3 ms·

I'm just going to state this, as statefully as I can, without trying to be sensationalist. Everyone I come across these days insist on calling me "schizophrenic

I'm just going to state this, as statefully as I can, without trying to be sensationalist. Everyone I come across these days insist on calling me "schizophrenic" or "paranoid" or what have you: But "Marshall Law", as I understand it, is _more or less_ in effect, and a lot of people are talking about Obama's UAVs and whatever it is they do. (I know it was repealed. But you get what I mean. We're all consuming roughly the same information; so can we just bootstrap past the facts, please? I don't want to play semantics, pedantics, or any kind of fact-checking game.) So I must ask: Is this a civil war? When do we call it that? 100 years ago, it meant having a militia or something of that order. Now we all play slapstick at our keyboards and write "modules" and pentests. Is it possible to call a spade a spade? I'm asking seriously here. Every week I have to stop and ask myself, "Should I read the news? Will there be another episode or thread of death that I'll have to keep track of on account of something our government did?" I really do appreciate Mr. Schwartz efforts and work. But this country is taking heavy demoralizing blows every week. Beating someone down who isn't trained or prepared to fight is a different matter from beating down leaders, ideologues, activitists, and fighters. It seems like this country, our communities, are being served heavy blows, in much the same way the U.S. demoralizes the "Middle East" with its extended arm of Social/Big Media.

AnthonyMouse 14y ago
I don't know if you can call it a civil war when only one side has a military. There are no defined "sides" even. Not everyone in government or politics is a bad guy -- look at Sen. Wyden or Rep. Lofgren, for example. It's almost like the internal struggle we all face in our own lives. Doing the right thing is hard, doing the wrong thing is convenient. So the people we have running our government are human, they pick the wrong thing sometimes. Most of the time they probably don't even realize they're acting like the bad guys. People can rationalize anything. What we have to do is to stop them when they do wrong. The check on the common criminal is law enforcement. The check on law enforcement is Congress. The check on Congress is the people. We the people need to do our job.
- nerdfiles 14y ago
  Something needs to be done, I agree, but I do not understand what you mean when you say "we the people". (I'm not sure how one reads the Internet Declaration of Independence and walks away thinking that phrase is meaningful in any politically relevant sense.) And honestly. I'm sure a majority of us here are prepared to print a gun and build a quadcopter at the drop of a pizza slice. [Ugh. Of course that doesn't mean "let's go out and get crazy!" I just want to make it clear that something is emerging socially in this country, and it is due to the fact that weaponry is so widely available. (And even further, by the Bureau for Justice Assistance, my Terminal is technically considered a weapon.) Many of us defend the idea of printing a gun, and this in itself is problematic for something like a "Congress" that cannot even begin to understand, in any practical sense, what 3D printing amounts to economically and socially.]

AnthonyMouse 14y ago

I don't know if you can call it a civil war when only one side has a military. There are no defined "sides" even. Not everyone in government or politics is a bad guy -- look at Sen. Wyden or Rep. Lofgren, for example. It's almost like the internal struggle we all face in our own lives. Doing the right thing is hard, doing the wrong thing is convenient. So the people we have running our government are human, they pick the wrong thing sometimes. Most of the time they probably don't even realize they're acting like the bad guys. People can rationalize anything. What we have to do is to stop them when they do wrong. The check on the common criminal is law enforcement. The check on law enforcement is Congress. The check on Congress is the people. We the people need to do our job.

nerdfiles 14y ago
Something needs to be done, I agree, but I do not understand what you mean when you say "we the people". (I'm not sure how one reads the Internet Declaration of Independence and walks away thinking that phrase is meaningful in any politically relevant sense.) And honestly. I'm sure a majority of us here are prepared to print a gun and build a quadcopter at the drop of a pizza slice. [Ugh. Of course that doesn't mean "let's go out and get crazy!" I just want to make it clear that something is emerging socially in this country, and it is due to the fact that weaponry is so widely available. (And even further, by the Bureau for Justice Assistance, my Terminal is technically considered a weapon.) Many of us defend the idea of printing a gun, and this in itself is problematic for something like a "Congress" that cannot even begin to understand, in any practical sense, what 3D printing amounts to economically and socially.]