I wish people would move beyond 1984 and quote more Foucault's Discipline & Punishment [1]. There is a much deeper-rooted problem in society than mass surveillance or militarization of police. It's the question of why we all let this happen without any resistance. We accept and welcome our controllers. Foucault wrote about the effects of prisoner mindset in society in the 1960-70s. Our subjugation and tolerance to authoritarianism is very widespread and not limited to just police.
We're not just afraid to be anti-authoritative, we're institutionalized since our birth in schools and the concept of control is in embedded in every aspect of life (such as in language found in politics, school work, or newspapers).
Mass-surveillance is just a more direct implementation of "panopticon" [2] applied to everyday life, existing at all times. Having committed a crime is no longer the requirement to be imprisoned, whether physically or mentally.
It's the question of why we all let this happen without any resistance
Because it's easy, because most of the time it doesn't affect us, and because it's hard for one voter to fix the problem. Bryan Caplan's The Myth of the Rational Voter is very good on this subject. Most people (and voters) don't even know how many Senators their state has, or their terms, let alone why complex subjects like privacy are important. Based on Caplan's book, I think ignorance is a more reasonable explanation than a fear of being anti-authoritarian or an institutionalized mindset.
That critique of Foucault is much too cheap. To any halfway competent theory hacker, it will sound like "But Python uses significant whitespace, and Guido van Rossum's knowledge of language design is dubious at best." It's hard to base a serious discussion on that type of argument.
To me, one of the major takeaways from Foucault is his renouncement of the "repression hypothesis". In a nutshell, he proposes to understand power not as a binary relation between oppressors and the oppressed, but as a much more molecular system that spans all sectors of society, and whose modus operandi is not primarily repression, but rather motivation (making someone speak, articulate desires, etc).
Deleuze's "Postscript on the Societies of Control", (https://files.nyu.edu/dnm232/public/deleuze_postcript.pdf, also linked a bit further down), written in the late 1980s, can serve as a very lucid short introduction to (and escalation of) that idea. Worth the read, it's really just five pages.
To me, one of the major takeaways from Foucault is his renouncement of the "repression hypothesis". In a nutshell, he proposes to understand power not as a binary relation between oppressors and the oppressed, but as a much more molecular system that spans all sectors of society, and whose modus operandi is not primarily repression, but rather motivation (making someone speak, articulate desires, etc).
I know that's satisfying to some people. But it seems like not the useful insight given a state the clearly has asymetrically greater power than the populace?
To come back the original article, how the heck does "everything is power" illuminate a situation of Campus Security are using a fricken armored personnel carrier when their job is stopping underaged kids from drinking???
"But it seems like not the useful insight given a state the clearly has asymetrically greater power than the populace?"
Is your assumption true? That is, leaving aside the fact that the police are ostensibly part of the populace, how would some police and a single APC pacify even a couple of blocks of citizens without the cooperation of those citizens?
Personally, and I realize that this is opinion, I do not believe your assumption is true, and as such is a pretty good example of why the ideas you are critiquing are useful- it is difficult to see the larger system of power described by the ability or inability to motivate people.
> how would some police and a single APC pacify even a couple of blocks of citizens without the cooperation of those citizens?
Assuming that the police have no restriction in the use of force, it would be very simple for them to pacify a rather large area with an APC and Police. All they have to do is kill a few people who are out of line, and the rest will cower.
No single or small group of citizens in the US really has the ability to stand up to even a single measly APC. The firepower required to stop one is beyond what anybody outside the US enforcement structure can realistically obtain. You may be able to limit its movement with well constructed roadblocks, but harming the vehicle or its passengers with an assortment of shotguns, handguns and IEDs is not reasonable to expect (given they were explicitly designed to withstand these threats).
This is one aspect of sort of complicity with power that's being discussed. Sometimes, people decide en masse that a certain way of life is worth dying for, so we know there are other responses to armed pacification.
Not that this is always a bad thing. It's pretty great that most of us obey the state's injunction to not wantonly kill each other.
I find it extremely distasteful to describe backing down in the face of slaughter as "complicity." If that's the sort of thinking that follows naturally from the model of power dynamics being discussed here, then I think the model is likely intensely flawed.
On one hand, you are correct that it's an ethical problem.
But on the other hand I think it's more salient to understand that, say, the students shot down at Kent State were murdered and the general population of the country was on the side of the National Guard.... that's the kind of complicity that most people live under, the same complicity that believes people executed by police for non-compliance deserve their fates.
On one hand, it probably really is a good thing that we are generally aligned toward lawfulness, but at the same time it does make us complicit when the people charged with upholding that law use it towards criminal ends-- which is quite common in the US.
But on the other hand I think it's more salient to understand that, say, the students shot down at Kent State were murdered and the general population of the country was on the side of the National Guard.... that's the kind of complicity that most people live under, the same complicity that believes people executed by police for non-compliance deserve their fates.
If you actually read the thread up your position on it, you'd know that you were equating an unwilling to challenge tanks rolling through your streets due a fear of getting shot with an approval of such tanks rolling through your streets.
It seems to me that intellectuals spouting this kind of nonsense wide-up complicit to power and not in a it's-OK-cause-everyone-is, kind of way.
Complicity is a loaded term, so I can see why you'd feel that way. Perhaps it'd be better to say that such behavior enables the slaughterers to do what they do. As for the ethical question of whether a particular instance of backing down was right or wrong, hopefully our analysis of power dynamics avoids answering such questions and focuses on, well, the dynamics of power. That's not to say that such questions are irrelevant, they're just a different field, like the quantitative differences between the light emitted by configurations of dyes and the feeling evoked by a certain painting.
The recent regime changes termed "Arab Spring" provide some evidence that killing some of the population can sometimes further inflame the populate rather than intimidating them.
When the state has access to nukes and the populace doesn't, how can this statement not technically be true? It seems like the ability literally wipe cities off the face of the earth means that you have the permanent upper hand, in terms of power.
Further, what you call "cooperation" I think would largely would be a lack of organization. The ability to organize can grant immense power, and when people talk about the power of large crowds like this I think there's usually an unstated assumption of "if they were to spontaneously act in great--or at least adequate--coordination." I don't think it's fair to assess power in terms of something like a body count, and to ignore the power granted by organization.
> When the state has access to nukes and the populace doesn't, how can this statement not technically be true? It seems like the ability literally wipe cities off the face of the earth means that you have the permanent upper hand, in terms of power.
Because that's not a credible threat. Nuclear weapons are antithetical to the goals of a government in conflict with it's own people.
No, it's not true. The state has vastly inferior power compared to the populace at large, at least in the U.S. However, the state is able to, in most cases, choose when and how it engages it's enemies so that it faces an inferior force on it's own terms.
Personally, I am looking more and more towards sadism and masochism as explanations for such things, and am wondering if sadism isn't the primary drive to attain power in the first place.
Speaking of control, I think an interesting way to conceptualize what's happening here is a cybernetic/organicist model (a tradition that goes at least as far back as Hobbes).
The nation-state can be thought of as a superorganism, and this requires complex systems of feedback and control. We have resource inputs, which are processed via the churn of economic activity (this is analogous to cellular respiration). This activity sustains the citizens (cells) while also providing resources via taxes to the government (the executive control / brain / etc). The government, in turn, uses those resources to sustain itself and exert control over the body-state, as well as powering the police/military for internal and external defense (somewhat analogous to the immune system).
So this is all a very complicated machine, the nation-state feeding off resources and in turn providing for its own sustenance and protection. It is, as Hobbes noted, basically a giant form of life.
Of course, this idea can be taken much further (the NSA is essentially a somatosensory system) but I'll just leave it at that for now.
You might enjoy "Protocol: how control exists after decentralization" by Galloway.
A lot of it is very similar to this, building on top of Deleuze's "Postscript."
>Foucault is SmallTalk. Tangentially inspirational, but mostly useless in modern practice.
I don't think you can categorize a philosopher/historian in such crude terms. For one, this pressuposes that there's some "modern practice" of history, which makes it incompatible or difficult for practical reasons to use Foucault's theory anymore. That's not the case in the least -- modern academic discourse in such matters refers to Foucault all the time.
(And even if the comparison was apt, I'd still take SmallTalk over, say, Java that replaced it, any time of day).
>That's your counter-argument?
No, his counter-argument is a lucid essay, of which you extracted, out of context (and cut in half), a small, non characteristic, phrase that you find troubling. Might as well extract some oneliner from type theory full of heavy math notation to "prove" that Haskell is impossible to learn.
In fact, the paragraph the excerpt belongs to is crystal clear, wether you agree with it's contents or not.
What he says in that part is that in older societies (those based on disclipline), a person moved from one place of instilling discipline to the other (from school, to army service, to vocational education, to the factory, etc). In contrast to that, in modern societies, all those distinct places and stages have been merged (the school is also like a prison, the workplace is also like the army, etc).
This sort cherry-picking of "obtuse" quotes to attack high-level theory is pretty absurd. It's equivalent to somebody from the humanities putting down this formula: Y = λf.(λx.f (x x)) (λx.f (x x)) and saying "I have difficulty understanding this, ergo computer science is absurd nonsense."
There are many things in this world/levels of perspective that benefit from a non-mathematically rigorous analysis- up to and including the question "what is the benefit of rigorous mathematical analysis". That doesn't mean they don't have their own kind of rigor or that you should be able to understand them right away without any background knowledge. The attitude you have is shared by folks in the humanities who think that because they're experts in their field, they should be experts in everything, but luckily, human knowledge is broad and diverse, and there's no single master key.
So here's the operative difference: I can explain to a non-technical person what the Y-combinator gets you in terms of results. I could make a physicist or mathematician or mechanical engineer or even an analytic philosopher understand the significance, and then it's just a matter of notation.
And I really wish postmodernists would stop hiding behind the banner of "the humanities". Analytic philosophy, history, classics, religious studies, and art history are all capable of making meaningful and even true statements from time to time, and most of them can be made comprehensible to the typical person.
If you read the other comments on this thread, a number of people have clearly explained the significance of the theory.
As for the humanities thing, yes, I agree. Just as physicists can make many clear statements that resonate with people who don't even know math, there are many aspects of the humanities that are accessible and clear to people who have never studied theory. Your disdain for higher level theory would also make it difficult for you to enjoy certain texts by people like Aristotle, Kant, and Hegel, none of whom are "postmodernists".
I think you should apologize for making this post. There are a lot of important things that aren't mathematically rigorous but are nevertheless worth understanding.
If you're making grand opaque abstractions without applying some form of logical rigor, how can you be sure you're saying anything that's true and meaningful?
I agree that there are lots of things that are worth understanding but can't be expressed in rigorously logical terms. Things like the subjective experience of falling in love or laughing at a joke or the value of behaving toward others with compassion. Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen.
And yet, Wittgenstein goes on to write texts that are central pillars of contemporary theory. He also saw that laying out everything you can say in purely logical terms leaves a lot off the table.
Keith Windschuttle is among the last people I'd trust to assess anybody's knowledge of history. He is most well known for arguing that the Australian Stolen Generations are made up, and that the enlightened nature of white European settlers in Australia in the 1700/1800s makes it virtually impossible for them to have treated Aboriginals as poorly as is generally accepted - outright accusing most historians he's ever mentioned of being liars or political patsies. Saying that other people don't know anything about history is pretty much his default stance.
Interesting. In The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies - does Caplan do a good job of proving the inverse as an attainable goal? For example:
a) that fully rational voters instating representative politicians into power will result in good policies (that benefit voters)?
b) that it's possible for voters to become less ignorant and more rational on average, within the current system, in order to reach the outcome of a)?
