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chiefly benefits powers whose long term vision is the decline of liberal democracy. ...by exposing the hypocrisy of said liberal democracies. What good is a li
by tremon 6y ago
chiefly benefits powers whose long term vision is the decline of liberal democracy.
...by exposing the hypocrisy of said liberal democracies. What good is a liberal democracy when the demos remains oblivious of the negative aspects what the cracy is doing?
If things like the collateral murder videos, or the treatment of Manning and Snowden are the work of said "liberal democracies", then I'm fully in the camp that wants to decline them, and replace them with better, more transparent, more accountable structures.
- woodruffw 6y agoNo arguments here. The US is a nation of profound and disgusting hypocrisies. But see my sibling comment.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago"Hurr durr America bad" is the standard trope on Reddit. Most people on HN are pretty well informed of the less than nice things the .gov has done over they years even if they bury their heads in the sand when advocating for expansion of government scope on <insert personal favorite issue here>. And the right has their own laundry list of reasons the government is not to be trusted. Those people have nearly zero trust for pretty much any gun-toting federal agency. I wouldn't say that people are "oblivious". I'd say that people are divided on how to fix the issues.
- ntsplnkv2 6y agoThe power of liberal democracies is not that bad things never happen in them. The power is that despite all of that, people can still vote and make change. That's why we have amendments and legislature - we see wrong, we try to change it. > If things like the collateral murder videos, or the treatment of Manning and Snowden are the work of said "liberal democracies", then I'm fully in the camp that wants to decline them, and replace them with better, more transparent, more accountable structures. But that's not what will happen. Instead, populists will rise to power under the ruse of libertarianism, or going back to "the old ways." Eventually the nation will continue to divide itself until it collapses under internal infighting. Almost as if by design...
- tremon 6y agowe see wrong, we try to change it. Exactly! But that's predicated on "we see wrong". What Snowden and Wikileaks (and the various paradise leaks) showed, is that there's a lot of wrongs we don't see. Maybe I didn't specify this explicitly in my earlier post, but my core position is this: attacks on Wikileaks are attacks on the ability for the voting population to see the wrongs, and as such are attacks on democracy itself. It's ironic for the CIA to claim that Wikileaks "works towards the decline of liberal democracy", when the CIA itself is working to suppress democratic checks and balances.
- ntsplnkv2 6y agoSo essentially - any attack on wikileaks or journalism/the press in general is an attack on democracy?
- the_only_law 6y ago> It's ironic for the CIA to claim that Wikileaks "works towards the decline of liberal democracy", when the CIA itself is working to suppress democratic checks and balances. the CIA in the past has installed brutal dictatorships and actively tortured the most vulnerable of our own citizens. I think it's fair to say protecting liberal democracy is hardly a priority of theirs.