Comment by marvin | Hacker News Reader

Comment by marvin | Hacker News Reader

There are plenty of interesting things to be said about the United States and its similarities (and differences) to totalitarian regimes of the past. I don't think we should point to Wikipedia as the authority on this matter, but it is perfectly okay to go to the primary sources for insight in this. These are recent historical developments, and the questions are covered in so much controversy that it is difficult to find unbiased commentary.

As I have said before, there are plenty of really worrying developments in the theory and execution of power in the United States. When I say worrying, I mean worrying in the sense that they remind closely of things that totalitarian regimes have done in the past. We shouldn't be distracted too much by history when analyzing contemporary events - "History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme."

The list, which you can compile by simply reading the news, is quite long: Warrantless dragnet surveillance, world record incarceration rate, selective enforcement and prosecution of unclear and conflicting criminal law, lifetime incarceration for non-violent crimes, utilization of paramilitary forces (SWAT teams) against non-violent offenders, plea bargains as a tool for simplifying prosecution under the threat of lifetime sentencing, indefinite detainment and incarceration with no judicial oversight (Guantanamo), extrajudicial execution of citizens (drone strikes), limitations on free speech during peaceful protests, systematic prosecution of whistleblowers.

These are just some issues which are interesting to discuss. I am an outsider, and I believe the things I have quoted are facts which have very small political bias in the interpretation. The United States' deadlocked political system and prosecutors' role in the execution of power is also worthy of discussion, although it is harder to discuss this without taking a particular political view.

>There are plenty of interesting things to be said about the United States and its similarities (and differences) to totalitarian regimes of the past.

While implying that the US is a totalitaian state will get you lots of up votes from insecure europeans, the word has no meaning if it encompasses the current state of affairs in America. Could that change? Sure. Pretending it is already the case is fine as long as you realize you are just pretending.

It certainly is for some. For example, the folks still indefinitely detained at Guantanamo would probably agree that it's a totalitarian state.

I agree with you but due to the state of (teachings, or lack there of) our primary and secondary public school systems many probably think: "But if a majority think they should be locked up forever without trial then that's democracy and the goal we're striving for right?! We win!"

EDIT: It seems the emphasis is a bit heavy on democracy and too little on liberty. The minority that needs the most protection is the individual.

The emphasis is heavy on democracy because that's the basis of our society. Rule by the majority. Rights are narrow exceptions to that general rule. That's why the bulk of the constitution talks about implementing the democracy, not rights.

Your comment is actually a rather good example of the grandparent's complaint.

The 9th Amendment (which is essentially redundant in that it would be true even if it didn't exist), states that 'The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.'

The point is, Rights are not exceptions. It is the removal of a right that is the exception. In other words, you have the right to do anything unless it is made illegal, not the other way around.

That's not at all what the 9th amendment means. The 9th amendment says that the enumeration of rights in the constitution is not exhaustive. That is to say, it acknowledges that there are sources of rights besides the Constitution. These rights are those that exist from long standing practice in the English tradition. It does not mean that all rights exist unless specifically limited. You have to trace the right to some other source--you cannot simply assume the fact of its existence.

Moreover, while it's true you can do what you want unless it's made illegal, the interesting question is instead: what can the majority make illegal? That's is the situation where majority consensus is the rule, and rights are the exception. In a democracy, the majority can legislate however it wants, limited only by certain acknowledged individual rights.

In our democracy, we have two layers of legislatures, state and federal. The state legislatures inherited the sovereignty of the English King, and the constitution did not disturb that arrangement except in that the states delegated certain of that sovereignty to the federal government. But at the time of the founding, the power of the state legislatures was almost unbounded. They were not even limited by the rights in the Bill of Rights, which weren't applied to the states consistently until the 20th century (incorporated via the civil war amendments). Even now, the state governments are emphatically not ones of enumerated powers. The majority can do whatever it wants, limited only by federal law, or state or federal rights.

At the federal level, within the broad enumerated powers of the government, the majority can do what it wants, limited only by federal rights. Again, the rule is majoritarian control. Rights are a limited backstop to that general rule.

