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Comment by dmos62 | Hacker News Reader

The answer is not to avoid engaging with a corrupt institution. US is a democracy: vote, be active politically, go into organizations that need change.

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So you are suggesting that you can change the US military industrial complex by.. working for the NSA or Lockheed Martin ?

Also it is quite questionable how much of a democracy the US is nowadays.

Gerrymandering aside, the populace does not get to choose the presidential candidates. And the whole two party thing ? Or the fact that to have a chance you need a super PAC with hundreds of millions ?

This seems like elitocracy..

Edward Snowden did.

Did he? How much change did he enact, and what was the consequence to his person?

Snowden and other whistleblowers, of whom there have been many (many of which paid arguably a dearer price than Snowden did), made it plain obvious to everyone that US intelligence services are doing illegal things abroad and at home. Before that, only tinfoil-hat-types thought so: now everyone knows it. They moved the Overton window a tremendous amount.

Snowden's files are the direct reason we have HTTPS everywhere.

I don't think actual change comes from people lobbying for some bill or whatever. It comes from a far more imperceptible shift in the zeitgeist of society, that is then eventually formally reflected in some way or another. For instance the Civil Rights Movement only succeeded because society had already largely shifted, before it had even begun, in a way that made it viable. A Civil Rights Movement in Saudi Arabia isn't going to succeed, because it needs the widespread desire for such to already exist.

And in this regard I think Snowden had a bigger influence on society than anybody or anything in my living memory. Prior to him there was a belief by many that government conspiracies couldn't happen because somehow if there were enough people involved, it'd show up on News at 9 or whatever. He made it clear that such conspiracies, far beyond the bounds of what even the absurd conspiracy theorist might propose, can and do exist. The NSA has friggin spies in World of Warcraft!

That sort of skepticism played a key role in fueling an anti-establishment mindset. And that mindset is what fueled the rise of everything from Trump to the DSA. I'm certainly not claiming those are good outcomes, but merely part of an increasingly visible shift away from the old establishment. And I think this shift will be, in the longrun, good for America. And I think in hindsight, it will be clear that a lot of this change started happening with Snowden.

Yes, that's what I'm suggesting. If you feel that the problem is higher up or lower down in the institutional hierarchy, then go higher up or lower down. That's the civil approach, as I understand it.

I think this is utterly infeasible.

Apart from the fact the if you stay true to your morals you will be incapable of rising to a position of power in such corrupt institutions, the degree of institutionalisation necessary to do so will definitely erode your ethics, turning you into another cog.

In my opinion, you underestimate the power of an individual. I'm not saying you have to be Gandhi, but he was one person. A problem with your assessment, is that if you're right, or, if everyone believes you're right, you'll have to wait for some external force to come in and change things, like a calamity or desperate revolt. By the time USSR broke apart, bread riots were happening, and, tragically, 30 years later we still have the same authoritarian, corrupt regime (in all but name) wrecking havoc at home and abroad. That's what a people get for believing in the story of disempowerment. That's my take, at least.

I agree in principle, but also agree with gp that in practice the things one has to do to rise to a position of power in corrupt institutions make it virtually impossible to be a credible agent of change, especially private/secretive institutions like military, intelligence, military-industrial corps. I guess politicians are the one role that is supposed to be able to operate without those institutional constraints but of course, (in the US) given corporate capture of political speech, political hyper-polarization, etc, in most cases they are just as or more constrained. It is a hard problem.

The Brits were bankrupting themselves with war spending, which culminated in WW2. After its conclusion, they started liberating every territory that wasn't directly profitable, including some that did not even want to be liberated. WW2 ended in 1945, India was liberated in 1947 alongside numerous other territories. Without WW2, India would likely have remained a British territory well past 1947. Beyond that, Gandhi wasn't one man - but the leader of a movement of millions.

As for Russia, I think your perception there is also driven by 'messaging'. There's a million videos of people streaming walking tours and the like in Russia. Here [1] is one done 4 days ago. That's a country that in the 90s was on the verge of collapse and was extremely dangerous. You can find similar stuff on e.g. Twitch because there's this somewhat odd subculture of delivery drivers, taxi drivers, and others streaming their days. Perhaps in part out of bemusement from this Western perspective paired against reality.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89ckPUyGVA8

I'm probably too focused on the Afghanistan war but I don't think that voting differently would have extended or shortened the war.

Both republicans and democrats wanted the war in Afghanistan back when 9/11 happened and they needed to get revenge on the scapegoat. Meanwhile the end of the war was initiated by Trump, then slowly concluded by Joe Biden.

So both the start and the end of the war had bipartisan support. Nothing against democracy but war doesn't follow the election cycle. It might start in one though.

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