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It's coming. not in the 2018 elections, but the 2020 democrat party will be forced from below and unpredictable other sides to be far more leftist and treat pri

It's coming. not in the 2018 elections, but the 2020 democrat party will be forced from below and unpredictable other sides to be far more leftist and treat privacy as a crucial issue

ibeckermayer 9y ago
I don't see the leftists treating privacy as a crucial issue... Far more leftist = authoritarian sjw's does it not? I haven't heard a peep about privacy from the left since Obama dropped it as an issue (and quietly expanded surveillance).
- lern_too_spel 9y ago
  Obama quietly expanded privacy as an issue? That doesn't parse. Edit: parent fixed his parenthetical to be merely factually incorrect instead of grammatically incorrect. As I recall, he publicly discussed privacy as an issue and both privately (until the Snowden leaks showed his cancellation of email metadata collection) and publicly (phone metadata) shut down data collection programs.
  - kakarot 9y ago
    His regime was brutal against whistle-blowers. Look at Chelsea Manning. In his last few years as president, he did not exert much effort at all to shut down the NSA program, as he surely already mostly knew the extent of it and was fine with it. Obama does not care about doing the right thing here.
    - lern_too_spel 9y ago
      > His regime was brutal against whistle-blowers. Look at Chelsea Manning. Walking free. After she blew the whistle on what, exactly? The heavily edited Collateral Murder video that conveniently left out the RPG[1]? What do the cable leaks have to do with that? > In his last few years as president, he did not exert much effort at all to shut down the NSA program. He shut down the email metadata collection program two years after taking office. [1]https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wired.com/2010/04/2007-iraq-apache-attack-as-seen-from-the-ground/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wired.com/2010/04/2007-iraq... Edit: > I didn't say anything about cable leaks or what Manning leaked, that is a different conversation.... Nice strawmanning, though. You literally pointed to Manning as an example of how Obama was brutal to whistleblowers. I quoted you. I pointed out that the actions she took do not count as whistleblowing, and you appear to have conceded that point. > I'm implicitly referring to the NSA spying programs leaked by Snowden. How does that example show Obama's brutality to whistleblowers? Snowden is not a whistleblower, and Obama didn't treat him brutally. Out of the millions of documents that Snowden leaked, only phone metadata collection was found to be illegal. If you leak millions of documents from any government agency or any private company for that matter, you're bound to find at least one instance of illegal activity.
      - kakarot 9y ago
        I didn't say anything about cable leaks or what Manning leaked, that is a different conversation. I am simply referring to the Obama administration's treatment of Manning, and Obama's cowardly attempts at saving grace by granting clemency right as he's leaving office, and shortly after Assange claimed he would turn himself in if Manning was granted clemency (Obviously Assange wasn't being for real and didn't) I'm implicitly referring to the NSA spying programs leaked by Snowden. That has nothing to do with the program you're talking about. Nice strawmanning, though.
        nl 9y ago
        I didn't say anything about cable leaks or what Manning leaked, that is a different conversation. err... His regime was brutal against whistle-blowers. Look at Chelsea Manning. It's pretty hard to read that as anything except you using Manning as an example of a whistle-blower.
        kakarot 9y ago
        I'm not talking about what Manning leaked, just that they were a leaker who the US government made an example of.
    - jonnybgood 9y ago
      Chelsea Manning wasn’t a whistleblower. Leaking a ton of classified intel while having little clue of its contents isn’t whistleblowing.
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- knieveltech 9y ago
  You appear to be grossly misusing the term "left". I'm guessing you're talking about Democrats here, which are center-right liberals. Leftist politics for the most part don't even vaguely resemble the Democratic party platform.
  - lern_too_spel 9y ago
    Leftist politics resemble https://www.democrats.org/party-platform https://www.democrats.org/party-platform quite a bit.
    - JetSpiegel 9y ago
      Only in America. The problem was the person chosen to lead that platform was Hillary Clinton.
      - deleted 9y ago
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      - knieveltech 9y ago
        Um...no. Leftist politics are inherently anti-nationalist, anti-capitalist, and anti-racist. The venn diagram between liberals and leftists only really overlaps on issues of racism, and even that only weakly.
        lern_too_spel 9y ago
