Comment by Ovid | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Ovid | Hacker News Reader

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I agree with much of what you say, but I'm not sure I agree that "Americans won't accept that".

- Obama has a secret "kill list" and has bragged about killing Americans without due process of law.

- We have widespread surveillance of our phones and email.

- The FBI admits that drones are now being used for domestic surveillance.

- The activist Supreme Court is continuing to gut our laws and give Big Business everything they want.

- The TSA is groping and nude scanning everyone, they've never caught a single terrorist, but are expanding beyond airports.

- Half of the inmates at Guantanamo have been cleared for release but are still detained a decade after incarceration.

- Half of America is in poverty.

- The Obama administration is trying to gut the Freedom of Information Act by denying certain doesn't even exist.

- The Supreme Court and various politicians are finding more ways of restricting the right to vote.

But people won't shut the fuck up about Kim and Kanye's baby.

It's 1984 meets Brave New World.

- Internet regulation justified by copyright protection

- Continued unconstitutional wars again "terrorism"

- Continued imperialism

- Whistleblower vilification

- Implicit taxation through unbridled govt debt

On Facebook, some friends are even afraid to "like" these stories now.

Most friends just ignore my posts. I can't tell whether they're apathetic, or whether they're suppressing it in fear. Or whether Facebook is throttling my posts using their "spam" algorithm. Maybe I've been throttled by my friends.

Most friends on Facebook post about how ugly or pretty something is, about the food they consume, or they're pushing some agenda of their own, as everybody has them nowadays.

Then you start wondering whether you're just being paranoid. Of course in normal pre-media life, such an inconsistent state of existence would be impossible. Can you imagine everybody around you being happy with ice-cream cones after being abused by yet another "lawful" breach of your liberty by the SWAT team, joined by some "celebrity"?

So it's easy to ignore the signs and live on earning your paycheck. Every day is exactly the same. You can't stay here, keep on moving on.

Dude, how do you even watch sports right now? There's so much work to do.

Yet days go on, everybody is chasing a paycheck or chasing a paper pyramid scheme. Or chasing fame, or chasing tail, anything to help take their minds off the now-ordinary horrid reality.

Some see the problems and can't help but feel that something is wrong, that something is unjust in this world. They're searching for a real purpose, as they stumble with potential solutions that have been tried and have failed.

While we ignore the children.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man%27s_Search_for_Meaning

I understand your sentiment but if there's anything positive to hold onto it's that we're not the cliche frogs in water that slowly comes to a boil. Snowden alerted us in stark terms almost overnight that the water was boiling. We were in 1984 but the reality of our world was classified as top secret. In the tech community many of us saw the water slowly coming to a boil since about 2003. I think to most Americans though all the recent events comes as actual news. Yes, hopefully we can focus on matters of substance and not the mindless drivel we normally occupy ourselves with. Humanity, though, has always been the same I think. It's a case of "the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing". I really don't think anyone is the US gov't has malice or ill will or a truly evil side. It's inertia and apathy that have led us to our current state. And so I think that if we decide to change course, we will.

Not disagreeing with your entire post, but

> I really don't think anyone is the US gov't has malice or ill will or a truly evil side.

Of course it depends on what you call "truly evil", but I believe that in any sufficiently large government (not just US) exist a significant number of sociopaths. It's just that, sociopaths exist, smart sociopaths also exist, and those are qualities that make it easy to find their way into politics. (and on an even more cynical note, a combination of qualities of particularly evil + intelligent + sociopathic, sounds like an even more likely profile to find itself in a position of power)

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