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25 years of mass surveillance is enough

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Re: 25 years of mass surveillance is enough

#151

Post by [deleted] »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #54
pc86 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm skimming the "Aftermath" section and I'm not seeing where Biden's inauguration was cancelled or Trump retained power or anything else? If Trump "refused to peacefully transfer power" how was power peacefully transferred to Biden exactly on schedule the same way it's happened in every other election? I do see this happened on Jan 7th though: > 7:10 p.m.: Shortly after Twitter unlocked Trump's account, Trump releas…

The peaceful tour of the capital by pro American demonstrators (sorry, peak Americans) interrupted the proceedings. They were very close to pulling off a strategy of having the senate override the vote, if they hadn’t reconvened before midnight and had Pence left the Capitol like secret service were urging him to do. Anyway this argument has occurred a thousand times on these boards so if you saw January 6 as peacefu…

[deleted]

Re: 25 years of mass surveillance is enough

#152

Post by rpdillon »

rickdeckard wrote: post #42
smallmancontrov wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Trump calls Democrats "enemies from within," that's anti-American. When Trump refuses to peacefully transfer power to his victorious opponent and instead plays "heads I win tails you cheated," that's anti-American. When Trump sends the FCC chair to suppress speech "we can do this the easy way or the hard way," or yucks it up with the president of El Salvador over suspending Habeas Corpus, that's anti-American. T…

While I understand the intention of what you're saying, you're still attempting a definition of the term "anti-American", which needs no definition as the term should be rejected as a whole.

I mean, there are American values. The country was built around the idea of limiting the federal government's power, and adherence not a person, but to a set of values (like freedom of speech). We're explictly founded on the concept of rule of law.

Through that lens, it is very clear what anti-American means: adherence and loyalty to a person instead of a set of values, expansive government overreach, erosion of individual liberties, including the ability to express dissent.

Re: 25 years of mass surveillance is enough

#153

Post by Balinares »

matchbok3 wrote: post #27
mschuster91 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but... but the bathrooms! and the children's sports! /s it's still baffling to me how incredibly irrelevant niche cases dominate the entire discourse.

They do it because it wins them elections. It's a 90/10 issue and national democrats are on the losing side.

The number of people abject enough to end up with transphobic views is thankfully nowhere near that. Most people, as it turns out, are not creepily obsessed with other people's genitals. Most people also aren't driven by a horrible urge to find minorities to torment. Though those who are would sure claim otherwise, of course; trying to normalize their awfulness is part of the playbook.

Re: 25 years of mass surveillance is enough

#154

Post by pessimizer »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #85
feanaro wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you advocating for inaction? If so, what do you wish to achieve?

I would advocate for a shift of power by creating greater individual rights over their data (as their irrevocable property) , and greater oversight and consequences for those in power (ab)using the data. It's one thing for our data to be out there such that a NSA employee could stalk their girlfriend, it's another thing for said person to be allowed to gracefully "retire" rather than be put in prison.

> I would advocate for a shift of power[...]

This is not advocating, this is wishing. It is as meaningful as "advocating" that you were rich and that Elon was poor, or "advocating" that you should be six inches taller.

Re: 25 years of mass surveillance is enough

#155

Post by rpdillon »

rickdeckard wrote: post #80
parineum wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And that's the weak link of tying ideals and values to a location like a country My entire post is about exactly how this is not the case, American values are defined in a document[1]. [1] https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcrip...

And what I'm trying to explain is, that this paper doesn't matter if it is represented by someone who doesn't uphold its content. Germany had the Paulskirche-, the Bismarck- and the Weymar-Constitution, all of them before that certain Leader elected into power. He got to define who is worthy/unworthy, decide how to read the document his party represents and change the definition of "un-German"

> this paper doesn't matter if it is represented by someone who doesn't uphold its content.

Not at all...that's when the paper matters the most, because the electorate can see that the person in charge is not upholding our values, purely in contrast to the document. The document sets the baseline. Writing things down has value.