        Your definition confuses the goals with the implementation. You don't need the workers to seize the means of production to achieve minimum living standards, and research shows that there are better ways.
        knieveltech 9y ago
        A few things: 1. This isn't "my" definition, this is how the term is used everywhere it hasn't been coopted. 2. "goals and implementation" is a non-sequitur in what was a conversation about the meaning of words. 3. Kindly source your claims about "research". I'm currently unaware of any method of establishing controls for whole-society scale experiments in economics so am left puzzled regarding what this "research" might entail.
duncan_bayne 9y ago
Both left and right dug the US - and your allies like Australia, where I live - deeper into this hole. It is a bipartisan problem.
uptown 9y ago
Nope. Both parties are unified on this issue.
- rektide 9y ago
  "We Must Fight Even Harder Against Trump's Authoritarian Impulses Now That We've Voted To Enable Them" is another true to life, accurate Onion article. Obama administration certainly made no effort to correct any of the Bush DoJ authorized spying programs, until Wired and then Snowden forced some kind of response, resulting in FISA. Which seems to be a star court that refuses to answer any questions from congress or deny any request. https://politics.theonion.com/pelosi-we-must-fight-even-harder-against-trumps-autho-1822205559 https://politics.theonion.com/pelosi-we-must-fight-even-hard... It's a shit show everywhere. Very very few congress-people seem to have any backbone what-so-ever. Ron Wyden of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is one of the only people that seems to even try to ask questions, and he is shut down and denied by the military at every turn. https://www.thecipherbrief.com/column_article/dont-pass-surveillance-legislation-dark#.WlX-vO2BQqo.twitter https://www.thecipherbrief.com/column_article/dont-pass-surv...
  - DrScump 9y ago
    Which seems to be a star court Did you mean a "star chamber" court?
  - patrickg_zill 9y ago
    I may be wrong, but I am pretty sure that FISA has been around for 20 years or more. Wiki says it was established 1978 as part of an act passed that same year.
    - rayiner 9y ago
      The FISA Act was an attempt to reign in domestic spying. It didn’t create it.
- guelo 9y ago
  No they are not unified. Going by the congressional vote about 25% of Republicans and 70% of Democrats voted against the spying. If this issue is important to you you're generally better off voting Democrat unless you have a Ron Paul type of Republican.
boomboomsubban 9y ago
Personally, I find it more likely that the NSA or another organization ends up leaking some sort of damning info about Trump. This would give them a huge opinion boost, and the Democrats would end up owing the organization for their victory. We're already seeing this, the Democrats seem to love Comey despite his role in mass surveillance.
- duncan_bayne 9y ago
  Why "despite"? Mass surveillance is a legacy of both the Democrats and the Republicans.
- MaxBarraclough 9y ago
  > huge opinion boost You think people would warm to the NSA if only they demonstrated an inability to keep secret the findings of their domestic spying, and revealed they'd been spying on the president? You don't think that would make them look like they were illegally meddling in partisan politics?
  - makomk 9y ago
    This doesn't seem too unlikely to me. Fighting Trump has become something that seems to override concerns about democracy or any other principle for a wide swathe of people. Supporting intelligence agency meddling in partisan politics is one of the milder, more widely normalised and expected parts of being anti-Trump today; the more extreme fringe views involve support for tactics like a literal military coup.
  - boomboomsubban 9y ago
    >You think people would warm to the NSA if only they demonstrated an inability to keep secret the findings of their domestic spying, and revealed they'd been spying on the president? They may not need to make it domestic or seem like they were spying on the president, finding some sort of scandal involving a different nation doesn't seem that hard. Or they could use some intercepted knowledge from a foreign spy agency. As a whole though, I suspect they'd see an opinion boost even if it came from domestic surveillance. The hatred of Trump is ridiculous, Democrats have even praised Bush following his attacks on Trump. Plus, Mark Felt did basically did this and just got had a movie made about him.
finnthehuman 9y ago
The dems getting their shit together has been "just around the corner" for decades. At some point you've gotta admit they're just scrambling to be slightly less detestable than the GOP, to just enough voters to win elections.
- astronautjones 9y ago
  > At some point you've gotta admit they're just scrambling to be slightly less detestable than the GOP, to just enough voters to win elections. absolutely. i'm arguing that that has finally (obviously) become untenable, the shift left will be bolstered by the vivid, insurmountable gulf in inequality

