6 ms·

Like any other outrage in the past few decades. We have become soft and there is nothing you can do about it. Instead of writing intellectual comments on the ma

Like any other outrage in the past few decades. We have become soft and there is nothing you can do about it. Instead of writing intellectual comments on the matter, we should go down the street, burn some tires, overthrow the government; stuff like that. Yet here I am,thinking that no one will be brave enough to initialize or follow me if I would. They made us soft and we obeyed. Don't tell me there is a civilized road to solving this because the stakes are way too high for anyone to turn in what we have become.

astrodust 13y ago
Americans don't know outrage. They've been trained from a young age to be apathetic and those that have the audacity to fight back have been systematically beaten down. When's the last time they've had to mobilize the National Guard because there was a protest? The entire American economy could collapse because of a giant banking scandal and people wouldn't even raise a fist in anger.
- pearjuice 13y ago
  The best part being these downvotes only proving the point.
  - res0nat0r 13y ago
    People aren't protesting because like the article says...they really don't care. NSA spying doesn't directly affect them in any tangible way, so there is no reason for the average person to be upset. If people were being physically yanked from their homes and interrogated related to NSA spying intel, then it might be a different story I believe.
- jakejake 13y ago
  I don't think it's that we're not capable of getting angry or taking action. It's just that nobody can be bothered to do anything until something directly affects them. The effects of PRISM are easy to ignore for most people because its not easily visible. On top of that many people actually accept it because they feel its a necessary trade off for security. Add all that up with the fact that we get bored easily and that's how politicians are able to do just about anything they want. They just have to be a little more patient than the public.
- rayiner 13y ago
  > Americans don't know outrage. Americans have never experienced anything really worth being outraged about, at least not the current generation of people.
  - astrodust 13y ago
    Spending over a trillion dollars on various nonsense wars, completely destroying the education system, massive youth unemployment, a political system with candidates entirely out of touch with their base, you know, nothing to get upset about. The problem is if you asked a dozen people from the under-20 demographic what "Occupy Wall Street" is it's like half would have no clue.
    - rayiner 13y ago
      Probably far more than half. Because even unemployed 19 year olds in the U.S. have a vastly better quality of life than hardworking people in the rest of the world. Regarding your points: 1) The U.S., like every major western power in the last couple of hundred years, uses war to achieve political objectives. In the case of the Iraq war, it was to turn a regime that was slipping out from under America's thumb and replace it with one that was friendlier to the U.S. That happened. Regardless of whether you think the war was ultimately in the U.S.'s interests, it's hard to call something that so much of the population supported so long truly outrageous. "Outrageous" must be more than mere political disagreement. 2) There is nothing outrageous about the U.S. educational system. Adjusted for our socio-economic demographics, the U.S. performs about the same on international educational tests as western european countries: http://www.epi.org/publication/us-student-performance-testing http://www.epi.org/publication/us-student-performance-testin.... In the U.S., the educational system has become the whipping boy for deep-rooted sociological problems. In a nutshell, whites enslaved black people for hundreds of years, systematically denied them the opportunity to advance, and when the Supreme Court forced integration just 60 years ago, whites responded by fleeing the cities to homogenous suburbs, leaving urban cores full of poor blacks and none of the infrastructure of functioning middle class society. On the other front, we let in huge numbers of low-income Hispanic immigrants, far more than we can effectively integrate into the larger society. In the face of all this, we have the gall to blame it all on the educational system. When Chicago's public school system drag's down the average of the whole of Illinois, everyone blames the schools. They blame No Child Left Behind, they blame teachers, they blame the Department of Education. But it's not the schools' fault that so many of those kids have no fathers, that the neighborhoods are dominated by gangs, that the kids come from generations of families without any education. There is no educational fix to these sociological problems. The solution isn't within the government's power, and certainly not within that of the schools. The solution is all the middle class people from the Detroit suburbs moving back into the city, stabilizing the social structure of the city, sending their kids to Detroit public schools so as to dilute the influence of social phenomena like gangs that thrive in low-income ghettos, and to build functioning integrated communities with broad parental involvement. Butt hat will happen when hell freezes over, and until then people will complain ceaselessly about the government's failure with regard to education. 3) Massive youth unemployment relative to who else? U.S. youth unemployment rate (15-24) is right around the OECD average, below all of the big western European countries except Germany: http://www.economist.com/node/21528614 http://www.economist.com/node/21528614.
JonFish85 13y ago
In the USA, there's a chance to completely revamp the government (well, Executive and Legislative branches, anyways) every 6 years. No anarchy required.
- DamnYuppie 13y ago
  That is a pipe dream they sell to keep people compliant. It costs a lot of money to run a campaign. Oddly enough we have these weird rules where the fund raising entities can hide where the money is originally coming from. Most likely because both parties are being funded by the same source, the whole two party system is a fraud that is used to keep people docile with the illusion of choice. Under the current system we have no choice, the whole thing needs to be torn down and rebuilt....
  - JonFish85 13y ago