Fully rational or merely fully informed? That is, a rational voter must first be an informed voter.
But, there is a machine dedicated to disinformation. In the aftermath of Citizens United, we are seeing the rise of dark money to the point where billion dollar campaigns are imminent. Combine that with the consolidation of media, the fall of investigative journalism, and a 24 hour news cycle which has devolved news into infotainment, and it is little wonder that the populace is woefully ignorant. Actually, ignorant is too generous. They are actively misinformed, in that they think they know.
So, I would say no, the current system makes it all but impossible for voters to make rational choices, or even to identify what the real choices are.
And it is possible to see "why" all these things have been happening once you understand that the country has been getting poorer and poorer for some time and more and more in debt. In other words, the USA in an Empire in decline. Each and every aspect of life in the US is a little bit worse every year. This has been a process since I believe 1973 when US went out of the gold standard. Rich nations, creditor nations, want a gold standard. Because they want their debt to be repaid in gold, not paper. Once the economy started going down and be more and more dependent on debt and cheap credit -- that's precisely when all the other things started going down.
The solution is bankruptcy, to be able to start over from scratch.
>The solution is bankruptcy, to be able to start over from scratch.
I believe it has more to do with the unfettered rise of the military-industrial complex (including banking/finance), which has siezed near complete control of our political machinery. We have become a corporate state, wherein politicians are fully purchasable and policy is made for a narrow set of interests vs. for the people.
If this is not changed, then these same powers will sieze control again after a bankruptcy reset.
My understanding is the bankruptcy will have huge impact on the society. There could be a revolution. Favorably, a revolution in which banisters among other traitors (i.e. constitution destroyers and haters who are in Office) hanged by an angry mob. Like 2nd American Revolution.
USSR bankruptcy caused plenty of revolutions in the whole region.
People are calm and don't care - exactly like the article implies - till there are three missing meals. Hungry stomach makes them go to the streets and revolt. Not another news about the Government going crazy.
>Foucault's style is (possibly deliberately) obtuse, and his knowledge of history dubious at best, per Keith Windschuttle's book The Killing of History
That critique is not even worthy of an answer -- it's basically a conservative "oh, all these new fangled lefty theorists have ruined our field" cry.
It's not a critique - it's an answer to the question "why don't more people quote Foucault's _Discipline and Punish._" They don't quote it because it's not quotable.
If someone were to write and (crucially) popularize a version that reads the way people explain Foucault, things would be different.
>If someone were to write and (crucially) popularize a version that reads the way people explain Foucault, things would be different.
Foucault was French. French (and Europeans that are non British in general) do not write theory and history the way anglosaxons do. At least most of them doesn't. If you want to learn from them, you have to study their idioms. You cannot just point at it and say it's unquotable or alien (or, well, you can, but it's not fair).
It's like living all your life in C like languages, and being put off by functional programming and parentheses in LISP or Scheme. It's another way of doing things. If you had started with that, you'd find it perfectly normal. Since you didn't, it takes some time adjusting and absorbing the material and culture.
For me, a European, those are perfectly fine and understandable. And I also understand the use of metaphor and poetic language they often use to make a specific point. The anglosaxon idea for that is that you should write in a way that the local butcher or stock brocker can also understand -- which constraints you to only writing for issues that a stock brocker can fathom (or only handling extremely elaborate issues at that level of discourse).
To put it in programming terms, the anglosaxon way is like the C way -- they don't like "magic", unfamiliar notation, higher level code, and DSLs. And they feel that "worse is better". Which, I guess, makes the European way more LISPy.
Disclaimer: I'm Anglo Saxon, and I'm also a butcher in your terms despite spending reasonable amount of time and effort working to understand this stuff.
I think the key difference here is that code actually has to compile, so no matter how clever your lispy magic gets it's still grounded by that reality. Foucault (and Barthes, Saussure et al) are unencumbered by the constraint of their prose actually having to be parseable by anyone. Their prose is better thought of as an artistic performance than a functional machine.
> "Their prose is better thought of as an artistic performance than a functional machine."
Nail on head. The relationship between the words of the above and reality is similar to the relationship between a painting of a landscape and the real landscape. It's not that the painting is not valuable in itself, but it would be a mistake to think that it says anything about how the landscape actually works
If you're going to complain about people misinterpreting Foucault or applying the wrong norms in judging philosophy, you should drop the habit of referring to 'Anglo-Saxons' as if this alien race were somehow homogenous in their culture and opinions, when it is used for anyone white from Staines to Cambridge, Mass. There are plenty of obtuse American theorists, and plenty of philosophers whose conception of power and relations is very similar - for example Chomsky has a lot in common with Foucault in examining relations of power and control, and their relationship with language, and is fond of constructing similar thickets of prose. Many writers from James to Joyce to Faulkner also delighted in creating obtuse literature in the 'Anglo-Saxon' canon.
The label Anglo-Saxon is an absurd, racist simplification which undermines your argument. There is no coherent Anglo-Saxon way - except as it exists in the imagination of the French intelligentsia as a foil to their clearly more sophisticated approach. There is more to the world than is dreamt of in that philosophy of opposition of thoughtful Europe against shopkeeper Anglo-Saxons.
If you changed the question to "How many people represent you in Washington, D.C.?" the answer becomes even simpler. Most people could then safely answer "zero," without a second thought.
I guess I should have specified that I was drilling down on the question of "their state" - it doesn't matter whether it's their state or any other, it's always the same.
(In contrast to congressmen, where the number changes with population.)
(And yes, I can believe, unfortunately, that not every citizen knows this.)
Right, you can't say every State has a Senate. Every State has a legislative branch of government whose setup varies by State Constitution. For example, Nebraska has a unicameral legislature while New York and California have a Senate and Assembly while Texas has a Senate and House of Representatives.
> A state senator is a member of a state's Senate, the upper house in the bicameral legislature of 49 U.S. states, or a legislator in Nebraska's one house State Legislature.
So when in 1960s students revolted against the War in Vietnam, an average American knew all those things? I don't think so.
I'd rather draw parallel to Ancient Rome and its citizens. As long as there were "Games" in town and bread for free nobody cared. Once the Rome was on fire they woke up. For some time.
The situation is hopeless. The only solution is when US runs out of money. Goes bankrupt. Which is quite possible. Once USD isn't the world currency, the country defaults. And then there is no money for wars, no money for swat teams in every little town, no money for surveillance. Those things will still be there but on much lesser scale.
The US has currently the biggest debt of any empire in the history of the world. Impossible to repay. Once the world currency status moves from USD to Yuan, the Government will try to use all that military/police power to "maintain order", the thing is the policemen and soldiers won't have money, there will be no gas even for military, etc. Exactly like USSR when it collapsed -- bankrupted by all the wars and stupid policies.
> The situation is hopeless. The only solution is when US runs out of money. Goes bankrupt. Which is quite possible. Once USD isn't the world currency, the country defaults.
Why would it? The US dollar not being the world currency wouldn't drop the value of US industrial output, but it would (presuming that it dropped the value of the dollar due to reduced global demand for US dollars) reduce the value of US debt.
Which would be bad for entities with incomes or assets denominated in US dollars, but good for entities with debts denominated in US dollars, and neutral for entities whose income was dependent, say, on US output.
> The US has currently the biggest debt of any empire in the history of the world.
In absolute terms, maybe, but relative to the size of its economy, its not even the largest of countries in the world today.
> Impossible to repay.
This is neither true nor meaningful; as long as the debt can be serviced, it doesn't actually need to be repaid (and could, in fact, grow in absolute terms over time without limit without harm so long as output was growing apace.)
>Why would it? The US dollar not being the world currency wouldn't drop the value of US industrial output, but it would (presuming that it dropped the value of the dollar due to reduced global demand for US dollars) reduce the value of US debt.
90% of all USD in circulation isn't even in the US borders. Isn't used for the needs of the US industry/economy. Thanks to this the FED can print, print, print into the oblivion, getting back just 10% of inflation it created, while the world gets the 90%. Ever heard the famous: “The dollar is our currency, but your problem” by John Connally, President Nixon’s Treasury Secretary, to a delegation of Europeans worried about exchange rate fluctuations?
Now the ponzie scheme grew (as they always have to) so it is not only Europeans, but also Arabs and Asians, but the days of the USD debt ponzie scheme are counted. There are just these many losers on the planet to buy into it.
Now, just imagine these additional USD coming from all over the world to the US. Hyperinflation?
And just a single simple event could cause that: Chinese tying their Yuan to gold. Who on Earth will want your t-bill backed by the most indebted government on the planet, when they can get it backed by gold and the biggest creditor government in the world?
>Which would be bad for entities with incomes or assets denominated in US dollars, but good for entities with debts denominated in US dollars, and neutral for entities whose income was dependent, say, on US output.
Right. Your debt would vanish. I think that's the only good thing from the hyper inflationary perspective. The debt is USD denominated, so yes, it makes sense. Again, from China perspective, a little price to pay to have world reserve currency instead of the US having it.
>This is neither true nor meaningful; as long as the debt can be serviced, it doesn't actually need to be repaid (and could, in fact, grow in absolute terms over time without limit without harm so long as output was growing apace.)
If we use the official government formula of calculating inflation from Ronald Reagan years we are at 10% today. We've been for at least 3 years now. And what is the return on the t-bill? Again, it might be true, that at least you know you'll be repaid even if it means you'll loose. But t-bills are in fact in a bubble territory now. What will you do when interest rates rise? If interest rates are at 7% we're talking about more than 50% of tax revenue going just to service the debt. Just to pay the premium. Over 50% of the tax revenue! And what if we have to have it at the levels from the beginning of 1980s? At 18% ? We won't even be able to service it. And in 1980s most of the debt was hold by the Americans. So the money was going back to the US economy. Currently most of the debt is held by foreigners. Can you imagine the impossibility of a political situation were over 50% of the tax revenue goes to foreigners in the middle of a financial crisis? And it is just at 7% interest rates. The FED effectively can't rise the rates. There is no way they can do it. You think this is acceptable like forever for t-bills holders?
> I'd rather draw parallel to Ancient Rome and its citizens. As long as there were "Games" in town and bread for free nobody cared. Once the Rome was on fire they woke up. For some time.
This is not why the Roman empire collapsed. In fact the term "collapse" itself implies some weird sudden event, rather then a gradual evolution over the course of hundreds of years into the various entities which became the forerunners of nation-states today.
The Byzantine empire - east Rome - has no definitive end, for example.
I agree with you 100%. My post (I think) was more about decline than collapse. All the negative development we currently see in the US from militarization to weak economy are signs of decline and not collapse.
Like UK -- it has declined from an Empire Status, but did not collapse. I agree - the same with Roman Empire.
You're incorrect here again. Byzantium retained its integrity, but Rome, the city, did collapse thanks to invasions by Germanic tribes and the Huns. So did most of Europe that was under Roman control, and some portions of North Africa as well. Constantinople stayed standing for quite a while. Control shifted around, falling into the hands of the Mamluks, Seljuks, and subsequently the Ottoman Turks, from where Turkey gets its name.
There are numerous other civilizations (for instance, dynastic China) that have suffered decline rather than outright collapse. Rome was not one of them though; the entire Western Empire broke apart. It's just not a good example.
There is no correct and incorrect. I claim - as many historians do - that The Roman Empire continued for many centuries more than you claim:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Roman_Empire
And yet, I agree, there are historians who will claim that The Holy Roman Empire had nothing to do with Roman Empire. Still it is debatable. There is no correct/incorrect here. For me the Holy Roman Empire was the continuation of the Roman Empire.
