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At least for the no-fly list (because I'm old enough to have watched the change happen): 9/11 caused an existential panic in the US public that made them willi

At least for the no-fly list (because I'm old enough to have watched the change happen): 9/11 caused an existential panic in the US public that made them willing to accept several new things in the name of safety against a threat model they did not understand. Once those things were in place, (a) burden of proof that removing them doesn't jeopardize our safety rests on those calling for their removal and (b) the average citizen can see the list doesn't impact them so they have little opinion on keeping or removing it. In short, it was a sticky-bit that once stuck, is hard to un-stick because people don't, generally, feel less free (day-to-day) with it in existence.

slackfan 4y ago
>existential panic in the US public that made them willing to accept several new things in the name of safety against a threat model they did not understand I'm old enough to have watched the change happen. There was no existential panic, but a straight up propaganda campaign waged by a collaborative media and government to ensure that this would be accepted, and that dissenters would be seen as "the other" to be feared and reviled, and potentially targeted for law enforcement action. Seems very familiar, but history rhymes.
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  It's both. There's no doubt the ruling party invested time and effort selling their solutions to the public, but the public was also buying because all of a sudden, men armed with automatic rifles standing in the airport security lines was a comforting sight, not a terrifying one, for many, many Americans. ETA: Regarding effects on the American psyche, https://www.webmd.com/balance/features/american-psyche-post-911 https://www.webmd.com/balance/features/american-psyche-post-... summarizes some of the post-9/11 research. Probably most of interest is that 21% of Americans studied by a researcher at Carnegie Mellon believed they would be the victim of a terrorist attack within a year. That number proved to be a way-outsized overestimate, but I think it's easy to see how people accept new curtailments to freedoms (especially someone else's freedoms) if 1-in-5 of them believe they'll be personally attacked.
  - mindslight 4y ago
    > all of a sudden, men armed with automatic rifles standing in the airport security lines was a comforting sight, not a terrifying one, for many, many Americans. Once again, because of the media amplifying the terrorism over and over, repeatedly playing it on every screen and telling everyone that they were under attack. Just as you're arguing that popular opinion shouldn't be ignored, neither should the centralized actors driving that opinion. They feed into each other, and downplaying the involvement of one category of actors only serves to hide their share of the blame.
    - shadowgovt 4y ago
      No disagreement. When Americans panic, they look for people to explain the problem, even if those explainers are ignorant, and for people offering solutions, even if the solutions are bad. It's a recurring historical pattern. It's worth noting that since the American news model is fundamentally capitalist, one can assume, once a panic starts, that cognitively-dissonant news will be downsampled. I don't know how to disambiguate "the media caused / fed a panic" from "people weren't interested in hearing 'everything's okay and nothing has fundamentally changed' when there was a crater where two skyscrapers used to be." Did the media feed a panic, or did the public tune out cool heads?
      - slackfan 4y ago
        Socialist media is no better in this regard.
      - mindslight 4y ago
        The same way we disambiguate what's right versus what's commercially expedient across the whole gradient of (soulless, dodgy, unethical, malpractice, fraudulent). It does not matter that people want to hear garbage that reaffirms their lazy beliefs - if you are in a position of power and take the easy/lucrative road of base affirmation, rather than the harder route of actually leading people somewhere productive, you are a bad person and you should feel bad. And people that know better should condemn you for that, rather than tacitly accepting your sold out self interest. Also if I'm reading your comment correctly, characterizing potential leadership as "cognitively-dissonant news" is a bit weird, especially with "cognitive dissonance" commonly referring to the rejection of criticism in the larger run up to the war on Iraq. With both points it feels like you're nominally agreeing, but still trying to push this framework that the news media and other leadership is inherently blameless.
- triyambakam 4y ago
  I'm not sure if you're alluding to this, but I think much of the same has happened during coronavirus
- p_j_w 4y ago
  >There was no existential panic, but a straight up propaganda campaign waged by a collaborative media and government to ensure that this would be accepted, and that dissenters would be seen as "the other" to be feared and reviled, and potentially targeted for law enforcement action. I'm also old enough to have seen the change happen, and maybe it's just that you and I lived in separate bubbles, but I really don't agree with this. I absolutely did see an existential panic in the general population, we were in an insane frenzy, and I don't get the sense that the media or government needed a propaganda campaign to get this sort of shit passed. Aside from a very small number of dissenters (including myself), we were all out for blood and there was no such thing as too far. Hate crimes against People Who Look Vaguely Like They Might Be Muslims shot through the roof, in spite of the government trying to quell that sort of thing. Giant flags the size of New York City were being flown on peoples' cars left and right. Normal Americans were absolutely NOT acting normal and didn't need any push towards supporting insane policy ideas.

