Join the discussion
Write your take first — we'll ask for email only when you're ready to publish.
- Hacker News
- It arguably polarized the public, paving the way to today's sharp ideological divisions, because political differences suddenly were treated as matters of life and death compared to the laid-back '90s.by Apocryphon
- FTA:
"In 1776 the American colonists rebelled against what they saw as the arbitrary and tyrannical British monarchy."
I like the sly use of "what they saw" - typical British snark.
- Rosa Brooks, the author of the piece, is American.
- There's plenty of American historiography that questions the motivations of the American revolution and how tyrannical the British monarchy was actually.by JuniperMesos
- A bunch of anti-ICE protesters in Texas were recently sentenced to 50-100 year prison sentences. It is one of the more egregious things I've read.
The long and short of it is: A bunch of people organized (over group chat) a protest in Texas, where their plan was to conduct noise protest with fireworks. Some of the people knew each others, some did not.
When they met up, some of the protesters broke off from the group and started vandalizing gov. property, like slashing up car tires.
This all culminated with a gov. guard approaching the people, guns drawn. One protestor fired at the guard from distance with a AR-15, and the guard was struck in the shoulder. The shooter argued that he believed the guard would fire at the group - he was handed a 100 year sentence due to attempted murder.
The rest of the group were found guilty in planning and aiding a violent terrorist attack, and handed 50 year and up sentences. If you look into the actual details of what they were charged with, and the things actually done, it gets even more wild.
This was possible due to "antifa" being designated a terrorist organization.
What this means in practice, at least in Texas, is that if you're part of a organized protest, and something goes wrong, you can and probably will be charged as a terrorist, or aiding a terrorist, and face life behind bars.
I have no doubt that if / when dems dethrone Trump and MAGA GOP, all but the shooter will be pardoned, and the terrorist designation of antifa will be removed - but we now see that designated antifa works as they intended: To charge anyone protesting Trump or his controlled organizations as "antifa", and thus label them as domestic terrorists.
by TrackerFF - Here's a flagged discussion of that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48653311by r721
- Any policy/weapon/tech used against an outgroup (e.g. brown people across the ocean) can and will eventually be used against the ingroup (citizens voting for it) by an inner ingroup.
Sooner or later any ingroup will itself be divided into an inner ingroup in power and a powerless outer ingroup who'll be treated just like the old outgroup.
- A nation willfully ruled by war criminals will always become their final victim.
Americans need to start prosecuting their war criminals. This is the only way out of the quagmire.
by aa-jv - we're at the stage of the cycle where we know things are wrong but we don't care enough to do anything about them. unfortunately, it might not be until we live through the consequences that we can muster the energy to care enough again.by chaseadam17
- Cycle suggest this will revert. Think with current technology it’s possibly to build a silt sustaining autocracyby Havoc
- I recommend a book 'Silk Roads' by Peter Frankopan. It’s an attempt to show world’s history as a continuous movement of center of civilizational gravity. It’s not without flaws, but interesting nonetheless.
Frankopan describes most of modern US history as a series of blunders. This approach is maybe a bit harsh, but it shows how difficult it is for a dominant power to stay on top.
I would summarise the book with a sentence „When you reach the top, the seeds of your decline are already planted”. In fact you can look at China or India - future dominant powers, and guess which of their flaws will make them fall.
by maciejw - > I recommend a book 'Silk Roads' by Peter Frankopan.
Thank you for the recommendation!
> In fact you can look at China or India - future dominant powers, and guess which of their flaws will make them fall.
Are these flaws talked about in the book or are they something you've worked out since after you read the book?
by civet_java - The elevation of the Executive branch the last and this century has led to this primordial autocracy. Say no to the royal perogative, and accept the more limited powers of Execution of Law.
https://jach.law.wisc.edu/exec-power-royal-prerogative-found...
- It would help if Congress wasn't sabotaged to enable this; and to have a major political party that effectively wants a king.
We were rightfully warned on the dangers of political parties and it's well demonstrated that that warning was correct in its assessment.
The fact that millions of Americans declare themselves to be loyal to their party first and foremost is terrifying. Evil people have weaponized the tribal stupidity of humans to trick them to vote against their own best interests.
I take no satisfaction in saying this, and would love to be proven wrong.
by pstuart - Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin#1750s
It's time to reconsider some of what we bought.
- >in 1776 the American colonists rebelled against what they saw as the arbitrary and tyrannical British monarchy.
although they didn't just do that, the American founders also articulated the point that the article seems to present as some new insight. That permanent foreign military involvements and the state it requires will eventually diminish freedom at home, that was why many of them wanted to avoid emulating the British empire.