    No one forces anyone to vote for any candidate. No argument that it costs a lot of money to run a campaign, and perhaps that should be changed. But ultimately, I think the majority of the country (myself included) thinks that the best way isn't to tear the country apart and start from scratch, it's to work with what we have. And outside of just money, there are plenty of other ways to get involved, starting in your community. Start with your local representatives if you want, and clean house from there. Go door to door in your neighborhood and talk to people one-on-one and get the movement started!
    - DamnYuppie 13y ago
      Again you can't change it by voting for candidates when they all bow to the same master. You must first remove those who control the system.
      - JonFish85 13y ago
        Mole people? Seriously, who? CEOs? Wall Street CEOs? CEOs tend to act according to the board & shareholders, and if they don't, they tend to get replaced with someone else. The largest shareholders tend to be places who get money from 401k plans, or pension funds. Want to send a real message? Convince everyone to stop contributing to 401k's or their pension funds. The money dries up, Wall Street feels the pinch in a BIG way (to the tune of trillions), the big corporations fold / find a new CEO that will convince people to put their money back into the markets.
rayiner 13y ago
The NSA is collecting information; nerds rage at how the U.S. has become a third world dictatorship; lawyers argue about whether it's legal or not; the average American rightly realizes that nothing has happened that is worth burning tires and trying to overthrow the government over. There is no civilized way to overthrow a government that no longer has the interests of its people at heart. Luckily, we don't live under such a government. At worst we have a bunch of misguided old people that don't realize that the internet is much more valuable to younger people than just the tool for commerce they perceive it as. At the end of the day, the kind of liberties that average Americans care about, the kind that affects the lives of Americans directly: being able to own guns, being able to get abortions, being able to belong to religious groups, however mainstream or wacky, being able to criticize the government, etc, are strongly in place. And despite the recession, Americans still enjoy among the highest standards of living of any large liberal democracy on the planet. Few Americans would trade places with someone in Spain or Italy, or the UK (with its oppressive laws re: speech and guns) for that matter.
Homunculiheaded 13y ago
It’s not simply apathy, and personally I think one of the most dangerous things is for American’s to blame ourselves for lack of change when the system is pretty much designed to minimize civil unrest. The biggest issue is simply comfort. Most HNers work for pretty cool companies, but even then how many would face repercussions if they took the day off to burn tires in the street? Also this type of serious protest you discuss does happen for just a day, but maybe weeks (or longer). Many HNers would definitely face employment concerns if they took weeks off to protest, and most people outside the tech community would be fired/seriously repremanded as the employer/employee balance of power is extremely imbalanced right now. The surveillance state is, imho, one of the greatest existential threats to individual freedom in the history of the US, but for anyone looking at the risk calculus it’s still a future threat: today you have tons of food, entertainment, a place to live and most people don’t actually feel the affects of the shrinking limitations on freedom (in fact the only people who do are those who are fighting against this changes, another point in favor of not protesting from the pov of risk). So the calculus of pleasure means for most people protest is more painful than the current state of things. But there’s also the pain factor. Most Americans are aware of the incarceration rate of the US. We’re also aware of the terrible conditions in US prisons. We know the fate that became Manning, can only imagine what will happen to Snowden and under the current administration US citizens have even been targeted for assassination (no due process involved). Not only is there a threat of reduced pleasure to consider, you really, really don’t want to face punishment at the hands of the US government. Finally there’s the completely uninteresting but real problem of geolocation: The US is a huge country, where are we going to meet? Even in DC today most protester are actually hired to protest, they aren’t concerned citizens but paid by a group of concerned citizens to protest in a formulaic and safe way. Assaults on American freedoms are being extracted in such a brilliant way that pleasure/pain calculus won’t sway in favor of massive protest and unrest until the government has such power that such protests can be squashed before their inception (this is exactly why the surveillance state is so dangerous). But please don’t turn your anger inward or towards other Americans: learn about tools that can fight the surveillance state (legal and technical), start small community discussion about these topics, and continue to fund organizations that are fighting for your rights in these domain. And yes keep being angry on HN, everyone who up or down votes your comment at least has to think about what is being said.
oftenwrong 13y ago
I don't think Americans are soft; I think they know that the odds aren't in their favour. America is a massive country, so it is hard to reach critical mass - the point at which people feel they can go out and "raise hell" without simply getting arrested/killed because their group is too small and lacking in support. For example, the Restore The Fourth protests were extremely tiny. They barely made a blip in international news, which tends to feature happenings in the US prominently. An uprising of that size would be extinguished almost immediately if it became violent or destructive. However, if the streets were filled with angry protesters, to the point where local police might not be able to handle it, then people would more open to revolutionary action. At a certain point, people will recognize the risk/reward balance is in their favor, but right now it is not anywhere close. I think you can blame the fact that Americans have fairly comfortable lives. If Americans were going hungry, it would be different.

