We have all the hallmarks of a police state with only frequency of abuses separating us from the moniker officially. We have the largest, most momentous anti-intellectual "movement" I've ever heard of, at least in the first world, going on right now, with Romney as a shining example.
So yes, in terms of standard of living, on a historical scale, we're doing pretty good. For now. I don't think it's pessimistic to see a general decline over the course of the last three decades, the warning signs of a further decline, and little indication of a slowing or reversal of that decline any time soon. I think that's just reading the situation accurately and without fantasy.
As for racial epithets, what is that, I don't even. You know that characterizing a particular mode of thought using terminology characteristic of that... fuck, forget it. I'm not even going to get into that slap fight.
People who can't remember what the US was like before the DHS and TSA existed, and don't remember a time when Grand Central Station didn't have guards armed with automatic weapons stationed in passenger areas, I guess can be forgiven for being less pessimistic for lack of comparison. (Do they still have the preposterously armed guards in Grand Central? Last I was there, they had guards, dogs, and frequent announcements that I could be stopped and searched at any time without explanation.)
There's clearly a generational difference in what you would call a "decline." For me, I'd say an increasingly technically-inclined, socially progressive society hold more weight than the TSA and terrorism paranoia undertones, which is why I'm still optimistic. Not to use the "old man" argument, but I'd just suggest that our priorities are different.
Technology and innovation are great and admirable but social and civil freedom will define your access to both.
True, but I think we're in that point of discord where lawmakers are too old to fully understand the direction of innovation, while the younger generation is hip enough to circumvent the majority of half-assed attempts to stifle that innovation. As the aforementioned older generation dies out/retires, the imbalance will settle.
I could also be totally out of touch with reality and just spouting positive garbage, but I'll go with being an optimist for now.
As long as I can still buy a beer and have casual premarital sex without being executed, I'd say we're doing okay.
Speaking from my personal experience abroad: The US is far, far less of a police state than the UK. We have gobs more money than Romania. Our police are far less heavily armed than Germany's, and they can arrest you for drawing a swastika on something. In Skokie, IL, the Illinois Nazis still hold pride marches past rows of synagogues, and no one bothers them.
If we go outside of personal experience, addicts are shooting up each other's blood in Tanzania, female circumcision is a cultural norm in Somalia and Kenya, and a bottle of vodka means death in Riyadh.
I'm not saying there aren't freedoms we need to fight to preserve in the United States. I am saying that if you think an obesity epidemic, pornoscanners, and a rich, grinning liar running for president means we're plunging headlong into the abyss, you're probably a victim of the fearmongering you despise.
Our police are far less heavily armed than Germany's, ...
Speaking as someone in the arms industry, I'd be terrified to see a police force more heavily armed than ours. Police departments in the U.S. have been buying assault rifles, SMG's and Riot-guns like there's no tomorrow for years.
The beat cop on the street may not carry much, but the armory some of these departments are building up is significant. The idea that our policemen are outgunned by criminals has been BS for quite some time.
We are running a concentration camp in Guantanamo. The president is allowed to select and authorize assassination targets, to include US citizens. Warrantless wire-tapping is A-OK and they track what books you take out of the library.
The net effect of these outrages is, right now, not pronounced, but there is no good reason to ignore this sort of power-mongering or to allow it to continue, nor is dismissing it as not relevant to your life or the potential lives of your future children a very good idea.
My town of 17,000 has a police force with a fucking APC. A fucking armored carrier, for fuck's sake. They have assault rifles. Why do small town cops need automatic weapons? They have a new system mounted on their cars that passively identifies and tracks license plates and aggregates the data into a warehouse of everybody's movements on the road, with, admittedly, gaps. For now.
This shit is not cool. This shit is not dismissable.
My town of 17,000 has a police force with a fucking APC. A fucking armored carrier, for fuck's sake. They have assault rifles. Why do small town cops need automatic weapons?
Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it. The APC might be a bit much, but the rifles are reasonable. If your policemen are going to be carrying guns then give them good guns.
The problem comes when you give the police all that gear and then start telling upstanding citizens they aren't allowed to have anything.
