- Systematic execution for the crime of belonging to a particular ethnic group or religion
- Open and openly arbitrary disappearing, detention, and torture of intellectuals for the crime of writing articles critical of state-sponsored religious and political doctrine
- Use of force against people who commit such crimes as selecting their own sexual partners, disobeying their parents, being seen in public with members of the opposite sex, texting members of the opposite sex, being homosexual, etc. Or, more commonly in the "developed" world, failure to investigate or pursue family-based vigilante "justice" against same.
- Failure to acknowledge women as people and rape as a crime
- Committing violence against, or being complicit in violence against, children who dared to go to school
- Corruption to a degree that renders the public health infrastructure so dysfunctional that tens of thousands of people die needlessly
- Outright censorship of any reporting that paints the state in a negative light
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"Knowing things about citizens" is dangerous because it enables the state to be far more effective in pursuing policies like the above. We ought to limit the government's knowledge of the lives of its citizens because that makes it much harder to effectively implement policies like these.
HOWEVER, HN sounds downright ridiculous when it declares that being listed in a database is comparable to being summarily executed for criticizing state religion.
The existence of worse does not make better good.
The state of things in the US is scary, and Saudi Arabia existing doesn't make it less so.
Edit: I'd argue that corruption of The State by lobbyists, special interest groups, and shadowy Super PACs cost thousands of lives a year in the USA.
This definition [1] even uses this very argument as an example:
"The counter to the relative privation argument when applied, for example, to compare America with other more tyrannous countries is to note that the proper comparison to make should not be between America and other tyrannies but between America and the ideal of freedom."
I find it a scary way to look at the world and to me it always comes off as less an honest argument and more like somebody who understands fallacy using it to persuade the reader for their own benefit.
Like the sort of thing they'll tell you as they are locking up your cage. "Hey, you're lucky it's dry unlike the cages the bad guys use!" the voice under the helmet said.
> Can we please stop acting like the USA is somehow a "good guy" anymore?
I am arguing the specific assertion that surveillance makes America morally equivalent to or less than the countries we oppose. That does not seem to be true. Apologies if that's not what parent meant.
Of course this doesn't make America "good" or even okay, but it is entirely possible to have severe problems while still being a "good guy" relative to the likes of Iran.
I just get spooked by those comparisons. I think I agree with you in the end that ultimately we the relative good guys and it's important to keep that in mind. In Fact it's our role as the relative good guys that makes it so damn important to make sure we exercise our rights to free speech and political freedom to make sure we stay the good guys.
2. Snowden, Manning, Barrett Brown, Jeremy Hammond
3. Don't know about this one. I think it's worth mentioning Racism, Islamophobia and Islam or race related violence here.
4. #opDeathEaters
5. I don't know about this one either, but school seems mostly like a tool to incur debt. So not necessarily a plus.
6. You watched the Healthcare debate, right?
7. Surveilled reading is more dangerous than censoring books, full stop. But if you're looking for censorship, there's plenty to go around. Try finding a copy of the Sony leaks these days. Look at what is happening to social media.
The Iraq war has not killed over a million people by almost any estimate. Actual body counts are around 100,000 and most estimates place it around 500,000 for all lives lost. This is not explicit in deaths caused by American troops.
Snowden, Manning and all are not always looked at in the same light as some see it. Not all state secrets are inherently bad.
Here's the thing: countries can transition into totalitarianism quickly.
1930 Germany was very, very different than 1940 Germany. Hitler's rise to power happened in the blink of an eye, before most people understood what was happening.
This is why "oh, being listed in a database is nowhere as bad as being summarily executed" should be consolation. Such mindsets breed complacency, whereas what we need is constant vigilance and an extreme intolerance for policies that grant the government more power without any oversight.
And the one can lead to the other.
Al-Awlaki? He was not accused of killing anyone himself, but got drone striked for writing terrorist propaganda. So did his son (for having Al-Awlaki as a father, no less). That seems like a pretty close fit.
Corruption to a degree that renders the public health infrastructure so dysfunctional that tens of thousands of people die needlessly
That's a funny example. Most people in western non-US countries would say the US meets this definition handily.
All that said, your point stands. There are worse governments than the US government. But lots better too.
But when did the US and UK start comparing themselves to the most oppressive rather than the freest in the world?
This happens but you tolerate it because it's consistent with your arbitrary local culture. Consider pedophilia (having "wrong" sexual feelings) which comes with chemical castration and an attempt to "cure" it along with imprisonment of course. You don't even have to abuse anyone to suffer some of these consequences. Sound familiar? Have you ever met any self-confessed pedophile who hadn't been arrested for a related crime? Until they're outed, they're forced to keep their feelings secret from everyone because it's a kind of western thought crime. This leads us to imagine that all pedophiles rape children. They don't any more than 60 years ago all homosexuals raped children.
In the case of government, it's definitely not complicated to classify the aggregate behaviour as unqualified bad (in term of result), regardless of the intention of the individuals working within the systems.
Search keyword: "wumao" which means paid internet commentator or "public opinion molder".