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Is anyone else fatigued? The effort required, ontop of just having a normal functioning life, to parse and make decisions around potential future law is incredi

Is anyone else fatigued? The effort required, ontop of just having a normal functioning life, to parse and make decisions around potential future law is incredible. Isn't this what elected officials are ment to do on our behalf?

0xfeba 9y ago
Yes. I give to the EFF and a few other select causes each year, but I just can't keep up with individual issues. I just plan on waiting it out for the next 4 years.
- CWuestefeld 9y ago
  I just plan on waiting it out for the next 4 years. You're not thinking that if the Democrats manage to take the White House, that this situation will improve - are you? I mean, most of this damage was done when Pres. Obama was in the White House and the Congress skewed more toward Democrats. The idea that the Democrats will defend our privacy and 4th Amendment is absurd.
  - archvile 9y ago
    Exactly. Three letter agency abilities were expanded hugely under Obama. Why people can’t grasp this, I’ll never know.
    - chimeracoder 9y ago
      > Exactly. Three letter agency abilities were expanded hugely under Obama. Why people can’t grasp this, I’ll never know. Partisanship is one hell of a drug.
    - at-fates-hands 9y ago
      > Three letter agency abilities were expanded As well as politicized and weaponized.
    - 0xfeba 9y ago
      The boat was built and set sail under Bush and the GOP congress, under the super-Orwellian PATRIOT Act. I am not happy Obama expanded their powers but fail to see how the GOP would make the situation better.
      - CWuestefeld 9y ago
        The boat has been under construction for decades. The FISA courts were set up in 1978 (that's the Democrat Carter, and I believe that it was Democratic Congress at the time, too), but even that was only a response, trying to rein in the national surveillance apparatus that was already running wild. Reagan upped it a notch with Exec Order 12333, GWB obviously built on top of that, and Obama went hog-wild with it. There's plenty of blame to drown both parties.
        0xfeba 9y ago
        That's true. Myopic of me.
        njarboe 9y ago
        Don't forget the grand daddy: J. Edgar Hoover, FBI director, 1924-1971.
  - 0xfeba 9y ago
    Obama expanded the program, yes. He did not create it. And also, many other groups I donate to are just swamping me with non-NSA stuff related to Trump and the GOP, so that's also what I meant. But still, yes, I feel democrats have a better chance of at least listening to constituent concerns about privacy. The GOP wallies about small government, except for the military and they view the NSA/FBI/CIA as the same. But even if not--I don't see it improving with another R in power either. Or do you?
    - Bartweiss 9y ago
      I think this misrepresents the split. Trump's views on privacy are obvious and awful, yes - he has Sessions as AG. But Dianne Feinstein is one of the fiercest surveillance advocates in Congress. Hillary Clinton had vastly more support from intelligence agencies than Trump did, and refused to condemn what was described in the Snowden releases. Meanwhile, Rand Paul ended bulk phone record collection for a few hours in 2015, defying much of both parties to do so. He filibustered over drone strikes, and promised to restrict NSA searches if he was elected. There's a lot to dislike about Rand Paul, and libertarians aren't the only people opposing surveillance - Bernie Sanders made similar promises from the far opposite end of the spectrum. But I think framing this as "bad under Democrats, hopeless under Republicans" makes it harder to address the problem. The mainstream of both parties are similarly awful, even if the Democrats talk a bit more softly about it, while the fringes of both parties are often strong surveillance opponents.
      - mindslight 9y ago
        > Rand Paul ... Bernie Sanders made similar promises from the far opposite end of the spectrum. Referring to Libertarian and left-libertarian as opposite ends of the spectrum is a grave disservice, and feeds directly into our contemporary fallacious polarization. Either view it as a two-dimensional circle, or just ignore the secondary "Left"-"Right" marketing and analyze the primary characteristic of libertarian-authoritarian.
        Bartweiss 9y ago
letsgetphysITal 9y ago
Yes, we are all fatigued, and that is how they win. Can't get your Bill through? Rename it and submit again. Still won't work? Tack it onto a Medicaid / NASA funding bill. Still won't get through? Change the wording so that it becomes more vague and open to interpretation in your favour and start again. Bonus points if you give it a name involving patriotism, freedom, economic or personal health, or a backromym that spells out the same.
- tfha 9y ago
