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Comment by throwaway85825 | Hacker News Reader

In the 40s the government took control of the whole economy in the name of national security, in the 1860s the government suspended the constitution in the name of national security. None of this is new.

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"In the 40s" and "in the 1860s" here are obfuscations of "during WWII" and "during the civil war". Extraordinary actions in the name of national security during a literal civil war or during a time of total war are to be expected. The comparison to other times is not meaningful.

Isn't this exactly what the war on terror was for? To always be able to claim that the US is currently at war?

It seems like it was to be able to not be encumbered by civil rights while attempting to solve the problem of terrorism militarily.

the war on terror is/was as real as the war on drugs and the war on christmas

Someone must tell the 200,000+ dead Iraqi civilians that the war was fake.

Strictly speaking, it was, since we never actually declared war on Iraq. Which only makes the whole tragedy a more egregious violation.

Declaring war isn't... Really a thing. Since around WWII. Acknowledging a war has happened, is what the notification to Congress is, and that happened.

> Isn't this exactly what the war on terror was for? To always be able to claim that the US is currently at war?

No, obviously not. That would have been pointless; the US was at war anyway. The US is always at war.

The intervention in the economy predated the war.

The context of what the nation was facing in the 1860's (the civil war) and 1940's (world war 2) were very materially different than what it faces now.

It's crazy how powerful trans people are. Given the response, they're as powerful as the Civil War and WW2.

There's 2.8M trans people in the US. Compared to the Axis powers who mobilized 25-30M personnel, each trans person has the equivalent strength of 9-10 Axis soldiers. Impressive.

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