Given that papers like the Economist used to regularly be staunch defenders of these interventions until they went wrong, and only ever seemed to disavow them for their practical outcomes rather than in principle they might want to do some reflecting on that.
by Barrin92 - I seem to recall the Economist wholeheartedly supporting the Iraq War. Am I wrong?by rayiner
- > the Economist used to regularly be staunch defenders of these interventions until they went wrong, and only ever seemed to disavow them for their practical outcomes rather than in principle they might want to do some reflecting on that
Can you link a couple of examples? Presumably those articles should be easy to find on economist.com
by andsoitis - This seemed obvious to me at the time. It was hard to understand why people in the cultural mainstream let themselves get swept up in it. I felt like I lost my country, back then, as they pretty much all went off into crazyland together.by marssaxman
- In the same way it is obvious that internet age gating, digital ID and abolition of physical cash will lead to much worse. But who's standing in their way?by nephihaha
- The OK-ing of torture was a clear step into the totalitarian camp and a clear breach with justice, liberalism, and decency.by nullhole
- If you weren't for the Patriot act you were pro terrorist. If you suggested that the terrorists might be motivated by us involvement in the middle east rather than pure evil then you were probably also evil. Mob mentality has been around since forever. And yet the current situation is making Bush seem like a statesman by comparison
- How old are you? I think a lot of younger folks don't fully adjust for important factors: plane hijackings used to be much more common, 9/11 was committed by the second group of Islamic terrorists who tried to blow up the World Trade Center, and 9/11 was the third major terrorist attack by Al-Qaeda in a 4 year span. It's easy now to say that it was a crazy worst-case scenario, but that was not at all obvious then; for all we knew, securing cockpits might have been impractical, and we'd just have to prepare the Air Force to shoot down a couple hijacked flights every decade.
There were real excesses, and I ultimately agree with you that many of them were predictable in advance, but there was no feasible version of a response that did not go at least a little into crazyland. It was a crazy time.
- It was obvious to many. It was even a sort of not-funny joke: "The terrorists have already won."by altcognito
- What do you think distinguishes the post-9/11 craziness from the Cold War/Red Scare craziness?
My reason for asking is because I believe that "that's unconstitutional!" has been a failed protest message for more like 100 years than 25 years (and there's threads of state violence at the local and state levels that go back far longer). And IMO that is even stronger evidence that words on an ~240-year-old-doc—and the way some interpret the second amendment in relation to those words—is a completely powerless measure against state violence. The United States is not exceptional in that regard. We'll only have a better country if we constantly, actively, choose to vote it that way.
by majormajor - Yes. History will record that bin Laden won. There's a pre-9/11 book about bin Laden, "The Man Who Declared War on America". Bin Laden was interviewed.
Consider the situation at the end of the Clinton administration. The US was at peace. The Soviet Union was gone. The US got along with China and Russia. No major enemies remained. The federal budget was balanced. Bin Laden looked at that, and realized that America had to be weakened before it could be defeated. That was his plan.
Mission accomplished.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bin_Laden:_The_Man_Who_Declare...
by Animats - Whilst I think there’s some truth to this, America’s elite would have brought us to this point anyway. Trump is a symptom of unfettered neoliberalism exporting jobs and destroying communities rather than a cause. Bin Laden drew America into forever wars and solidified their enemies in some dimensions. But America’s great downfall has been the ruthless pursuit of self-interest by its elite. They smashed the social compact and destroyed its institutions in the pursuit of profit.
I think Bin Laden will get a chapter in the book on the fall of America, but Reagan will be on the front cover.
by rhubarbtree - > bin Laden won
are his people better off or are they worse off?
by andsoitis - Oh come on. You’re trying to be edgy without any understanding of reality.
It’s like saying History will record Gavrilo Princip as having won WW1. Huh?
America’s current troubles are political polarization and ballooning deficits. Both of which are happening in every developed country, having nothing to do with 9/11. The foreign interventionism is a 100 year tradition in the US, nothing new under the sun.
The only thing Bin Laden accomplished is making air travel annoying, making some military contractors filthy rich, and getting hundreds of thousands of his Muslim brothers killed over values that are slowly eroding in the Middle East anyways.
The American global military empire was always going to decline over time, if anything, his actions reversed that decline and led to more American intervention. He got the opposite of what he wanted.
by pembrook - What surprised me, was the indifference of people when all this was happening. Saying that the American response to the terrorist attacks was essentially the aim of the terrorist at first place and that they won just went unregistered - no counter arguments or rage or anything, no one cared about this claim.by mrtksn