4 ms·

I do like the quote, but the part which isn't incorporated there is the conversion of the populace against the group. It seems as if 'they' are another entity;

I do like the quote, but the part which isn't incorporated there is the conversion of the populace against the group. It seems as if 'they' are another entity; but they're not, right? The government isn't some external group - they are an extension of you and me. The current examples we have are pedophilia and terrorism, which have been painted as crimes so heinous that they must be eliminated from the planet, at any cost. And the general populace do seem to agree with that. Once that happens I feel like we're done for, because all ability to debate rationally has been shut down. There doesn't seem to be a cost benefit analysis going on - it's just all or nothing. One case of child abuse, 20 people shot in a school, and people lose their minds. How can we stop that? Is it the media? Is there something more nefarious going on? I don't know. It's like - imagine that 90% of Jews were murderous villains. If that were true, perhaps civilization would be on the brink of collapse, and we'd have to forego the principle of innocent until proven guilty in order to prevent a descent into chaos. But what we actually see is some tiny, minute fraction. 0.001% of users of encryption, say, are murderers. One so small that the world would continue to spin for quite a while, possibly indefinitely, if we simply did _nothing at all_ and waited for suspects to get caught. And people go insane and call for actions against innocents. It's just odd. Really odd.

chii 11y ago
> And the general populace do seem to agree with [getting rid of terrorism/rape/etc]. when framed that way, anyone would agree. However the measures being taken is eroding liberty, asserting more control over people. And yet, people agree to having such measures imposed, because they've been convinced via propaganda that those measures are effective. The quote is apropo, because by the time they 'come for me' - me being the fact that the new rules instituted is now restricting me from being able to live the way i want - it's too late. Imagine if the gov't had a recording of you at all times - you'd be immediately identified as soon as you have an inkling of civil disobedience, or any hint of activism that the gov't disagrees with. This _must_ be nipped in the bud, before you no longer have a process to affect change because you'd be too scared of the secret police.
- stegosaurus 11y ago
  You removed the 'at any cost' fragment from the sentence, which I think basically describes what you're saying. I think it's about the tinkering occuring at all - basically, people are giving the government authority to fix problems which don't exist to begin with, or have minimal impact - and those fixes have negative side effects. It's like re-writing a piece of software entirely to fix a radio button that doesn't work. Even if it's the only possible way to fix the radio button, is that really a good idea? Can't we just live without the radio button? A more fleshed out example: I could, tomorrow, drop a glass whilst retrieving it from an overhead cupboard, and blind myself when it smashes over my head. Something like that. If I were worried about it, I could fix that particular situation by not storing glasses above my head. What I wouldn't do, is go and remove every instance of glass or ceramic from my house. That's what I often feel like these situations are coming down to. Someone gets shot in a school, and rather than looking at that problem, we go insane and look at 'how do guns get into the country at all' or 'how can other people end up with different thought patterns to me' or something utterly bonkers.
  - yoavm 11y ago
    Glass falling over your head isn't exactly the same as a gun shooting in a school. When a glass breaks, that's an accident. When a gun fires - it does what it was made to do. Living in a guns-free society is not similar to a glass-free one IMHO.
- marcosdumay 11y ago
  > me being the fact that the new rules instituted is now restricting me from being able to live the way i want The 'come for me' has a completely different meaning than 'restricting me from being able to live the way I want'. A huge part of the problem is that when people start talking that way, they sound like that peasant on Monty Python's and The Holly Graal that keeps screaming "Look! I'm being repressed!" When one goes through that route, however relevant and pressing issue he's taking about, people just tune out and ignore.

chii 11y ago

> And the general populace do seem to agree with [getting rid of terrorism/rape/etc]. when framed that way, anyone would agree. However the measures being taken is eroding liberty, asserting more control over people. And yet, people agree to having such measures imposed, because they've been convinced via propaganda that those measures are effective. The quote is apropo, because by the time they 'come for me' - me being the fact that the new rules instituted is now restricting me from being able to live the way i want - it's too late. Imagine if the gov't had a recording of you at all times - you'd be immediately identified as soon as you have an inkling of civil disobedience, or any hint of activism that the gov't disagrees with. This _must_ be nipped in the bud, before you no longer have a process to affect change because you'd be too scared of the secret police.

stegosaurus 11y ago
You removed the 'at any cost' fragment from the sentence, which I think basically describes what you're saying. I think it's about the tinkering occuring at all - basically, people are giving the government authority to fix problems which don't exist to begin with, or have minimal impact - and those fixes have negative side effects. It's like re-writing a piece of software entirely to fix a radio button that doesn't work. Even if it's the only possible way to fix the radio button, is that really a good idea? Can't we just live without the radio button? A more fleshed out example: I could, tomorrow, drop a glass whilst retrieving it from an overhead cupboard, and blind myself when it smashes over my head. Something like that. If I were worried about it, I could fix that particular situation by not storing glasses above my head. What I wouldn't do, is go and remove every instance of glass or ceramic from my house. That's what I often feel like these situations are coming down to. Someone gets shot in a school, and rather than looking at that problem, we go insane and look at 'how do guns get into the country at all' or 'how can other people end up with different thought patterns to me' or something utterly bonkers.
- yoavm 11y ago
  Glass falling over your head isn't exactly the same as a gun shooting in a school. When a glass breaks, that's an accident. When a gun fires - it does what it was made to do. Living in a guns-free society is not similar to a glass-free one IMHO.
marcosdumay 11y ago
> me being the fact that the new rules instituted is now restricting me from being able to live the way i want The 'come for me' has a completely different meaning than 'restricting me from being able to live the way I want'. A huge part of the problem is that when people start talking that way, they sound like that peasant on Monty Python's and The Holly Graal that keeps screaming "Look! I'm being repressed!" When one goes through that route, however relevant and pressing issue he's taking about, people just tune out and ignore.