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So they’re saying the response right now looks like the response immediately after 9/11. Ie mobilizing a whole of government effort to stamp out a home grown te

by ianai 6y ago

So they’re saying the response right now looks like the response immediately after 9/11. Ie mobilizing a whole of government effort to stamp out a home grown terrorist threat. (Per cable news this AM.) This news and other social media news reinforce this being a large response. In that case, I would urge people to remain patient and avoid making conclusions and long term decisions based on this response. It’s likely things ease up once “calm” is restored.

pjc50 6y ago
I wonder how long it will take to restore calm? People have been talking up armed insurrection in some form for as long as I've been on the internet. This stuff that used to appear in mass shooter manifestoes is now everywhere. And it's not a group with identifiable leaders, it's more a "stochastic terrorism" thing. Both "advocating revolution" and "owning weapons" are protected activities under the US constitution, so how do you identify the actual terrorists?
- cbozeman 6y ago
  Well a good start might be to address a lot of these concerns. Whether they want to or not, politicians and the ultra wealthy are going to have to get out of bed together. The affair is over, if for no other reason then their own physical safety, then at least for their financial safety. If income inequality continues and there's less and less available jobs for working age men, those men will find something to occupy their time, and I promise you, it won't be selling wood carvings on Etsy. I cannot remember where I heard this, and I'm going to butcher the quote, but it went a little something like, "When you take away a man's ability to earn his way, you turn him into a revolutionary." I'm almost certain I got that wrong, but that's the gist of it. We need a huge jobs program and we need one now. An enormous infrastructure bill would be a good start to calming down a lot of this nonsense. Employed people with disposable income rarely want to upend the system. If we continue down this path, then the cold civil war that we're seeing waged mostly on the Internet, but occasionally out in the open, is going to turn into a hot one. And I guarantee you, if things escalate, you'll find Russia taking advantage of this by sending groups of their special operators to train these people, because no one in the world has more experience with urban warfare than Russia. And if you think that the American military is entirely unsympathetic to these people, you are starkly and dangerously wrong. EDIT: And yes, I've been hearing / reading / seeing references to the "boogaloo" for years now. It seems we might be facing it sooner, rather than later.
  - watwut 6y ago
    > Employed people with disposable income rarely want to upend the system. The people who attacked Capitol were employed with disposable income.
    - doctor_eval 6y ago
      Yeah but they weren’t trying to upend the current system, they were trying to perpetuate it.
      - cbozeman 6y ago
        Are you kidding me? Donald Trump's election was a big "fuck you" to the system. They absolutely want to upend the system. The system isn't working for them, and they know it. If the system was working, wages wouldn't be stagnant for 50 years. Housing prices wouldn't have nearly quadrupled. College education prices wouldn't have nearly... you know what, I don't even know the correct modifier... gone up by 5000%. In 1971, CEO pay was at best 30-40 times the median salary of an employee at a company. If you made $10,000 a year, the CEO might make $300,000-400,000. The very best CEOs rarely made multi-millions. This is not a sustainable system. The problem is, these people don't really have the education to know how to attack the system to correctly dismantle it (in fact, it might not even be possible to dismantle it from a non-violent / institutional standpoint, but that's another conversation), so they instead riot and install Viking Pepe as their leader.
        adamcstephens 6y ago
        I guess you’re getting downvoted for this one because you’re more explicitly blaming the system instead of the actors. I agree with you that until we fix the rot in the system that leaves so many in despair, unrest will continue to escalate.
        cbozeman 6y ago
        People respond to incentives, incentives are created by systems, and systems aren't put into place by one single person. The "actors" that created many of the problems we suffer under are dead or dying - or quite simply, too rich and powerful to be easily or effectively held accountable. I think I'm being downvoted because most of us that post here on HN are either thoroughly entrenched in the system in some way, or we're elevated beyond these problems which mostly affect poorly educated lower class people. We have tons of FAANG employees that post here, tons of wealthy entrepreneurs, lots of startup founders, etc. None of us really have jack shit in common with poor disenfranchised people. But we better start making it a priority to look into, else I fear we're going to find ourselves in a very unenviable position.