slackfan 4y ago

>existential panic in the US public that made them willing to accept several new things in the name of safety against a threat model they did not understand I'm old enough to have watched the change happen. There was no existential panic, but a straight up propaganda campaign waged by a collaborative media and government to ensure that this would be accepted, and that dissenters would be seen as "the other" to be feared and reviled, and potentially targeted for law enforcement action. Seems very familiar, but history rhymes.

shadowgovt 4y ago
It's both. There's no doubt the ruling party invested time and effort selling their solutions to the public, but the public was also buying because all of a sudden, men armed with automatic rifles standing in the airport security lines was a comforting sight, not a terrifying one, for many, many Americans. ETA: Regarding effects on the American psyche, https://www.webmd.com/balance/features/american-psyche-post-911 https://www.webmd.com/balance/features/american-psyche-post-... summarizes some of the post-9/11 research. Probably most of interest is that 21% of Americans studied by a researcher at Carnegie Mellon believed they would be the victim of a terrorist attack within a year. That number proved to be a way-outsized overestimate, but I think it's easy to see how people accept new curtailments to freedoms (especially someone else's freedoms) if 1-in-5 of them believe they'll be personally attacked.
- mindslight 4y ago
  > all of a sudden, men armed with automatic rifles standing in the airport security lines was a comforting sight, not a terrifying one, for many, many Americans. Once again, because of the media amplifying the terrorism over and over, repeatedly playing it on every screen and telling everyone that they were under attack. Just as you're arguing that popular opinion shouldn't be ignored, neither should the centralized actors driving that opinion. They feed into each other, and downplaying the involvement of one category of actors only serves to hide their share of the blame.
  - shadowgovt 4y ago
    No disagreement. When Americans panic, they look for people to explain the problem, even if those explainers are ignorant, and for people offering solutions, even if the solutions are bad. It's a recurring historical pattern. It's worth noting that since the American news model is fundamentally capitalist, one can assume, once a panic starts, that cognitively-dissonant news will be downsampled. I don't know how to disambiguate "the media caused / fed a panic" from "people weren't interested in hearing 'everything's okay and nothing has fundamentally changed' when there was a crater where two skyscrapers used to be." Did the media feed a panic, or did the public tune out cool heads?
    - slackfan 4y ago
      Socialist media is no better in this regard.
    - mindslight 4y ago
      The same way we disambiguate what's right versus what's commercially expedient across the whole gradient of (soulless, dodgy, unethical, malpractice, fraudulent). It does not matter that people want to hear garbage that reaffirms their lazy beliefs - if you are in a position of power and take the easy/lucrative road of base affirmation, rather than the harder route of actually leading people somewhere productive, you are a bad person and you should feel bad. And people that know better should condemn you for that, rather than tacitly accepting your sold out self interest. Also if I'm reading your comment correctly, characterizing potential leadership as "cognitively-dissonant news" is a bit weird, especially with "cognitive dissonance" commonly referring to the rejection of criticism in the larger run up to the war on Iraq. With both points it feels like you're nominally agreeing, but still trying to push this framework that the news media and other leadership is inherently blameless.
triyambakam 4y ago
I'm not sure if you're alluding to this, but I think much of the same has happened during coronavirus
p_j_w 4y ago
>There was no existential panic, but a straight up propaganda campaign waged by a collaborative media and government to ensure that this would be accepted, and that dissenters would be seen as "the other" to be feared and reviled, and potentially targeted for law enforcement action. I'm also old enough to have seen the change happen, and maybe it's just that you and I lived in separate bubbles, but I really don't agree with this. I absolutely did see an existential panic in the general population, we were in an insane frenzy, and I don't get the sense that the media or government needed a propaganda campaign to get this sort of shit passed. Aside from a very small number of dissenters (including myself), we were all out for blood and there was no such thing as too far. Hate crimes against People Who Look Vaguely Like They Might Be Muslims shot through the roof, in spite of the government trying to quell that sort of thing. Giant flags the size of New York City were being flown on peoples' cars left and right. Normal Americans were absolutely NOT acting normal and didn't need any push towards supporting insane policy ideas.