If anything, American education focuses too much on rights and not enough on democracy. K-12 curriculums tend not to cover any state constitutional law. They focus on enumerated powers and the Bill of Rights. But in doing so they paint a misleading picture of the Constitutional scheme. A scheme in which, as originally conceived, nothing would've prevented states from making it illegal to have sex with the lights on or outside of marriage or to use birth control or any of the other "moral" legislation that was very widespread at the time of the founding. I don't think expansion of rights of individuals has been a bad trend away from the original constitutional scheme, but it's misleading to paint the trend as pointing in the other direction. That characterization is simply a libertarian rewriting of history.

You need to distinguish between democracy and populism. Democracy isn't simply majority rule but a voice for everybody.

"Totalitarianism" loses all meaning if you apply it to states that imprison foreigners captured in war. What developed country doesn't do this?

Guantanamo is an example of improper treatment of POWs, not detainment of citizens in a totalitarian state.

> Totalitarianism" loses all meaning if you apply it to states that imprison foreigners captured in war.

Many of the detainees weren't "captured in war" in any meaningful sense, they were civilian noncombatants sold to US forces by various local militias during the occupation of Afghanistan; but its correct that that's more a symptom of the US being a global empire and than of the metropolitan system of government within that empire being totalitarian.

The Taliban side didn't follow any kind of war laws. What legal protection does the POWs of Guantanamo really have?

For instance, afaik POWs from lawful sides in conflicts can be kept until the conflicts are over. The Afghan war is still raging, arguably. And the Guantanamo conditions are hardly much worse than the horrid US prison system.

I have seen this subject discussed, but never in a serious way. E.g. please don't write that they should be treated as civilians or something, the point of the Geneva conventions etc was to give POWs some protection, it is just stupid to then argue that to ignore those laws would give better protection.

(And I have no idea how many of the people at Guantanamo are innocent, as dragonwriter claims to know. The people making claims on that subject aren't exactly to be trusted if they really would know!)

Sigh, I guess I deserve downvotes for the stupidity of asking a tricky legal question on newsYC which doesn't have to do with startups. :-)

Two wrongs does not make one right ... arguments like "they started" may be heard in a kindergartens playground but I think it's reasonable to hold USA to higher standards than that.

And as for the conditions at Guantanamo, I hope that "enhanced interrogation techniques", water boarding and similar, isn't used all that frequently in the US penal system.

Uhh... If you don't sign and follow the conventions, I thought you weren't protected by them?

And for the US prison system, Google stop prison rape.

Not in a hurry now.

Your point is that democratic countries should behave better than the international treaties they sign, even if it will result in dead citizens of those countries.

And you compare with children, to give "weight" to your argument? Sigh...

Feel free to call me an idealist, but I do think that the base foundation for a democracy such as a fair trail before imprisonment and non-use of torture should extend not only to citizens but to all people.

Where to start? :-(

The point with democracies is that they take input from their citizens, or the leadership will get kicked out. The point with terrorism is to scare people, mainly in democracies.

If the terrorists succeed in scaring voters enough, then the politicians will throw out the law book and all other concerns (see Germany, UK, Spain, Israel, USA, etc) because they want to get reelected above anything else... What you ask for go against the central interests of the involved parties.

I might also note that your moral world view is based on living inside a society with a state violence monopoly, in a democracy. If you go outside that, the attitude is ... well, read up on clan societies yourself. A typical example is when Israel did one sided peace gestures -- it was taken as signs of weakness and attacks increased (leaving south Libanon and Gaza).

tl;dr: You're not naive, you just don't think. This is HackerNews, please start.

They are specifically not PoWs, that's the whole controversy.

And up votes from middle class Americans who are just outraged about having to pay taxes. Or something-something NSA.

>While implying that the US is a totalitaian state will get you lots of up votes from insecure europeans, the word has no meaning if it encompasses the current state of affairs in America.

It would be convenient to keep the word "totalitarianism" forever connected with the very specific practices of Nazi Germany or, say, Stalin's USSR, and only those. Unfortunately the word and the practice existed way before and will continue to exist in the future. And there's not just a single form of it.

One can spend all his life between home, office, some cosy restaurant or cafe, friends house, and never understand anything that's going on in society at large, if he's so inclined. Especialy if he's on the upper echelon, e.g not a black, latino, native american, or "white trash", so he doesn't get to transparently see the structures of totalitarianism in a day by day basis.