- watwut 6y ago
  There are groups with identifiable leaders. You could even see groups in uniforms, trained and organized. Basically the same thing as with Islamic terrorist groups.
- alistairSH 6y ago
  "advocating revolution" That's not always protected, depending on how you're defining it. Seditious conspiracy is a major felony.[1] A person is allowed to speak generally about political change. "Trump is a jerk, we should throw him out!" would probably be protected. "Trump is a jerk, we should march to the WH after work today and physically remove him" might not be protected (though the bar to conviction would be pretty high - government would probably have to prove you actually meant to do so, not just "making noise"). IANAL, so that above is meant to be very general. 1 - https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2384 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2384
  - pjc50 6y ago
    Indeed - so the Q movement has been pushing further and further towards this, and has finally hit the point where there will be some kind of legal pushback. The trick to stochastic terrorism is to incite other people to do it without quite overstepping the arrestable line yourself. A sort of distributed "Nuremberg defense".
    - burnthrow 6y ago
      Please stop with this fake thought-crime "stochastic terrorism." It's not clever, no matter how much Anderson Cooper loves to say it. People are responsible for their own actions.
      - ben_w 6y ago
        Joint and several responsibility. I’d love it if people couldn’t be manipulated, but we’re bald monkeys in suits, not Vulcans.
garmaine 6y ago
> In that case, I would urge people to remain patient and avoid making conclusions and long term decisions based on this response. It’s likely things ease up once “calm” is restored. Just like airport security theatre and the PATRIOT Act were eased up after 9/11?
- adamcstephens 6y ago
  Right, so that’s the argument for not making any significant changes in law for a while, right? There are plenty of laws in the books to charge people who are actually doing illegal acts (like storming the capital)
gedy 6y ago
People seem to have huge double standards here. One side: "The government needs to step in and stop this widespread violence!". Other side: "People need to stand up! Government needs to back off!" Then flip flop when it's "their side" a few months later..
- ryanmercer 6y ago
  You're being downvoted but you aren't wrong. It's starting to look like a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation. A friend of mine runs a social media brand that calls out men who post nasty comments on female strength athletes profiles, she simply screenshots them and posts them to the brand as well as making memes of the horrific things. She's shared screenshots of people wishing violent sexual assault against underage girls just beacuse they are a strength athlete, and instead of that person getting banned for advocating the rape of a minor, she gets a 3 day, week, 30 day ban from Facebook and/or Instagram for simply screenshotting and reposting a public comment. You can see some of these awful things screenshotted, as well as her various bans, on https://www.instagram.com/you.look.like.a.man/ https://www.instagram.com/you.look.like.a.man/ Or they you remove a politician, or something like Info Wars for saying absolutely insane/dangerous things and then all the fans "overstepping! You're overstepping!" meanwhile everyone else is "it's about bloody time!" I would absolutely hate to be the leadership at any social media platform. Even things like nudity, I've seen several burlesque friends have posts removed and temporary bans issued for topless women with pasties covering their nipples on digital flyers advertising their next show, meanwhile I once saw a woman breastfeeding to a club song while sexually fondling her bare breast that wasn't being used to breast feed with millions of views on Facebook and tens of thousands of comments that was months old... Not only is there no consistency in how such things are applied, but when they do get applied people freak out for various reasons. Like Sam Altman (/u/sama) said a few days ago: >There are exemptions to free speech defined by the Supreme Court, and we urgently need new ones for the age of social media. >What those exceptions are should be decided by the government, and fairly applied by companies. https://twitter.com/sama/status/1347980613559611392 https://twitter.com/sama/status/1347980613559611392
  - gedy 6y ago