Speaking from my personal experience abroad: The US is far, far less of a police state than the UK. We have gobs more money than Romania. Our police are far less heavily armed than Germany's, and they can arrest you for drawing a swastika on something. In Skokie, IL, the Illinois Nazis still hold pride marches past rows of synagogues, and no one bothers them.
There are often reasons for a lot of those forces being that harsh. The German laws especially are rather cherry picked as there is a good fucking reason they clamp down on that shit. Its the same as Clan rallies to give you some perspective.
Also UK officers do not carry guns nor do they want to. I view this as a good thing.
Technology and innovation are great and admirable but social and civil freedom will define your access to both.
True, but I think we're in that point of discord where lawmakers are too old to fully understand the direction of innovation, while the younger generation is hip enough to circumvent the majority of half-assed attempts to stifle that innovation. As the aforementioned older generation dies out/retires, the imbalance will settle.
I could also be totally out of touch with reality and just spouting positive garbage, but I'll go with being an optimist for now.
I think you need to remember that you have a physical body in meatspace and that that body is being increasingly tracked, limited, and litigated. Circumvention of censorship and copyright and DRM and etc is all well and good but when you try to legally protest in a public space and are forcibly removed (and likely assaulted for good measure), that's something else entirely.
This country is getting increasingly authoritarian and I worry quite a bit about the "frog boiling" analogy applying (even though I'm pretty sure you can't actually boil a frog that way, the theme stands.)
The TSA is a god damned national disgrace, but a lot of liberal youth right now actually believe it makes them safer and honestly don't understand why anybody would consider it an affront to anyone's dignity or personal sovereignty. I think that's a BIG problem, and I think that's only one example out of many.
http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/bulletin/license-plate-tracking-innovation-or-privacy-invasion/1361 This article is a bit heavy on opinion, but establishes the existence of the technology. Two out of ten cruisers in my town now have specialized cameras mounted on their trunks, 6 lenses each, with image recognition and OCR software and GPS capability, built specifically to recognize, catalog, and track license plates. Passively, of as many vehicles as possible. The operating officer does not target any specific car(s), it just tracks and stores data on everybody it sees.
As for liberal youth not being terribly disturbed by the existence of the TSA, that's anecdotal, but in my opinion ubiquitous. It's not easy for people to recognize that something that's been around as long as their memory might actually be pretty fucking bizarre. I think most intelligent people, presented with the statistical and empirical case(s) against the TSA tend to agree it's mostly a farce, but I don't think most ever really get around to questioning it or worrying about it. Ten years ago people who weren't cowed by fear were livid at its inception.
1) The existence of license plate tracking does not mean that the government knows where you are at every single moment. Also, people in the most dangerous, high population density zones (that is, in major urban centers) don't typically use cars to get around.
2) He was a war criminal. No one is going to eat a round of 30.06 because they're pro-choice or because they think gay people should be allowed to marry.
3) Anecdotal evidence is worthless. This argument is pure conjecture.
1) You're right. Good thing I didn't say that. In fact, I said there were gaps way back when I brought it up in the first place. There are gaps. For now. The issue here is not with the technology but with the precedent. Just like technology is driving social changes and re-examinations in areas like intellectual property and parenthood and the legal definition of a family, it should also drive a re-examination of what a reasonable expectation of privacy actually is and whether we as a society really want to eventually solidly eliminate the "soft" expectation of privacy that has existed in public areas to date even though no legal, codified expectation to privacy in those areas exists and in fact the opposite has been established. Even though legally anything you do on the street is available for public scrutiny, maybe this should not necessarily mean that ubiquitous, gapless monitoring should be allowed as technology approaches that capability. These are conversations that should occur, not be avoided, eschewed, and downplayed.
2) Precedent. It was once unthinkable for the US government to assassinate a US citizen without due process regardless of context. Now it's not. You may not think this is a problem. A LOT of people disagree with you.
3) The longer the TSA and DHS exist, the more legitimacy they gather. This is a matter of social science. The suppositions and casual statements I make surrounding that don't really matter either way. Good thing people are allowed to just, you know, talk sometimes. You sure do.