  How can we fight against these patterns? Amendments? Force bills to be broken up? Only allow a bill to be submitted once a decade? Our system is definitely broken, but I have no idea what type of changes might prevent these abuses
  - FLUX-YOU 9y ago
    >How can we fight against these patterns? Elect enough people willing to self-regulate and pass those bills. The current climate with lobbying money won't ever pass something like that.
    - aaronbrethorst 9y ago
      What do lobbyists have to do with the NSA?
      - FLUX-YOU 9y ago
        It wasn't a comment about lobbying for NSA expansion specifically, but I imagine there's plenty of companies who would benefit from NSA expansion that provide services to the US government.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
sandworm101 9y ago
Stephen Frye did a nature series a few years ago called "last chance to see" in which he expressed the notion that environmentalists are so dismayed and tired that they are ready to give up and accept the future. I'm starting to feel that way about US democracy. I used to work in the US (lawyer) but have returned to Canada. I feel like I am sitting on a hill watching Rome burn. Why bother trying to help when the Romans are setting fire to their own houses?
- jameskegel 9y ago
  As much as Canada’s own legislation is shaped by US events, I hope you don’t sit on that hill long- you should be offline gathering metaphorical water buckets.
  - sandworm101 9y ago
    Or we wait until it is in rubble, until the Romans realize what they have done to themselves, and then document the destruction so that nobody forgets the mistakes. That's what I think Disney just did. That Trump robot will be terrorizing people for generations to come.
mLuby 9y ago
An antidote to fatigue is automation! I'd be happy to give EFF posting ability for this issue on my social media accounts. And I'd be fine with them using my voice and signature to generate voicemails and letters to my elected officials. if they abuse that power (which I doubt they would) I bet they'd be much more responsive to "their constituents" and also social media at least it's easy enough to de-auth integrations.
- mring33621 9y ago
  I think this is the core of a very interesting idea.
  - mring33621 9y ago
    expanding... - call it Automated, Permissioned Grassroots Campaigning - Users permit designated Orgs to post on their behalf on social media and other online forums - Users guide priorities & tone of posts - ML for content generation - Aided by collaborative computer-human workflow
    - mLuby 9y ago
      similar idea is https://www.thunderclap.it/howitworks https://www.thunderclap.it/howitworks
    - ogdoad 9y ago
      Just to be clear, you _are_ talking about opinion biasing pools here, just on the side of the good guys?
      - mLuby 9y ago
        I'd quibble with 'biasing', more like reporting. The bright line between this kind of delegation and FCC-style comment-bots is that each communication still only represents the will of one individual human. Just that they don't have to manually act each time, as they've already made their position clear. Really it's just about changing EFF's emails from "Act now!" to "We're about to do this on your behalf! (opt out if you want)."
dmode 9y ago
I am fatigued constantly fighting for NN, Healthcare, Women's choice, environment etc. Don't have any energy left to fight for privacy. I suspect this is by design.
noahdesu 9y ago
So completely fatigued. It is exhausting keeping up with everything, and on top of that, many issues are truly important, not merely in the realm of political junkie. What's depressing is that so much of what's going on right now feels like a waste of time; provide the means by which I can stay healthy and safe, and I'd much prefer to be thinking about a totally different set of policies. The next time you are working, totally in the zone, or in a research meeting talking about fascinating new technology, or really doing anything of substance, just stop. And think about the fragile shit happening with policy changes and tweets. what. the. fuck.
peeters 9y ago
I wonder what would happen if everyone advocating against these individual things put all of those fights on hold and spent every bit of lobbying effort into campaign finance reform.
- mac01021 9y ago
  Maybe if there were a consensus about how to reform campaign finance...
Bartweiss 9y ago
