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America’s Open Wound

edwardsnowden.substack.com

181–190 of 349 posts

Re: America’s Open Wound

#181
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a clear case of the "ad hominem" fallacy. You are saying his argument is wrong because of who he is. Just because he is doing something odd (holed up in Russia) doesn't mean he is wrong.

I believe most judgements share some common edges with some fallacious logical forms, and yet retain some validity. Your argument, for example, has some commonality with what I would call the "fallacy" fallacy, in which one finds an insignificant echo of a fallacy in another's view and dismisses the entirety of what they have to say.

You invented a meaningless term called a fallacy fallacy and then committed exactly that. /Chef's kiss/

Re: America’s Open Wound

#182
post #156
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution isn't "throw more police at crime". It's multi-faceted. It's not just make work/life more worthwhile either because there are places with relatively high unemployment but also low crime. It's about civics and what society sets as acceptable boundaries and enforcing those boundaries and punishing those that stray too far. Looks at the USA's wild west. It went from rampant violent crime to acceptable socia…

> The solution isn't "throw more police at crime". For clarity, do you mean that more police alone won't fix the problem by itself? While I agree, I think more police could be part of the solution, or at least it's not an unreasonable point to bring up in the discussion. Just hiring more people in a broken system is almost never a silver bullet, but there are times when it may be warranted as part of the solution. It…

>For clarity, do you mean that more police alone won't fix the problem by itself?

Yes. Sometimes we do need more police but the police alone cannot solve the issue. You also need a working system of justice and a system where people know they will be held responsible for wrongdoing (all around) and a system to handle people who need mental care (along with laws that allow the state to assume care for those incapable of caring for themselves) but again, we'd require the state not to abuse its power...

I still think there is normally acceptable behavior and non-normally acceptable behavior. Of late, we've swung too far on, "everything is normal". You wanna shit on the street? You wanna run sit naked in a restaurant? You wanna use intravenous drugs and get high in a playgrouund? You wanna just rummage and dump things from the supermarket aisles into your bag and run out?

Re: America’s Open Wound

#183
post #13

I have to ask, because I know that Biden was said to give a speech with bad optics but I never looked it up seriously - is that photo doctored?^W^W^W I just googled it myself. Whoever is doing his PR needs to be sacked for leaving him open to a photo like that.

Looking tough is something Dems haven’t tried and people lost their minds over the slightest effort.

Re: America’s Open Wound

#184
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I’d be surprised to hear that these people even contradict their boss Has Snowden talked about Putin's war on Ukraine yet?

Seeing as how he's stuck there with nowhere else to go except prison in the US, and owes what little freedom he has to them, I think it's fairly obvious and smart to not speak ill of your host, especially considering what they're capable of. I'm quite sure he would have a LOT to say about it were he not stuck there. Yes, we know, if it were you you'd be condemning them to their face.

He could have remained silent, but he used the opportunity of the run up to the war to spread Russian propaganda about US agencies and media to his 5 million twitter followers.

E.g. his tweet from not even 2 weeks before the invasion:

>There is nothing more grotesque than a media pushing for war.

https://mobile.twitter.com/snowden/status/149222362658580890...

Why would he blame western media and intel agencies for Putin invading Ukraine?

Re: America’s Open Wound

#186
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the amount of hate for Snowden and Assange is dismaying. These men sacrificed their lives to expose the crimes of one of - if not the most -powerful organizations on Earth. And people nitpick that they’re not criticizing the other most powerful entities too. Basically they’re criticizing them for not committing suicide in the name of a people which were impotent of unwilling to do anything with the revelations p…

>I’d be surprised to hear that these people even contradict their boss Has Snowden talked about Putin's war on Ukraine yet?

No post body was provided.

Re: America’s Open Wound

#187
post #107

We say: Hey, the police are killing us, could you please stop that. No, we need to be tough on crime. It's just too bad that some people die, but I need to feel secure. We say: Hey, the police are still killing us, could you please stop that. It looks like we need to reboot the justice system. No, we need to be tough on crime. Why do you want the crime rate to go up? We say: Hey, the police are still killing us, we n…

Quoted post unavailable.

> occasional and unpreventable bad behavior

That is a bold and aggressive claim, and I believe one unsupported by evidence. Can you prove that some of the famous, recent, dramatic examples of police misconduct were actually unpreventable and were not in any way caused by an institutionalized lax attitude towards self-policing?

> vs a tiny few hundred examples of bad behavior

Oh, just a half dozen or so in each state? That's a very white thing to say. And trivial to disprove.

However, the issue isn't that the police are imperfect- it's that they knowingly tolerate, and even defend bad behavior. THAT is a very different problem than being "imperfect", and it is not one we have to accept in order to avoid total anarchy.

Re: America’s Open Wound

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The building was lit up in red, white and blue, and whoever took/published the photo either chose their angle or cropped it for dramatic effect. But yeah, I assume there's someone whose job is to avoid things like this who wasn't doing their job very well. https://www.inquirer.com/news/philadelphia-joe-biden-picture...

No — the US feeds of the speech all had the tight red framing, while international ones did not. That photo is the same framing as his speech broadcast on US networks. Such a market split indicates the framing was intentionally authoritarian and meant to provoke/intimidate political rivals.

No post body was provided.

Re: America’s Open Wound

#189
post #87

Has everyone on Hacker News lost their minds? I come here to read and sometimes participate in rational discussions. These comments are some of the lowest effort, least rigorous, paranoid bullshit I’ve ever seen on this site. We’re a step above Facebook comments on NPR articles, here. Partisanship, viciousness and lazy conspiracy theories are not a good look for this site.

Look up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September. Happens to every forum. HN is well past its "hidden niche community" period and is now attracting the same crowd as Reddit, Facebook and the like.

Re: America’s Open Wound

#190
post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is if it makes someone reject the argument. This is identical to saying "Climate change doesn't exist because Al Gore flies in airplanes," or "Ralph Nader cannot be a critic of capitalism because he made a million dollars of his books." Motivations have nothing to do with it, that is exactly what an ad hominem attack is. If you reject the argument because of the person's motivations, you are calling an argument fa…

You're acting like people are rational, and they aren't.

Thanks for demonstrating.
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