, denialism, whataboutism, tankism, etc.)

Meme Magic (FTW?)

And journalists who cheer "Yeah, we hate Nixon too!" but don't truly hold anyone to account for the truth.

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