Arguably, we've moved beyond purely disciplinary societies and into what Deleuze and others called "Societies of Control". One of the arguments there is that while disciplinary societies tend to have centralized enforcement mechanisms and ways of normalizing subjects into one single type of ideal subject (the ideal student, prisoner, patient, etc.), in control societies, things like shifting levels of access and networks of enforcement in which we police each other and ourselves become more important. There's a great, very short article by Deleuze talking about it [1]. Nonetheless, getting folks started on things like Discipline and Punish would be nice.
Why = Edward Bernays. Manipulation of public opinion. Turning two opposed groups in to supporting your agenda without either admitting it. This is not an accident, but a practiced and studied science.
The American right represented something totally different in the 1990s. So much so that when September 11th occurred, for a brief moment some speculated it could be right-wing terrorists.
The George W Bush administration through propaganda was able to transform those that had just years earlier been strongly anti-interventionist in to supporting interventionism. The same group that rallied for years on shrinking the government was suddenly applauding the addition of new federal agencies. The final term was capped off by a massive government redistribution of $1 trillion of wealth.
The exact same thing happened when Barack Obama was elected President. The left was so neutralized it appeared to have never existed.
Where to start? Target astro-turfing. Fake political organizations such as the elusive tea party and Barack Obama's Organizing For Action. These groups hijack causes for the purpose of gaining and holding political power. Voter mind share and physical effort are utilized as an engine that supports a fire hose of new laws and a highly profitable revolving door capitalism.
There are books, both fiction and less so, and then what really happens.
The reasons acquiescence seems an acceptable behavior are:
1. Most people are rarely inconvenienced by arbitrary overkill. It is persons deemed "undesirable" (appearance or manner) that are subjected to disportionate punishment on a routine basis that makes the overkill seem acceptable to them. It is often shocking to learn what people have been forced to endure.
2. There is a modern concept that the government is the only legitimate holder of the absolute monopoly of violence, which necessitates compliant "good" people, which should be helpless and defenseless. This also requires justifying one's business and unlimited access to search physical person, property and digital life, so as to have "nothing to hide." But it's only the fool that hands over the keys to their own destruction by persecution by a voluminous and arbitrary legal bureaucracy.
3. The majority and privileged agree by consent through silence to the ends that the police are "correctly flushing society" of those they deem "undesirable." In their view: "If that's you, too bad (overkill is legitimized, and you're not important so it doesn't matter what we do to you anyhow).
Yup, Foucault (with maybe some Deleuze) is the answer to the question "Why did we all hate Microsoft, yet we love Google?" Control and power is one of the reasons why open source just isn't enough to protect us from bad things happening with our technology.
'War-nography', islamophobia, narco-phobia... and the script goes on. When the masses believe that they are in danger, they will stand behind those in power for protection.
There's surprisingly little difference between Joseph Goebbels and Hollywood.
As someone broadly in political agreement with much on the left I never understand the obsession with rolling in Islamophobia with these things. At the end of the day religious movements are broadly intolerant, aboslutist and objectionable in nature. It's not a bad thing to fear the increase in power of religious totalitarians. They have a lot in common with many of the others you want to attack.
Even the most mainstream of Islamic voices tend to espouse positions on women's rights, sexual identity and tolerance which would be pilloried and decried if they came from our typical WASPy overlords.
Because pilloried and decried is different than feared (-phobia). The paranoia some Americans have about Sharia law is a good example of the difference - I'm strongly against that happening, but I'm not afraid of that happening, because it isn't a real threat. Being against something and being afraid of something are very different, and it's the fear that can be useful to those in power.
To the contrary I am indeed afraid of the increase in Islamic fundamentalism across the world because of the destabilizing influence. Also because of the detrimental effects it has on global development, scientific progress and human rights (particularly women's rights). With the latter I fear that the more entrenched it becomes the harder it is to roll back. Sharia is a terrible thing for global progress and its implementation anywhere is something I fear, so phobia seems pretty apt and not irrational. Talking with women living in societies where Islamic fundamentalist power is on the rise you will find a very real fear as to what it means for them.
You practically proved his point. It doesn't matter whether fundamentalism is risky, it's not a practical threat and therefore is not anything to be afraid. Destabilizing influence? Give me examples. Historians have no phobia of fundamentalism because it doesn't matter in today's society.
There is an incredibly fractional chance that Sharia will take hold. That's what the OP was saying.
It's already taken hold in countries spanning a very large number of people. It matters in Pakistan for example. Pakistan has nukes. There's a threat there to everyone.
Sorry, I suppose I wasn't very clear. I was referring to the fear some people have of Sharia law taking hold in the U.S., not in other countries, which is a baseless fear that can be used by those in power to manipulate those who are afraid. The fear of fundamentalism in other countries is not so baseless, but it can still be used to manipulate people if those people don't examine the relationship between their fears and the policies advocated in their name (ie. fear of fundamentalism justifying not just surveillance of fundamentalists but of everybody).
Your use of the word "practically" is very generous. I'm not sure I could have proved my point better if I had created a fake account to reply to myself saying exactly the right things to prove my point.
Because they're fucking awesome. War movies, that is. Sure, I'm probably playing into some sort of social conditioning, but it doesn't change that I enjoyed watching John Wayne movies growing up.
I would rather know the inverse; what causes people to reject that system of control? It is extremely rare compared to the acceptance but people do it, how do you "teach" the rest to do likewise?
This is a false equivalence that keeps being brought up on HN. Yes, authoritarian government have mass surveillance, but the converse isn't necessarily true.
The only very clear example of the government getting more authoritarian is in the TSA. (where they now are fondling our balls for our "safety") and to a smaller extent the DHS, prison authorities, and NSLs - smaller in the sense that it has a smaller impact on society.
We're still a nation of laws, and just because the government knows more, doesn't mean it can actually do more.
Imagine for a minute that the president himself personally hated your guts and wanted to make your life miserable. Now imagine he also knows everything about you. What advantage does that really give him? Okay, if you didn't pay your taxes or something, then he could screw you over. But assuming you're law abiding, other than making your traveling an absolutely nightmare there isn't a whole lot he can do.
You can go into fantasy land and say he'll send the CIA to go blackmail you with information about all the tranny midget porn you watch - but lets stay within the framework of what is legal for the government to do.
People aren't afraid of surveillance because it has no impact on our lives. The government isn't actually misusing the data on a large scale. That's why we didn't know about all this NSA stuff for so long.
Ironically, now that the surveillance is out in the open "they" can try to become authoritarian. And my bet is that if they start trying people will go ape-shit. They'll all get voted out and everything would get rolled back.
>This is a false equivalence that keeps being brought up on HN. Yes, authoritarian government have mass surveillance, but the converse isn't necessarily true.
Perhaps (which is still arguable). But that's not the case here, because we have both.
From the Patriot Act to the SWAT-ization of everyday police operations, and from the TSA to the massively increased legal overload (compared to 1960's laws and practices) and down to the rise of the huge (private) prison business and the constant wars, what more proof exactly do you need?
>People aren't afraid of surveillance because it has no impact on our lives. The government isn't actually misusing the data on a large scale.
They don't have to. It's enough for them to misuse those in a tiny scale to affect everybody's life. When the next Martin Luther King/Mother Jones/Rosa Parks/Harvey Milk/Aaron Swartz (and thousands of other, less known figures that fought for change) etc appears, they can crush him at will, and everybody will be poorer for it.
It's not like last year they passed the evil-fascist-police bill that allows the cops to buy tanks. This is all happening within the preexisting legal framework. (The Patriot Act has been around for already 12 years) There has been no significant expansion of the power of the state over the past decade.
If you think the existing framework is flawed (and I would strongly agree), then definitely fight against it. Vote for people that support your view, and write to your representatives.
The fight against surveillance is essentially defeatist and fear mongering. It assumes the government will turn evil and it'll start trying to make your life miserable. It's all part of a collective psychosis. We think that it's an inevitability that one day the US will turn into an evil dystopian nazi regime.
I think it's rather more that the history of states turning fascist shows that the turn is usually proceeded by the state acquiring extraordinary powers on the basis that "insert-bogeyman-here" is out to get us (see Italy, Spain, Germany for past exemplars) and that current citizens would rather be vigilant and ensure that we don't have a fascist future than sit back and allow the possibility that it might occur.
"The fight against surveillance is essentially defeatist and fear mongering. It assumes the government will turn evil and it'll start trying to make your life miserable. It's all part of a collective psychosis. We think that it's an inevitability that one day the US will turn into an evil dystopian nazi regime."
I think that history disagrees with you. Have you ever heard the phrase: all that's required for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing? People questioning the reach of government surveillance are good people doing something.
(I'm gunna respond even though I'm getting downvoted b/c hopefully someone gets something out of this.. but keep it coming! =) )
There is nothing inherently evil in surveillance. In and of itself it's a neutral thing. It's what you do with it that is evil or good.
First I'd say that I don't really see how the NAZIs gain power because of surveillance. Hitler didn't seize power because the SA had some intricate intelligence apparatus. Nor was it the case for the the fascists in Italy, nor Spain. I would argue it was for them simply a tool for the consolidation of power and their fight against subversion.
Just like - in la-la land - if the US government were to turn evil, they would use surveillance to oppress the people. But at that point it's "too-late". The oppression comes first, and then the surveillance to back it up.
"I think it's rather more that the history of states turning fascist..."
I think maybe the larger issues is that the "cyclicality" of history is really more about people seeing patterns where there are none (and historians justifying their jobs). Virtually all the examples we return too are from the beginning of the 20th century. Somehow because of how horrible WW2 was we feel that this may happen again if we aren't careful.
But in reality, history doesn't really "repeat itself" as the old says goes. The NAZI arose during a period of extreme nationalism. There is no reason to believe that this will necessarily happen again. For instance it didn't happen before the end of the 19th century since nationalism is a relatively new concept. And we don't for examples anticipate the return of communism, or disco.
I think at this point in our cultural evolution a return to tyranny is simply impossible. We have so much precedent of the success of democracy and our thinking on human rights has evolved to a point where this is simply unsustainable
"Statistical analysis shows that authoritarian regimes become progressively more unstable (and democratic transitions more likely) once income rises above $1,000 (PPP) per capita. When per capita income goes above $4,000 (PPP), the likelihood of democratic transitions increases more dramatically. Few authoritarian regimes, unless they rule in oil-producing countries, can survive once per capita income hits more than $6,000 (PPP)."
> There is nothing inherently evil in surveillance. In and of itself it's a neutral thing. It's what you do with it that is evil or good.
No it is not. Being watched changes the behavior of the watched. Dissent is less, if the incentives are that way, that dissenting hurts your future choices.
There are so much studies showing the dangers of a society being watched and of watchers not controlled, fueled by legal powers.
Historically speaking it was the way you described, that oppression came first, surveillance followed as a means to an end. Securing the oppressing leaders.
So surveillance is a dangerous thing even without oppressive governments using the data. Just being watched is enough to undermine healthy democratic dissent.
There's a certain hilarity in the fact that anyone who doesn't toe the party line in comments on articles like these on HN gets mass-downvoted. Dissent must be punished and all that.
The argument is not that surveillance is evil or causes totalitarianism, the argument is that given a legal system wherein anything one does can be interpreted as a crime and a panopticon, the laws will be selectively applied to individuals who have personal conflicts with government agents or ideological conflicts with the government itself; the extreme version of this being some future totalitarian government that has ideological conflicts with nearly all citizens.
It's a matter of the additional power granted to the government... in exchange for what? An insignificant decrease in the likelihood that I am killed by terrorists?
A very good argument, but definitely not what the other folks were talking about.
