What now?

Voters need to organize ourselves so we can put forward a credibly effective litmus test: "We won't elect anyone who will continue to tolerate torture"

So let me probe at this + give some anecdotes.

"Organize ourselves." The meat and potatoes here seems to be in what it means to be organized. Amnesty International would theoretically fit the bill of what we're seeking, but as demonstrated by our inability to even end our own indefinite detention facilities (gitmo) during the tenure of a president who was ostensibly opposed to it, we can observe that the organization we've had at our disposal to fight these wrongs is unfortunately lacking in terms of producing results.

Meanwhile, the NRA has taken a different angle of "organization" and has seen it pay dividends, as their message by and large continues to be the law of the land, despite an onslaught of events (consistent mass shootings) that one would expect to undercut them.

How can we organize in a way such that we fall into the latter group and not the former? (In success, not in virtue)

And now the anecdotes. The other night I had a conversation with my mother about Vietnam. She had protested heavily, and told me about the inflection points in public opinion (kent state, tet, and the draft numbers themselves). For her, and her peers, "what is your draft #" became one of the key topics of conversation, the understanding of the implications of not doing anything about the war was pervasive among the broader population.

To loop this back to my main point, in absence of:

1. A clear, sustained, and singular message.

2. _awareness_ of this message throughout society.

3. A societal "concience" that the message is in fact something worth having

I am very pessimistic about incurring change; and she and I agreed that all 3 aspects are currently somewhat lacking in the American zeitgeist.

This loops back on my whole frustration about these topics often being persona-non-grata, so I'd ask if you agree with my summation, and what points you think can most effectively be addressed? (again to reference my root post, this is why I think we have a privileged position as tech influencers and business-people, since there's often such tight connections between our work and govt, and we may be able to flex this)

I agree with your thoughts, and I think you've clarified the problem well here.

I think #1 is likely the most addressable, at least in the short term.

I think the best way to accomplish this is that we need a concise and consistent buzzphrase/meme/hashtag for demonstrating self identification in the group saying: "Our country is illegally torturing people and we need it to stop". Obviously, this string is too long - it should probably be less than 30 characters.

"#BlackLivesMatter" I believe owes much of its success in entering the public zeitgeist to the fact that people can add the hashtag in various contexts to indicate that the issue at hand is relevant to that particular conversation. (Whether BLM has a 'singular' message is debatable - probably more a constellation of related messages). Similar can be said for #MeToo, and to a lesser extent #FakeNews.

Maybe something like #TortureCausesTerrorism: if every social media thread which discussed terrorism had people bringing the conversation back to torture's role in fostering the environment which catalyzed those actions, it could plausibly shift the cultural conversation. While it is great to have people articulate their individual opinions, there is something to be said for making a low-effort buzzphrase someone can easily add to a conversation: fewer people will put the effort in to uniquely articulate their thoughts on a subject than would just quickly reply with a hashtag and some emojis.

My other comment on this page got 11 points in 6 minutes. But since then, every time I refresh the page my comment shows up as 'compressed' (as if it had been flagged), and it has been been on 11 points every time I've checked (now an hour old).

Weird shit happening here for sure.

To echo a sentiment I posted in another thread.

"I don't mean to 'complain about points' but it's rather absurd to look at the wild swings from +8 to -8 and back again for any of my posts on this topic. It speaks to me that there are at least two 'factions' with very polarizing opinions on this, and the context has turned less from discussion into silencing vs vouching. I certainly don't remember seeing these patterns as strongly 5+ years ago."

I've become increasingly unhappy with the quality of discourse over the last few years, especially on these "fringe" topics. It's doubly sad because I haven't found comparably good levels of discussion that HN sometimes generates, but for these other topics. (Ignoring the additional sadness that I fear by sticking our heads in the sand about anything that smells like politics we're in for a "Very fun" next few decades, I've historically been a strong advocate that to draw a hard line in the sand between "this is tech" and "this is politics" is to abscond a lot of responsibility _every_ expert community should have for the political space they operate in)

I sometimes come across political news in my feed and then post it.

These type of posts get flagged almost immediately fyi