Yes, yes I am. For years, my two biggest spheres of advocacy have been environmentalism and privacy/anti-surveillance. What I've noticed, with that background, is that privacy activism has steadily become more like environmental activism. With rare exceptions (e.g. the ozone layer), environmentalism is an endless, grinding rear-guard action. Extinct species do not become unextinct. Destroyed habitats do not recover, at least not within hundreds of years. Draining the Glen Canyon Dam will not restore Glen Canyon; Church Rock will never be remediated. And the threats are endless and everywhere: 4,500 species are critically endangered right now, global warming is set for 3+ degrees Celsius, the Great Barrier Reef might die entirely. Attacks on privacy aren't new, but they seem have changed. The Clipper Chip was a central, recognizable enemy, promoted by branches of the government citizens can relate to. 24 hour turnaround on surveillance legalization for intelligence agencies is part of a new and horrible political landscape. SOPA and PIPA were indirect attacks, part of a state-corporate partnership that lets each party do the things the other is barred from. And even those were too central and easy to oppose - now they're coming back piecemeal, in budget bills and trade agreements where they're harder to address. And as with the environment, what's lost is lost. Repealing surveillance laws is rare and unsustainable. Fighting surveillance in open courts is impossible; fighting it in FISA courts is a Kafkaesque nightmare of secret evidence and lack of standing. Corporate data-gathering is unprovable, and user information breaches are irreversible. Stolen identities can't be changed or recaptured. So yes: I'm tired. I'm tired, and it's not an accident, because we're on the wrong end of an asymmetric fight.
- mattmanser 9y ago
  And depressingly it won't rollback until tyrannical governments get in power and run amok. The sheer damage politicians across the world are inflicting on future generations with these privacy laws are very depressing.
  - mLuby 9y ago
    But it's to prevent attacks in the short-term. If passing these laws were more immediately damaging than an actual attack (ie moving long-term consequences up) they might stop doing this.
camelCaseOfBeer 9y ago
The greatest ruse ever perpetrated on the American people was that we stand divided from one another and our own self interests based on ideological lines; articulated by ego-driven flesh puppets, vote for your favorite color like a 4 year old posed with the same inquiry. "What's your favorite color?" Bleh, we need real representation, real discussion of building the real utilitarian future. I think a good start would be choice between real representatives acting on behalf of more than one side of the same bloody coin. In short, liberal lovey-dovey pussies like me and knuckle-dragging conservatards agree, this mother fucker needs to burn.
TausAmmer 9y ago
Every elected official is your enemy, ever was, ever will.
pocoloco 9y ago
"The most ominous danger we face does not come from the eradication of free speech through the obliteration of net neutrality or through Google algorithms that steer people away from dissident, left-wing, progressive or anti-war sites. It does not come from a tax bill that abandons all pretense of fiscal responsibility to enrich corporations and oligarchs and prepares the way to dismantle programs such as Social Security. It does not come from the opening of public land to the mining and fossil fuel industry, the acceleration of ecocide by demolishing environmental regulations, or the destruction of public education. It does not come from the squandering of federal dollars on a bloated military as the country collapses or the use of the systems of domestic security to criminalize dissent. The most ominous danger we face comes from the marginalization and destruction of institutions, including the courts, academia, legislative bodies, cultural organizations and the press, that once ensured that civil discourse was rooted in reality and fact, helped us distinguish lies from truth and facilitated justice." The Permanent Lie, Our Deadliest Threat https://www.truthdig.com/articles/permanent-lie-deadliest-threat/ https://www.truthdig.com/articles/permanent-lie-deadliest-th... This seems to me a good and complete answer as to why everything seems so hard. It's because everything that occurring is based on the "permanent" lie. The powers that be, be the deep state or whatever, cannot acknowledge facts or reality because it will loose its power. The sad part is that I think we also live in our own permanent lie in order not to see the homeless on the sidewalk, acknowledge the cow/chicken/etc raised in factory farming, the use of tax dollars to overthrow governments and kill untold number of people around the world, etc. Lots of issues that I think we need to tackle personally if we want society to do it too. So what is your permanent lie?
kzrdude 9y ago
You need to work on the deeper roots of the problem. Campaign finance in Congress is the big one. It blocks common sense reform on the left and the right.
juanmirocks 9y ago
Tough times in the US; too many attacks on rights and liberties at once. I feel for you.
maxxxxx 9y ago
That's what you hire lobbyists for and pay them. They will just keep working on it until they get it done. As citizen you can't sustain the effort to fight them, so eventually they will get their way.
emveeoh 9y ago
They count on our fatigue and ignorance.
nkkollaw 9y ago
They are meant to do that, but corporations pay better.

