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Well that's just one of lesser things that happens for a paranoid society that trades freedom and privacy for what the oppression apparatus calls security. You

Well that's just one of lesser things that happens for a paranoid society that trades freedom and privacy for what the oppression apparatus calls security. You don't have security, just a police-state, and to add insult to injury besides having less freedom now you also have less security too. And yes, let's pretend that only China, Iran and Russia are police states, let's keep singing star spangled banner while we happily slip through this slope towards the gulags.

Forgeties79 5y ago
>let's keep singing star spangled banner while we happily slip through this slope towards the gulags You had a point until "gulags." You honestly think we're on the verge of becoming a Stalinist state that imprisons and murders political dissidents by the millions? Maybe that's a tad alarmist?
- stuckinhell 5y ago
  I don't think so, America has a massive amount of political unrest. Both parties seem to adore violence on their political enemies these days, and most Americans think civil war is on the way.
  - Forgeties79 5y ago
    >most Americans think civil war is on the way Source? Personally, if we survived the 60’s/70’s, I think we can survive this. They literally murdered college students in front of the world. I’m also not sure how any of this translates into Stalin-era gulags. People throw that term around too lightly, like “nazi.” If you’ve actually studied any Russian/Soviet history you should know how insane those were, even for an era with rampant fascism.
    - hackerfromthefu 5y ago
      Absolutely correct. It seems in vogue to use words without understanding the actual meanings. Most people haven't read history and speak, loudly, of that which they don't know.
    - thechao 5y ago
      Right; I think at worst we're managing to rewind ourselves to the `90s, at this point. I think a lot of people don't remember how much social change there was starting in the early `00s through the early `10s. I'm not pleased with the retrogression; I think Project Red Map has really uncovered a large scale hack/flaw in the US electorate that needs to be fixed quickly, but the political situation is certainly nothing like the `60s/`70s. My parents were activists in the 60s, and my grandparents were activists in the 20s & 30s. My parents mostly feared being beaten, with a background fear of being shot at. My grandparents feared being disappeared along with retribution to their extended family, friends, and neighborhoods.
      - Forgeties79 5y ago
        Re: your grandparents, I really don't think people appreciate how easy it was to cross the government with your speech - especially in wartime - prior to late 20th century.
    - stuckinhell 5y ago
      https://thehill.com/homenews/news/467143-voters-believe-us-two-thirds-of-the-way-to-edge-of-a-civil-war-poll/ https://thehill.com/homenews/news/467143-voters-believe-us-t... The advent of increased population, social media, technology, and major american hyper polarization make the current times very different than the 60s/70s.
  - pstuart 5y ago
    > Both parties seem to adore violence on their political enemies these days Let's stop with the both sides are the same bit, m'kay? Plenty to criticize on the left but please stick to facts.
    - pstuart 5y ago
      I welcome valid examples that prove me wrong. The concern is legitimate, not hyperbole. And as far as Civil War goes, I'd posit that it's already begun.
      - Forgeties79 5y ago
        Well I think many of welcome valid sources showing that “most Americans think civil war is on the way.” If a civil war has “already begun,” I guess I live somewhere else, because I don’t hear any gun shots. Frankly it feels a lot calmer around here than it did a year or two ago.
        pstuart 5y ago
        Just as we're no longer using muskets and cavalry, the method of warfare has changed in other ways. Perhaps meld in aspects of The Cold War as well. A key change this time is not to split apart, but to simply grab all the marbles and declare the game to be over. I wish I could be sanguine about this and would love to be proven wrong, but it's looking grim.
- elzbardico 5y ago
  This is what we call an hyperbole.
  - Forgeties79 5y ago
    Pretty over-the-top example if you ask me
  - maxbond 5y ago
    This is sort of a dodge, isn't it? The question wasn't, what rhetorical device are you employing? It's, do you truly believe the situation is as extreme as you imply? If the answer is "no", then there's an implied invitation to lay out what you actually believe. If the answer is "yes", there's an implied request to justify why you think that way. Saying 'this is what we call hyperbole' seems to imply, 'my ideas stand so well on their own, I don't need to respond to your criticism; the problem is not with my ideas or how I've expressed them, it is with your inability to recognize a particular rhetorical device.' Which is both patronizing and wrong. Your use of hyperbole was recognized and is being interrogated. You're under no obligation to respond to that challenge, no one here has a right to your time, but if you're going to, it would be more productive for everyone if you did so in good faith.
