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Comment by alexvr | Hacker News Reader

In order to stay safe from the government,

1. Don't buy sparkling water if you're a college student

2. Don't bet with friends because an arbitrary threshold of about $2k warrants your execution

3. Don't tell American citizens that their government abuses its power, or you'll be charged with espionage

4. It's probably a bad idea to bear arms these days, because saying "Officer, I have a weapon in the trunk of my car" might give him reason to shoot you in self defense

5. You don't actually have free speech anymore, so be careful about that. If you threaten to shoot up a school, even jokingly and totally within your rights, you will be incarcerated for half a year before your trial. And who knows if the judge will let you off? You just have to pray for one who knows and abides by the constitution.

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Also don't be black, poor, trans, or a sex worker (and if you're black, poor and trans, you'd better dress like a nun, or the police will read you as a sex worker). People in those categories usually don't even make it as far as an outraged Salon article.

What a sad truth, especially the last part

yep, as they say - being black is a probable cause.

And lets not pretend that it isn't a stereotype without warrant. Not going to go into the racial factors, more the cultural. It's just simply more likely that blacks will be criminals in certain areas - humans have evolved to generalize things like this for survival's sake.

3. Don't tell American citizens that their government abuses its power, or you'll be charged with espionage

Point 3 is patently false. All of my Facebook friends, and I, regularly say that the United States government abuses its power, some from the right, some from the left, and many from a general freedom-loving perspective, and we all go on posting as we please. All of these statements are exaggerations. Many of these statements refer to problems that are much worse in other places. (If you think that arbitrary abuse by the police is the worst it can be in the United States, you haven't traveled very much.) Sure, protest fearlessly about any abuse you find anywhere. But don't lose sight of reality.

AFTER EDIT: People who follow my comments on Hacker News

https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=tokenadult

will be well aware that I participate in public protests here in the United States, in full view of TV news cameras and police observers. (The last protest I participated in was across the street from the headquarters of the Minneapolis police department.) I am an equal-opportunity democracy movement activist, desiring more power for the people in every country of the world. As one of the grandchild comments to this comment has now said, it's silly to exaggerate conditions in the United States, as that just robs a comment of credibility. If you want to establish a better trend line for United States policy, be specific in your policy proposals, and make your policy proposals public fearlessly, early and often. Don't be an anonymous coward. Put your name behind your convictions.

People power democracy movements that nudge countries from dictatorship to democracy can really work. I have seen it done. A successful movement for greater freedom requires great courage, and a degree of social trust among the movement participants that is not easy to find. Allow me to repeat advice I have shared here on Hacker News before. If you really want to be an idealistic but hard-headed freedom-fighter, mobilizing an effective popular movement for more freedom wherever you live, I suggest you read deeply in the free, downloadable publications of the Albert Einstein Institution,

http://www.aeinstein.org/organizationsde07.html

remembering that the transition from dictatorship to democracy described in those publications is an actual historical process with recent examples around the world that we can all learn from. You can find publications in more than a dozen languages there to share with your friends around the world.

Ahhh yes, the "these problems are worse in other places" Okay, you're right, so lets never try to fix them. Because Russian police are abusive we should count ourselves lucky that our own police force isn't AT LEAST that bad. Sure, they go out of their way to murder people for no reason, but we can't be man about that, we should simply be thankful that there are worse police agencies that exist.

And yeah, your point that the govt won't abuse the shit out of its power if you are a whistleblower makes me wonder if you've been living under a rock recently. I imagine you don't think it was any big deal that the US coerced other countries into not allowing the Bolivian President use their airspace because the US was upset with Bolivia offering Snowden asylum? But yeah, you're right man, no abuses whatsoever will occur if you are a whistleblower...

The type of self awareness one would have to lack to get to the point where they are making the point you just made is staggering.

Oh yeah it's all much worse in other places. We're still "better" than all the dictatorships and authoritarian governments in the world, and that makes it all just fine and dandy. The only people losing sight of reality are the ones deluded into thinking that America/ns is/are immune to what appears to be a fundamental feature of power: corruption.

By point 3 he meant actions by USG whistle blowers with access to classified information, not a civilian's facebook account.

There is a problem with broad statements like the grandparent comment. College students buy water everyday without trouble, people own guns without being harassed daily, people makes bets daily without any trouble, people make joking threats daily without incident. There is plenty bad going on without the need for exaggerations and outright lies.

If you want reality to change, you have to accept reality. Skewing it to the most sensationalistic interpretation only makes it easier to dismiss.

There is some irony in chiding someone for hyperbole while claiming 'at least it's not as bad as some other places', an argument that can be made of almost any aspect of the human experience.

I mean, if you set the bar as low as "better than living in a dictatorship" instead of "comparable to western democracy -foo-", you're engaging in some pretty solid resetting of the frame of reference.

If you're going to talk economics, politics, sociology, or just about any massive and complex systems, you cannot avoid broad statements. I dislike them, but that's just the way it is. I notice a lot on HN that broad statements generally are called out and (usually without being defensive) clarified in the discussion.

However, in this case, there is no clarification needed. Compare the United States across whatever subjective experience and online indices you can find (economic freedom, press freedom, happiness, quality of life, etc but take them with a grain of salt) and make up your own mind.

After having traveled a little bit and lived in circumstances very different from my current life in SF, I have become less concerned with the water, guns, bets, and bad jokes and more concerned about the creeping changes in massive institutions like the US government. After all, one of the hallmarks of a democracy is how it protects the minorities from the tyranny of the majority.

> If you're going to talk economics, politics, sociology, or just about any massive and complex systems, you cannot avoid broad statements.

Of course not, but they need to semi-accurately reflect the way things are going on a broad scale. If someone steps on my toe at the convenience store and doesn't apologize, I don't start a rally cry about how America is full of toe-hating assholes. If it starts happening systemically then I might be more willing to make that charge.

People also break into cars to finance their crack addiction everyday without trouble. The incompetence of the police does not excuse their overreach.

Point 1 is also patently false: I have bought sparkling water and I'm not a felon! Obviously the GP is not making logical declarations. To stay SAFEST, one must avoid sparkling water, threatening jokes, and any statements the DOJ would disapprove of. Your friends on Facebook do not invalidate that point.

6. Don't have $20 buy-in poker games

and Steven Seagal driving a tank into that guys living room for fighting chickens...wow.

Additional things to not do:

6. Write 'disturbing' material (for any definition of disturbing)

7. Own a permanent marker

8. Connect to an unsecured WiFi

9. Use a fake name on the Internet

6. Do not come into posession of short lobsters. http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/rightsandfreedoms/a/alobsterst...

6. Become a mormon (mormons are highly regarded by the NSA as naturally suited to following orders).

7. Become a cop. A proper one, not just a security guard or something.

I wonder how applicable 7 is if you're an immigrant. You might get charged with espionage or something.

My family is Mormon (LDS) and two of my brother's are cops, so we definitely have this covered.

What I can say is that cops seem to get indoctrinated as part of their training about the rule of law and the need to enforce laws "because it's the law" without thought or common sense applied to each situation.

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