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Comment by achierius | Hacker News Reader

Just like how all we had to do to shut down Guantanamo Bay was vote for President Obama, right? So glad that that worked out. By and large, our institutions are not democratic, in that they are not responsive to 'popular opinion'; while there are certain arenas where, for one reason or another, the will of the majority does sway the day (e.g. the influence of scandals on individual elected officials), by and large most things are decided by non-democratic factors like business interests and large donors, and the media just works to get people on-side with whatever comes out of that.

To quote a well-known study on the topic: “The preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”

(Gilens & Page, Perspectives in Politics)

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Not closing Guantanamo is, unfortunately, an example of democracy working. Public support for closing it has never been anything close to a majority. Obama got elected despite, not because, of that promise. Congress blocking his attempts to do so was a reflection of the will of the people, even if perhaps coincidentally.

This is ahistoric. No-one ever said we had to "just vote for Obama" to close Guantanamo Bay.

Frankly, Obama _tried_ to close Guantanamo Bay. He significantly shrunk the population of inmates, but it was ultimately Congress, and the courts that prevented the closure

Obama spent a huge amount of time and political capital trying to clean up Bush's messes.

Obama only tried to close Guantanamo by moving the prisoners to the United States, which is arguably worse than having them in Guantanamo. It would mean that you could hold prisoners in the United States indefinitely without trial. What he should have done was give the prisoners fair trials or release them.

Having prisoners in the US is a lot more hassle and subject to scrutiny than keeping them tucked away on some out of bounds military prison where few have access to, which was probably the reason to put prisoners there in the first place. Anything could be done to prisoners on Guantanamo, including torture.

You're supporting the point of the person you responded to.

One vote isn't enough. Just Obama was insufficient when congress was not sufficiently aligned.

But I have no power to vote for anyone but the president, two senators and one representative.

What he’s saying is that you need to vote with a consistent message. Voting for Bush, then voting for Obama, then voting for Trump is unlikely to make any lasting change

That’s the separation of powers at work, which is desirable. Congress has to (and can) do it. Obama, unlike Trump, would sometimes back down when he met the edges of executive authority. That’s how it should be.

I wanted Gitmo closed, but I don’t want it closed in a way that further expands the executive branch by once again nibbling at the edges of another branch’s authority.

Plenty of countries that are well-run democracies don’t have separation of powers between the legislature and the executive — the UK is one of many examples.

Separation between the executive and the judiciary is important, but separation from the legislature doesn’t really seem to be.

Even among countries that do have such a separation, the US is unique in making it so difficult for the legislature to pass anything, which IMO is the most serious flaw in its system. The permanent deadlock is what creates such a temptation for the executive to circumvent the rule of law and try to seize power wherever it can.

All wannabe dictators complain about not having enough power to save the country. I am not referring specifically to the US.

Historically it hasn't generally been this difficult to pass anything.

At ~all times for a long period of time during Gitmos operation, there was at least one (revolving) prisoner that no nation on earth would take. I think that was the biggest challenge for someone who actually wanted to close gitmo, to close it. Not clear where you would put them that wouldn't be yet another prison.

I guess now that the US has normalized relations with the Taliban, maybe they'll end up sending them to them, not sure who else will take the last ones.

They should stand trial in a US court, and if they’re acquitted, they should be set free, like anyone else. That’s a pretty fundamental principle of the rule of law.

If they’re indeed innocent and can’t be deported because nobody will take them, then they have to be allowed to stay in the US. That’s unfortunate but not really their fault given that the US brought them into its jurisdiction against their will in the first place.

It seems transparently unfair to capture someone and then keep them forever because nobody else wants them.

If we didn’t want them then why did we capture them?

A lot of them were captured for things like simply having an F91W watch and also being proximal or familial to a terrorist. They were initially wanted but then once 'cleared' the problem became once accused as a terrorist no country on earth wanted to take them even if they were cleared as likely innocent.

Obviously it was also politically infeasible to admit them into the general US.

What a nightmare.

No, they refuted their strawman.

This is far too nihilist.

Obama and Biden both led to meaningful policy improvements and they were far more stable than the current admin.

They were able to slow down the inevitable trajectory, they did nothing to reverse course. Doing anything different would be too "radical" for Obama or Biden.

The trajectory in question was pretty well laid out in Bush’s Patriot act. If the Democratic Party at any point wanted to reverse course they would have opposed the initial legislation (like the general public did), and subsequently championed a policy which abandons it and corrects for the harm it caused.

That did not happen, quite the contrary in fact.

I think you vastly undersell how much of the US voters supported extreme measures in reaction to Sept 11.

There was a social panic to “protect us against terrorism” at pretty much any cost. It was easy for the party in power to demonize the resistance to the power grab and nobody except Libertarians had a coherence response.

I don‘t think it really matters how much people supported these extreme actions. This policy was clearly wrong. The general public mounted a much more significant opposition against this policy then the Democratic party did. Some members of the Democratic party did some opposition, but the party as a whole clearly did not oppose this, and therefor it was never truly on the ballots.

To be clear, I personally don‘t think stuff like this should ever be on the ballot in any democracy. Human rights are not up for election, they should simply be granted, and any policy which seeks to deny people human rights should be rejected by any of the country’s democratic institutions (such as courts, labor unions, the press, etc.)

> I don‘t think it really matters how much people supported these extreme actions. This policy was clearly wrong.

This is wrong and ignorant of how we select elected representatives. They have no incentive to do “what is right” and all of the incentives to do “what is popular”. The representatives who stood up against the Patriot Act, the surveillance state, “you’re either with us or either the terrorists”, etc were unable to hold any control in Congress.

The reason we have stereotypes of politicians as lying, greasy, corrupt used car salesmen is because their incentives align with those qualities.

I am exclusively discussing the _is_, not the _ought_ (which is where I would agree with you)

If politicians did what was popular, the USA would have a public health system a long time ago. They just pretend and do things they're paid to support, that's it.

I was stating an opinion, not a fact, and I was interpreting history according to that opinion. That is I am arguing for a certain historical framework from which I judge historical moments.

I also don‘t think mine is a widely unpopular opinion either. That scholars of democracy and human rights agree that a democracy should not be able to vote them selves into a dictatorship, that human rights are worth something more than what can be ousted by a popular demand. So I don’t think this is an unreasonable historical framework, from which I judge the actors of this history of.

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