It's coming. not in the 2018 elections, but the 2020 democrat party will be forced from below and unpredictable other sides to be far more leftist and treat privacy as a crucial issue

ibeckermayer 9y ago

I don't see the leftists treating privacy as a crucial issue... Far more leftist = authoritarian sjw's does it not? I haven't heard a peep about privacy from the left since Obama dropped it as an issue (and quietly expanded surveillance).

lern_too_spel 9y ago
Obama quietly expanded privacy as an issue? That doesn't parse. Edit: parent fixed his parenthetical to be merely factually incorrect instead of grammatically incorrect. As I recall, he publicly discussed privacy as an issue and both privately (until the Snowden leaks showed his cancellation of email metadata collection) and publicly (phone metadata) shut down data collection programs.
- kakarot 9y ago
  His regime was brutal against whistle-blowers. Look at Chelsea Manning. In his last few years as president, he did not exert much effort at all to shut down the NSA program, as he surely already mostly knew the extent of it and was fine with it. Obama does not care about doing the right thing here.
  - lern_too_spel 9y ago
    > His regime was brutal against whistle-blowers. Look at Chelsea Manning. Walking free. After she blew the whistle on what, exactly? The heavily edited Collateral Murder video that conveniently left out the RPG[1]? What do the cable leaks have to do with that? > In his last few years as president, he did not exert much effort at all to shut down the NSA program. He shut down the email metadata collection program two years after taking office. [1]https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wired.com/2010/04/2007-iraq-apache-attack-as-seen-from-the-ground/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wired.com/2010/04/2007-iraq... Edit: > I didn't say anything about cable leaks or what Manning leaked, that is a different conversation.... Nice strawmanning, though. You literally pointed to Manning as an example of how Obama was brutal to whistleblowers. I quoted you. I pointed out that the actions she took do not count as whistleblowing, and you appear to have conceded that point. > I'm implicitly referring to the NSA spying programs leaked by Snowden. How does that example show Obama's brutality to whistleblowers? Snowden is not a whistleblower, and Obama didn't treat him brutally. Out of the millions of documents that Snowden leaked, only phone metadata collection was found to be illegal. If you leak millions of documents from any government agency or any private company for that matter, you're bound to find at least one instance of illegal activity.
    - kakarot 9y ago
      I didn't say anything about cable leaks or what Manning leaked, that is a different conversation. I am simply referring to the Obama administration's treatment of Manning, and Obama's cowardly attempts at saving grace by granting clemency right as he's leaving office, and shortly after Assange claimed he would turn himself in if Manning was granted clemency (Obviously Assange wasn't being for real and didn't) I'm implicitly referring to the NSA spying programs leaked by Snowden. That has nothing to do with the program you're talking about. Nice strawmanning, though.
      - nl 9y ago
        I didn't say anything about cable leaks or what Manning leaked, that is a different conversation. err... His regime was brutal against whistle-blowers. Look at Chelsea Manning. It's pretty hard to read that as anything except you using Manning as an example of a whistle-blower.
        kakarot 9y ago
        I'm not talking about what Manning leaked, just that they were a leaker who the US government made an example of.
  - jonnybgood 9y ago
    Chelsea Manning wasn’t a whistleblower. Leaking a ton of classified intel while having little clue of its contents isn’t whistleblowing.
- deleted 9y ago
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deleted 9y ago
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knieveltech 9y ago
You appear to be grossly misusing the term "left". I'm guessing you're talking about Democrats here, which are center-right liberals. Leftist politics for the most part don't even vaguely resemble the Democratic party platform.
- lern_too_spel 9y ago
  Leftist politics resemble https://www.democrats.org/party-platform https://www.democrats.org/party-platform quite a bit.
  - JetSpiegel 9y ago
    Only in America. The problem was the person chosen to lead that platform was Hillary Clinton.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - knieveltech 9y ago
      Um...no. Leftist politics are inherently anti-nationalist, anti-capitalist, and anti-racist. The venn diagram between liberals and leftists only really overlaps on issues of racism, and even that only weakly.
      - lern_too_spel 9y ago
        Your definition confuses the goals with the implementation. You don't need the workers to seize the means of production to achieve minimum living standards, and research shows that there are better ways.
        knieveltech 9y ago
        A few things: 1. This isn't "my" definition, this is how the term is used everywhere it hasn't been coopted. 2. "goals and implementation" is a non-sequitur in what was a conversation about the meaning of words. 3. Kindly source your claims about "research". I'm currently unaware of any method of establishing controls for whole-society scale experiments in economics so am left puzzled regarding what this "research" might entail.

