But this is exactly why all citizens should be concerned about the infringement of rights happening in Minnesota. If it is allowed without prosecution, you are next.
That said, I was thinking more about people all of us building tools that got us into the situation we are in now.
Then they came for the Socialists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists And I did not speak out Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews And I did not speak out Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me And there was no one left To speak out for me
In any case it’s also historically illiterate, the IRS has long been used as a political weapon, infamously against “Tea Party” activists.
And ICE says they only go after illegals.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_targeting_controversy
> Conservatives claimed that they were specifically targeted by the IRS, but an exhaustive report released by the Treasury Department's Inspector General in 2017 found that from 2004 to 2013, the IRS used both conservative and liberal keywords to choose targets for further scrutiny.
Similarly, you can think it would be good to catch tax fraud, but think that it should be handled without executing folks.
That isn't the issue being discussed. This is illustrating that armed, masked goons as a political weapon is a pandora's box that will get turned against everyone, regardless of status. Some people just don't care about the violence in Minnesota because it isn't happening to them.
Obama even gave Tom Homan a medal for his work.
It's not about whether the US deports criminals. It's about how we go about doing it.
that claim was disproved by the way
but, it is famously how the feds managed to get Al Capone
This was spun as "targeting conservatives".
What baffles me is how conservatives supporting the current government overreach aren't worried about the coming backlash. Do they think they'll just win all the future elections? Even when there is no more Trump?
There's a degree of that. But really it's learned behavior; MAGA literally sacked the Capitol in a violent insurrection and Democrats managed to botch the response to that. The only reason we're talking about future malfeasance is because Democrats didn't punish past malfeasance, thereby shifting the Overton window. And of course this goes back further than Jan 6 -- Trump might actually get a pardon from the next Democratic president if history repeats.
Let's say the administration require physical in-person voting due to supposedly mail-in vote fraud and similar in past elections, like when Trump lost.
Then they place a bunch of ICE agents outside of each voting location, checking any immigrants and others they've declared unwanted that are about to vote. Suddenly a lot of democratic voters no longer feel safe voting.
Will the democrats still win?
that is to say, the law only applies to you if you do "bad" things. and ill be honest, there is a level of truth to this to me. from a practical standpoint, it is infeasible to formally understand every nuance of every law ever created just to be a citizen. The underlying core social contract does appear to be one of "if you do 'good' things, generally the law will agree with you and if it doesnt then we wont hold it against you the first time"
*the important caveat here is that this leaves a rather disgustingly large and exploitable gap in what is considered good vs bad behavior, with some people having biases that can spin any observable facts into good or bad based on their political agenda. Additionally, personal biases like racism for example, influence this judgement to value judge your actions in superficial ways
To me, the system of codified law and courts makes intuitive sense, and most people misunderstand or abuse the system. But other people's intuitive understanding of the law as you mentioned is a much easier way to understand and actually IS a rough approximation of what the system does.
I feel like this is basically the case in everything.
* A lot of people don't read the article before commenting.
* Nobody reads TOS for things.
* Most people don't read academic papers.
* MIT or BSD license is easy, but how many people here have actually read the whole GPL, Apache, or Mozilla licenses.
* Voter turnout in Municipal elections here in Ontario is incredibly low.
There is too much information out there for one person. Everything is done with value judgements.
We really shouldnt be allowing things like, "this is a location dedicated to peace and non-violence" and then section 32 subsection C part 2 (a) says "we can kick the shit out of you if you photograph the premises". Just a random made up example for communication purposes, but it applies to all sorts of things. Personally, I think it should apply to social media. there was a implied sense of privacy to it, that people could not see my information if i did not approve it - and then the fine print says except for the company running the page who can sell the information to whoever they want. Like WTF was that about? I wont say its an ignored thing, there plenty of outrage over it - but i think its incredibly fundamental to whats going wrong and feeding this information overload in a dangerous / stressful way.
Companies shouldnt need 10 pages of TOS to say all the obvious things, and appealing to this idea that only whats written down is what matters shouldnt allow for just any arbitrary set of things to be written down and called reasonable
Less about value judgements. More about outsourcing to people/brands we trust.
When it comes to software licenses, we aren’t lawyers, so the informed people will use a primer created by a trusted 3rd party. Maybe GitHub’s “which license is right for me?” Page.
Who to vote for in local elections is usually decided via one of the following: (1) I know/met the person, (2) I trust the party they affiliate with, (3) I trust the newspaper/news source which recommended them.
Academic papers are usually thick, long, and inaccuracies are difficult for anyone not in that field of expertise (or something relevant like statistics) to identify. Most people require an overview of the article by an expert. Hopefully (but unlikely) they can choose one which is impartial / minimally biased and who can give an opinion on how definitive or significant the findings are.
In an ideal world, when this happen, it should be anarchy until a new set of government, that uphold the law equal to everybody, is enacted. But we don't live in ideal world.
What should happen is that everyone who is flagrantly violating the law and looting the federal govt right now should be quickly and aggressively prosecuted. Real concrete legislative reforms should be enacted to limit future corruption and dangerous adventurism by demented leaders.
I expect none of that to actually happen.
It would be orders of magnitude more productive if we did that.
I think my concern was that we think too much in terms popular culture. That itself is a problem. Still, as problems go, it is not urgent. Hence my apology.
At a time when state violence in the US is brandished so loudly and proudly, it feels like a very important piece of media for folks to watch.
I was just thinking how in my country immigration officials would be probably wearing formal clothes and have clipboards and paperwork.
Your comment about armed IRS agents made me laugh / reminded me about this.
1. Republican breaks norms/laws
2. Democrat cleans up after, but by *not* breaking norms, doesn't go far enough to actually undo all the damage
3. We end up with a more broken governmental configuration, and head back to (1)
Most Democratic politicians are in on the game too. Its all just political theater and their in-group rotates out who gets to be the bad guys.
Yes Democrats clean-up by not breaking norms, but as mentioned they never go far enough because they legitimately do not want to go too far due to corporate interests and the elite.
I am left leaning but do not align with the majority of the Democratic party because they are in on this too. They have the tools to be much more antagonistic to the GOP but they purposely don't use them
I'm not sure what you mean by "they consistently come up with the exact small number of Democrats needed to push legislation and bills that the party proposes to be against" -- if you mean the Republicans manage to get some Democrats to "switch sides" -- it's important to remember that this is how everything used to get done. Check the old votes: party-line was less common back in the day. And even now, Democrats tolerate members with differing opinions far more than the GOP does, and it shows in their voting patterns.
This Bernie trutherism is really getting old, it's been disproven so many times.
1. Knew that Hilary Clinton would lose to Trump
2. Engineered the primary to select her as their nominee *because* of (1)?
If it helps, I appreciate going meta after me, but there is not much to dissect here. I stand by my bemused. You may think it is some soft of grand struggle and kudos for you for finding something to believe in, but don't project onto others.
I really do think you're fundamental warning is spot on: people really should consider how power is going to be used against them when calculating how much of it to give up in the pursuit of a goal. I also happen to think its sort of ridiculous (and impossible) for us all to wail and gnash our teeth each time a person dies unjustly. But I also think its probably wrong to be amused by it, even if it is commonplace in human affairs.
This may be the source of disconnect. While it might seem like I am amused by suffering, this is explicitly not the case. I shudder at the thought that people would take my argument as meaning that.
All I am saying is: things exist after their original purpose has been served ( or not served ). But those things continue to exist, because we, as a species, can't seem to help ourselves.
That weird drive within us is what I would call bemusing ( and not amusing ).
On a different webforum one or the other might become agitated and emotional, at which point it does not matter what the intent was, now it only matters to "be right". Great that it was just resolved cleanly.
This is different from what parent post describes. Parent means developing tools by one side of a barricade, that the other may eventually use against them, e.g. when the power shifts to them. Whereas you speak about developing the tools to be used abroad, but those tools eventually also get used domestically, but the administrator remains the same.
Seems unlikely.
If the implication is that the tools won't exist if I don't build them, that's beyond a pipe dream. We'll never get a globe of 8 billion people to agree unanimously on anything. Let alone agreeing not to build something that gives them power over their adversaries.
As simple as the project was, the employee had the presence of mind to ask his seniors some thoughtful questions of what makes sense, what is too intrusive, what is acceptable. He felt uncomfortable and that was with something that corps build on a daily basis.
Now.. not everyone wakes up thinking they are building database intended to enslave humanity as a whole, but I would like to think that one person simply questioning it can make a difference.
I don't subscribe to the hypocritical vies that people are expected to have "free will" and "freedom", while also being "influenced by the algorithm".
Its either one or the other. Personally I think its the former, and Tik Tok is just confirming to people what they want to hear.
Why would that be a given? If we remove tiktok and replace it with anything else, that replaced influence does not automatically negate my will? Case in point, when I call my mother to talk a new car purchase, does her disliking my choice automatically mean I either influenced and therefore have no will?
I am not certain you considered edge cases here.
Both parties seem to be on an authoritarian bent over the last 10-15 years, which sucks.
Democrats would really love some extra help from WikiLeaks right now, if only not Bidens administration who helped to extradite Julian.
On the matter of social media "moderation," this is the phase you're actually in, right now.