    - elzbardico 5y ago
      > Saying 'this is what we call hyperbole' seems to imply, 'my ideas stand so well on their own, I don't need to respond to your criticism; the problem is not with my ideas or how I've expressed them, it is with your inability to recognize a particular rhetorical device.' Well. now this is a strawman.
      - maxbond 5y ago
        It certainly isn't a strawman, it's how I interpreted your statement. I continue to believe that it is what you intended, but feel free to correct me; I'm listening. If you're truly being misinterpreted as often as you seem to imply, consider communicating more plainly without sarcasm and hyperbole. I personally find them to be poor tools for communication in general and on the internet especially.
- nahkoots 5y ago
  Don't forget that we very nearly had a successful coup, which would have spelled the end of American democracy. Are we on the verge of becoming a Stalinist state? No, not really. Could it happen? Absolutely, and we need to recognize that possibility to avoid becoming the next one.
  - ipaddr 5y ago
    Please forget whatever idea you came up with. America was never under a coup attempt. Hard to even attempt to call it a coup without weapons. Don't worry America is safe from farmers rallying at the white house.
    - whateveracct 5y ago
      Maybe they're referring to the attempts to invalidate the 2020 election? No weapons, but what is a better word for a coordinated attempt to undermine the government?
      - hackerfromthefu 5y ago
        How about 'attempt to undermine the government'? That is much more accurate than coup. Words have meanings, and using the words inaccurate/the wrong meanings is saying one thing but meaning another, and the word for that is lying.
        jetpks 5y ago
        This is the same verbal gymnastics confederate sympathizers use when trying to say that the civil war was about "states rights." All you have to do is follow the logic to its conclusion. What was the civil war about? States rights. What rights, specifically? The right of states to allow their citizens to practice slavery. Therefore, the civil war was about slavery. What was jan 6 about? It was about an attempt to undermine the government. An attempt to undermine what, specifically? The election process. Why did they seek to undermine the election process? So that the mob could extra-judicially install a leader of their preference. Another word for this is coup d'etat.
- mywittyname 5y ago
  We'll get our own flavor of gulags. The USA already has a pretty nasty and oppressive prison system. We have pro-authoritarian politicians in office, in the police forces, and now throughout the court system. So it doesn't seem alarmist to me. I'm pretty sure the police could get away with murdering political rivals right now. But a few key court decisions are all we need to formalize that capability for the next 100 or so years.
  - consumer451 5y ago
    > "I wanted to tell everyone that there is a cancer within the government and when I tried to weed it out, I got fired," Gilmore wrote. "It was just easier for government management to get rid of me rather than to deal with the underlying issue." https://www.military.com/daily-news/2022/03/13/classified-us-intelligence-chat-rooms-dumpster-fire-of-hate-speech-says-ex-nsa-contractor.html https://www.military.com/daily-news/2022/03/13/classified-us...
  - frankfrankfrank 5y ago
    Yet again I find myself in between rather detached perspectives. I agree with you regarding the trajectory because it is clear as day by all objective measures where this is all heading, yet I am left befuddled by your parroting of tropes about the “pretty nasty and oppressive prison system” that the very people are pushing who are leading us to the state where an equivalent of gulags will be created. The American prisons are not full of thought criminals just because you are being denied all the footage and proof of the violent crimes the people in US prisons commit, constantly. I realize that most people live in a negative bubble, where they have no idea what is happening because the truth has been withheld from them, but that does not change the reality most people are at least unwittingly ignorant of. But yes, the gulag system actually already exists in America, and the political prisoners in the USA right now already know that. Assange is also in that gulag system and can probably be considered the first, Prisoner #1 of the American Empire’s Gulag Equivalent System, even though it is on foreign soil.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- DiabloD3 5y ago
  America elected Trump and then Congress knowingly rejected evidence that he colluded with Putin to defraud voters and steal the election. He then occupied that office for four years, while additional evidence continued to mount against the increasingly obviousness of Russian interference. Not only did a sitting President betray people and killed millions with anti-masker/anti-vaccine rhetoric, he did so to aid a foreign country that is known for murdering political dissidents, and did so during WW2, during the Cold War, and the post-Soviet era that exists today; but also our Congress, most of those still occupying those seats today, aided and abetted him. What Trump and his Congress did is terrorism without being formally charged with it, and is hardly any different than the pre-Stalin era of Soviet Russia and the pre-Kristallnacht era of the Nazi occupation of Germany. So, please, I'd like you to tell me why you think people shouldn't be seriously alarmed? You sound like all the deniers in the history books: "Oh, the Nazis wouldn't kill Jews and political dissidents", "Oh, Stalin wouldn't (also) kill Jews and political dissidents", "Oh, Chairman Mao wouldn't just starve tens of millions to gratify his own ego". People keep saying this, it keeps not being true. History is a goddamned broken record.