"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. When there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws."
I think what you need to fight then is the absurd amount of laws on the books. I don't think we're close to the point you're describing. Sure cops overlook J-walking and driving 5 mph over the speed limit, but that's minor in the grand scheme of things. I think if the government found out ever law I'd broke... I'd probably have to pay a large amount of fines for all the stuff I've torrented, and maybe quite a few speeding tickets. But you've got to understand that if everyone that speeded and torrented was caught, the system of punishment would have to be completely different. The punishment - right or wrong - is scaled inversely to the chance that you will get caught. As an example: If they saw each time you went over 65 mph, you'd probably be dinged 5 bucks, not 100+.
In a sense it would make the system a lot more fair.
I can't say I'm exactly surprised. If you ran a police department, you're not about to turn down a free tank -- I mean, how cool is that, toys for the boys?!?!
What's bothersome is that a police department is allowed to do this. That DoD rules don't prohibit selling/giving military equipment to police departments. That state legislatures don't prohibit it. A police department, like any organization, is always going to amass all the power/capability it can. Where are the people who are supposed to be limiting and regulating it?
The mayor is busy making speeches about how he's tough on crime. Things are gerrymandered enough that its a one party system where I live, so any speeches are a bit extreme, hoping to rise up in the party ranks, not appeal to anyone but extremists.
My little city has one of those tanks and used it down the street from my home a couple years ago. Couple broke up, guy goes out, gets drunk, comes home, mostly but not entirely passed out on couch, refuses to leave. There exists a deer hunting rifle in the closet, which never left the closet so far as I know, but she wanted him punished for his marriage transgression, so report goes out he's in the house, and there's a gun in the house. Next thing you know there's a swat team with a tank in the front lawn. Never turn down a good safe PR opportunity. Needless to say he's not leaving the house, he's not too happy about getting dumped and he's way too drunk to stand up anyway. They wait a couple hours until he passes out, then smash open the doors and windows and taze him repeatedly, pretty much just for fun, to be the bullies they are. Not the most inhumane thing imaginable but still pretty stomach churning to listen to his screams on the scanner. Those brave warriors sure had their "fun" with a semi-conscious unarmed drunk guy that day. Plenty of speeches later about defending the public and being tough on crime. This is not Detroit by the way... this is the second wealthiest suburb of what used to be the tenth largest city in the country (well, tenth largest a long time ago).
In the old days, the drunk driving would have been washed over, maybe, maybe not, and he'd cool off in the drunk tank overnight at jail. Probably a disturbing the peace ticket, unsure if the soon to be ex-wifey had a restraining order or not at that time. The modern way involves militaristic force and judge jury executioner style punishment. In all fairness the wifey got some punishment too as the cops smashed in "her" houses windows, and those aren't cheap.
I've also seen the tank used around town when serving warrants. It costs a lot to maintain, you need to use it as much as possible for budget justification. So here's your summons for skipping jury duty, delivered by APC. And I'm not kidding.
A year ago, SWAT bust into the house two doors down from mine. I live on a corner unit, and had been drinking when I saw these funny looking guys dressed up for what looked like a game of paintball or some kind of motorcycle night-rider gang, right outside my window. The window which was around the corner from the house two doors down, the bottom of which was about 6.5' about the sidewalk. In my intoxicated silliness, I decided to go ahead and tap on the window. Right then, one of them looked into the window, and I'm sure caught me with a wonderful "Oh Shit" face as I realized these guys were holding AR-15s and wearing military-style Go-Pros and LED headlamps on their helmets.
> What's bothersome is that a police department is allowed to do this.
Well, that's not too surprising. Every party along the chain that has the power to say Yes or No, from the weapon manufacturers, to the US legislature awarding funding, to the DoD, to the state legislatures, to the local police departments, have an obvious incentive to say Yes. The party that has the incentive to say No is the civilian population, but you're fooling yourself if you think they actually have political power. Maybe they should vote harder next time.
Who do you vote for? I vote.. But it doesn't seem to do anything. We have an illusion of choice in this country when it comes to anything that matters. Political parties, banks, oil/gas companies, electricity/natural gas/telecom/internet providers; everything that is critical to living a modern life, we have a handful of choices - sometimes just one. Shampoos, tooth paste, tomato sauce, everything else that doesn't really matter; we've got dozens or hundreds of choices.
Well you're always free to leave. But you don't. And you keep on not voting, and then wonder why your government doesn't represent you. And you know, eventually on that track, you're no longer free to leave either.
But you're indignation shall not brook political engagement! So that's...something.
His implicit assumption is that the act of me voting increases the extent to which government represents me enough to justify the time and effort spent voting (not to mention researching candidates and options). I think that assumption is demonstrably false.
That's a bit of a trick question, because I do not find political authority to be desirable. Thus there could not be a choice that would be acceptable to me.
I ever saw the option "Dissolve the government and just leave everyone to their own devices," on a ballot, I'd be pretty paranoid about it being a trap that would put anyone who voted for it on some sort of special list.
No, bothersome is the one above - that a police department chief is not about to turn down a free tank. If your police has such a mentality, you ought to be worried already.
Human nature is hard to change. Systems are (relatively) easy to change. Rather than worry about people being irresponsible, lazy, greedy, immoral, incompetent, etc, we should focus on building systems that work well and protect all involved despite all of that.
You nailed it. What also changes is people in authoritarian posts. The system has to be resilient to the occasional wrong guy being chosen for a powerful post. Also it doesn't make sense to fight individuals since it gives a fake sense justice. If the system allows injustice then it is bound to happen and abundantly so.
A very important part of a system that works well is making sure that the people with the worse character flaws don't get into power positions, and that the people in power get punished when they display those character flaws.
Or, in other words, stop blamming the system, and start making it work.
The problem is, that (at least today's) societies need some kind of immune system. As much as I liked the world to be without arms, I see the need for law enforcement.
I see the need of a society for people making harsh decisions. Sometimes the utilitarian greater good needs the suffering of the few to come into existence.
The problem is, when it is turned on its head, so that the greater majority suffers a little bit (financially, or otherwise) for the benefit of the smaller minority. And that is, what our current system of lobbying/economics/politics sadly seems designed to achieve.
Actually to parent's point, it's ensuring that even if the worst people got into positions of power, things would be structured enough and there'd be enough checks to keep them from doing any real damage.
This is one of those things that sounds nice but is mostly self-contradictory (or, at least, requires magic) -- if there is something checking to prevent "the worst people" from doing real damage in "positions of power", then:
1) The positions you are atalking about really don't have all that much power, and
2) Assuming that the checks aren't magical external impersoal forces, the people doing the checking actually exert the real power.
But I don't think this is a workable task in a political system. The views of the guy you voted for are going to be different from the one you didn't vote for. In a perfect system every person will be impartial in evaluating elected officials. In the real world, if you evaluate the guy you DID NOT elect you would be perceived as being biased. On the other hand, if you evaluate the person you DID elect you would be perceived as being biased as well. Both cases you would be perceived as being biased. So the only workable approach is to focus less on individuals and more on the system and its results.
I wonder if this stuff is surplus when bought, the M.O. of the military industrial machine seems to be financing a small group of firms for equipment and services we don't need. Just like NSA monitoring data centers and drones.
It's not completely free. They need to pay to store it, insure it, run it. They need to have staff (diverted from their other tasks) to maintain it and operate it and bureaucrat it.
There's a hit to their public image too. When your home or car is burgled you don't want to see a tank.
And, as toomuchtodo hints at, heavily arming a police force leads to those guns being used. Ignoring "bad guys" for a moment, shooting innocent dogs of innocent people is probably a bad thing. Shooting innocent bystanders is probably a bad thing.
True but it's really no different than a truck or existing police vehicles cost-wise. And it's free. In fact it looks pretty similar to police vehicles already in use: http://i.imgur.com/DQFJESy.jpg
>And, as toomuchtodo hints at, heavily arming a police force leads to those guns being used.
Perhaps, but this is a vehicle, not a gun. It's just a big bullet proof truck.
Nothing is ever free, it's paid for at some point. In this case, it's our tax dollars, which could be spent on something more worthy. I know for my state, if I could direct all that money towards trade programs for prisons, I think that would be a much better investment towards serving the same goals, even if it takes longer to pay out.
As the parent post mentioned, the shape of the tool shapes the perceptions of the user. Giving militarily designed equipment to police forces might influence them to behave less like peace officers and more like military officers.
Yes, I'm serious. Swat teams have been around forever, this isn't anything new. An armored vehicle of all things isn't particularly harmful. I would react differently if they gave them, say, a minigun or a guided missile or whatever. It's just a bullet proof truck.
The first SWAT team was established in 1964. They have grown considerably in the past few years and with their growth they are being used more and more for very simple reasons, to execute simple warrants for example.
This man had a SWAT team raid his house for gambling $2000 on a college football game, and he ended up dead. Was a friggin SWAT team needed for a gambling arrest!???
>Whats wrong with a police department having a tank? I'd say it's a waste of money, but if it's completely free there's no downside.
First, it's not all about the money. Second, the tools you use, shape your practice ("If you have a hammer", etc).
Those tanks only reinforce the idea of the militarization of the police forces. Next time, they'll be tempted to use it to crack down some student shit-down or such. Or go bust some small time drug dealer. Perhaps killing a few innoncents in the process.
Even if you were able to ignore the economic factors, the ability to use the show of force represented by the tank decreases the marginal utility of peaceful de-escalation, which most people would agree to be the superior tactic for community policing.
If you have a tank, you don't need to negotiate a peaceful surrender.
Think about how Icelandic cops are wringing their hands over killing their very first person ever, in their entire history. Now think about American cops driving tanks over someone's family dog on the way to punching a hole in a house and using flashbangs and tasers indiscriminately on the people inside.
It was a mistake to give Barney Fife even the one bullet.
Aside from them being an aggressive display of power (even Russia uses them only for riots), they are very expensive!
The military spends a massive amount of money for maintenance - now the police can do that, too! Very cool, except you pay for it and they'll need more money.
APCs use a lot more fuel, have more expensive parts and need special training to operate = more money from the local budget (= more taxes).
Next thing, they'll be buying jets and drones for $10 each and spending millions on their maintenance.
When I read something like this, I always think back to when I would see some tinfoil-hat type ranting on Usenet 20 years ago about the growing surveillance/police state in America. It was generally eye-rolling or unintentionally hilarious stuff.
What's depressing is that it's starting to look like they were right.
The real tinfoil types believe that the government cloud research facility in Alaska controls the weather globally and can cause earthquakes and tsunamis on command. We don't have any indication to believe that's true yet.
True; there are the tinfoil hat types that believe that there was a second gunman on the grassy knoll, and then there are those that believe Bigfoot killed Kennedy with the mind powers he learned from the Lizard People of Zeta Reticuli B.
Edit: from the downvotes, I can only assume that I've offended the Bigfoot fans.
Separately, as a karma strategy, it makes sense to upvote something that you reply to (regardless of whether you agree or disagree) as it tends to make your reply higher up (because the parent comment is higher up) and get more visibility which in theory should result in more karma.
I do this, but I justify it by thinking that the thread was important enough to me to reply to, so I should vote. I don't care about karma, but I'm more likely to get replies, or so I hope.
well, as long as your thermonuclear nuke's seismic wave signature looks like tremor(s) of an earthquake, planting/burying it near continental plate dividers deep in the ocean should do the trick
Oh yes, we will surely get there eventually. But it probably won't be the giant sky-laser in Alaska that does it. Honestly I don't even understand how people came up with that one. I mean, what is the link between "sky-laser" and "earthquakes", other than "God is mad because we're shining the laser in His eye".
