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The NSA being the good guys for once feels strange. Especially caring for public interest. Only if everything you know about the NSA comes from the evil, cackl

The NSA being the good guys for once feels strange. Especially caring for public interest. Only if everything you know about the NSA comes from the evil, cackling, mustache-twirling caricatures of it promulgated by angry people on the internet. Once you look beyond the politics, propaganda, and axe-grinding that is endemic to the online world you find out all sorts of fascinating things about the U.S. government.

snapcaster 2y ago
You think the dominant propaganda in the US is _against_ the US war state and intelligence community?!
- nullityrofl 2y ago
  It depends on the circles you run in. If you consume news primarily from, say, Hacker News, then sure.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- jknoepfler 2y ago
  I don't think the Federal government has had much control over public perception of itself for quite some time now. We're not living in an age of manufactured consent in which the dominating central tendency is more or less obvious.
  - DiscourseFan 2y ago
    The concept of manufactured consent always felt a bit suspect, but Kamala Harris' presidential candidacy has been covered by say, the NYTimes and The Guardian with little to no criticism, and they seem to be intentionally masking the fact that she has no real policies or any sort of platform. What else, if anything, points you towards the image of a state in whose operations it wants to appear as ambiguous as possible? The real threat, the known threat to state security is Trump, because he and his followers are crazy. If the NSA, and other intelligence agencies, had any influence on the election, why wouldn't they do exactly what it would appear they are doing now and get a milquetoast liberal elected to office who will easily capitulate to their demands?
    - defrost 2y ago
      What, exactly, did they do to further their evil plans? Did they inject Biden with a dementia drug to force a withdrawal and engineer the timing such that the current Vice President was pretty much the only viable option for the US Democrats to rally behind? Seems like a tightrope feat of Rube Goldberg Heath Robinson needle threading.
      - DiscourseFan 2y ago
        >Did they inject Biden with a dementia drug to force a withdrawal and engineer the timing such that the current Vice President was pretty much the only viable option for the US Democrats to rally behind? It's not a one-way relation to power. Intelligence agencies are nothing if not opportunistic, they can influence elections but if one of the candidates is clearly incompetent there isn't much they can do unless he drops out. You're forgetting that Jill Stein would've never been endorsed by Biden; what appears to be chaotic and contingent actually has a strong set of boundary conditions of possibility that all the contingency is contained within, and intelligence agencies, including even the state department for foreign affairs, try to control that. Not individual actions, but the ability to perform them, the rationality of it. The fact that you can't even imagine a candidate besides Donald Trump who poses a serious threat to the state intelligence apparatus shows you that they've already won, or at least nearly so.
        defrost 2y ago
        > The fact that you can't even imagine a candidate besides Donald Trump who poses a serious threat to the state intelligence ? How'd you get this incorrect insight into what I think ... and what makes you think that Trump is a serious threat to the US state intelligence apparatus?
        DiscourseFan 2y ago
        He encouraged a group of his supporters to overthrow the government to allow him to stay in elected office, and his political advisors have developed a plan for him to wipe out the executive branch in its current form if he gets re-elected? There won't be a security state under Trump, at least as it exists now. I think you claimed that Harris was somehow not an ideal candidate for the current hegemonic forces in the US, or at least those forces of power wouldn't do what they could to make sure she gets elected. One of Chomsky's points was precisely this, they goad you with progressive political candidates who don't actually threaten power. The two main forces of power in the US are capitalist industry and the state, but the truth is that both have an interest in maintaining power relations such as they are, and so what we are witnessing in most elections is just a sort of balancing act between direct and indirect means of control. With Trump you have someone who is so insanely narcissistic that he is completely unreliable and there is essentially no way of using him to maintain state control as such.
emilamlom 2y ago
Of course the NSA (and arguably any topic) is more nuanced than internet discourse likes to admit. That said, they've done plenty to warrant people's paranoia of them and not a lot to dissuade it.
psunavy03 2y ago
It's entertaining how many people online think government intelligence agencies actually care about them at all, considering the limited amount of time in the day and all the info that said agencies need to know about adversary countries and other important topics. For 99 44/100 percent of the online outrage bait, I'm like "you're not that interesting, and they almost certainly don't care about you anyway."

