5 ms·

This seemed obvious to me at the time. It was hard to understand why people in the cultural mainstream let themselves get swept up in it. I felt like I lost my

This seemed obvious to me at the time. It was hard to understand why people in the cultural mainstream let themselves get swept up in it. I felt like I lost my country, back then, as they pretty much all went off into crazyland together.

altcognito 4mo ago
It was obvious to many. It was even a sort of not-funny joke: "The terrorists have already won."
nullhole 4mo ago
The OK-ing of torture was a clear step into the totalitarian camp and a clear breach with justice, liberalism, and decency.
- dnautics 4mo ago
  I'm gonna be that guy and say that the concern about torture is orthogonal to authoritarianism. There were very much "less authoritarian/less centralized" eras in the US when it was general course of action was to do torturous things far worse than many of the things that got labelled 'torture' in the post 1990s era.
  - nullhole 4mo ago
    My first reaction is that the step to torture was a step backwards, a disregard for what we've learned about the efficacy of torture in getting reliable information, and an embrace of sadistic revenge as an end in itself as state policy. It's the state policy part that I find the worst. Individual acts of senseless violence you can blame on the individual; state acts that in retrospect are senseless violence you can - in some cases - blame on what was known at the time. To purposefully do that when you now it's useless is a rare evil; to declare it's useful when you know it's useless is an Orwellian, totalitarian turn. And it was torture, not 'labelled' 'torture'. Waterboarding, sleep deprivation, high-volume constant music, others I'm glad I don't know about. It was torture.
    - tialaramex 4mo ago
      There's even a big book on my shelf "The Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Torture" which catalogues extensive examples where US intelligence tortured people or was instrumental in their torture, insisted this had unlocked important information and then eventually walked that back as investigators started to dig in. The US still more or less remembers how to improve and that book is an example of how such improvement could start, what changed in the last decades is that more and more Americans don't want to. The word "Again" is crucial, MAGA don't want to make America great, they want the America from their nostalgia. It's hollow, that's not what they wanted but it could never have been otherwise.
      - amanaplanacanal 4mo ago
        Don't we still have a bunch of people in gitmo that can't be tried because we tortured them, and can't be released because they are "too dangerous"? Jesus fucking Christ. Even though the wars are long over.
- euroderf 4mo ago
  History should record that for a brief moment of time, the US government tortured at least one person to death.
SpicyLemonZest 4mo ago
How old are you? I think a lot of younger folks don't fully adjust for important factors: plane hijackings used to be much more common, 9/11 was committed by the second group of Islamic terrorists who tried to blow up the World Trade Center, and 9/11 was the third major terrorist attack by Al-Qaeda in a 4 year span. It's easy now to say that it was a crazy worst-case scenario, but that was not at all obvious then; for all we knew, securing cockpits might have been impractical, and we'd just have to prepare the Air Force to shoot down a couple hijacked flights every decade. There were real excesses, and I ultimately agree with you that many of them were predictable in advance, but there was no feasible version of a response that did not go at least a little into crazyland. It was a crazy time.
- csb6 4mo ago
  "Real excesses" is a bit of an understatement. There is the security theater instituted by the TSA, the militarization of police, normalized Islamophobia, mass surveillance of U.S. citizens, torture as an official military policy, indefinite detention of "unlawful combatants", a trillion dollars spent destroying Iraq and Afghanistan, a million killed and many more made refugees. The rise of ISIS and the refugee crises in Europe can be traced back to the War on Terror. The Middle East should not be the punching bag for America to take out its "crazy" feelings (where "craziness" appears to be a polite way of saying "bloodlust").
  - SpicyLemonZest 4mo ago
    I would point to the TSA as a key example of what I'm talking about. You say "security theater", but which of the things they do are security theater, and which are the ones that drove plane hijackings to near-zero? We can make reasonable guesses, but does another major skyscraper get blown up if we guess wrong? It's not so easy, and it was hard to the point of impossibility in the aftermath of 9/11. > The Middle East should not be the punching bag for America to take out its "crazy" feelings (where "craziness" appears to be a polite way of saying "bloodlust"). Yes, this I agree with. The Iraq War in particular was clearly not justified.
    - 4mo ago
majormajor 4mo ago
What do you think distinguishes the post-9/11 craziness from the Cold War/Red Scare craziness? My reason for asking is because I believe that "that's unconstitutional!" has been a failed protest message for more like 100 years than 25 years (and there's threads of state violence at the local and state levels that go back far longer). And IMO that is even stronger evidence that words on an ~240-year-old-doc—and the way some interpret the second amendment in relation to those words—is a completely powerless measure against state violence. The United States is not exceptional in that regard. We'll only have a better country if we constantly, actively, choose to vote it that way.
- stateofinquiry 4mo ago
  Probably the fact that most of the readership of the article and this site were alive for the former but not the latter. One could equally pin the rise of Joe McCarthy as the moment America started its move to "autocracy". Or when Roosevelt interned Japanese Americans. Or the civil war. Or the Mexican-American war. In fact, the struggle is constant (as mentioned downthread).
- kitku 4mo ago
  I am still amazed by the typical internet American's (Yours also I presume) love for voting, despite having long degraded into a two-party charade. Your sentiment starts out fierce: "constantly, actively..." and is immediately cut short "... choose to (only?) vote it that way." You point out that voicing one's interpretations of the 2nd amendment is powerless - but voting, reduced to such a miniscule gesture, is also. The choice between a galloping right wing and a stagnant center-right is no choice at all. American elections are a facade for decisions already made on top. You can't vote it out.
  - rwmj 4mo ago
    How (and if) you vote is really the one and only thing politicians care about.
    - inigyou 4mo ago
nephihaha 4mo ago
In the same way it is obvious that internet age gating, digital ID and abolition of physical cash will lead to much worse. But who's standing in their way?
- fsflover 4mo ago
  https://eff.org https://eff.org and https://edri.org https://edri.org do.
ghtbircshotbe 4mo ago
If you weren't for the Patriot act you were pro terrorist. If you suggested that the terrorists might be motivated by us involvement in the middle east rather than pure evil then you were probably also evil. Mob mentality has been around since forever. And yet the current situation is making Bush seem like a statesman by comparison