100% false. On my way home now. Good job on that low hanging fruit. Maybe one day we'll have an exchange that rises above you using Tue easiest rhetorical shortcut in all instances.
I am disappointed that we haven't actually stopped being a literal first world country yet. Maybe if we changed our classification to second world, some of my more worldly friends would think of the US more favorably.
100% false. On my way home now. Good job on that low hanging fruit. Maybe one day we'll have an exchange that rises above you using Tue easiest rhetorical shortcut in all instances.
Occam's Razor says that my "easiest rhetorical shortcut" is invariably the correct one. Maybe one day you'll have a logically cohesive and defensible opinion.
I am disappointed that we haven't actually stopped being a literal first world country yet. Maybe if we changed our classification to second world, some of my more worldly friends would think of the US more favorably.
"Second World" refers to cold-war era communist states, so...
I am disappointed that we haven't actually stopped being a literal first world country yet. Maybe if we changed our classification to second world, some of my more worldly friends would think of the US more favorably.
"Second World" refers to cold-war era communist states, so...
Which is why it doesn't fit, and why it is a fail. I just think we need to lower the bar a bit, so that our infant mortality rate and the state of our infrastructure doesn't look so bad anymore.
I am disappointed that we haven't actually stopped being a literal first world country yet. Maybe if we changed our classification to second world, some of my more worldly friends would think of the US more favorably.
"Second World" refers to cold-war era communist states, so...
While the term "police state" is an obvious exaggeration, there are indeed some serious concerns with the path the U.S. government has taken over the past decade. The trend has been a clear one involving an expansion of government power that began under Bush and and has not abated under Obama.
Perhaps even more worrying is just how little attention these issues are being given. For a start, the indefinite detention section of the NDAA is not something to be taken lightly, and neither was CISPA. Fortunately, CISPA didn't pass, but there are signs that legislators may yet attempt to pass something much like it.
One of the biggest problems is that in a two-party system, any issues that both parties are in agreement on end up being marginalized in the extreme.
Occam's razor, firstly, is a rule of thumb, not a natural law. Secondly, it does not state that you should remove integral complexity from an argument in order to more easily, lazily dismiss it. My argument regarding surveillance was not "if they do this, they'll do that," it was "tech is progressing in this direction and that may possibly lead to A or B, we as intelligent humans should maybe have some pre-emptive discussions rather than risk implementation without review." That's nit slippery slope, that's prudent application of wisdom. Your dismissal was pithy and lazy.
"Hallmarks of a police state" was the phrase I used, cheese. I think its pretty apt.
You cited what Eugene Volokh refers to as the "boiling frog" slippage mechanism directly and without irony. I did not remove any inherent argumentative complexity beyond the slippery slope; you did that for me.
As for Occam's razor, you're up against hundreds of years of philosophy challenging my usage of it, and any "integral complexity" to your argument is by definition that quality by which the razor dismisses your argument.
Reference mechanism #4, please. Respectfully, I'm going to opt to go with Volokh, a renowned lawyer and logician, over you. It doesn't matter where the analogy comes from, arguments over small change tolerance as represented by the analogy of the "boiling frog" is nothing more than a mechanism of slippage for the application of the slippery slope fallacy.
Comments
/cycle of aging in America
So yes, in terms of standard of living, on a historical scale, we're doing pretty good. For now. I don't think it's pessimistic to see a general decline over the course of the last three decades, the warning signs of a further decline, and little indication of a slowing or reversal of that decline any time soon. I think that's just reading the situation accurately and without fantasy.
As for racial epithets, what is that, I don't even. You know that characterizing a particular mode of thought using terminology characteristic of that... fuck, forget it. I'm not even going to get into that slap fight.
People who can't remember what the US was like before the DHS and TSA existed, and don't remember a time when Grand Central Station didn't have guards armed with automatic weapons stationed in passenger areas, I guess can be forgiven for being less pessimistic for lack of comparison. (Do they still have the preposterously armed guards in Grand Central? Last I was there, they had guards, dogs, and frequent announcements that I could be stopped and searched at any time without explanation.)