From the militarization of police: http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Warrior-Cop-Militarization-Americ...

to cities built for exclusion and closing down of public space: http://www.amazon.com/City-Quartz-Excavating-Future-Angeles/...

to the privitazation of prisons (and the highest incarceration rate of the world by far, surpassing even Stalin's era Gulag percentages when it comes to blacks): http://www.amazon.com/Punishment-Sale-Private-Business-Incar...

to the dwindling middle-class (which is, when it exists, the real pillar of democracy): http://www.amazon.com/Servant-Economy-Americas-Sending-Middl...

Add mass surveillance, three-strike laws that resemble 19th century ethics, the concentrated control of mass media, constant external war, etc etc and you have quite a potent mix.

It is also convenient to redefine "totalitarianism" to simply mean aspects of government/society that you don't like. Only defining it in terms of Nazi Germany might be too narrow, but the word still has specific meaning (total state control over most/all aspects of society). And while it's easy to see how that meaning applies to Nazi Germany, it's much less obvious how the United States fits that definition...especially compared to most of the rest of the world. I agree that your examples are generally bad things, but it's hard to see how some of them are even instances of totalitarian behavior much less representative of the overall political state of the US. It's hard for me to see much argument for the idea that the US is really totalitarian at all, much less especially totalitarian by global standards or increasingly totalitarian (the implied part of most of these arguments).

That's the gist of the article... that the state achieves control over society not via forceful means, but more subtle psychological action, political apathy and instilling materialism.

>Only defining it in terms of Nazi Germany might be too narrow, but the word still has specific meaning (total state control over most/all aspects of society). And while it's easy to see how that meaning applies to Nazi Germany, it's much less obvious how the United States fits that definition...

Well, not that hard. For one, there's a humongous legal framework, criminalizing and turning almost all aspects of everyday life, from speech to nutrition, into a legally mediated issue.

Second, a way over the top (compared to regular liberal western democracies) use of police force (and incarceration).

Third, devising of new ways of tranfering powers to the state (from extended no-rights zones around airports to the Patriot Act).

Fourth, total surveillance over society.

Political scientists and philosophers have read totalitarianism in these (and other aspects) for ages. Putting them in constast to the relative freedoms of 1960 or 1880 paints a bleak picture.

It's like slowly boiling the frog while it watches Miley Cyrus twerk.

A fine argument, but you must realize that same argument has been made by many men from the very inception of the United States.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shays'_Rebellion

Whatever is being suffered now by any minorities, etc. pales in comparison to what they would have been put through in the past. I don't see too many blacks being hosed down by a fire truck nowadays, do you?

So let's keep things in perspective. We have a lot of work on ours hands. But it's a hell of a lot less work than we had in the past.

> Pretending it is already the case is fine as long as you realize you are just pretending.

I'm forced to wonder if Germans in the late 30s/early 40s considered themselves living in a totalitarian state. If not, their response to the suggestion would probably be along the lines of your comment.

I think you are pretending that previous regimes were comically totalitarian, rather than meeting any realistic definition of the word. Even state sponsored Soviet art projects ended up funding pieces that had anti-Stalin and anti-state parodies in them. Even the Nazi party had internal tensions.

Speaking as an America, it's exactly this kind of pithy dismissal from the psuedo-intellectual class that gives our regime a pass. The vast swath of American political discussion is limited to the purview of cable news, and in these few bastions of informed discussion when real political problems of our country are discussed there's always this contingent of people who aggressively don't care and find offense in others caring.

Your post is somewhat amazing in that respect, especially the emphasis on "pretending" as the separation from reality that makes you comfortable with this conversation. There's nothing so uniquely unrighteous about America that it can't fall into the same power struggles that all empires throughout history have. If the citizenry is going to prevent that we need to be able to discuss it without resorting to pretending.

> While implying that the US is a totalitaian state will get you lots of up votes from insecure europeans

You are putting words in my mouth - I said no such thing. But getting caught up in this kind of debate is exactly what I was trying to avoid by wording my comment carefully.