0xfeba 9y ago

Yes. I give to the EFF and a few other select causes each year, but I just can't keep up with individual issues. I just plan on waiting it out for the next 4 years.

CWuestefeld 9y ago
I just plan on waiting it out for the next 4 years. You're not thinking that if the Democrats manage to take the White House, that this situation will improve - are you? I mean, most of this damage was done when Pres. Obama was in the White House and the Congress skewed more toward Democrats. The idea that the Democrats will defend our privacy and 4th Amendment is absurd.
- archvile 9y ago
  Exactly. Three letter agency abilities were expanded hugely under Obama. Why people can’t grasp this, I’ll never know.
  - chimeracoder 9y ago
    > Exactly. Three letter agency abilities were expanded hugely under Obama. Why people can’t grasp this, I’ll never know. Partisanship is one hell of a drug.
  - at-fates-hands 9y ago
    > Three letter agency abilities were expanded As well as politicized and weaponized.
  - 0xfeba 9y ago
    The boat was built and set sail under Bush and the GOP congress, under the super-Orwellian PATRIOT Act. I am not happy Obama expanded their powers but fail to see how the GOP would make the situation better.
    - CWuestefeld 9y ago
      The boat has been under construction for decades. The FISA courts were set up in 1978 (that's the Democrat Carter, and I believe that it was Democratic Congress at the time, too), but even that was only a response, trying to rein in the national surveillance apparatus that was already running wild. Reagan upped it a notch with Exec Order 12333, GWB obviously built on top of that, and Obama went hog-wild with it. There's plenty of blame to drown both parties.
      - 0xfeba 9y ago
        That's true. Myopic of me.
      - njarboe 9y ago
        Don't forget the grand daddy: J. Edgar Hoover, FBI director, 1924-1971.
- 0xfeba 9y ago
  Obama expanded the program, yes. He did not create it. And also, many other groups I donate to are just swamping me with non-NSA stuff related to Trump and the GOP, so that's also what I meant. But still, yes, I feel democrats have a better chance of at least listening to constituent concerns about privacy. The GOP wallies about small government, except for the military and they view the NSA/FBI/CIA as the same. But even if not--I don't see it improving with another R in power either. Or do you?
  - Bartweiss 9y ago
    I think this misrepresents the split. Trump's views on privacy are obvious and awful, yes - he has Sessions as AG. But Dianne Feinstein is one of the fiercest surveillance advocates in Congress. Hillary Clinton had vastly more support from intelligence agencies than Trump did, and refused to condemn what was described in the Snowden releases. Meanwhile, Rand Paul ended bulk phone record collection for a few hours in 2015, defying much of both parties to do so. He filibustered over drone strikes, and promised to restrict NSA searches if he was elected. There's a lot to dislike about Rand Paul, and libertarians aren't the only people opposing surveillance - Bernie Sanders made similar promises from the far opposite end of the spectrum. But I think framing this as "bad under Democrats, hopeless under Republicans" makes it harder to address the problem. The mainstream of both parties are similarly awful, even if the Democrats talk a bit more softly about it, while the fringes of both parties are often strong surveillance opponents.
    - mindslight 9y ago
      > Rand Paul ... Bernie Sanders made similar promises from the far opposite end of the spectrum. Referring to Libertarian and left-libertarian as opposite ends of the spectrum is a grave disservice, and feeds directly into our contemporary fallacious polarization. Either view it as a two-dimensional circle, or just ignore the secondary "Left"-"Right" marketing and analyze the primary characteristic of libertarian-authoritarian.
      - Bartweiss 9y ago

letsgetphysITal 9y ago

Yes, we are all fatigued, and that is how they win. Can't get your Bill through? Rename it and submit again. Still won't work? Tack it onto a Medicaid / NASA funding bill. Still won't get through? Change the wording so that it becomes more vague and open to interpretation in your favour and start again. Bonus points if you give it a name involving patriotism, freedom, economic or personal health, or a backromym that spells out the same.