by ianai 6y ago

pjc50 6y ago

I wonder how long it will take to restore calm? People have been talking up armed insurrection in some form for as long as I've been on the internet. This stuff that used to appear in mass shooter manifestoes is now everywhere. And it's not a group with identifiable leaders, it's more a "stochastic terrorism" thing. Both "advocating revolution" and "owning weapons" are protected activities under the US constitution, so how do you identify the actual terrorists?

cbozeman 6y ago
Well a good start might be to address a lot of these concerns. Whether they want to or not, politicians and the ultra wealthy are going to have to get out of bed together. The affair is over, if for no other reason then their own physical safety, then at least for their financial safety. If income inequality continues and there's less and less available jobs for working age men, those men will find something to occupy their time, and I promise you, it won't be selling wood carvings on Etsy. I cannot remember where I heard this, and I'm going to butcher the quote, but it went a little something like, "When you take away a man's ability to earn his way, you turn him into a revolutionary." I'm almost certain I got that wrong, but that's the gist of it. We need a huge jobs program and we need one now. An enormous infrastructure bill would be a good start to calming down a lot of this nonsense. Employed people with disposable income rarely want to upend the system. If we continue down this path, then the cold civil war that we're seeing waged mostly on the Internet, but occasionally out in the open, is going to turn into a hot one. And I guarantee you, if things escalate, you'll find Russia taking advantage of this by sending groups of their special operators to train these people, because no one in the world has more experience with urban warfare than Russia. And if you think that the American military is entirely unsympathetic to these people, you are starkly and dangerously wrong. EDIT: And yes, I've been hearing / reading / seeing references to the "boogaloo" for years now. It seems we might be facing it sooner, rather than later.
- watwut 6y ago
  > Employed people with disposable income rarely want to upend the system. The people who attacked Capitol were employed with disposable income.
  - doctor_eval 6y ago
    Yeah but they weren’t trying to upend the current system, they were trying to perpetuate it.
    - cbozeman 6y ago
      Are you kidding me? Donald Trump's election was a big "fuck you" to the system. They absolutely want to upend the system. The system isn't working for them, and they know it. If the system was working, wages wouldn't be stagnant for 50 years. Housing prices wouldn't have nearly quadrupled. College education prices wouldn't have nearly... you know what, I don't even know the correct modifier... gone up by 5000%. In 1971, CEO pay was at best 30-40 times the median salary of an employee at a company. If you made $10,000 a year, the CEO might make $300,000-400,000. The very best CEOs rarely made multi-millions. This is not a sustainable system. The problem is, these people don't really have the education to know how to attack the system to correctly dismantle it (in fact, it might not even be possible to dismantle it from a non-violent / institutional standpoint, but that's another conversation), so they instead riot and install Viking Pepe as their leader.
      - adamcstephens 6y ago
        I guess you’re getting downvoted for this one because you’re more explicitly blaming the system instead of the actors. I agree with you that until we fix the rot in the system that leaves so many in despair, unrest will continue to escalate.
        cbozeman 6y ago
        People respond to incentives, incentives are created by systems, and systems aren't put into place by one single person. The "actors" that created many of the problems we suffer under are dead or dying - or quite simply, too rich and powerful to be easily or effectively held accountable. I think I'm being downvoted because most of us that post here on HN are either thoroughly entrenched in the system in some way, or we're elevated beyond these problems which mostly affect poorly educated lower class people. We have tons of FAANG employees that post here, tons of wealthy entrepreneurs, lots of startup founders, etc. None of us really have jack shit in common with poor disenfranchised people. But we better start making it a priority to look into, else I fear we're going to find ourselves in a very unenviable position.
watwut 6y ago
There are groups with identifiable leaders. You could even see groups in uniforms, trained and organized. Basically the same thing as with Islamic terrorist groups.
alistairSH 6y ago
"advocating revolution" That's not always protected, depending on how you're defining it. Seditious conspiracy is a major felony.[1] A person is allowed to speak generally about political change. "Trump is a jerk, we should throw him out!" would probably be protected. "Trump is a jerk, we should march to the WH after work today and physically remove him" might not be protected (though the bar to conviction would be pretty high - government would probably have to prove you actually meant to do so, not just "making noise"). IANAL, so that above is meant to be very general. 1 - https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2384 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2384
- pjc50 6y ago
  Indeed - so the Q movement has been pushing further and further towards this, and has finally hit the point where there will be some kind of legal pushback. The trick to stochastic terrorism is to incite other people to do it without quite overstepping the arrestable line yourself. A sort of distributed "Nuremberg defense".
  - burnthrow 6y ago
    Please stop with this fake thought-crime "stochastic terrorism." It's not clever, no matter how much Anderson Cooper loves to say it. People are responsible for their own actions.
    - ben_w 6y ago
      Joint and several responsibility. I’d love it if people couldn’t be manipulated, but we’re bald monkeys in suits, not Vulcans.

garmaine 6y ago

> In that case, I would urge people to remain patient and avoid making conclusions and long term decisions based on this response. It’s likely things ease up once “calm” is restored. Just like airport security theatre and the PATRIOT Act were eased up after 9/11?

adamcstephens 6y ago
Right, so that’s the argument for not making any significant changes in law for a while, right? There are plenty of laws in the books to charge people who are actually doing illegal acts (like storming the capital)

gedy 6y ago

People seem to have huge double standards here. One side: "The government needs to step in and stop this widespread violence!". Other side: "People need to stand up! Government needs to back off!" Then flip flop when it's "their side" a few months later..

ryanmercer 6y ago
You're being downvoted but you aren't wrong. It's starting to look like a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation. A friend of mine runs a social media brand that calls out men who post nasty comments on female strength athletes profiles, she simply screenshots them and posts them to the brand as well as making memes of the horrific things. She's shared screenshots of people wishing violent sexual assault against underage girls just beacuse they are a strength athlete, and instead of that person getting banned for advocating the rape of a minor, she gets a 3 day, week, 30 day ban from Facebook and/or Instagram for simply screenshotting and reposting a public comment. You can see some of these awful things screenshotted, as well as her various bans, on https://www.instagram.com/you.look.like.a.man/ https://www.instagram.com/you.look.like.a.man/ Or they you remove a politician, or something like Info Wars for saying absolutely insane/dangerous things and then all the fans "overstepping! You're overstepping!" meanwhile everyone else is "it's about bloody time!" I would absolutely hate to be the leadership at any social media platform. Even things like nudity, I've seen several burlesque friends have posts removed and temporary bans issued for topless women with pasties covering their nipples on digital flyers advertising their next show, meanwhile I once saw a woman breastfeeding to a club song while sexually fondling her bare breast that wasn't being used to breast feed with millions of views on Facebook and tens of thousands of comments that was months old... Not only is there no consistency in how such things are applied, but when they do get applied people freak out for various reasons. Like Sam Altman (/u/sama) said a few days ago: >There are exemptions to free speech defined by the Supreme Court, and we urgently need new ones for the age of social media. >What those exceptions are should be decided by the government, and fairly applied by companies. https://twitter.com/sama/status/1347980613559611392 https://twitter.com/sama/status/1347980613559611392
- gedy 6y ago