What infuriates me is that not enough people care for them to demand change. This is a common theme on Hacker News, and an understandable one: You see a situat

What infuriates me is that not enough people care for them to demand change. This is a common theme on Hacker News, and an understandable one: You see a situation that seems unjust, and you want other people to be upset about it. But they're not, because people don't work that way. People will become upset when they have social proof that they ought to be upset. This takes a long time, which means that politics, metaphorically speaking, has massive momentum and takes a long to change direction. At this stage, watch the decision makers, the influencers, and the people who pride themselves on being "middle of the road" above all else. When they start to flip, it means a larger political shift has started. And sure enough, obsessively middle-of-the-road writers like Andrew Sullivan are starting to doubt the government's arguments. If the government keeps raiding newspapers, detaining spouses, and otherwise getting caught, public opinion will continue to shift. But it will do so slowly.