tfha 9y ago
How can we fight against these patterns? Amendments? Force bills to be broken up? Only allow a bill to be submitted once a decade? Our system is definitely broken, but I have no idea what type of changes might prevent these abuses
- FLUX-YOU 9y ago
  >How can we fight against these patterns? Elect enough people willing to self-regulate and pass those bills. The current climate with lobbying money won't ever pass something like that.
  - aaronbrethorst 9y ago
    What do lobbyists have to do with the NSA?
    - FLUX-YOU 9y ago
      It wasn't a comment about lobbying for NSA expansion specifically, but I imagine there's plenty of companies who would benefit from NSA expansion that provide services to the US government.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

sandworm101 9y ago

Stephen Frye did a nature series a few years ago called "last chance to see" in which he expressed the notion that environmentalists are so dismayed and tired that they are ready to give up and accept the future. I'm starting to feel that way about US democracy. I used to work in the US (lawyer) but have returned to Canada. I feel like I am sitting on a hill watching Rome burn. Why bother trying to help when the Romans are setting fire to their own houses?

jameskegel 9y ago
As much as Canada’s own legislation is shaped by US events, I hope you don’t sit on that hill long- you should be offline gathering metaphorical water buckets.
- sandworm101 9y ago
  Or we wait until it is in rubble, until the Romans realize what they have done to themselves, and then document the destruction so that nobody forgets the mistakes. That's what I think Disney just did. That Trump robot will be terrorizing people for generations to come.

mLuby 9y ago

An antidote to fatigue is automation! I'd be happy to give EFF posting ability for this issue on my social media accounts. And I'd be fine with them using my voice and signature to generate voicemails and letters to my elected officials. if they abuse that power (which I doubt they would) I bet they'd be much more responsive to "their constituents" and also social media at least it's easy enough to de-auth integrations.

mring33621 9y ago
I think this is the core of a very interesting idea.
- mring33621 9y ago
  expanding... - call it Automated, Permissioned Grassroots Campaigning - Users permit designated Orgs to post on their behalf on social media and other online forums - Users guide priorities & tone of posts - ML for content generation - Aided by collaborative computer-human workflow
  - mLuby 9y ago
    similar idea is https://www.thunderclap.it/howitworks https://www.thunderclap.it/howitworks
  - ogdoad 9y ago
    Just to be clear, you _are_ talking about opinion biasing pools here, just on the side of the good guys?
    - mLuby 9y ago
      I'd quibble with 'biasing', more like reporting. The bright line between this kind of delegation and FCC-style comment-bots is that each communication still only represents the will of one individual human. Just that they don't have to manually act each time, as they've already made their position clear. Really it's just about changing EFF's emails from "Act now!" to "We're about to do this on your behalf! (opt out if you want)."

dmode 9y ago

I am fatigued constantly fighting for NN, Healthcare, Women's choice, environment etc. Don't have any energy left to fight for privacy. I suspect this is by design.

noahdesu 9y ago

So completely fatigued. It is exhausting keeping up with everything, and on top of that, many issues are truly important, not merely in the realm of political junkie. What's depressing is that so much of what's going on right now feels like a waste of time; provide the means by which I can stay healthy and safe, and I'd much prefer to be thinking about a totally different set of policies. The next time you are working, totally in the zone, or in a research meeting talking about fascinating new technology, or really doing anything of substance, just stop. And think about the fragile shit happening with policy changes and tweets. what. the. fuck.

peeters 9y ago

I wonder what would happen if everyone advocating against these individual things put all of those fights on hold and spent every bit of lobbying effort into campaign finance reform.

mac01021 9y ago
Maybe if there were a consensus about how to reform campaign finance...

