Police are murderous thugs. Their pensions should be cut and department budgets gutted.
US police kill about three people a day, and shoot and harrass many more and all with hardly any consequences. They even openly operate 'blacksites' where people are detained without rights and tortured, sometimes even killed.
These are not the hallmarks of a free society, it is the symptoms of fascist military rule.
Funny particularly because I did not defend America.
Not only did I not defend them, but I actually left open the possibility that they're lying— explicitly! And I suggested they might (hah!) be doing the same thing the Chinese allegedly did (hacking/spying/etc).
It does in fact make a difference when the law prosecutes some but not others. That is how kings and dictators rule, by enforcing 'the law' selectively and in secret.
I'll take this one further and add that selective timing of votes, polls, and application of law are all ways to 'rule by law' but game the system so that the rules have favoritism.
Take the recent Visa application process in the US. Let's pretend - and I'm not so sure we would be pretending - that the Visa process isn't 'random' but is prioritized for political purposes. This is one way that the appearance of fairness can be ridden for the pursuit of interests.
Even prioritizing police cases (parking tickets) to 'subjects of interest' or prior offenders is a skew of justice if these filters are correlated to any significant degree with political outcome or race/creed.
The US will poll citizens in other areas of the world until it is ascertained that the population would vote a certain way - at which point they will call for a vote to be held. This gives the outcome of a vote a sense of legitimacy to those just paying attention to the outcome of the vote - but those who can watch the process of repeated polling alongside influence operations understand just how fine an instrument this can be for deciding political outcomes.
This isn't to say any of this is 'wrong'. There's an undercurrent in the language - that's unfortunate. It's first enough to realize that these things are done and they are done sometimes explicitly with a purpose and other times by accident. Being aware is the first step to deliberation.
I'm not saying "Yay tyranny!" and to characterize my position thusly is, frankly, shitty discourse.
I'm saying, "Ooh, look: teeny, tiny step back from the level of tyranny we had yesterday. Nice!" I would hope anyone who hates tyranny would see merit in that.
Now, yes, if that's all we get, then being pissed and — more importantly, doing something about it — is warranted. But I choose to look at this as a first step, while you and others appear to regard it as appeasement and a pat on the head.
When you celebrate political theater that reaffirms the status quo with some window dressing you are essentially saying "yay, tyranny".
Dismissing criticism with a flippant "perfect is the enemy of the good" is lazy and thoughtless.
The government has shown no interest in curtailing the vast surveillance apparatus it has built, nor does it show interest in investigating its own abuses of such power.
When people praise such drivel as the freedom act it only sets us all back on the road to tyranny. So yeah, your perspective is detrimental to improving the dire circumstances we find ourselves.
If all I'd said was the quip you quoted, your position might have merit. Instead, you're selectively quoting my rather measured comment and calling me "lazy and thoughtless".
Thanks.
EDIT: You know what I think has people the most pissed off in all of this? That their illusions about America having been a particularly "free" country in the first place are being shattered.
I'm reminded of nothing quite so much as the virulence I've seen in former, incredibly ardent Obama supporters, when they realized how much of a tool he actually was.
Those of us who knew he was a tool from the beginning? Not so pissed when his true colors came out.
(And, no, I'm not a Republican, nor a Libertarian. I just realized a long time ago how corrupt the American political process is, and engage with it with that principle in mind.)
The document is classified and supposed to be kept secret for four years after the entry into force of the TPP agreement or, if no agreement is reached, for four years from the close of the negotiations.
How do people put up with this craziness? You all are talking about the rule of law while your congress is going to pass something many of them can't read, can't read in full, can't read with the help of aids, and can't disclose, and can't disclose even after it becomes law.
The power and authority of the state emanates from the people, don't let your government convince you otherwise. If enough enough people woke this morning deciding their government was no longer legitimate those in power would be gone by night fall.
That is a little idealistic, don't you think? The Occupy movement got crushed by the police. It is in the state's best interest to prevent social movements from reaching critical mass. As such, they use their massive enforcement arms to nip the troublemakers in the bud.
US police kill about three people a day, and shoot and harrass many more and all with hardly any consequences. They even openly operate 'blacksites' where people are detained without rights and tortured, sometimes even killed.
These are not the hallmarks of a free society, it is the symptoms of fascist military rule.
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/10/the-counted-5...