snapcaster 2y ago

You think the dominant propaganda in the US is _against_ the US war state and intelligence community?!

nullityrofl 2y ago
It depends on the circles you run in. If you consume news primarily from, say, Hacker News, then sure.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
jknoepfler 2y ago
I don't think the Federal government has had much control over public perception of itself for quite some time now. We're not living in an age of manufactured consent in which the dominating central tendency is more or less obvious.
- DiscourseFan 2y ago
  The concept of manufactured consent always felt a bit suspect, but Kamala Harris' presidential candidacy has been covered by say, the NYTimes and The Guardian with little to no criticism, and they seem to be intentionally masking the fact that she has no real policies or any sort of platform. What else, if anything, points you towards the image of a state in whose operations it wants to appear as ambiguous as possible? The real threat, the known threat to state security is Trump, because he and his followers are crazy. If the NSA, and other intelligence agencies, had any influence on the election, why wouldn't they do exactly what it would appear they are doing now and get a milquetoast liberal elected to office who will easily capitulate to their demands?
  - defrost 2y ago
    What, exactly, did they do to further their evil plans? Did they inject Biden with a dementia drug to force a withdrawal and engineer the timing such that the current Vice President was pretty much the only viable option for the US Democrats to rally behind? Seems like a tightrope feat of Rube Goldberg Heath Robinson needle threading.
    - DiscourseFan 2y ago
      >Did they inject Biden with a dementia drug to force a withdrawal and engineer the timing such that the current Vice President was pretty much the only viable option for the US Democrats to rally behind? It's not a one-way relation to power. Intelligence agencies are nothing if not opportunistic, they can influence elections but if one of the candidates is clearly incompetent there isn't much they can do unless he drops out. You're forgetting that Jill Stein would've never been endorsed by Biden; what appears to be chaotic and contingent actually has a strong set of boundary conditions of possibility that all the contingency is contained within, and intelligence agencies, including even the state department for foreign affairs, try to control that. Not individual actions, but the ability to perform them, the rationality of it. The fact that you can't even imagine a candidate besides Donald Trump who poses a serious threat to the state intelligence apparatus shows you that they've already won, or at least nearly so.
      - defrost 2y ago
        > The fact that you can't even imagine a candidate besides Donald Trump who poses a serious threat to the state intelligence ? How'd you get this incorrect insight into what I think ... and what makes you think that Trump is a serious threat to the US state intelligence apparatus?
        DiscourseFan 2y ago
        He encouraged a group of his supporters to overthrow the government to allow him to stay in elected office, and his political advisors have developed a plan for him to wipe out the executive branch in its current form if he gets re-elected? There won't be a security state under Trump, at least as it exists now. I think you claimed that Harris was somehow not an ideal candidate for the current hegemonic forces in the US, or at least those forces of power wouldn't do what they could to make sure she gets elected. One of Chomsky's points was precisely this, they goad you with progressive political candidates who don't actually threaten power. The two main forces of power in the US are capitalist industry and the state, but the truth is that both have an interest in maintaining power relations such as they are, and so what we are witnessing in most elections is just a sort of balancing act between direct and indirect means of control. With Trump you have someone who is so insanely narcissistic that he is completely unreliable and there is essentially no way of using him to maintain state control as such.

emilamlom 2y ago

Of course the NSA (and arguably any topic) is more nuanced than internet discourse likes to admit. That said, they've done plenty to warrant people's paranoia of them and not a lot to dissuade it.

psunavy03 2y ago

It's entertaining how many people online think government intelligence agencies actually care about them at all, considering the limited amount of time in the day and all the info that said agencies need to know about adversary countries and other important topics. For 99 44/100 percent of the online outrage bait, I'm like "you're not that interesting, and they almost certainly don't care about you anyway."