I could also be totally out of touch with reality and just spouting positive garbage, but I'll go with being an optimist for now.
Speaking from my personal experience abroad: The US is far, far less of a police state than the UK. We have gobs more money than Romania. Our police are far less heavily armed than Germany's, and they can arrest you for drawing a swastika on something. In Skokie, IL, the Illinois Nazis still hold pride marches past rows of synagogues, and no one bothers them.
If we go outside of personal experience, addicts are shooting up each other's blood in Tanzania, female circumcision is a cultural norm in Somalia and Kenya, and a bottle of vodka means death in Riyadh.
I'm not saying there aren't freedoms we need to fight to preserve in the United States. I am saying that if you think an obesity epidemic, pornoscanners, and a rich, grinning liar running for president means we're plunging headlong into the abyss, you're probably a victim of the fearmongering you despise.
The beat cop on the street may not carry much, but the armory some of these departments are building up is significant. The idea that our policemen are outgunned by criminals has been BS for quite some time.
The net effect of these outrages is, right now, not pronounced, but there is no good reason to ignore this sort of power-mongering or to allow it to continue, nor is dismissing it as not relevant to your life or the potential lives of your future children a very good idea.
My town of 17,000 has a police force with a fucking APC. A fucking armored carrier, for fuck's sake. They have assault rifles. Why do small town cops need automatic weapons? They have a new system mounted on their cars that passively identifies and tracks license plates and aggregates the data into a warehouse of everybody's movements on the road, with, admittedly, gaps. For now.
This shit is not cool. This shit is not dismissable.
The problem comes when you give the police all that gear and then start telling upstanding citizens they aren't allowed to have anything.
Also UK officers do not carry guns nor do they want to. I view this as a good thing.
This country is getting increasingly authoritarian and I worry quite a bit about the "frog boiling" analogy applying (even though I'm pretty sure you can't actually boil a frog that way, the theme stands.)
The TSA is a god damned national disgrace, but a lot of liberal youth right now actually believe it makes them safer and honestly don't understand why anybody would consider it an affront to anyone's dignity or personal sovereignty. I think that's a BIG problem, and I think that's only one example out of many.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/05/us-targeted-killings-eric-holder_n_1320515.html All you have to do is google for an almost infinite supply of articles on the relatively new idea that it's perfectly legal and OK to assassinate citizens of the US in the interest of national security.
As for liberal youth not being terribly disturbed by the existence of the TSA, that's anecdotal, but in my opinion ubiquitous. It's not easy for people to recognize that something that's been around as long as their memory might actually be pretty fucking bizarre. I think most intelligent people, presented with the statistical and empirical case(s) against the TSA tend to agree it's mostly a farce, but I don't think most ever really get around to questioning it or worrying about it. Ten years ago people who weren't cowed by fear were livid at its inception.
2) He was a war criminal. No one is going to eat a round of 30.06 because they're pro-choice or because they think gay people should be allowed to marry.
3) Anecdotal evidence is worthless. This argument is pure conjecture.
2) Precedent. It was once unthinkable for the US government to assassinate a US citizen without due process regardless of context. Now it's not. You may not think this is a problem. A LOT of people disagree with you.
3) The longer the TSA and DHS exist, the more legitimacy they gather. This is a matter of social science. The suppositions and casual statements I make surrounding that don't really matter either way. Good thing people are allowed to just, you know, talk sometimes. You sure do.
Perhaps even more worrying is just how little attention these issues are being given. For a start, the indefinite detention section of the NDAA is not something to be taken lightly, and neither was CISPA. Fortunately, CISPA didn't pass, but there are signs that legislators may yet attempt to pass something much like it.
One of the biggest problems is that in a two-party system, any issues that both parties are in agreement on end up being marginalized in the extreme.
"Hallmarks of a police state" was the phrase I used, cheese. I think its pretty apt.
As for Occam's razor, you're up against hundreds of years of philosophy challenging my usage of it, and any "integral complexity" to your argument is by definition that quality by which the razor dismisses your argument.
"Keep trying," tho~
Appeal to authority certainly is.