"I would see some tinfoil-hat type ranting on Usenet 20 years ago"
Ok then so how many "tinfoil-hat type rantings" have not come true?
It's easy to say "I had a feeling I should have bought that stock" without acknowledging all the stocks that you didn't buy that didn't go up in price. Or the ones you did that didn't go up in price.
That's not the point. If something that would be dismissed as the mutterings of a lunatic 20 years ago is now taken as true, perhaps we live in a world of lunacy (even if other things that were also dismissed as the mutterings of a lunatic aren't true).
The problem is that when the batshit-crazy people are crazy, they're really batshit, and the official story is a more comfortable option for anyone. Most people do not utilize true, rational thought, so to them the world is a false dichotomy: either the government is telling the truth, or the first person to formulate a new, completely-unproven conspiracy is correct. It's really just herd-like behaviour. Many of those assholes on Usenet you're referencing were really just spewing mindless garbage with no evidence, just like the lovely pro-Government trolls that infest this site do now.
People have been well conditioned to believe that their governments are benevolent, do good deeds and that misconduct can be alleviated by stricter law enforcement and electing better leaders.
Anyone who doubts this is a "conspiracy theorist".
If every police station in the country is equipped with military-grade weapons and vehicles, what happens in the event of despotic leadership?
Suppose someone rises to power with little regard for legislative oversight and activates the sleeping military at home. It might start with a real (or faked) terror event coordinated across several major cities. It wouldn't take much at all, 5-10 cities, and suddenly:
1. Internet & cell communications are shut down
2. a national state of emergency is declared
3. A curfew is issued
4. Dissidents are squashed via a military police force with little recourse themselves.
5. Everyone is required to have location-aware implants "for safety."
With a little fear, a government could take full, permanent control of their citizens via aggressive laws and more aggressive enforcers. Would it even take two weeks?
Radley Balko’s book, which is cited in the article, "Rise of the Warrior Cop"[0] actually makes a very good argument that the 3rd Amendment which prohibits the quartering of soldiers during peacetime was referencing this exact situation, wherein a group of government controlled "peace officers", which are essentially military personnel, are in constant deployment inside the United States of America keeping tabs on it's citizens. He argues that it has nothing to do with literally being forced to give up your bed to a soldier, but entirely with the state housing soldiers within it's walls. With the gifting of Tanks, M16s and other paramilitary gear to ordinary police officers, we're essentially creating another branch of the armed forces.
The sad thing is, this is unnecessary. Why be a despot, when you can be a "democratically elected leader"? The masses will love you, so long as you don't explicitly say that you are a dictator, no matter how violent and bloodthirsty you are.
Perhaps I'm naive, but I never understood why a despotic US President would need all of these weapons and vehicles. I mean, they're a nice convenience, but they're complete unnecessary for a takeover.
My thought would be that you just need the presidency and maybe six high ranking military officers. You then declare a presidential address where you announce that you're declaring yourself dictator for life. If anyone objects, you'll nuke Moscow. Of course, Russia will respond by annihilating the entire US, so objecting to the take over is essentially a death sentence.
Let the citizens have their guns. They can't shoot an ICBM.
The problem is, the newly-appointed tyrant would need everyone in the military to play along with the blackmail. All it would take is a few rogue Air Force pilots to shoot down that ICBM.
Never underestimate the ability of human beings to go along with, and justify in their minds, a bad idea.
How does any tyrant do the things they do without enough people willing to go along with it?
Actually, your idea of rogue Air Force pilots shooting down an unscheduled launch of an ICBM is classic B-movie material. As long as there are three pilots and there's some love triangle sub-plot involved. Plus, one of them has to die in some meaningless and tragic way.
With magical patriot fuel that provides thrust relative to the amount of ridiculous drama that has thus far been painted on the stupid propaganda movie reel. Likely when the meaningless death of the goofy but loveable sidekick has been concluded somehow and the ex quarterback pilot jock is sufficiently despairing and enraged at the same time while his high school sweetheart is crying over said death in some sterile but tense government control room and he can hear her on comms as he spurts out his last gasp of impotent rage doing the actually impossible thing and making watching vaccuous halfwit proles feel proud to be American.
Queue complete bullshit speech by sufficiently aristocratic looking political figure about lessons hard learned and tests successfully overcome.
Someone has taken Iron Man saving NYC from a rogue nuke a bit too seriously. If only we could shoot down ICBMs with fighters, my favorite military vehicle, the aircraft carrier, would be far more prevalent in the world.
Why are the enforcers that are keeping the police in line so quick to go along with the despot?
Or do you really think that the police in the U.S. are equivalent to a disciplined, no-questions-asked unit of the Federal government?
(I don't think a majority of the military could be encouraged to act directly against the citizens of the U.S., never mind the police (preempting snide replies, against the people in a nationally organized manner))
In that hypothetical scenario, the police would be responding to an attack (staged or otherwise). Later, the immediate security measures put in place in response to the attack simply wouldn't be wound down over time, maybe because of additional attacks against notable weak points of the existing security measures. Also, cell phone and Internet service would be shut down (ostensibly to prevent attackers from triggering remote detonators, which obviously could never have timers or dead man's switches), thus preventing the on-duty emergency security police from getting news from an outside source.
It's an interesting hypothetical scenario which exploits the good intentions of the police and military to do evil.
I agree, but not for the reason you gave in your comment. The police wouldn't know they're going along with a despot. They would don riot gear, block streets, and set up checkpoints in the name of safety from terrorists and looters.
What is the difference between using militarized police and actual military? If in the hands of a despot one is a problem, then so is the other. So I don't see how weaponizing the police changes this equation.
(Some other commenters suggest the police is more loyal to the local citizenry, in which case weaponizing the police could be seen as providing a counterbalancing armed force that could defend against a military assault on the populace)
Personally, I'm not concerned about either scenario.
If I had to generalize about the military and the police, I'd have a lot more fear for police. The veterans I've known by and large hate the government, which is ironic. But cops have zero compunction against violently attacking the people.
Especially because the police are not professional soldiers. They might think that that APC of theirs makes them invulnerable and pull some crazy shit. Actual soldiers with one APC would live in dread of rednecks with hunting rifles.
In Iraq you can buy an AK-47 for about the price of a pack of cigarrettes. RPGs, C-4, probably a ton of looted US militay hardware from the Pakistani border as well. The populace did not, and does not, want for access to heavy duty ordnance.
Mysteriously, this didn't stop Saddam Hussein ruling for decades.
I would not expect that the current ability to purchase weapons could impact past events (, unless the Iraquis have access to US army surplus time machines as well).
It should also be noted that most discriminatory and tyrannical regimes selectively arm or disarm segments of their populations, so as to effect greater control and stability. If one quickly examines the "Jim Crow" laws of the southern US states, it is easy to find many which were targeted at disarming the black population and others (, making the minorities vulnerable to lynching).
Police does not listen to federal or state officials. Each city has it's own police comprised usually of it's own residents. I doubt they will all side with the corrupt officials.
WOW! The most shocking linked article is the kids who got arrested for waiting for the bus. They were excepted to plea bargain. That's right, the charges weren't dropped!!!!!!
edit the DA dismissed the charges but the police chief thinks the arrest was justified.
Obey the cop and get suspended... or obey the teacher and go to jail.
Just leaving these kids in no-win situations. SOMEONE has to be willing to listen and hear the kids out.
Either the cop has to hear them out, and then say "OK, well I'll just keep an eye on you until your teacher comes."
Or the teacher has to hear them out, and then say "Well, OK, it was my fault for telling you guys to stand there so I'm not going to suspend anyone this time."
But you can't put kids in a situation like that and then say... "It's YOUR fault!"
That's insanity. This wasn't ANY of these kids' fault.
Did you see the interview with the coach? He showed up, identified himself, said these kids were in the right place and they were going to a basketball game all while speaking very respecfully and the cops said if he didn't leave the coach was going to jail too! Apparently being out in public is illegal.
They were going to a basketball game not school so they probably wouldn't get suspended but they were expected to be there. Plus they wanted to be there. It was according to the coach the normal place they caught the bus for games.
Oh... I didn't know that the coach had tried to speak with the cop.
Yeah... I guess that makes it a little worse for the cops.
My only point was that this is a problem that should have been settled between the teacher(s) and the cop(s). They should have communicated better. Now if the teacher TRIED to communicate and the cop ignored him... yeah... that's a problem too.
I mean, adults need to work together to solve problems where children are concerned... not get in pissing contests to see who's is bigger. This is an issue where, I would think, it's obvious that the schools and the police should be communicating about what's going to happen with respect to transportation.
But you can't set up transportation. Communicate the arrangements to parents and students. Then show up and arrest all of the students for following your instructions. That's just a poorly run school district AND police department really. Actually... probably more a poorly run city.
And to arrest the kids because of the bumbling ineptitude of all of the adults involved in the incident is unforgivable. People should be fired for that. Anyone who plays CYA by trying to pin his ineptitude on children should be out of a job.
Incidentally... you do get suspended for some number of games for missing practice or a game. At least, those were the rules in my day. And that's how most teams are run at the school I work with. Basketball, Volleyball, Football or whatever.
"A 6-year-old was suspended from school in Canon City, Colo., after kissing a girl on her hand. School officials said the smooch was sexual harassment"
This is a common way that a totalitarian state can be implemented on top of an apparent democratic republic: pass so many laws (and contradictory / complex laws) that anyone can be found guilty of something, then enforce the law selectively.
"There's no way to rule innocent men.
The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals.
Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them.
One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws."
(From Atlas Shrugged -- Damn, it's bad when I of all people am quoting Ayn Rand).
She's completely misunderstood and misrepresented. There are countless examples of this.
In politics, she's seen as the epitome of all that is "right wing", whatever the Hell that means. Her ethics are disregarded as simple ignorant selfishness. It's easy to see why many would disagree with her.
Academia simply dismisses her. However, her ideas are becoming harder to ignore - they are important!
Highly recommend reading at least Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, and Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. Then pick up Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, Virtue of Selfishness, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, and the recently released Understanding Objectivism . UO is very good (it's useful/personal, down to earth), but requires familiarity with Objectivism.
Generally, people don't like her for lacking 'heart'. However, most people don't actually understand her message, nor do they appreciate her definition of selfishness.
It's very unfortunate because her writings were on the spot on about human behavior.
Rand is difficult for many people because her philosophy is essentially standalone; take it all or take none of it. You cannot really take one small lesson of Rand on its own - it always comes tightly bound to the premises it is derived from.
This current "era" isn't defined by the number or scale of these tragedies but by institutions' and the public's reaction to them. If we want to protect the lives and welfare of the average U.S. citizen our money and efforts would be better spent tackling some of the less newsworthy health issues.
Also the time frame of the Sandy Hook Shooting was extremely brief. The shooter was believed to enter the school around 9:30 the first 911 call was made at 9:35 and the last shot heard was at 9:40 and the police enter at 9:44. The MRAP and other military artillery obviously wouldn't have made a difference due to time frame of the tragedy.
The fact that this is being instigated by the federal government makes me suspect that this is deliberate planning for the long-term consequences of american societal breakdown, for when the war on drugs isn't enough to control the ever-growing underclass anymore.
Does this kind of thinking still place me firmly with the tinfoil contingent?
Having a so called police force like this is societal breakdown.
To me, current US policing looks much like how the Brits patrolled Northern Ireland back in the day, with the army. Only thing the US is missing is check points and road blocks. Don't kid yourselves, the US does not have a police force, it has a domestic army.
Only hope Americans have is in the individuals who wear the uniform. Would American uniformed son and daughters, mothers and fathers turn on non uniformed Americans?