duncan_bayne 9y ago

Both left and right dug the US - and your allies like Australia, where I live - deeper into this hole. It is a bipartisan problem.

uptown 9y ago

Nope. Both parties are unified on this issue.

rektide 9y ago
"We Must Fight Even Harder Against Trump's Authoritarian Impulses Now That We've Voted To Enable Them" is another true to life, accurate Onion article. Obama administration certainly made no effort to correct any of the Bush DoJ authorized spying programs, until Wired and then Snowden forced some kind of response, resulting in FISA. Which seems to be a star court that refuses to answer any questions from congress or deny any request. https://politics.theonion.com/pelosi-we-must-fight-even-harder-against-trumps-autho-1822205559 https://politics.theonion.com/pelosi-we-must-fight-even-hard... It's a shit show everywhere. Very very few congress-people seem to have any backbone what-so-ever. Ron Wyden of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is one of the only people that seems to even try to ask questions, and he is shut down and denied by the military at every turn. https://www.thecipherbrief.com/column_article/dont-pass-surveillance-legislation-dark#.WlX-vO2BQqo.twitter https://www.thecipherbrief.com/column_article/dont-pass-surv...
- DrScump 9y ago
  Which seems to be a star court Did you mean a "star chamber" court?
- patrickg_zill 9y ago
  I may be wrong, but I am pretty sure that FISA has been around for 20 years or more. Wiki says it was established 1978 as part of an act passed that same year.
  - rayiner 9y ago
    The FISA Act was an attempt to reign in domestic spying. It didn’t create it.
guelo 9y ago
No they are not unified. Going by the congressional vote about 25% of Republicans and 70% of Democrats voted against the spying. If this issue is important to you you're generally better off voting Democrat unless you have a Ron Paul type of Republican.

boomboomsubban 9y ago

Personally, I find it more likely that the NSA or another organization ends up leaking some sort of damning info about Trump. This would give them a huge opinion boost, and the Democrats would end up owing the organization for their victory. We're already seeing this, the Democrats seem to love Comey despite his role in mass surveillance.

duncan_bayne 9y ago
Why "despite"? Mass surveillance is a legacy of both the Democrats and the Republicans.
MaxBarraclough 9y ago
> huge opinion boost You think people would warm to the NSA if only they demonstrated an inability to keep secret the findings of their domestic spying, and revealed they'd been spying on the president? You don't think that would make them look like they were illegally meddling in partisan politics?
- makomk 9y ago
  This doesn't seem too unlikely to me. Fighting Trump has become something that seems to override concerns about democracy or any other principle for a wide swathe of people. Supporting intelligence agency meddling in partisan politics is one of the milder, more widely normalised and expected parts of being anti-Trump today; the more extreme fringe views involve support for tactics like a literal military coup.
- boomboomsubban 9y ago
  >You think people would warm to the NSA if only they demonstrated an inability to keep secret the findings of their domestic spying, and revealed they'd been spying on the president? They may not need to make it domestic or seem like they were spying on the president, finding some sort of scandal involving a different nation doesn't seem that hard. Or they could use some intercepted knowledge from a foreign spy agency. As a whole though, I suspect they'd see an opinion boost even if it came from domestic surveillance. The hatred of Trump is ridiculous, Democrats have even praised Bush following his attacks on Trump. Plus, Mark Felt did basically did this and just got had a movie made about him.

finnthehuman 9y ago

The dems getting their shit together has been "just around the corner" for decades. At some point you've gotta admit they're just scrambling to be slightly less detestable than the GOP, to just enough voters to win elections.

astronautjones 9y ago
> At some point you've gotta admit they're just scrambling to be slightly less detestable than the GOP, to just enough voters to win elections. absolutely. i'm arguing that that has finally (obviously) become untenable, the shift left will be bolstered by the vivid, insurmountable gulf in inequality