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Comment by bjelkeman-again | Hacker News Reader

The developments in the US around surveillance, domestic use of force and the way the politicians allow this to happen reads more and more like the introduction chapter to a dystopian science fiction novel.

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Don't forget to read Greg Lukanioff's Unlearning Liberty[1], a very detailed examination of basically the same forces at work in education and free speech. I read it not long after reading Anne Applebaum's Iron Curtain[2], and was really disturbed by the parallels between what's happening naturally in universities (basically because individual actors such as administrators have no personal disincentive against violating the rights of their students) and what the soviet union systematically did to the universities when they were establishing their foothold in the Eastern Bloc. There's a whole chapter on education in Applebaum's book, and it's essentially a perfect description of what's happening in US universities. It's deeply chilling, and the same thing is causing the militarization of the police - individual police are never held liable for wrong-door raids, for killing innocent civilians, for violating the rights of US citizens, so they have no incentive to try and stop it happening.

1. http://www.unlearningliberty.com/ 2. http://www.anneapplebaum.com/iron-curtain-the-crushing-of-ea...

Sorry if this is not exactly related but the words Unlearning Liberty made me think of The Anatomy of Slavespeak, a document on questioning words we use and hear all the time (like liberty). It's easily found by putting the title into a search site. In the least, it's an interesting exercise in how we give shared meaning to words we often don't think twice about using.

It seems the government has gotten really good at using the complexity of law to provide inane justification for shocking activities.

The government has gotten really good at making access to the law impracticable for anyone except those who have already read it (lawyers). The law is the most expensive set of books you will ever memorize yet never own and never read. See my other comment on why.

"It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow."

— Alexander Hamilton

By a spectacularly bad writer, after all, who would ever believe all this nonsense.

Maybe we could get a more interesting future by electing science fiction writers. Stross-Doctorow vs. Gibson-Sterling would make for some fun campaigning.

The election is here, it's just not evenly distributed.

I can't find the most recent stats, but you are right[1]... at least for the House of Representatives.

[1] http://www.datamasher.org/mash-ups/people-representative#tab...

If the question is who would believe ALL of it, the answer is: people who are very credulous, and people whose prejudices are catered to by these stories.

It is very easy to forget that just because some stories of a certain kind are true, not all of them are true.

The privatization of the police and military is right out of the pages of Snow Crash.

Snow Crash was written long after Robocop and the Sprawl series.

Sheesh. Kids.

One has to wonder if this is a repeat of history in the U.S. or if this has really no precedent. Either way, the future of this nation looks bleak.

If this is a repeat of history, then the future of the U.S. is bright.

explain?

That "rubber stamp" court at FISA was created in response to far worse breaches of power (and the law) by various LE agencies and NSA itself which were revealed in the late 1970s. The actions of an NSA trying to keep up with rapidly changing technology in a way that doesn't violate the law (even if only technically so) is a far cry from the abuses that led to the Church Committee.

So if this (like last time) is the low that we will improve from after the bright light of transparency was shined on the enterprise, then the U.S. will be in great shape.

He's analogising it to the American Revolution.

I find this more than a little strained for a number of reasons.

1. Imagine the horror of a world where the USA looked more like Canada and slavery probably ended without the bloodiest war in North America's history. 2. British tyranny was light. At the time of the American Revolution the Crown's North American subjects were richer and less lightly taxed than its British ones. 3. Military and transportation technology have advanced radically since that time. No European power managed to subdue trans-Atlantic rebellions from established settler states. The US armed forces are designed for fighting two major wars at a time and have oceans to east and west and client states to north and south. They would have no problem subduing "terrorists" or "seditionists".

History has shown that the US has done rather well by many metrics. If history is to be repeated, the US will do rather well again.

...yes, well, looking back a little further than a couple centuries, empires crumble, their citizens starve, and barbarians pillage the remains.

If history is to be repeated the US will die and it will die screaming.

If it's any solace, we're not going out without taking you with us!

it is shocking how much you don't seem to understand the implication of history repeating itself.

Uttering the words, "history is repeating itself," is meaningless without context. What part of history is repeating itself? Are you drawing analogies to post-WW1 Germany? The fall of the Roman Empire? Or to the abuses brought to light in the 70's as another commenter pointed out?

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