The only question for OP and other chicagonians: why don't you organize and push back? It seems like the overwhelming majority of city population including local police doesn't support this, so go ahead and do something instead of crying on HN.
There are protests everyday you walnut and the administration is using that as a pretense to move in honest to god military troops. Nearly everyone I know (including my 80 year old neighbor) has been to a protest. You can go to an organizing meeting any day of the week in any neighborhood in the city. We are all walking around with whistles for signaling when ice comes and kids are making them on 3d printers in the l…
I Want You to Understand Chicago
181–190 of 532 posts
Re: I Want You to Understand Chicago
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
Margin of victory was ~2M votes, about how many voters 55+ die in a year. Hopefully enough voters have aged out or learned their lesson next time around (considering election results we've seen in the last week or so [1]). You're never going to convince unsavory voters to vote with empathy, the subject brain structure does not support it (anterior insular cortex, primarily), you can only hope they're aging out of the…
It's comforting that maybe this mentality is correcting itself one funeral at a time. But what really makes me sad is how this mentality so quickly swept into the country to begin with. 30 years ago, the vast majority of Americans would be horrified at the thought of people being assaulted on the street in broad daylight, black-bagged, kidnapped and disappeared forever by masked, non-identifying thugs. Fast forward 3…
There are two components to this answer.
First, your country has been divided since at least the mid-19th century. Every war has a winning and losing side, but the losers don't simply vanish. Their mentality persists throughout generations, even if it remains in the background, and is ignored by the other side.
Secondly, all this technology you've built and allowed the world to use can and has been exploited by your enemies to your own detriment. The same systems you've built that allow manipulating people into buying things are also ideal channels for spreading propaganda and disinformation. Information warfare is not new, but modern technology has made it more effective than ever at manipulating groups of people, sowing dissent, and generally causing chaos and confusion within a nation.
So, putting those two together, it's not difficult to see how acts of information warfare could be used to fuel the deeply rooted social divide, directly causing or strongly contributing to the internal sociopolitical instability you've been experiencing for the past decade.
Meanwhile, your enemies can sit back and enjoy the show of an imploding nation. They know that you're untouchable via traditional warfare, which is why these tactics are so perfect. They do require a long time to come into effect, but they're highly effective, very cheap to deploy, and the best part is that they're completely untraceable to the attacker. It's still debatable whether there was Russian interference in your elections, and how effective it actually was, even though there is evidence for it. It's still debatable whether Chinese-operated social media platforms are a national security threat or not. Were J6 protesters rioters or patriots? And so on about every controversial sociopolitical topic.
This confusion is exactly the intended effect. Your regular checks and balances, your laws, ideals and values, make no difference if your communication channels are corrupted.
I don't see how you can get out of this mess, and I expect things will get much worse before they get better. Not just for you, but globally. These same tactics are also deployed in other countries, by the US as well. Though, ironically, countries that are cut off from the global internet have an upper hand in this conflict.
Re: I Want You to Understand Chicago
#183[flagged]
Re: I Want You to Understand Chicago
#184Re: I Want You to Understand Chicago
#185A large part of this lawlessness is rooted in nonnormative behavior. But! there are basic protections we could have right now if we demanded them. First and foremost: the Bivens Act; specifically, the right to bring suit in State court against Federal agents. Presidential pardons can't help these thugs in State persons.
Re: I Want You to Understand Chicago
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tribalism, identity politics, low education and lack of respect for education and intellectualism, and late stage capitalism. A cautionary tale, for sure. People are angry, rightfully so, but at the wrong people. Thank Reagan (economics) and Gingrich (politics) for a lot of this we’re facing. Deepfriedchokes is right; we need stronger, more robust systems to protect humans from other humans, because we cannot trust t…
The Biden admin (no idea if Biden himself was involved) literally sued Texas to stop Texas from enforcing border law. This same admin also essentially redefined "asylum" to be economic asylum rather than "I'm afraid that if I go back to my country I'll be killed" which is how people typically thought of asylum. You can absolutely think that what's happening now is an overreaction, un-American, gross, illegal, and mor…
Re: I Want You to Understand Chicago
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the reality is far scarier - he doesn’t have nearly as much power over ISP as he should.
If he doesn't, he needs to be forthright about it in his speeches and podcasts. "The ISP is disobeying my direct orders." Until then, he bears responsibility for their actions.
Re: I Want You to Understand Chicago
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some of the allegations around the Canadian assisted suicides are absolutely indefensible and heinous but a tourist isn’t likely to encounter it. Even if you support the actions by the Trump administration, honestly especially so given the assertion is the cities are dangerous, it seems reasonable as a tourist to want to avoid countries, like the US, where there are active operations by military and paramilitary forc…
ICE agents took people from normal activities (ie not protests) from Grant park (the park in downtown with the famous bean sculpture tourists go to) recently. They are snatching people all over the city without warrants. I would not say tourists are unlikely to encounter their operations.
The majority of illegal immigration in my location are people overstaying their student visas and they're getting sent back. Saw a former co-worker's wife was sent back, no I didn't snitch, but I don't feel sorry for someone who overstayed a student visa then worked under the table for a decade.
Re: I Want You to Understand Chicago
#189Re: I Want You to Understand Chicago
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some of the allegations around the Canadian assisted suicides are absolutely indefensible and heinous but a tourist isn’t likely to encounter it. Even if you support the actions by the Trump administration, honestly especially so given the assertion is the cities are dangerous, it seems reasonable as a tourist to want to avoid countries, like the US, where there are active operations by military and paramilitary forc…
ICE agents took people from normal activities (ie not protests) from Grant park (the park in downtown with the famous bean sculpture tourists go to) recently. They are snatching people all over the city without warrants. I would not say tourists are unlikely to encounter their operations.