421–430 of 830 posts
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Nobody ever voted for mass surveillance. There's no party you can vote for in the US that doesn't advocate for total mass surveillance by the federal government. Don't pretend this is a red/blue thing. The military-industrial complex is fully integrated with both parties in the US.
No major party. There are smaller parties who oppose mass surveillance.
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USA was founded well after the Pilgrims. I don't think anyone in 1776, or even in the Pilgrim days, was thinking a foreigner should have the right to vote for instance.
After the Revolutionary War, most US citizens couldn't vote. I don't think we should be using that time period for comparison.
US also didn't have Jus soli citizenship until the whole civil war and slavery debacle. You had to go into a local court and show you lived in the US for a couple years, who would swear you in as a citizen. But most people didn't care about voting or holding office enough to bother.
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> We voted for the people who gave the power, and we re-elected them. That would be true if We The People were reliably informed when we showed up to cast our votes. However, in recent years, we have become detached from reality. "News media" companies pivoted away from keeping their audiences informed about things that mattered and instead focused on capturing audiences and keeping those audiences maximally engaged…
> That would be true if We The People were reliably informed when we showed up to cast our votes. Weren't the democrats criticised for campaigning on the message that voting for Trump was a significant risk to due process and democracy? I feel like every voter was aware of what happened on Jan 6th and still voted for him with some level of knowledge about that.
What a particular voter was “aware of” regarding Jan 6th and the events that caused it very much depended on where that person got their news. For example, one prominent network was found in court depositions to have knowingly reported complete BS about what Jan 6 was all about: “During pre-trial discovery, Fox News' internal communications were released, indicating that prominent hosts and top executives were aware the network was reporting false statements but continued doing so to retain viewers for financial reasons.”
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_Voting_Systems_v._Fox....
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Nobody ever voted for mass surveillance. There's no party you can vote for in the US that doesn't advocate for total mass surveillance by the federal government. Don't pretend this is a red/blue thing. The military-industrial complex is fully integrated with both parties in the US.
No major party. There are smaller parties who oppose mass surveillance.
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I don't care. The UX means I can't give it any credibility. For all I know this could be somebody's OpenClaw spouting bullshit. The default credibility of all throwaways is zero and that was even true before 2023. If you let it influence your opinion in any way you're a fool.
From busterarm's profile: "Most people are stupid and/or on drugs." The account is from 2013 but given that profile, I can't give it any credibility. After all, it could be somebody's OpenClaw having been granted control of the account.
Luckily for HN, I actually have a post history. You can use my post history, textual analysis and statistics to make an informed decision about whether I'm a bot or not. Whether I'm being consistent or spouting any random bs.
The account I was responding to doesn't have anything.
> The account is from 2013 but given that profile, I can't give it any credibility.
What's in my profile is a statistical fact. It's there as a reminder, to me, not to expect everyone to see the world the same way that I do. To be comfortable with strong disagreement.
Just a hair shy of half the population is below average intelligence. Roughly 1 in 4 people has a cognitive impairment. This is of any age but trends upwards with age, reaching 2 in 3 by age 70. 1 in 4 Americans take psychiatric medication. 1 in 4 participates in illegal drug use. We haven't even touched on alcohol abuse.
My profile statement is just objective reality, whether you're comfortable with being stated openly or not.
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I find the idea of a non citizen protesting and causing social unrest diabolical. Most international students, (whether studying in the US or Europe or Australia or Malaysia or indeed anywhere else) understand that their visa does not grant them the same substantive rights that citizens of a country get. That’s as it should be. I couldn’t care less about a non citizen’s non existent free speech rights, nor would I ex…
There is nothing in the constitution limiting the 1st amendment to only citizens.
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c) despite appearances and the current state of fear, Trump's second-term ICE has deported merely a fraction (0.6m) achieved under Obama's ICE (3m+), so if it's on a different level, it's clearly a lower one. Movement vs action, perhaps. https://www.wlrn.org/immigration/2026-01-23/politifact-fl-im... https://tracreports.org/tracatwork/detail/A6019.html https://docs.house.gov/meetings/GO/GO00/20200109/110349/HHRG...
It's a little weird to compare Obama's 8-year numbers to Trump's 1.25-year numbers.
Whether you think we should look at per-year numbers or the overall numbers, I'd say that most people count total progress of a thing moreso than the velocity, or the prices of things instead of the spot inflation rate.
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That is A solution. To be "the real solution", it needs to be within the grasp of a regular person. Self hosting your entire digital life is absolutely asking too much of the vast majority of people This is like saying the real solution to bad practices of food companies is to exclusively grow your own food, or the answer to anti-repair practices is to only build your own devices, vehicles, etc. Contractors cut corne…
You said it better than I could! As someone who does software for a living, do I want to come home and maintain a homelab that hosts photos, email, decentralized social, etc? Hell no! Even if it's fun as a hobby, I don't want to be on call for my own basic online services.
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> That would be true if We The People were reliably informed when we showed up to cast our votes. Weren't the democrats criticised for campaigning on the message that voting for Trump was a significant risk to due process and democracy? I feel like every voter was aware of what happened on Jan 6th and still voted for him with some level of knowledge about that.
> I feel like every voter was aware of what happened on Jan 6th and still voted for him with some level of knowledge about that. What a particular voter was “aware of” regarding Jan 6th and the events that caused it very much depended on where that person got their news. For example, one prominent network was found in court depositions to have knowingly reported complete BS about what Jan 6 was all about: “During pre…
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There elections every two years, it's not too late. But only if people actually want that enough to vote and press politicians.
There's no mechanism for pressing politicians except threatening not to vote for them again, and politicians are exceptionally cowardly and avoid picking up hot potatoes that could incur criticism. I'm in a district with one of the safest seats in the country, and getting my representative to state a position on many issues is like getting blood out of a stone. There's no formal mechanism of accountability for member…