astrodust 13y ago

Americans don't know outrage. They've been trained from a young age to be apathetic and those that have the audacity to fight back have been systematically beaten down. When's the last time they've had to mobilize the National Guard because there was a protest? The entire American economy could collapse because of a giant banking scandal and people wouldn't even raise a fist in anger.

pearjuice 13y ago
The best part being these downvotes only proving the point.
- res0nat0r 13y ago
  People aren't protesting because like the article says...they really don't care. NSA spying doesn't directly affect them in any tangible way, so there is no reason for the average person to be upset. If people were being physically yanked from their homes and interrogated related to NSA spying intel, then it might be a different story I believe.
jakejake 13y ago
I don't think it's that we're not capable of getting angry or taking action. It's just that nobody can be bothered to do anything until something directly affects them. The effects of PRISM are easy to ignore for most people because its not easily visible. On top of that many people actually accept it because they feel its a necessary trade off for security. Add all that up with the fact that we get bored easily and that's how politicians are able to do just about anything they want. They just have to be a little more patient than the public.
rayiner 13y ago
> Americans don't know outrage. Americans have never experienced anything really worth being outraged about, at least not the current generation of people.
- astrodust 13y ago
  Spending over a trillion dollars on various nonsense wars, completely destroying the education system, massive youth unemployment, a political system with candidates entirely out of touch with their base, you know, nothing to get upset about. The problem is if you asked a dozen people from the under-20 demographic what "Occupy Wall Street" is it's like half would have no clue.
  - rayiner 13y ago
    Probably far more than half. Because even unemployed 19 year olds in the U.S. have a vastly better quality of life than hardworking people in the rest of the world. Regarding your points: 1) The U.S., like every major western power in the last couple of hundred years, uses war to achieve political objectives. In the case of the Iraq war, it was to turn a regime that was slipping out from under America's thumb and replace it with one that was friendlier to the U.S. That happened. Regardless of whether you think the war was ultimately in the U.S.'s interests, it's hard to call something that so much of the population supported so long truly outrageous. "Outrageous" must be more than mere political disagreement. 2) There is nothing outrageous about the U.S. educational system. Adjusted for our socio-economic demographics, the U.S. performs about the same on international educational tests as western european countries: http://www.epi.org/publication/us-student-performance-testing http://www.epi.org/publication/us-student-performance-testin.... In the U.S., the educational system has become the whipping boy for deep-rooted sociological problems. In a nutshell, whites enslaved black people for hundreds of years, systematically denied them the opportunity to advance, and when the Supreme Court forced integration just 60 years ago, whites responded by fleeing the cities to homogenous suburbs, leaving urban cores full of poor blacks and none of the infrastructure of functioning middle class society. On the other front, we let in huge numbers of low-income Hispanic immigrants, far more than we can effectively integrate into the larger society. In the face of all this, we have the gall to blame it all on the educational system. When Chicago's public school system drag's down the average of the whole of Illinois, everyone blames the schools. They blame No Child Left Behind, they blame teachers, they blame the Department of Education. But it's not the schools' fault that so many of those kids have no fathers, that the neighborhoods are dominated by gangs, that the kids come from generations of families without any education. There is no educational fix to these sociological problems. The solution isn't within the government's power, and certainly not within that of the schools. The solution is all the middle class people from the Detroit suburbs moving back into the city, stabilizing the social structure of the city, sending their kids to Detroit public schools so as to dilute the influence of social phenomena like gangs that thrive in low-income ghettos, and to build functioning integrated communities with broad parental involvement. Butt hat will happen when hell freezes over, and until then people will complain ceaselessly about the government's failure with regard to education. 3) Massive youth unemployment relative to who else? U.S. youth unemployment rate (15-24) is right around the OECD average, below all of the big western European countries except Germany: http://www.economist.com/node/21528614 http://www.economist.com/node/21528614.

JonFish85 13y ago

In the USA, there's a chance to completely revamp the government (well, Executive and Legislative branches, anyways) every 6 years. No anarchy required.