On the other hand.... If the main government got all evil and what not, couldn't this local police force defend the people with all this hardware? Aren't they all sort of independent, under local state or what ever control? I mean, it we are talking revolution and all that, its not a given who side the police would be on, is it?
An interesting realisation in Northern Ireland in the mid-1970s was that Army operations had to be brought back under the umbrella of civilian authority.
From 1969 to 1977 the Army in NI basically operated independently of the constabulary, with only informal liaison and co-ordination, whilst pursuing their primary mission.
But from then onwards the Army was seconded to Security Co-ordinating Commission and was re-orientated towards support of the policeman on the beat.
The UK Government had realised that soldiers having unregulated police-like powers over people was counter-productive, and the response was to re-establish the 'primacy of the constabulary' to give some faith in the justice system. If you were arrested, it was by a police officer with his number visible on his lapel.
I've had these kinds of conversations with military veterans before, actually. It's surprising how libertarian-leaning veterans are. I'm not sure why but I would trust veterans or even active duty military over cops any day.
Cops shoot dogs, taze people for fun, pretend to be badasses, and then go home to their families every night. It's the perfect profession for a bully. But serving in the military sucks, they do a better job screening out the psychopaths, and once you've been in combat once or twice you tend to take the whole organized violence thing a little more seriously.
Yes. It's comforting to think that it's all orchestrated from the top; that means that, even if it's not you, someone is in control of this chaotic world. The truth is much more frightening. No one quite knows what will happen or how to prepare for it, and we'll all likely get screwed when the unexpected happens.
I used to religiously apply that view, nobody is in the driving seat, chaos reigns, conspiracy theorists are looking to replace their father, etc etc. These days I try to take more of a balanced perspective.
There are many examples of covert malevolent acts in the halls of power throughout history, there was a list of confessed false flag operations on here just the other day. Look into any book about the history of military intelligence and you will find all sorts of nasty adventures. Then there's COINTELPRO, MKULTRA, the FBIs attempt to undermine the civil rights movement, it goes on and on. What would be truly irrational would be to believe that this stuff doesn't happen in the present.
So now I try to evaluate each "conspiracy theory" on its own terms, lest I blind myself to the one that turns out to be real.
(Note: I still don't actually believe in any specific tinfoilery. I just try to evaluate it honestly. Almost all of it, I still dismiss immediately. Most of the really juicy stuff is right there in the history books anyway.)
If you discover a conspiracy that you believe, in absence of proof, what can you do with that information? I stopped trying to "figure it all out" once I realized that there was very little I can do as an individual, even if I am right about some conspiracy.
I suppose I worry that if I dismiss this stuff out of hand, one day I'll be blind to the one for which there is proof, or I'll ignore someone else who with hindsight shouldn't have been ignored. Like rms.
But you're probably right, this kind of thinking is largely self-indulgent.
EDIT: a little understanding of that kind of political history definitely gives useful context to discourse on current affairs, I think. It is helpful to consider how the events of the present might be seen in 30 or 50 years time, even without knowledge of what occurs between now and then.
Thanks for the thoughtful replies. I've been on both sides of this. My current position is really only for the sake of pragmatism. I notice that I enjoy my life a lot more when I'm not worried about all the ways that people are trying to screw me.
There are plenty of separate (in many cases, even conflicting) conspiracies out there, planned by disjoint groups, but the problem is most conspiracy theories make it sound like there's a single global organization behind all of it. I cringe every time I hear "freemasons are secretly ruling the world". False flag operations and COINTELPRO are very far (in terms of likelihood and being believable) from "freemasons/jews/illuminati are behind all of it".
This article is not about police tanks. (Even though it's horrifying that if the tanks were about to roll into America's equivalent of Tianeman Square, our American Tank Man would just be tasered, at best.)
This article is about the prison/police system becoming the fundamental axis of civil society. Schools are run like prisons, and increasingly with police presence. Minority groups are, as always, increasingly targeted for harassment and neutralization. If you get on the radar of the police state, you and your family will be hounded forever. If you are imprisoned, it's more likely than not that you'll be held in solitary confinement.
The article doesn't seem to answer the question I wish I knew the answer to -- how did we get here? What happened that made the United States this way? Was it always like this, behind the curtains, just a nest of HUAACs and J Edgar Hoovers?
Well, now the J Edgar Hoover of 2013 knows everything about everyone, he can arrest anyone for any reason at any time, and he can't be opposed by any means I'm aware of. That iconic picture of a hippy putting a flower in the barrel of a riot cop's gun could never happen today -- as soon as the hippy reached for the gun I'm sure his head would be blown off.
Used to be military surplus stores would acquire military surplus and sell them to an amused and subsequently harmless citizenry. All that old equipment has to go somewhere; now such civilian possession is prohibited (even used Humvees (basically just off-road cars) cannot, by law, be sold to the public), it ends up routed to the only group legally allowed to have it and wants it: police. In the meantime, stores that sold military surplus have adapted by selling military-like knockoff gear, and would-be buyers are pumping money into the fast-growing "tactical gear" market.
Fact is, if all this military equipment were sold on open market, no harm would come of it. Used to be available and wasn't a problem then, and the rather large paramilitary equipment market isn't a problem now. Question is: why is the government so afraid of its own citizens possessing such gear?
> Question is: why is the government so afraid of its own citizens possessing such gear?
Is that the right question, considering that the tactical gear market is allowed to exist? I'm apparently too lazy to do it, but it would probably be instructive to look at the history of that ban on military-to-citizen sales.
In 1934, machineguns & "destructive devices" were hit with a $200 "transfer tax" and subject to tight paperwork regulations and severe penalties for violations. Given the products in question cost around $50, and the tax equaled some $3000 in today's US$, it was practically a ban. Inflation brought the tax down to affordable (cough) levels today.
In 1986, possession/manufacture of new machineguns was banned outright. Old ones could still be owned & transferred, but between the severely limited supply and accumulated $200 taxes, prices have increased about 25x over what they would cost unrestricted, making them desirable for investment and undesirable for mundane use.
When the US Army transitioned to "Humvees" replacing Jeeps, the contract included a clause prohibiting resale to civilians. Likewise other equipment cannot be resold, not so much by law but by contract.
As it is, the tactical gear market is "allowed" to exist mainly because there isn't much way to legally prohibit it. Most such gear is objectively indistinguishable from other common products (clothing, camping equipment, radios, hunting gear); the differences are significant in specialized use but nowhere near enough to be codified in law. As demonstrated during the now-expired 10-year "assault weapons ban", the marketplace will come up with all kinds of creative solutions to bridge any gaps caused by prohibition (10 round limit? get subcompact pistols or .50-caliber semi-auto rifles. Weight limits? superlight plastic/carbon-fiber guns.)
> When the US Army transitioned to "Humvees" replacing Jeeps, the contract included a clause prohibiting resale to civilians. Likewise other equipment cannot be resold, not so much by law but by contract.
Do you know why this is? It sounds more like economic protectionism than a desire to keep them out of the hands of civilians.
What a depressing article(s). Our reality is only going to get worse since there is little we can (or have the will to) do. At least in the Ukraine people are really contemplating change. Here we watch our football and our shows and fawn over celebrities and nothing changes.
Every time you say people are just fawning over celebrities you contribute to the problem by helping develop widespread facile cynicism. Say something new.
Was OWS not your style? Do you think anti-capitalist critics that use technology are hypocrites? Are you waiting for someone to craft the perfect movement before you jump in? If any of these or those in their vein apply, it's time to change your MO, your way of looking at the problem.
The is no "the" in Ukraine. And there is no point in comparing Ukraine to the US. If you think that people in Ukraine are contemplating change you have to read up more on it. Or maybe visit the country sometimes to see for yourself how wrong you are.
I have been to the Ukraine over a dozen times. Ukraine is doing more than just contemplating change. Everyone there is demanding change and is unhappy with all elected politicians no matter what party they are from.
The main problem is that Ukraine is not sure what kind of change it wants. And it doesn't understand the steps to take to get change. And too many Ukrainians want a magical solution that will sweep the problems away.
Point 1 - Signing that Euro agreement will not change anything. It only puts Ukraine on a path to make thousands of changes in their laws and their society that may or may not hurt the people. Then, after 10 or 15 years of this, they might be allowed to join the EU. Ask Turkey about how long you need to wait. And after joining the EU, Ukraine would be a substandard partner, for instance there would be visa restrictions for years to come that would prevent many Ukrainians from working in the EU. Quotas in fact.
Point 2 - Ukraine is already in an informal union with Russia. Given that Ukraine's largest trading partner is Russia and that Russia's largest trading partner is Ukraine, they can't help but be in a union. If Ukraine would only sign an agreement as a CIS member and formalize this relationship, the people of Ukraine would gain immediate benefits. For instance there would be a legal way for Ukrainians to go work in Russia, and since they are already fluent in Russian, they could get reasonable jobs and not dishwashing or hotel cleaning jobs like they get in the EU.
So what would be best for Ukraine?
Also, consider this. Russians are GREAT chess players. What if Russia is orchestrating this because it knows that if Ukraine joins the EU, then it will weaken the EU and open the door for Russia to also join, and then to dominate?
Yeah, but in Ukraine, they're digging themselves out of a much deeper hole. If they manage to get accepted in the EU, a lot of them would emigrate west. USA citizens don't have that option. There isn't a "west" for someone from the USA to emigrate to. USA is the west.
You shouldn't compare your corruption with Ukraine's or other Soviet Bloc countries'. Those people have a place to run to, as hard as getting there is. You have nowhere to run.
I know plenty of US citizens that have emigrated to Canada, via school or work related methods. It's not particularly hard, it just takes time for the paperwork to clear.
How about Germany. I'm in Berlin, although I even thought about moving to USA in the past (I also had a few decent job offers in Vally). As a side note: I'm not German.
USA looks increasingly like a place that must exist and I'll need to visit from time to time, but I'd prefer for all the conferences and everything else to be somewhere else if possible...
Get a job, get a green card, wait five years, get your citizenship.
That first step is a challenge but if you're the type who reads Hacker News you're better off than most. My green card application for Ireland was approved yesterday. (Yes yes Ireland has numerous flaws - I still vastly prefer life here).
That's not the case in my experience. Anecdotal, but I worked at a company where the brunt of the downturn layoffs fell disproportionately on people who needed work Visas, which have become much more difficult to justify in the current climate. AFAIK nothing's changed in that respect.
This is a continuation of the military industrial complex. There aren't enough wars, but companies that supply the military still need to make money. So they make so much equipment that the DoD needs to give their completely usable equipment away for free.
This page should make any U.S. taxpayer sick and any non-U.S. citizen worried:
I have felt we have too many laws and over zealous cops for
some time now. I guess I'm old--I was born in 1972, but
I can assure you; things were not like it has been
in the last twenty years. I started noticing a change in the late 80's and it's(a over regulated society, cops who
abuse the system) just gotten worse. If Jesus Christ reappeared he would most likely be arrested for indecency.
Ticketed for fishing without license. Arrested for loitering. Arrested for holding an event without a permit.
Ticketed for sleeping in someone manger, without written consent. It's really not funny when you get an expensive
ticket for no reason. I have thought about this and a solution; tie all fines to income, and require all Cruisers to be wired with 24/7 cams. This is a good website, but I
sometimes wonder if I just blowing smoke, and racking up
clicks for a already Rich Dude? Some of these topics are
so important they deserve their own webpage?
Not being from the states I've only seen this through documentaries and expose shows... but to me its just seems to be the police are starting to treat everybody the way minorities have said they have been treated for decades.