altcognito 4mo ago

It was obvious to many. It was even a sort of not-funny joke: "The terrorists have already won."

nullhole 4mo ago

The OK-ing of torture was a clear step into the totalitarian camp and a clear breach with justice, liberalism, and decency.

dnautics 4mo ago
I'm gonna be that guy and say that the concern about torture is orthogonal to authoritarianism. There were very much "less authoritarian/less centralized" eras in the US when it was general course of action was to do torturous things far worse than many of the things that got labelled 'torture' in the post 1990s era.
- nullhole 4mo ago
  My first reaction is that the step to torture was a step backwards, a disregard for what we've learned about the efficacy of torture in getting reliable information, and an embrace of sadistic revenge as an end in itself as state policy. It's the state policy part that I find the worst. Individual acts of senseless violence you can blame on the individual; state acts that in retrospect are senseless violence you can - in some cases - blame on what was known at the time. To purposefully do that when you now it's useless is a rare evil; to declare it's useful when you know it's useless is an Orwellian, totalitarian turn. And it was torture, not 'labelled' 'torture'. Waterboarding, sleep deprivation, high-volume constant music, others I'm glad I don't know about. It was torture.
  - tialaramex 4mo ago
    There's even a big book on my shelf "The Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Torture" which catalogues extensive examples where US intelligence tortured people or was instrumental in their torture, insisted this had unlocked important information and then eventually walked that back as investigators started to dig in. The US still more or less remembers how to improve and that book is an example of how such improvement could start, what changed in the last decades is that more and more Americans don't want to. The word "Again" is crucial, MAGA don't want to make America great, they want the America from their nostalgia. It's hollow, that's not what they wanted but it could never have been otherwise.
    - amanaplanacanal 4mo ago
      Don't we still have a bunch of people in gitmo that can't be tried because we tortured them, and can't be released because they are "too dangerous"? Jesus fucking Christ. Even though the wars are long over.
euroderf 4mo ago
History should record that for a brief moment of time, the US government tortured at least one person to death.