Bartweiss 9y ago

Yes, yes I am. For years, my two biggest spheres of advocacy have been environmentalism and privacy/anti-surveillance. What I've noticed, with that background, is that privacy activism has steadily become more like environmental activism. With rare exceptions (e.g. the ozone layer), environmentalism is an endless, grinding rear-guard action. Extinct species do not become unextinct. Destroyed habitats do not recover, at least not within hundreds of years. Draining the Glen Canyon Dam will not restore Glen Canyon; Church Rock will never be remediated. And the threats are endless and everywhere: 4,500 species are critically endangered right now, global warming is set for 3+ degrees Celsius, the Great Barrier Reef might die entirely. Attacks on privacy aren't new, but they seem have changed. The Clipper Chip was a central, recognizable enemy, promoted by branches of the government citizens can relate to. 24 hour turnaround on surveillance legalization for intelligence agencies is part of a new and horrible political landscape. SOPA and PIPA were indirect attacks, part of a state-corporate partnership that lets each party do the things the other is barred from. And even those were too central and easy to oppose - now they're coming back piecemeal, in budget bills and trade agreements where they're harder to address. And as with the environment, what's lost is lost. Repealing surveillance laws is rare and unsustainable. Fighting surveillance in open courts is impossible; fighting it in FISA courts is a Kafkaesque nightmare of secret evidence and lack of standing. Corporate data-gathering is unprovable, and user information breaches are irreversible. Stolen identities can't be changed or recaptured. So yes: I'm tired. I'm tired, and it's not an accident, because we're on the wrong end of an asymmetric fight.

mattmanser 9y ago
And depressingly it won't rollback until tyrannical governments get in power and run amok. The sheer damage politicians across the world are inflicting on future generations with these privacy laws are very depressing.
- mLuby 9y ago
  But it's to prevent attacks in the short-term. If passing these laws were more immediately damaging than an actual attack (ie moving long-term consequences up) they might stop doing this.

camelCaseOfBeer 9y ago

The greatest ruse ever perpetrated on the American people was that we stand divided from one another and our own self interests based on ideological lines; articulated by ego-driven flesh puppets, vote for your favorite color like a 4 year old posed with the same inquiry. "What's your favorite color?" Bleh, we need real representation, real discussion of building the real utilitarian future. I think a good start would be choice between real representatives acting on behalf of more than one side of the same bloody coin. In short, liberal lovey-dovey pussies like me and knuckle-dragging conservatards agree, this mother fucker needs to burn.

TausAmmer 9y ago

Every elected official is your enemy, ever was, ever will.

pocoloco 9y ago

"The most ominous danger we face does not come from the eradication of free speech through the obliteration of net neutrality or through Google algorithms that steer people away from dissident, left-wing, progressive or anti-war sites. It does not come from a tax bill that abandons all pretense of fiscal responsibility to enrich corporations and oligarchs and prepares the way to dismantle programs such as Social Security. It does not come from the opening of public land to the mining and fossil fuel industry, the acceleration of ecocide by demolishing environmental regulations, or the destruction of public education. It does not come from the squandering of federal dollars on a bloated military as the country collapses or the use of the systems of domestic security to criminalize dissent. The most ominous danger we face comes from the marginalization and destruction of institutions, including the courts, academia, legislative bodies, cultural organizations and the press, that once ensured that civil discourse was rooted in reality and fact, helped us distinguish lies from truth and facilitated justice." The Permanent Lie, Our Deadliest Threat https://www.truthdig.com/articles/permanent-lie-deadliest-threat/ https://www.truthdig.com/articles/permanent-lie-deadliest-th... This seems to me a good and complete answer as to why everything seems so hard. It's because everything that occurring is based on the "permanent" lie. The powers that be, be the deep state or whatever, cannot acknowledge facts or reality because it will loose its power. The sad part is that I think we also live in our own permanent lie in order not to see the homeless on the sidewalk, acknowledge the cow/chicken/etc raised in factory farming, the use of tax dollars to overthrow governments and kill untold number of people around the world, etc. Lots of issues that I think we need to tackle personally if we want society to do it too. So what is your permanent lie?

kzrdude 9y ago

You need to work on the deeper roots of the problem. Campaign finance in Congress is the big one. It blocks common sense reform on the left and the right.

juanmirocks 9y ago

Tough times in the US; too many attacks on rights and liberties at once. I feel for you.

maxxxxx 9y ago

That's what you hire lobbyists for and pay them. They will just keep working on it until they get it done. As citizen you can't sustain the effort to fight them, so eventually they will get their way.

emveeoh 9y ago

They count on our fatigue and ignorance.

nkkollaw 9y ago

They are meant to do that, but corporations pay better.