Re: 25 years of mass surveillance is enough

#156

Post by kelseyfrog »

asaddhamani wrote: post #137
kelseyfrog wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taking hormones activates the genes responsible for making someone biologically a woman. That's kinda the point of taking them.

Right. Hormones cause an insane amount of changes. The texture of my skin, my scent, how much oil my skin produces, the haemoglobin in my blood, the size and strength of my muscles, how much fat my body stores, and where it goes, how attraction feels, how emotions feel, what I find rewarding. Certain physical attributes do require different interventions but the vast majority of sexually differentiated traits are dec…

If that's not biological, what is?

Re: 25 years of mass surveillance is enough

#157

Post by ToValueFunfetti »

mschuster91 wrote: post #97
ToValueFunfetti wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I don't get this. If they're niche irrelevant issues that affect ~nobody, why not just concede them? Republicans could hardly dominate the discourse with these topics if there was nobody to discourse against.

> Yeah, I don't get this. If they're niche irrelevant issues that affect ~nobody, why not just concede them? Because there's about 1% of people who are trans in the US [1] and most other populations, on top of that come a further about 1.7% people who are somewhere on the intersex spectrum [2]. Democrats aren't willing to throw literally millions of people under the bus. Republicans aren't just willing to cast them a…

But this is not throwing millions of people under the bus. At least according to this thread, there are fewer trans women in sports than bills stopping them. If this issue does represent throwing literally millions of people under the bus- driving them to extinction-, why are you saying upthread that it's niche and irrelevant?

Re: 25 years of mass surveillance is enough

#158

Post by iamnothere »

pessimizer wrote: post #115
RajT88 wrote: post #13

> It says that the government “will prioritize the rapid identification and neutralization of violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender and anarchist” and “will use all the tools constitutionally available to us to map them at home, identify their membership, map their ties to international organizations like Antifa.” So, Democratic candidates who are looking like the…

[flagged]

I mostly agree with you, but the DSA (the only remaining organized anti-establishment political force) is still making real progress. So much so that Third Way is actively allocating resources to fighting them. And winning NYC was a huge step.

Trump and an army of paid influencers completely broke up the America First coalition, who had pinned their hopes on Trump being “their guy”. Now they’re all infighting, so the DSA is the only tangible threat to the establishment at the moment.

It remains to be seen if the DSA has shaken off attempts at disruption. It’s hard to be a small-d democratic organization when your opponents can afford to send endless streams of wreckers into your midst.

Re: 25 years of mass surveillance is enough

#159

Post by IAmBroom »

pc86 wrote: post #45
smallmancontrov wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Trump calls Democrats "enemies from within," that's anti-American. When Trump refuses to peacefully transfer power to his victorious opponent and instead plays "heads I win tails you cheated," that's anti-American. When Trump sends the FCC chair to suppress speech "we can do this the easy way or the hard way," or yucks it up with the president of El Salvador over suspending Habeas Corpus, that's anti-American. T…

> When Trump refuses to peacefully transfer power to his victorious opponent When did this happen? I didn't realize Biden wasn't inaugurated. I could have sworn he was the President for 4 years.

You are literally claiming the Jan. 6 murder of police officers was "peacefully transferring power".

It was never claimed that it was successful.

Re: 25 years of mass surveillance is enough

#160

Post by NoImmatureAdHom »

RajT88 wrote: post #13

> It says that the government “will prioritize the rapid identification and neutralization of violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender and anarchist” and “will use all the tools constitutionally available to us to map them at home, identify their membership, map their ties to international organizations like Antifa.” So, Democratic candidates who are looking like the…

The politicized take on this is not correct. More importantly, it's not helpful.

When the "left" (Democrats) had power recently in the U.S., they were very happy to try to criminalize the protected speech of their enemies. Their tack was to define speech they didn't like as "hate speech", which luckily isn't actually a thing in the U.S., legally. But they were trying to make it happen.

I don't mean to defend one or the other side, merely to point out that this is a non-partisan issue.

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