SpicyLemonZest 4mo ago

How old are you? I think a lot of younger folks don't fully adjust for important factors: plane hijackings used to be much more common, 9/11 was committed by the second group of Islamic terrorists who tried to blow up the World Trade Center, and 9/11 was the third major terrorist attack by Al-Qaeda in a 4 year span. It's easy now to say that it was a crazy worst-case scenario, but that was not at all obvious then; for all we knew, securing cockpits might have been impractical, and we'd just have to prepare the Air Force to shoot down a couple hijacked flights every decade. There were real excesses, and I ultimately agree with you that many of them were predictable in advance, but there was no feasible version of a response that did not go at least a little into crazyland. It was a crazy time.

csb6 4mo ago
"Real excesses" is a bit of an understatement. There is the security theater instituted by the TSA, the militarization of police, normalized Islamophobia, mass surveillance of U.S. citizens, torture as an official military policy, indefinite detention of "unlawful combatants", a trillion dollars spent destroying Iraq and Afghanistan, a million killed and many more made refugees. The rise of ISIS and the refugee crises in Europe can be traced back to the War on Terror. The Middle East should not be the punching bag for America to take out its "crazy" feelings (where "craziness" appears to be a polite way of saying "bloodlust").
- SpicyLemonZest 4mo ago
  I would point to the TSA as a key example of what I'm talking about. You say "security theater", but which of the things they do are security theater, and which are the ones that drove plane hijackings to near-zero? We can make reasonable guesses, but does another major skyscraper get blown up if we guess wrong? It's not so easy, and it was hard to the point of impossibility in the aftermath of 9/11. > The Middle East should not be the punching bag for America to take out its "crazy" feelings (where "craziness" appears to be a polite way of saying "bloodlust"). Yes, this I agree with. The Iraq War in particular was clearly not justified.
  - 4mo ago

majormajor 4mo ago

What do you think distinguishes the post-9/11 craziness from the Cold War/Red Scare craziness? My reason for asking is because I believe that "that's unconstitutional!" has been a failed protest message for more like 100 years than 25 years (and there's threads of state violence at the local and state levels that go back far longer). And IMO that is even stronger evidence that words on an ~240-year-old-doc—and the way some interpret the second amendment in relation to those words—is a completely powerless measure against state violence. The United States is not exceptional in that regard. We'll only have a better country if we constantly, actively, choose to vote it that way.

stateofinquiry 4mo ago
Probably the fact that most of the readership of the article and this site were alive for the former but not the latter. One could equally pin the rise of Joe McCarthy as the moment America started its move to "autocracy". Or when Roosevelt interned Japanese Americans. Or the civil war. Or the Mexican-American war. In fact, the struggle is constant (as mentioned downthread).
kitku 4mo ago
I am still amazed by the typical internet American's (Yours also I presume) love for voting, despite having long degraded into a two-party charade. Your sentiment starts out fierce: "constantly, actively..." and is immediately cut short "... choose to (only?) vote it that way." You point out that voicing one's interpretations of the 2nd amendment is powerless - but voting, reduced to such a miniscule gesture, is also. The choice between a galloping right wing and a stagnant center-right is no choice at all. American elections are a facade for decisions already made on top. You can't vote it out.
- rwmj 4mo ago
  How (and if) you vote is really the one and only thing politicians care about.
  - inigyou 4mo ago

nephihaha 4mo ago

In the same way it is obvious that internet age gating, digital ID and abolition of physical cash will lead to much worse. But who's standing in their way?

fsflover 4mo ago
https://eff.org https://eff.org and https://edri.org https://edri.org do.

ghtbircshotbe 4mo ago

If you weren't for the Patriot act you were pro terrorist. If you suggested that the terrorists might be motivated by us involvement in the middle east rather than pure evil then you were probably also evil. Mob mentality has been around since forever. And yet the current situation is making Bush seem like a statesman by comparison