I just find it so incredible that a hospital can bill you for a rectal cavity search ordered by police/judge. Honestly I think my mind is experiencing some sort of race condition as I try to pick a word that accurately describes my incredulity about this. Ughhhhhh
I share your sentiment, but trying to analyze objectively the entire scenario from different angles I find acceptable for the subject being searched to pay the bill if he is found guilty (which is hiding illegal stuff in his body). I don't agree with the shaky grounds used by the law enforcement to bring up the body search though.
What's funny to me about the suggestion to move is that the very people who have the greatest ability to actually move to another country - upper-middle class people with college degrees - are the ones least affected by these issues.
That's true, but I was profoundly disturbed by the direction the country was going and more directly at the thought that my taxes were supporting it (along with the military industrial complex, policies enabling substantial environmental destruction, etc.). My friends probably think my response is rather extreme but I prefer that my taxes go towards pensions, health, and education (and, yes, even the dole), instead of the military.
Once you leave (and give up citizenship) you loose a lot of options to influence it. And you leave behind those who are either too naive, too poor, too sick, or otherwise unable to follow; together with the elements who made you leave, and who now have free access to a completely empty stage..
Exit is what gives power to voice. If you're at a stagnant company where nothing changes even though it's clear that change is necessary, even the suits will sometimes notice when half their staff quit.
Hah, well I like to imagine that just after walking out the door my previous boss realized the error of his ways and instituted sweeping new reforms.
I don't know of anything that's not anecdotal. I also think that trying to fix things as an individual in a country of over 300 million, despite what people tell you, is generally a fool's errand for anyone who doesn't have enormous amounts of capital at their disposal. Best to find somewhere that suits you and enjoy life there.
The US has poor and mediocre global rankings in many areas: Education, health care, economic disparity, crime, incarceration, number of times police use guns, etc. Some of our rankings, like incarceration, rank down there with totalitarian hell-holes. So, by most groupings of objective measures, you'll find a dozen or more places that have better living conditions than the US.
Well, I can tell you for sure that most of Europe (Spain, France, Germany, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Italy, Austria, probably more) at least as it is now, is great for raising kids and living a normal life without a constant fear of the police in the back of your head.
The general attitude, and the implications of everyone having health care, are far better. The police in general have a far friendlier disposition. It's not all about authority and the "listen to me I'm the coach/sergeant" sports-talk/military-talk mentality. There is also no real race issue the way African Americans experience in the US (a systematic, paranoid, aggressive marginalization of a large section of society).
And there certainly isn't anything like the militarization of the police like there is in the US, which is the focus of this article.
I don't know where in Canada you've lived, but there is plenty of that in Toronto, and Calgary, especially dealing with the natives. I'll bet Montreal and Vancouver aren't must different.
There was no culture shock moving from Canada to the US.
The situation with natives is a far cry from the systematic and pervasive problems with racism against African Americans in the US. Natives are such a small percentage of the population in Canada, and certainly in urban centres, that no especially abusive laws have been constantly set up over the years in order to keep them at what is considered the appropriate station in society. Think of the hundred years of Jim Crow laws in the US, and the even current attempt to disenfranchise them during every election through voter registration laws and voter list deletions. It is simply not comparable.
There's less of a precedent of them abusing their own citizens so (which is my anecdotal opinion, admittedly). Add that to healthcare costs that won't cripple you forever, and it's a solid choice for an English-speaking country.
On the handful of times I've been in Canada, I've enjoyed the experience. The people were friendly and the scenery breathtaking. There's a lot to like about America's neighbor to the north.
What's striking is the correlation between excessive police tactics and enforcement of victimless crimes.
From a right libertarian point of view, it is the government's responsibility to protect your rights, not to protect you.
From a left libertarian point of view, it is the government's responsibility to demonstrate that the good of enforcing a law outweighs the loss of individual freedom and other harm of enforcing it.
Drugs, immigration, fail those tests. Many sex crimes fail those tests. Seatbelt laws probably fail.
The police have to be so aggressive about these things because they never lent themselves to enforcement in the first place.
One of the underpinnings of the U.S. Constitution is the Bill Of Rights, one of which states "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
People go bouncing off the wall around this issue as if it were one having solely to do with owning guns, but the real purpose is arranging the real power in the government. The people reserve and are ultimately responsible for the use of lethal force in the United States. They can delegate that power to the government for certain things, like a defense department or law enforcement, but at the end of the day, it's everybody carrying guns that are responsible for social order. At least that's the way it was set up.
As we've drifted away from that principle, by assigning more and more powers to the defense department and police agencies, (gun control is part of this but not the only part), those folks have quite naturally started viewing themselves as the privileged few to hold the power to make things go boom. Then we got rid of the volunteer military, further separating the mass of the population from the things carrying lethal force.
So nowadays, if you want to become a specialist in the application of power tools to destroy people and things, you pick one of a few different career paths and become one of the chosen few. This is a VERY recent development. Not 50 years ago it was commonplace to know people who could operate machine guns, explosives, and drive tanks around. To those folks, cops were just another working Joe like them except they wore a badge. On the other side, cops viewed the population as a trained asset to have and use in time of crisis. It was not unusual to consider gathering up as many armed men as necessary from an area to conduct police operations.
But the professionals got involved, and having that kind of power was viewed as a terribly complicated responsibility that the average guy couldn't handle. This created a wall in society. On both sides now, it's us against them. We need MRAPS because, hell, anything can happen, and there's just a few of us cops in this county. We are no longer all in it together. It's not like if AQ comes knocking we can knock on doors and ask for help.
This is a self-fulfilling feedback loop: as the police arm themselves more and more with special gear, the average person really can't operate it. So even more specialized training is required. Same goes for military gear, where this divide originated.
I would suggest that what we need is some sort of ready reserve system where everybody is trained at reaching 18 on how to safely use most all common forms of police and military gear. I'd further suggest that local police departments be required to have a certain percentage of their patrols as civilian ride-alongs.
There are a lot of things that can be done here, and we don't have to argue gun control to make progress. But I think we do need an understanding of how we got here in the first place. This is a trend that has been a long time coming. The War On Terror just exacerbated it.
People will probably despise me for this, but why don't we have compulsory military duty in the U.S. like other countries?
It would give people some discipline. It would discourage us from acting arrogant, "lol! we should bomb them!" It would give people some skills. If it was equally applied, no one would have any disadvantage. It would make people feel much more secure, without delegating their security to others.
The real scourge is that in order to be economically competitive, we must all hyper-specialize and become experts in a single, narrow area. We can no longer lucidly judge others b/c we have less in common with one another.
A work buddy said in the 1950s in the U.S., teenagers would hang out with the police. He distinctly remembers hanging out in a police car, smoking marijuana, while the cops chided him because he said he couldn't afford real tobacco to smoke. I want to get back to that world. I want to provoke other nations less, so we're no longer a target of terrorism. I want us to get back to the business of making our lives leisurely through technology, rather than more awesome. "More awesome" means were doing more with the same energy as we exerted in the industrial revolution. I'd much rather see us getting less done with less energy.
It would lead to the US military becoming way too large, and given the prowess in media propaganda, you'll get tens of millions of people with a highly militaristic mindset with nothing to do - think current soldier worshipping x10.
I disagree. The current volunteer-only military service means that only people with that mindset join in the first place. If there were compulsory military service, that would mean everyone else, regular people with no desire for glory/etc would be in there too. Look at what happened during Vietnam. There was such drastic anti-war sentiment specifically because anyone could be drafted.
Because it went horribly in Vietnam? Because we have tens of millions of willing, ready, and able volunteers? If you ask me, compulsory duty is just a bad idea, period. Especially in a country the size of the United States. It all sounds fine and dandy if you are not at war, but what if your two years just so happened to be 2004-2006? What if I turned 18 during that period? I get to endure decades of PTSD and who knows what else just so I can master the fine art of driving a Humvee?
This is excellent Daniel. Your take on the 2nd amendment is sensible almost to the point of obviousness, yet it's one that I've not encountered before.
> I would suggest that what we need is some sort of ready reserve system where everybody is trained at reaching 18 on how to safely use most all common forms of police and military gear. I'd further suggest that local police departments be required to have a certain percentage of their patrols as civilian ride-alongs.
The military reserves are certainly an option, but having a mandatory training+service aspect certainly seems ... interesting. Frightening, in a way, but it seems to work for Switzerland.
> Frightening, in a way, but it seems to work for Switzerland.
Yes, because when the entire male populace is effectively your military it's a lot harder for the military to do shady things. Also, as the original commenter points out there's a lot less division between your average joe and someone who is a professional police officer/soldier.
What good would weapons' system training do, exactly? Are you suggesting that if more people knew how to operate this equipment that local police departments would be less likely to say yes to a free MRAP? What point are you making here?
Americans really should learn more about the Soviet KGB and its predecessor, the NKVD, and how they ran a campaign of terror against citizens who did little more than have a different opinion of how the country should be run. Because now that America no longer compares itself to the Soviet Union, this is the kind of police state that is being constructed in the USA.
Meanwhile, in Russia, the place where the Soviet system used to be, they have moved in the opposite direction and dismantled most of the police state. In Russia people have more personal freedoms with respect to the state than they do in the USA. Of course one unfortunate side effect of so much freedom is that there was a great increase in corruption and the growth of the oligarchs after the fall of the Soviet Union. But Russia is dealing with this step by step, reducing corruption and reigning in the oligarchs. Their ideal seems to be the USA of the 1960s or 70s, but not the USA of today.
>In Russia people have more personal freedoms with respect to the state than they do in the USA.
How it is possible for someone to reach such a stupendous level of confusion boggles the mind. Even if the Russian propaganda minister were to make such a declaration he surely isn't deluded enough to believe it to be true.
Well, I speak Russian fluently (and therefore can follow the Russian media/Internet) and I have visited the country 3 times. In addition I have visited another ex-Soviet country, Ukraine, over a dozen times. You really have to go to these places to understand them, and preferably have some level of competence in the language so that you can speak to a variety of people, not just some egotistic activist that gets his jollies out of manipulating foreign media.
I have spoken to Ukrainians and Russians, students and programmers, and they would be offended at your assessment of the situation. The most telling part of my conversations with them was when I suggested that things are getting at least a little better. They were adamant that things were not getting better. Anyway they were glad to be in the states.
Immigrants have gone through incredible emotional struggle to adapt to a new culture. They are not a reliable source to assess how things are in their country of origin, especially not how things are currently. And to lump together Russia and Ukraine and say that things are not getting better, is gross oversimplification. Ukraine has had weak leaders and strong oligarchs since the fall of the Soviet Union. However Russia has had strong leaders (Yeltsin and then Putin) who have consistently pushed back on their oligarchs. In particular Putin has spent most of his leadership period fighting corruption, reigning in oligarchs, and undertaking the perestroika (redevelopment) that Gorbachev was never able to achieve. Things in Russia are getting better while things in Ukraine are getting worse. They are heading in opposite directions and many Ukrainians are aware of this which is why public dissent has been growing there.
Being offended at someone's assessment of a situation is a political statement. We should not be surprised to hear people making political statements about a political situation. None of this makes one person more right or another one more wrong.
Politics is very hard to figure out, and we should all be careful of making oversimplified statements. It's not as simple as Ukraine signs an agreement with the EU and then everything is rosy. Neither is it as simple Putin twisting Yanukovitch's arm. This is a bloody complex geopolitical problem and Ukraine is getting no support in solving it from anyone outside Ukraine. They have to work through it, accept the hard knocks, and ultimately reap whatever benefits that their decision brings. Cheerleaders on the sidelines have no skin in the game.
