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Comment by annoyingnoob | Hacker News Reader

The United States should be better than this, makes me sad to be American.

You may not believe this, but humans are like that (and have been throughout the entire history). Makes me sad to be a human, but things are probably better than how they were, say, 300 years ago.

This is really true. It may be depressing for some people, but humans doing the wrong thing sometimes is never going to go away.

We may never be able to get rid of individual psychos that torture people, but it would be nice if we could get rid of large-scale state-sanctioned torture that everyone knows about.

Doubtful, at least anytime soon. The diffusion of responsibility that large organizations bring enables the organization to act however unethically it wants in pursuit of its goals without anyone feeling responsible for it. Clandestine "we have to stop this instance when it becomes known" torture is still better than "everyone winks and nods and the program goes on" torture though.

yes but we should focus on the ones done recently or still being done, and in that aspect America really takes the crown along China and a few other ones.

Yeah, welcome to how I feel every day since 2001.9.11. Granted I was in highschool at the time, and we tend to view our youthful years with rose-tinted glasses, but I remember that as a significant turning point where we went from torture being something only bad people in foreign countries would do to something that has its merits debated openly. Never again have I been able to hold any faith in my government or countrymen. Which is not to say that those things were worthy of my faith beforehand, only that my illusions were shattered.

Don't just be sad. Get involved and get active.

I vote but often feel like my vote doesn't count for much.

There are a lot of other ways of getting involved, especially at the local level.

I'm still kind of figuring out as I go, but maybe the best bet is to find some like minded people who sort of know what they're doing in terms of 'activism'.

After all, a lot of politicians 'higher up the food chain' got their start locally. So that's a good place to help push things in a direction you'd like to see.

I agree with you. I am further saddened that when I look at our history, it is impossible to say "this isn't us". This is 100% the kind of deep evil the American state has sanctioned throughout our history from slavery, to genocide of native peoples, to imperialism in the Philippenes, to the more modern firebombing of entire cities, funding (through narco trafficking) death squads to overthrow elected governments, starting three wars based on lies (Spanish-American, Vietnam, Iraq) etc.

The security state is 100% antithetical to the aims, morality, and interests of the population as a whole.

Us meaning the USA or us meaning humanity? This kind of thing isn't exclusive to USA

It's common to systems that privilege the few over the many, and especially of colonial-settler societies, which is completely descriptive of the US political and economic system.

Reading all what has been done also makes me sad but on the other hand I remember lots of families who suffer and traumatised because of the terrorist attacks.

You're begging the question.

Then I remember the lack of any evidence that torture produces good information.

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