  - tiahura 5y ago
    Congress knowingly rejected evidence that he colluded with Putin to defraud voters and steal the election. You shouldn’t let your personal animosity towards Trump lead to believing misinformation. Mueller finds no collusion with Russia, leaves obstruction question open https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/aba-news-archives/2019/03/mueller-concludes-investigation/ https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/aba-news-archives/2... You should take this opportunity to consider what other things you know to be true about Trump may also be misinformation. The Washington Post corrects, removes parts of two stories regarding the Steele dossier https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/media-washington-post-steele-dossier/2021/11/12/f7c9b770-43d5-11ec-a88e-2aa4632af69b_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/media-washing...
    - treeman79 5y ago
      It’s also looking like some of the Bidens are going to jail for what they were accusing Trump. The entire Trump Russia gate was to divert attention from what Hillary / Biden were doing. Oh a laptop was found with solid evidence showing collusion between the Bidens and various countries. Well naturally the same response is to sensor anyone that wants to talk about it and to impeach Trump. https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/03/mainstream-media-outlets-ignore-new-details-in-hunter-biden-scandals/ https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/03/mainstream-media-outle...
- pyronik19 5y ago
  There are influential media personalities calling for the jailing people who aren't towing the line on the war drum beat on ukraine/russia... that any narrative deviation is treasonous and thus a jailable offense. Yeah, so what if our gulags have rainbow flags and black fists murals.
  - mrtranscendence 5y ago
    > There are influential media personalities calling for the jailing people who aren't towing the line on the war drum beat on ukraine/russia Source on these influential media personalities? I assume they're not fringe in any way, since you called them "influential".
    - pyronik19 5y ago
      https://twitter.com/KeithOlbermann/status/1503467489572921346 https://twitter.com/KeithOlbermann/status/150346748957292134...
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  It is worth pointing out that the American penal system is already distressingly close to the scope of the gulag system in Stalinist Russia. The gulag system hit a high of 1.5m prisoners in the 1940s out of a population of 168m (pre war), or about 0.89%. America’s prison population peaked in 2009 at an estimated 0.754%. If you include parole that shoots up to 3.1%, but I’m not sure how to compare that to the gulag system Wildly different death tolls though. Our best estimate is that the gulag system had an 8.88% death rate, with that varying wildly on a year by year basis. Meanwhile the US prison system as of 2018 kills 344 per 100,000, or .344%. But unfortunately those numbers are getting worse, not better. I think the difference here is less about our system being more humane, and more the fact that food and antibiotics are cheap. Heck, just look at how the prison system responded to covid. I honestly think we’re a lot closer to a gulag system than people think. We’ve already built the majority of the machinery to actually implement such a system, and politically making the system harsher and less humane is very popular. There is also a bipartisan consensus that what we need is to fund the system even more. All that we’re missing is the jump to directly imprisoning political opponents, and we’ve already seen some calls for that although it isn’t quite mainstream yet.
  - Forgeties79 5y ago
    >It is worth pointing out that the American penal system is already distressingly close to the scope of the gulag system in Stalinist Russia What do you know about the gulag system? Serious question, not baiting or anything. What are the broad strokes of what you understand to be "The Gulags"? Because like you, I am VERY concerned with the US penal system, but to compare the two is...a stretch for me.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
dalbasal 5y ago
There's more than one road to hell. All or nothing nihilism, that makes no major distinction between the US & china, Russia and Iran is also a road to totalitarian hell. It's a favoured rhetoric style if Putin and many reactionary extremists.
renewiltord 5y ago
Spotify records all the songs I listen to. Last week 10 songs. This week 100. Next week 200. The week after? PRISON IN A FROZEN WASTE! I suffer endlessly from the data they have collected. Cold bits are thrown upon me every morning; I've lost my toes to frostbyte due to data in cold storage; I have made friends, nay fellow sufferers, in the bitcoin mines, as we hash out issues together. If only I could have seen this last week. L'horreur! L'horreur!
dang 5y ago
"Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Forgeties79 5y ago

>let's keep singing star spangled banner while we happily slip through this slope towards the gulags You had a point until "gulags." You honestly think we're on the verge of becoming a Stalinist state that imprisons and murders political dissidents by the millions? Maybe that's a tad alarmist?

stuckinhell 5y ago
I don't think so, America has a massive amount of political unrest. Both parties seem to adore violence on their political enemies these days, and most Americans think civil war is on the way.
- Forgeties79 5y ago
  >most Americans think civil war is on the way Source? Personally, if we survived the 60’s/70’s, I think we can survive this. They literally murdered college students in front of the world. I’m also not sure how any of this translates into Stalin-era gulags. People throw that term around too lightly, like “nazi.” If you’ve actually studied any Russian/Soviet history you should know how insane those were, even for an era with rampant fascism.
  - hackerfromthefu 5y ago
    Absolutely correct. It seems in vogue to use words without understanding the actual meanings. Most people haven't read history and speak, loudly, of that which they don't know.
  - thechao 5y ago
    Right; I think at worst we're managing to rewind ourselves to the `90s, at this point. I think a lot of people don't remember how much social change there was starting in the early `00s through the early `10s. I'm not pleased with the retrogression; I think Project Red Map has really uncovered a large scale hack/flaw in the US electorate that needs to be fixed quickly, but the political situation is certainly nothing like the `60s/`70s. My parents were activists in the 60s, and my grandparents were activists in the 20s & 30s. My parents mostly feared being beaten, with a background fear of being shot at. My grandparents feared being disappeared along with retribution to their extended family, friends, and neighborhoods.
    - Forgeties79 5y ago
      Re: your grandparents, I really don't think people appreciate how easy it was to cross the government with your speech - especially in wartime - prior to late 20th century.
  - stuckinhell 5y ago
    https://thehill.com/homenews/news/467143-voters-believe-us-two-thirds-of-the-way-to-edge-of-a-civil-war-poll/ https://thehill.com/homenews/news/467143-voters-believe-us-t... The advent of increased population, social media, technology, and major american hyper polarization make the current times very different than the 60s/70s.
- pstuart 5y ago
  > Both parties seem to adore violence on their political enemies these days Let's stop with the both sides are the same bit, m'kay? Plenty to criticize on the left but please stick to facts.
  - pstuart 5y ago
    I welcome valid examples that prove me wrong. The concern is legitimate, not hyperbole. And as far as Civil War goes, I'd posit that it's already begun.
    - Forgeties79 5y ago
      Well I think many of welcome valid sources showing that “most Americans think civil war is on the way.” If a civil war has “already begun,” I guess I live somewhere else, because I don’t hear any gun shots. Frankly it feels a lot calmer around here than it did a year or two ago.
      - pstuart 5y ago
        Just as we're no longer using muskets and cavalry, the method of warfare has changed in other ways. Perhaps meld in aspects of The Cold War as well. A key change this time is not to split apart, but to simply grab all the marbles and declare the game to be over. I wish I could be sanguine about this and would love to be proven wrong, but it's looking grim.
elzbardico 5y ago
This is what we call an hyperbole.
- Forgeties79 5y ago
  Pretty over-the-top example if you ask me
- maxbond 5y ago
  This is sort of a dodge, isn't it? The question wasn't, what rhetorical device are you employing? It's, do you truly believe the situation is as extreme as you imply? If the answer is "no", then there's an implied invitation to lay out what you actually believe. If the answer is "yes", there's an implied request to justify why you think that way. Saying 'this is what we call hyperbole' seems to imply, 'my ideas stand so well on their own, I don't need to respond to your criticism; the problem is not with my ideas or how I've expressed them, it is with your inability to recognize a particular rhetorical device.' Which is both patronizing and wrong. Your use of hyperbole was recognized and is being interrogated. You're under no obligation to respond to that challenge, no one here has a right to your time, but if you're going to, it would be more productive for everyone if you did so in good faith.
  - elzbardico 5y ago
    > Saying 'this is what we call hyperbole' seems to imply, 'my ideas stand so well on their own, I don't need to respond to your criticism; the problem is not with my ideas or how I've expressed them, it is with your inability to recognize a particular rhetorical device.' Well. now this is a strawman.
    - maxbond 5y ago
      It certainly isn't a strawman, it's how I interpreted your statement. I continue to believe that it is what you intended, but feel free to correct me; I'm listening. If you're truly being misinterpreted as often as you seem to imply, consider communicating more plainly without sarcasm and hyperbole. I personally find them to be poor tools for communication in general and on the internet especially.
nahkoots 5y ago
Don't forget that we very nearly had a successful coup, which would have spelled the end of American democracy. Are we on the verge of becoming a Stalinist state? No, not really. Could it happen? Absolutely, and we need to recognize that possibility to avoid becoming the next one.
- ipaddr 5y ago
  Please forget whatever idea you came up with. America was never under a coup attempt. Hard to even attempt to call it a coup without weapons. Don't worry America is safe from farmers rallying at the white house.
  - whateveracct 5y ago
    Maybe they're referring to the attempts to invalidate the 2020 election? No weapons, but what is a better word for a coordinated attempt to undermine the government?
    - hackerfromthefu 5y ago
      How about 'attempt to undermine the government'? That is much more accurate than coup. Words have meanings, and using the words inaccurate/the wrong meanings is saying one thing but meaning another, and the word for that is lying.
      - jetpks 5y ago
        This is the same verbal gymnastics confederate sympathizers use when trying to say that the civil war was about "states rights." All you have to do is follow the logic to its conclusion. What was the civil war about? States rights. What rights, specifically? The right of states to allow their citizens to practice slavery. Therefore, the civil war was about slavery. What was jan 6 about? It was about an attempt to undermine the government. An attempt to undermine what, specifically? The election process. Why did they seek to undermine the election process? So that the mob could extra-judicially install a leader of their preference. Another word for this is coup d'etat.
mywittyname 5y ago
We'll get our own flavor of gulags. The USA already has a pretty nasty and oppressive prison system. We have pro-authoritarian politicians in office, in the police forces, and now throughout the court system. So it doesn't seem alarmist to me. I'm pretty sure the police could get away with murdering political rivals right now. But a few key court decisions are all we need to formalize that capability for the next 100 or so years.
- consumer451 5y ago
  > "I wanted to tell everyone that there is a cancer within the government and when I tried to weed it out, I got fired," Gilmore wrote. "It was just easier for government management to get rid of me rather than to deal with the underlying issue." https://www.military.com/daily-news/2022/03/13/classified-us-intelligence-chat-rooms-dumpster-fire-of-hate-speech-says-ex-nsa-contractor.html https://www.military.com/daily-news/2022/03/13/classified-us...
- frankfrankfrank 5y ago
  Yet again I find myself in between rather detached perspectives. I agree with you regarding the trajectory because it is clear as day by all objective measures where this is all heading, yet I am left befuddled by your parroting of tropes about the “pretty nasty and oppressive prison system” that the very people are pushing who are leading us to the state where an equivalent of gulags will be created. The American prisons are not full of thought criminals just because you are being denied all the footage and proof of the violent crimes the people in US prisons commit, constantly. I realize that most people live in a negative bubble, where they have no idea what is happening because the truth has been withheld from them, but that does not change the reality most people are at least unwittingly ignorant of. But yes, the gulag system actually already exists in America, and the political prisoners in the USA right now already know that. Assange is also in that gulag system and can probably be considered the first, Prisoner #1 of the American Empire’s Gulag Equivalent System, even though it is on foreign soil.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
DiabloD3 5y ago
America elected Trump and then Congress knowingly rejected evidence that he colluded with Putin to defraud voters and steal the election. He then occupied that office for four years, while additional evidence continued to mount against the increasingly obviousness of Russian interference. Not only did a sitting President betray people and killed millions with anti-masker/anti-vaccine rhetoric, he did so to aid a foreign country that is known for murdering political dissidents, and did so during WW2, during the Cold War, and the post-Soviet era that exists today; but also our Congress, most of those still occupying those seats today, aided and abetted him. What Trump and his Congress did is terrorism without being formally charged with it, and is hardly any different than the pre-Stalin era of Soviet Russia and the pre-Kristallnacht era of the Nazi occupation of Germany. So, please, I'd like you to tell me why you think people shouldn't be seriously alarmed? You sound like all the deniers in the history books: "Oh, the Nazis wouldn't kill Jews and political dissidents", "Oh, Stalin wouldn't (also) kill Jews and political dissidents", "Oh, Chairman Mao wouldn't just starve tens of millions to gratify his own ego". People keep saying this, it keeps not being true. History is a goddamned broken record.
- tiahura 5y ago
  Congress knowingly rejected evidence that he colluded with Putin to defraud voters and steal the election. You shouldn’t let your personal animosity towards Trump lead to believing misinformation. Mueller finds no collusion with Russia, leaves obstruction question open https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/aba-news-archives/2019/03/mueller-concludes-investigation/ https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/aba-news-archives/2... You should take this opportunity to consider what other things you know to be true about Trump may also be misinformation. The Washington Post corrects, removes parts of two stories regarding the Steele dossier https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/media-washington-post-steele-dossier/2021/11/12/f7c9b770-43d5-11ec-a88e-2aa4632af69b_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/media-washing...
  - treeman79 5y ago
    It’s also looking like some of the Bidens are going to jail for what they were accusing Trump. The entire Trump Russia gate was to divert attention from what Hillary / Biden were doing. Oh a laptop was found with solid evidence showing collusion between the Bidens and various countries. Well naturally the same response is to sensor anyone that wants to talk about it and to impeach Trump. https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/03/mainstream-media-outlets-ignore-new-details-in-hunter-biden-scandals/ https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/03/mainstream-media-outle...
pyronik19 5y ago
There are influential media personalities calling for the jailing people who aren't towing the line on the war drum beat on ukraine/russia... that any narrative deviation is treasonous and thus a jailable offense. Yeah, so what if our gulags have rainbow flags and black fists murals.
- mrtranscendence 5y ago
  > There are influential media personalities calling for the jailing people who aren't towing the line on the war drum beat on ukraine/russia Source on these influential media personalities? I assume they're not fringe in any way, since you called them "influential".
  - pyronik19 5y ago
    https://twitter.com/KeithOlbermann/status/1503467489572921346 https://twitter.com/KeithOlbermann/status/150346748957292134...
ashtonkem 5y ago
It is worth pointing out that the American penal system is already distressingly close to the scope of the gulag system in Stalinist Russia. The gulag system hit a high of 1.5m prisoners in the 1940s out of a population of 168m (pre war), or about 0.89%. America’s prison population peaked in 2009 at an estimated 0.754%. If you include parole that shoots up to 3.1%, but I’m not sure how to compare that to the gulag system Wildly different death tolls though. Our best estimate is that the gulag system had an 8.88% death rate, with that varying wildly on a year by year basis. Meanwhile the US prison system as of 2018 kills 344 per 100,000, or .344%. But unfortunately those numbers are getting worse, not better. I think the difference here is less about our system being more humane, and more the fact that food and antibiotics are cheap. Heck, just look at how the prison system responded to covid. I honestly think we’re a lot closer to a gulag system than people think. We’ve already built the majority of the machinery to actually implement such a system, and politically making the system harsher and less humane is very popular. There is also a bipartisan consensus that what we need is to fund the system even more. All that we’re missing is the jump to directly imprisoning political opponents, and we’ve already seen some calls for that although it isn’t quite mainstream yet.
- Forgeties79 5y ago
  >It is worth pointing out that the American penal system is already distressingly close to the scope of the gulag system in Stalinist Russia What do you know about the gulag system? Serious question, not baiting or anything. What are the broad strokes of what you understand to be "The Gulags"? Because like you, I am VERY concerned with the US penal system, but to compare the two is...a stretch for me.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]

dalbasal 5y ago

There's more than one road to hell. All or nothing nihilism, that makes no major distinction between the US & china, Russia and Iran is also a road to totalitarian hell. It's a favoured rhetoric style if Putin and many reactionary extremists.

renewiltord 5y ago

Spotify records all the songs I listen to. Last week 10 songs. This week 100. Next week 200. The week after? PRISON IN A FROZEN WASTE! I suffer endlessly from the data they have collected. Cold bits are thrown upon me every morning; I've lost my toes to frostbyte due to data in cold storage; I have made friends, nay fellow sufferers, in the bitcoin mines, as we hash out issues together. If only I could have seen this last week. L'horreur! L'horreur!

dang 5y ago

"Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html