31–40 of 199 posts
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You can turn that argument around just as easily; without honest campaigns, there is no incentive for an informed population, because there is no meaningful chance for popular support to elevate a candidate running an honest campaign to the same heights attained by those to whom all weapons are friends.
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This seems like a really sad and poor way to concern yourself with how our society governs itself.
Roughly 125 million people voted in the last presidential election. Had I been among them, I'd therefore have had roughly 1/125,000,000 of a say in who gained the office. Perhaps, to a homeopath, such a marvelous dilution of political power might leave something meaningful in its wake. Not being a homeopath myself, I find it somewhat less than compelling. I fail to see how resignation in the face of inevitable powerl…
And if you're the younger, more liberal type that commonly frequents HN, then frankly you're an ideological minority and it's pointless for you to vote. And really, it is by design that we don't let ideological minorities have their way.
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" A campaign is a marketing effort intended to install a team of people in power. " You've just described the current crisis of representational democracy.
It's not current and it's not a crisis. It's working exactly how it was designed to work. We changed, not them. The Internet disrupted the popular perception of democracy by creating a massive global communication channel that is not under the control of the people in power.
The most common thing I see is my fellow Americans blaming politicians, bankers, school teachers, lobbyists, cops, unions, almost anyone... except themselves. The truth is, the American people are the problem, and they've spent the last few decades doing everything possible to avoid personal responsibility for the shape of the country.
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" A campaign is a marketing effort intended to install a team of people in power. " You've just described the current crisis of representational democracy.
It's not current and it's not a crisis. It's working exactly how it was designed to work. We changed, not them. The Internet disrupted the popular perception of democracy by creating a massive global communication channel that is not under the control of the people in power.
They're working their hardest to correct that horrible mistake.
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There's just no way to do it from the bottom. All these protests, all this (sl)activism, it doesn't do anything. You either need to dedicate your life to politics and get into the club and start working from the inside, and pray some holy fucking deity that there are others like you, or nothing will change. Maybe severe violent revolt but I literally don't ever see that happening. There isn't enough time in the day t…
> Maybe severe violent revolt but I literally don't ever see that happening. I always find this sentiment (or various forms of "wiping the slate clean") to be quite amusing. It is historically more likely for a society to be less free after violent revolution than the opposite. Radicals who believe in a cause strongly enough to engage in revolution also tend to be ideologues who, once in power, want to remake society…
It's difficult to objectively say whether violent revolt works, because every single revolt has been in a very different context then the next.
The amount of people, artillery, the strength of the opposition, the cause, the location, the current government, the time.
You can't say whether a violent revolt is the way to go or whether it's not the way to go. It's not a black and white issue at all.
If my brothers and sisters see that giving up their lives for our country is a necessity, then I will dedicate my life and fight along side them.
It hasn't gotten bad yet, the moment it starts to really affect your day to day life, people will do something. Right now, to most people, if their instragrams and facebooks work they don't care.
“When you get the package every morning, it puts steel in your spine,” said David Plouffe, the president’s longtime adviser. This strikes me as backwards. Seems that a president with a steely spine would be strong enough to maintain the rights of citizens in the face of such challenges.
What if the president simply told his advisors that he would take a weekly instead of daily briefing on these issues?
That's the whole problem. The NSA spying is being sold as if it stops terrorist attacks. It does not. They have not cited a single incidence.
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This seems like a really sad and poor way to concern yourself with how our society governs itself.
Do you truly believe that you as an individual can make any difference at all? And do you truly believe that it is in fact the society that governs itself?
I think everything is just a tool, and those who see through them and utilize these tools to their advantage move up the ladder.
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It's not current and it's not a crisis. It's working exactly how it was designed to work. We changed, not them. The Internet disrupted the popular perception of democracy by creating a massive global communication channel that is not under the control of the people in power.
It is fascinating how people lay blame. The most common thing I see is my fellow Americans blaming politicians, bankers, school teachers, lobbyists, cops, unions, almost anyone... except themselves. The truth is, the American people are the problem, and they've spent the last few decades doing everything possible to avoid personal responsibility for the shape of the country.
What's interesting is that the article suggests that Obama himself did not know extent of the NSA's activities. ("At the same time, aides said Mr. Obama was surprised to learn after leaks by Edward J. Snowden... just how far the surveillance had gone.") If that's true, it seems to indicate that Obama is not an overseer at all. Have our worst fears been confirmed? Is the NSA an unstoppable organization that reports to…
The political power, the money, the might, the lobbying, the military budget slush fund, the endless scandals, the wars. It's pretty clear the military-industrial combination has done the most to shape the last five or six decades of America's existence.