Here's what I don't understand: what is the ultimate goal of this newfound desire to police everything? The obvious answer is control over people en mass, but say that happens...then what?
Articles like this (which I'm glad are being written) point out the flaws and injustice in the system, but don't discuss the presumed results "those in control" are looking to achieve by manipulating it.
From what I understand, the desired result is to minimize the autonomy of the general public and funnel the bulk of money, control, and power into the hands of a national elite. What happens next (an honest question, as I have some semi-paranoid theories but am curious to hear from someone who is a bit more educated on the topic)?
We live in an era of delicate balance between global overpopulation and resource depletion. We have exceeded the carrying capacity of the planet, we are at peak supply rates for oil and other essential resources. We're rendering things less habitable and global climate change - coupled with water table depletion and topsoil burnout - threatens to crash food crops in some key regions.
It's not a conspiracy. People who know things - and when you have wealth you have the ability to know things - tend to see that we have a period of incredibly instability coming involving a lot of dying and misery. In such a situation having a tight control of the masses and a control of resources in the hands of a tiny elite benefits that elite in ways that times of abundance make seem unnecessary.
Thanks for the response. Fairly inline with what I thought. Next question, how to prepare? Is it futile to make an effort to protect myself and those around me, or is such a thing feasible (I imagine this would require a huge edit to lifestyle)?
I don't want to be "that guy" but I also don't want to be caught in the headlights if shit hits the fan (which it seems is inevitable). Anything to study to guide my thinking without going full-on bomb shelter?
Don't talk to me about that - I'm buying a ranch with farmable defensible land in a remote underpopulated location with good water access, large enough to support friends and family indefinitely. Ya, know. Just for vacations and things of course.
On a serious note (though I really am getting the ranch) I would recommend reading John Robb's resilient communities blog - though his former defense-related work on Global Guerillas is brilliant too (he used to be a military strategist before realizing all these problems boil down to what I refer to above).
It's about resiliency. When things fail, and given our lack of investment in infrastructure, and coming challenges they will, it's important to be resilient and make sure those around you are too. After that it depends on how big you think the bottle neck is we all have to squeeze through to whatever is coming next. I worry it's quite narrow personally, but ymmv.
Finally... that edit to lifestyle is coming. It's just whether it's managed by you or you're managed by it.
You may plan your life to get a minimal exposure to future problematic development. Moving to a quiet place overseas might be a wise decision. This being noted though, you may also chose to gird up your belt, lift up your boots, and stay put enjoying what's coming - it'll be a helluva show (definitely worth witnessing)!
This is AMAZING! We're getting closer and closer to a cyberpunk society (unfortunately, authoritarianism is necessary, but not sufficient for this). Soon it'll be like Escape From L.A. or Snow Crash or Neuromancer!
I can't wait to stroll down the streets of Chiba like Case.
I can't wait to hack around in the Metaverse like Hiro.
I can't wait to explore the underbelly of prison-islands like Snake.
We just need a bit more authoritarianism, some advanced cybernetic implants, and just enough unrest for a Modern Wild West to be born.
Does anyone else plan on coming along for the ride?
I generally agree with the article, but I object to this section:
"And the mood is spreading. Take the asset bubble collapse of 2008 and the rising cries of progressives for the criminal prosecution of Wall Street perpetrators, as if a fundamentally sound financial system had been abused by a small number of criminals who were running free after the debacle. Instead of pushing a debate about how to restructure our predatory financial system, liberals in their focus on individual prosecution are aping the punitive zeal of the authoritarians. A few high-profile prosecutions for insider trading (which had nothing to do with the last crash) have, of course, not changed Wall Street one bit."
I think that the self-serving, damaging actions of those with a lot of power that affected the entire world's economy is worth looking into at least some prosecution, it's hardly in the same league as what happened to three innocent teenagers waiting for a bus. And if insider trading isn't related to the last crash, then of course prosecuting it isn't going to change anything.
The idea that there is a small cabal of powerful people who brought the economy to its knees while enriching themselves through their knowing and active malfeasance is a fairy tale.
To ethically prosecute people you have to competently and in good faith believe they have broken specific laws. And you need to know the actions, and how specifically they violated the law. An unfortunate outcome is not sufficient.
I made no claim that there is a small cabal of powerful people controlling everything brought down the system.
There are, however, Goldman Sachs people that lied to their own customers in order to make money, for example. That is the kind of behaviour that can be persecuted, mostly along the conflict of interest or fraud lines. Those are specific laws.
Oh, by the way, heard of the Libor scandal? Not specifically related to the crash, but interesting reading:
AFAIK Fab has yet to be sentenced, and note that as a foreign national, he's not eligible for the country club prisons.
At the same time, the you don't see prosecutors going after the hundreds of thousands who lied to obtain mortgages they would otherwise not have qualified for. That is the real irony of the comprehensive settlement of the investment banks -- the banks are paying billions in fines because of borrowers misrepresenting themselves.
One guy? Wow, justice at work. We are clearly over-targeting bankers.
Oh I see, you're of the "blame the borrowers" mentality. All those slick willies/poor bums scamming the naive banks out of money. Not at all the banks packaging bad debt with full knowledge of the bullshit they were participating in, due to perverse personal incentives on their own staff trading off huge institutional risk for guaranteed short term personal gain. Nor them taking side bets on the whole system crashing so seeing a win-win either way (those of the GS variety). Not to mention the banks are supposed to know what they're getting into, they are after all the experts.
Last I checked the ones suffering after the crash are most definitely not the banks, but rather the middle and lower class who have not seen effective wage increases in 30 years and now have even more trouble finding a job. Wow they really pulled a fast one on the banks.
Please see historical and global context related to 'police-state' and despotism in order to understand the significance of these issues. You will need to set aside your American exceptionalism.
I do have an issue with the article though. My middle school did have quite a few young criminals in it, and a zero-tolerance policy would have been beneficial for everyone. Instead, quite a lot of physical violence and theft was dismissed as 'bullying' which resulted in escalation. I know for a fact that many of the students who misbehaved in less extreme criminal ways (and were allowed to get away with it) did enter into a life of crime before they were halfway through high school.
So there is a difference between militarization and despotic control and disciplining students enough to prevent them from becoming criminals.
I think that rather than worrying about harsh penalties for vandalism etc., take issue with the propaganda being fed to students and the lack of focus on problem solving outside of narrow domains.
one of the few beauties of our government is that it is near impossible to pass laws with a divided congress. I'm a pretty passionate libertarian/conservative but having the dems control one house of congress isn't all that bad of a thing (from my viewpoint)
Seconded. It's very popular these days to bash congress for not getting anything done, but it has its upsides. I'm pretty far left, and I wish the far-right wasn't quite so powerful, but I am glad the republican party is there, still powerful, waiting to pounce on any and every mistake made on the left. It helps keep us honest (c.f. obamacare - which I like, but the rollout, eh...). And when the roles are switched, say, 50 years, we'll do you the same "favor" :)
The post-911 federal gov has been directing resources towards building a domestic counter-insurgency apparatus and promoting a culture in law enforcement conducive to their inclusion in it. You don't spend over a decade building something without a reason. So what's the reason? Needless to say, if the founding fathers were around today they'd be pondering a strategy to resist it.
The usual internet twaddle. How many commenters on this thread have bothered to look up incidents of this nature in their districts, neighbourhoods or whatever, and called their councilman or congressman?
I guarantee none. Spend less time online and more complaining to your representatives. You will achieve a lot more in turning things around, ie if you really want to, cowards.
To me, as an English person looking at America through the prism of the news, and articles such as this, it looks more and more like the American state is a rogue element beset by paranoia, increasingly lacking trust not only in the world at large, but also in its own citizens.
Do any of you American citizens out there have the same opinion of your government?
We are living in an extreme, high tech, highly theatrical version of The Wire; one in which you can't trust your government, the law, the police and you can guarantee they are watching you.
Turns out that any laws that have loop holes will be abused and everyone is guilty. This is the definition of tyranny.
I would say this is a symptom that could be explained by Turchin's structural-demographic theory -- that is, increasing competition for resources (including political power) produces measures that even in earlier, more violent periods might have been considered too drastic.
I'd love to study how long it takes the tanks to fall into disuse, to the point of being inoperable, simply because police departments will lose interest in them, neglect maintenance, forget where all of the pieces are, fail to find suppliers for spares, etc.
My family came on boat number 2 after the Mayflower. For the first time in my life, it may be time to checkout of the USA for awhile. Maybe it is time? Can always visit, but maybe this is it. This is just insane at this point.
> Sheriff Bud York suggested, according to the Post-Star, the local newspaper, that “in an era of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil and mass killings in schools, police agencies need to be ready for whatever comes their way...
And in reality, they're just preparing for social unrest that seem more likely by the day.
This story reminded me of the Boston bombing and it's "lockdown" (read martial law). Didn't Boston have one of these APCs roaming the streets during its martial law. In that case it's really a show of force against the "civilian" population than to catch terrorists.
Why the hell does Ohio State need an MRAP. Are they going to actually tell us that the terrorists might roll in with tanks or APCs. Or maybe the terrorists will be running around with APCs in full combat? No.
Geez, is anybody even questioning these clowns about these acquisitions.
Pathetic & self serving. There would be a cessation of federal/State/Muni funds if any agency's focal issue(s) were eradicated, hence the popularity of "War On..." ideologies with unattainable objectives. What starts as a legitimate(sic) cause all too often morphs into a personal job security issue. Imagine all the ICE, DHS, NSA, FBI, CIA, state, county and local LEOs that would have to look elsewhere for jobs if the "War on..."s didn't raise their budgets every fiscal quarter.
The 'good old days' had drug dealers and violence, don't kid yourself. It got covered up and ignored.
What is a police dept to do, when the crimes are escalating? Its simple to chide Warren County (or whoever); but who are you to say the next bombing or public rage will not occur there? The others were in similar places; no place is safe.
But how does an armored vehicle counter or deter bombs or a lone gunman? Their purpose is generally to get a handful of soldiers into an adversarial environment. Lone gunman are taken down easily enough with standard squad car kit.
I mean, there was that one bank robbery in LA where the perps had serious body armor and heavy rifles in the 90s. Other than that I'm really drawing a blank for how often this would be appropriate tactically.
Though it should be noted that the publicly-available statistic with the highest correlation with the drop in violent crimes is... drumroll, please... the drop in lead contamination.
Yes, America is safer primarily (presumptively) because it banned lead-containing antiknock molecules in gasoline and banned lead-containing pigments in paint. The dispersion of remaining lead contamination out of the urban environment over the years so closely tracks the drop in violence that it almost makes one believe the correlation is due to causation. Almost. Unfortunately, experimental confirmation would be grossly unethical.
This generalization gets bandied about too much. Crime trends and patterns are highly local. I'm sure violent crime is dropping in many places, but in other places it's spiraling out of control, for example, South Chicago, East Oakland, Detroit. I think it's a mistake to throw those places in the same basket as a small city in Ohio (unless it really has similar crime stats).
Crimes are escalating because bagatelles are being treated as crime. Besides that, overpolicing will not save you from terrorism, it will only lead to people being more afraid of the police and thus creating terror itself.
We're not just afraid to be anti-authoritative, we're institutionalized since our birth in schools and the concept of control is in embedded in every aspect of life (such as in language found in politics, school work, or newspapers).
Mass-surveillance is just a more direct implementation of "panopticon" [2] applied to everyday life, existing at all times. Having committed a crime is no longer the requirement to be imprisoned, whether physically or mentally.
http://www.amazon.com/Discipline-Punish-Birth-Prison-Vintage...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon