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Comment by tombert | Hacker News Reader

I'm far too lazy to go to a big protest or do anything terribly interesting, but at this point I'd be lying if I said I wasn't afraid publicly criticizing this administration. Palantir is weird and creepy and has infinite resources to aggregate anything that the government wants, and they could be building a registry of people who they're going to deem as "terrorist-leaning" or some such nonsense.

It's not hard to find long posts of me calling the people in the Trump administration "profoundly stupid", with both my "tombert" alias and my real name [1]. I'm not that worried because if Palantir has any value they would also be able to tell that I'm deeply unambitious with these things, but it's still something that concerns me a bit.

[1] Not that hard to find but I do ask you do not post it here publicly.

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> I'm far too lazy to go to a big protest

Then you are part of the problem. Get off your ass and do something, before it's too late. FFS!

How exactly am I part of the problem? I vote in every election I'm allowed to vote in, I didn't vote for Trump, I donate to political organizations that support causes I believe in. Because I don't go outside and hold a sign that no one is going to read I'm enabling this? Get off your high horse.

My wife is a Mexican immigrant. She's a citizen now, but that doesn't appear to be something that matters to this organization. There is no way in hell I am going to put her in jeopardy just to go protest.

I'm sorry, that sucks, it's a bad situation to be in :(

But I think we know from history, and other (attempted) authoritarian takeovers, that it only gets worse until people stand up and push back.

It's in their best interest to make everyone feel there's nothing they can do, there's no use in protesting etc etc.

I do think it works! And in addition to protests in the streets, and strikes, I think consumer boycotts would work. If a percentage of people stopped buying anything other than the necessities a lot of US companies would really feel it.

I don’t really disagree in principle, as I said I do try and donate to organizations that help with these things (e.g. ACLU, EFF).

I guess I am trying to say that there are multiple ways of fighting this, and without going into which is “better”, I think I am doing a little and I dispute being “part of the problem”. As I said, I vote in every election I am allowed to vote in, and I haven’t missed one in a bit more than a decade.

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