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The war on terror primed America for autocracy

economist.com

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Re: The war on terror primed America for autocracy

#121

Post by JuniperMesos »

applicative wrote: post #31
rayiner wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling it the “partition of India” makes it seem like it was imposed on India rather than being a product of the 1940 Lahore Resolution where Jinnah led calls for a separate Pakistan. And in retrospect, it was a huge boon to India and Bangladesh to separate themselves from Pakistan.

Two million dead Hindu; ten million forcible refugees; thousands of ancient villages burned to the ground — it ‘was a huge boon to India’

Would those ten million refugees have been better off if the people they were fleeing were their fellow voting citizens in a democracy instead?

Re: The war on terror primed America for autocracy

#122

Post by userbinator »

Pxtl wrote: post #51

There are people walking around today who voted Bush twice and regretted it and now voted Trump three times and regretted it. I wonder what war they'll regret next?

The big problem is that if the USA doesn't start wars, other countries are certainly more than willing to start them against us.

Re: The war on terror primed America for autocracy

#124

Post by Morromist »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #113
Morromist wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a crazy time, not in the danger from hijackings but the enormous amount of fear and cowardice America built up within itself. It was crazy because of the mass hysteria not the violence. Take this example: 1.2 million Americans died from Covid. 3000 americans died in the twin towers attack. That's 0.25% of the number that died from covid. However we gave up considerably more liberty to defend against the hijack…

Or guns. I find it crazy that the US gave up a ton of freedoms to stop the terrorists, but refuse to give up their guns. The guns clearly and obviously kill more people every year than the terrorists. Make it make sense.

Oh yeah, good point. Gun deaths each year amount to like 15 x the twin towers attacks deaths. I'm sure deaths from our terrible unaffordable healthcare system are way higher, but we spent our healthcare money on invading the middle east and paying for a bunch of obsolete fighter jets, so at least terrorism isn't a problem anymore.

Re: The war on terror primed America for autocracy

#125

Post by inigyou »

rayiner wrote: post #25
xbar wrote: post #6

Exactly what everyone said when Patriot Act was passed and renewed repeatedly. America permanently traded away basic freedoms for the bogus promise of safety in the shadow of fear. And the Supreme Court was too scared to stop it despite its obvious constitutional problems. Crying eagle photos in chain-emails were sufficient propaganda to keep it in place.

It wasn’t just the GOTW. It was much of the 20th century from World War I onward. Each step led to further centralization of government, a larger and larger security apparatus, and more and more foreign entanglements. We are more or less retracing the path of Rome as the Republic expanded militarily until it was no longer practical to run it as a republic and it transitioned to empire.

Do you mean GWOT? Global war on terror?

Re: The war on terror primed America for autocracy

#126

Post by nullhole »

dnautics wrote: post #92
nullhole wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OK-ing of torture was a clear step into the totalitarian camp and a clear breach with justice, liberalism, and decency.

I'm gonna be that guy and say that the concern about torture is orthogonal to authoritarianism. There were very much "less authoritarian/less centralized" eras in the US when it was general course of action was to do torturous things far worse than many of the things that got labelled 'torture' in the post 1990s era.

My first reaction is that the step to torture was a step backwards, a disregard for what we've learned about the efficacy of torture in getting reliable information, and an embrace of sadistic revenge as an end in itself as state policy.

It's the state policy part that I find the worst. Individual acts of senseless violence you can blame on the individual; state acts that in retrospect are senseless violence you can - in some cases - blame on what was known at the time.

To purposefully do that when you now it's useless is a rare evil; to declare it's useful when you know it's useless is an Orwellian, totalitarian turn.

And it was torture, not 'labelled' 'torture'. Waterboarding, sleep deprivation, high-volume constant music, others I'm glad I don't know about. It was torture.

Re: The war on terror primed America for autocracy

#127

Post by inigyou »

rwmj wrote: post #89
kitku wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am still amazed by the typical internet American's (Yours also I presume) love for voting, despite having long degraded into a two-party charade. Your sentiment starts out fierce: "constantly, actively..." and is immediately cut short "... choose to (only?) vote it that way." You point out that voicing one's interpretations of the 2nd amendment is powerless - but voting, reduced to such a miniscule gesture, is also…

How (and if) you vote is really the one and only thing politicians care about.

They care about appearing to care about it. In reality if they don't think you'll vote the right way they just prevent you from voting, like with a vaccine passport or an ID card. (See? Both sides covered)

Re: The war on terror primed America for autocracy

#128

Post by walrus01 »

Animats wrote: post #19

Yes. History will record that bin Laden won. There's a pre-9/11 book about bin Laden, "The Man Who Declared War on America". Bin Laden was interviewed. Consider the situation at the end of the Clinton administration. The US was at peace. The Soviet Union was gone. The US got along with China and Russia. No major enemies remained. The federal budget was balanced. Bin Laden looked at that, and realized that America had…

> Yes. History will record that bin Laden won

Or as The Onion has put it:

https://theonion.com/fbi-uncovers-al-qaeda-plot-to-just-sit-...

Re: The war on terror primed America for autocracy

#129

Post by ReptileMan »

majormajor wrote: post #48
marssaxman wrote: post #5

This seemed obvious to me at the time. It was hard to understand why people in the cultural mainstream let themselves get swept up in it. I felt like I lost my country, back then, as they pretty much all went off into crazyland together.

What do you think distinguishes the post-9/11 craziness from the Cold War/Red Scare craziness? My reason for asking is because I believe that "that's unconstitutional!" has been a failed protest message for more like 100 years than 25 years (and there's threads of state violence at the local and state levels that go back far longer). And IMO that is even stronger evidence that words on an ~240-year-old-doc—and the wa…

>What do you think distinguishes the post-9/11 craziness from the Cold War/Red Scare craziness?

State capacity. USA prior to the internet and the surveillance state was too big, too populous and too sparse to be effectively administered.

Trump is doing what every other president since WWII wanted to do ... but they didn't have the technology. Just for a moment imagine what USA will look like if you didn't get someone incompetent like Trump right now but Nixon or Johnson. With the modern security state - it would be their dream.

Re: The war on terror primed America for autocracy

#130

Post by inigyou »

userbinator wrote: post #122
Pxtl wrote: post #51

There are people walking around today who voted Bush twice and regretted it and now voted Trump three times and regretted it. I wonder what war they'll regret next?

The big problem is that if the USA doesn't start wars, other countries are certainly more than willing to start them against us.

Which? Why?
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