Let's discuss it from a different angle, and ignore the world "totalitarianism" for a moment. Looking at my (incomplete) list of recent developments in the execution of power in the United States, consider the following questions: Are these things good for American society and the world at large? What is their implication for the potential oppression and persecution of political opponents? How about other abuses of power, perhaps less systematic, e.g. the oppression of certain demogratic groups? Are they to any degree at all used for such purposes already?

I think these questions are interesting from a purely intellectual point of view, and very worthy of being discussed. Although personally I do believe that the current situation in the United States is worrying in the light of previous world history.

The perspective of the article is perfectly legitimate, and accusing europeans is only a pretext.

Don't forget that due to the, let's say, unparalleled "power and efficiency" of the States as a country, also the "dark side" of its government is assuming very scary power and efficiency.

The three main points raised by the article are perfectly reasonable, and worst of all, they're happening, for real, now.

> While implying that the US is a totalitaian state will get you lots of up votes from insecure europeans

Not only that, also a lot from secure europeans!

Perhaps it is indeed more so the "insecure" Europeans that still eagerly adore the shiny Hollywood/Silicon Valley rendition of "America" ;)

The US has really always been "practical" when it comes to Civil Liberties during times of war or disaster, going back to the Alien and Sedition Act: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_and_Sedition_Acts

It's easy to be cynical about the way the US government is heading, but I believe that Americans care too much about their rights to let this type of thing continue. I mean, sure we have our fair share of threats to our democracy, but we also have a lot of rights in terms of fighting those threats. For example, I feel we have stronger protections for freedom of speech than most industrialized countries.

As I understand it, in the UK you have nothing to prevent prior restraint on the part of the government. That is, the government can censor you before you publish something. In the US, this is illegal (Of course, the government can still punish you for publishing something illegal. They can only do it after it's been published.)

Also, we've gone to great lengths to protect the rights of even the worst groups (the KKK, Fred Phelps and company), while some countries have provisions against this sort of thing.

Long story short, I'm disappointed with the state of American democracy, but I'm hopeful. I think when more people learn about what's going on behind the scenes, things will change for the better.

EDIT: Here's a fun fact. Part of the Alien and Sedition acts are still the law in the US: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/21

When is the US not at war though? Almost never as far as I know.

The UK is maybe the worst example for freedom (just because they have a tradition of security being more important - it's the country of 1984 and "Brave New World" after all). Comparing America with France and Germany you get a different picture of freedom of speech imho. I did not hear about people in those countries being held at airports for indefinite time because they were suspected of being in contact with journalists who published the wrong thing.

> Comparing America with France and Germany you get a different picture of freedom of speech imho.

Germany is a terrible example of free speech. So is France. The parent is right, US is still way ahead on this specific point.

Remember, free speech is the ability to voice extremely unpopular views without persecution by the state. Saying something everybody agrees with is not representative.

As I have said before...

Surely if anyone can change things in the USA for the better, it's you, Mr. President.

> Surely if anyone can change things in the USA for the better, it's you, Mr. President.

The US system of government is engineered to assure, more than anything else that a single actor cannot unilaterally effect major change.

That may be the main ingredient, but that's not what it says on the tin.

EDIT: More to your point, of course, if BHO (or GWB, or WJC, or c.) were the sort of person who could conceive of major changes, he wouldn't have been allowed within a mile of the presidency.

> The US system of government is engineered to assure, more than anything else that a single actor cannot unilaterally effect major change.

The executive branch tells us this out of one side of it's mouth, and out of the other side it says it must have broad latitude to act on matters of national security (a term it defines for it's own convenience) without review from the judicial branch and minimal oversight by legislators, who have no idea what questions to ask, never mind any recourse if they get undesirable answers.

It's not wrong to label that a totalitarian tendency.

According to wikipedia:

""" Totalitarianism or totalitarian state is a term used by some political scientists to describe a political system in which the state holds total authority over the society and seeks to control all aspects of public and private life wherever possible. """

Sure, there are some really threatening things happening in the name of national security, but labeling these things "totalitarian" is hyperbole.

If you replaced "total authority" with "effective management and control," and "all aspects of public and private life" with "most politically and culturally potent trends," would that be more accurate?

By the definition you quote, perhaps only North Korea qualifies in terms of pursuing control "wherever possible." It is a definition of comic book villainy. It doesn't even encompass Soviet occupied Eastern Europe.

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