DamnYuppie 13y ago
That is a pipe dream they sell to keep people compliant. It costs a lot of money to run a campaign. Oddly enough we have these weird rules where the fund raising entities can hide where the money is originally coming from. Most likely because both parties are being funded by the same source, the whole two party system is a fraud that is used to keep people docile with the illusion of choice. Under the current system we have no choice, the whole thing needs to be torn down and rebuilt....
- JonFish85 13y ago
  No one forces anyone to vote for any candidate. No argument that it costs a lot of money to run a campaign, and perhaps that should be changed. But ultimately, I think the majority of the country (myself included) thinks that the best way isn't to tear the country apart and start from scratch, it's to work with what we have. And outside of just money, there are plenty of other ways to get involved, starting in your community. Start with your local representatives if you want, and clean house from there. Go door to door in your neighborhood and talk to people one-on-one and get the movement started!
  - DamnYuppie 13y ago
    Again you can't change it by voting for candidates when they all bow to the same master. You must first remove those who control the system.
    - JonFish85 13y ago
      Mole people? Seriously, who? CEOs? Wall Street CEOs? CEOs tend to act according to the board & shareholders, and if they don't, they tend to get replaced with someone else. The largest shareholders tend to be places who get money from 401k plans, or pension funds. Want to send a real message? Convince everyone to stop contributing to 401k's or their pension funds. The money dries up, Wall Street feels the pinch in a BIG way (to the tune of trillions), the big corporations fold / find a new CEO that will convince people to put their money back into the markets.

rayiner 13y ago

The NSA is collecting information; nerds rage at how the U.S. has become a third world dictatorship; lawyers argue about whether it's legal or not; the average American rightly realizes that nothing has happened that is worth burning tires and trying to overthrow the government over. There is no civilized way to overthrow a government that no longer has the interests of its people at heart. Luckily, we don't live under such a government. At worst we have a bunch of misguided old people that don't realize that the internet is much more valuable to younger people than just the tool for commerce they perceive it as. At the end of the day, the kind of liberties that average Americans care about, the kind that affects the lives of Americans directly: being able to own guns, being able to get abortions, being able to belong to religious groups, however mainstream or wacky, being able to criticize the government, etc, are strongly in place. And despite the recession, Americans still enjoy among the highest standards of living of any large liberal democracy on the planet. Few Americans would trade places with someone in Spain or Italy, or the UK (with its oppressive laws re: speech and guns) for that matter.

Homunculiheaded 13y ago

It’s not simply apathy, and personally I think one of the most dangerous things is for American’s to blame ourselves for lack of change when the system is pretty much designed to minimize civil unrest. The biggest issue is simply comfort. Most HNers work for pretty cool companies, but even then how many would face repercussions if they took the day off to burn tires in the street? Also this type of serious protest you discuss does happen for just a day, but maybe weeks (or longer). Many HNers would definitely face employment concerns if they took weeks off to protest, and most people outside the tech community would be fired/seriously repremanded as the employer/employee balance of power is extremely imbalanced right now. The surveillance state is, imho, one of the greatest existential threats to individual freedom in the history of the US, but for anyone looking at the risk calculus it’s still a future threat: today you have tons of food, entertainment, a place to live and most people don’t actually feel the affects of the shrinking limitations on freedom (in fact the only people who do are those who are fighting against this changes, another point in favor of not protesting from the pov of risk). So the calculus of pleasure means for most people protest is more painful than the current state of things. But there’s also the pain factor. Most Americans are aware of the incarceration rate of the US. We’re also aware of the terrible conditions in US prisons. We know the fate that became Manning, can only imagine what will happen to Snowden and under the current administration US citizens have even been targeted for assassination (no due process involved). Not only is there a threat of reduced pleasure to consider, you really, really don’t want to face punishment at the hands of the US government. Finally there’s the completely uninteresting but real problem of geolocation: The US is a huge country, where are we going to meet? Even in DC today most protester are actually hired to protest, they aren’t concerned citizens but paid by a group of concerned citizens to protest in a formulaic and safe way. Assaults on American freedoms are being extracted in such a brilliant way that pleasure/pain calculus won’t sway in favor of massive protest and unrest until the government has such power that such protests can be squashed before their inception (this is exactly why the surveillance state is so dangerous). But please don’t turn your anger inward or towards other Americans: learn about tools that can fight the surveillance state (legal and technical), start small community discussion about these topics, and continue to fund organizations that are fighting for your rights in these domain. And yes keep being angry on HN, everyone who up or down votes your comment at least has to think about what is being said.

oftenwrong 13y ago

I don't think Americans are soft; I think they know that the odds aren't in their favour. America is a massive country, so it is hard to reach critical mass - the point at which people feel they can go out and "raise hell" without simply getting arrested/killed because their group is too small and lacking in support. For example, the Restore The Fourth protests were extremely tiny. They barely made a blip in international news, which tends to feature happenings in the US prominently. An uprising of that size would be extinguished almost immediately if it became violent or destructive. However, if the streets were filled with angry protesters, to the point where local police might not be able to handle it, then people would more open to revolutionary action. At a certain point, people will recognize the risk/reward balance is in their favor, but right now it is not anywhere close. I think you can blame the fact that Americans have fairly comfortable lives. If Americans were going hungry, it would be different.