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It's more complicated than that. ----->[ good times ]---->[ hard times ] ---> [fascism] --\ ^ |

by bananas 13y ago

It's more complicated than that. ----->[ good times ]---->[ hard times ] ---> [fascism] --\ ^ | \-------------------[revolution] <--------------------/ Revolution merely starts the cycle again. We'll always end up with the KGB, Stasi, NSA, GCHQ, CIA etc so you have to deconstruct society regularly to flush it out. We're stuck in a pretty long loop at the moment just verging on hard times. Edit: the "good times" above is optional.

sillysaurus3 13y ago
Luckily, our founding fathers built in a way to achieve the same effects as a revolution without any violence. If you were to start an armed insurrection, the government would be totally justified in ending you. Not a smart decision given today's level of technology. It was through sheer luck that the American revolution worked at all: the British commanders were so incredibly incompetent that they checkmated themselves.
- JoeAltmaier 13y ago
  Actually its been remarkably effective in other countries, have you been reading the news? Our own soldiers have not been terribly effective at pacifying unrest, and the locals have nothing but rifles etc.
  - sillysaurus3 13y ago
    It's kind of interesting to think about. Remember the hullabaloo just after the Boston bomber lit off the bomb but wasn't caught yet? Imagine all of that societal rage focused on a small group of people who have started an armed conflict and killed a few policemen, and you can imagine how quickly that group will be annihilated.
    - JoeAltmaier 13y ago
      Yeah, you suppose one person - easy to find and contain. But a diffuse population of unrest? Impossible.
    - unethical_ban 13y ago
      When I think about Dorner or the Boston bombers, I think about how much chaos they caused, and the fact that they evaded regional manhunts for days while accomplishing their goal. To contrast your observation: Imagine what a group of dedicated, intelligent agents could do to stir things up.
      - samstave 13y ago
        And now you know exactly why the NSA is doing what it is doing: to protect the oligarchy from exactly an uprising against it from within. There is no terrorist. The system, the agents of the USG have won the coup on freedom. They now exist only to preserve their power, and this is the reason why apologists for the deep state are worse than fools
- bananas 13y ago
  Firstly, your "founding fathers" - ha now there's a joke. Do you think anyone respects those amendments? Nope. If they thought that, you wouldn't be stocked up with weapons. And we all know how effective that technology is at ending all those pesky terrorists with their zip guns and IEDs...
  - sillysaurus3 13y ago
    And we all know how effective that technology is at ending all those pesky terrorists with their zip guns and IEDs... Those people have been indoctrinated since birth to see us as evil invaders. Some of their religions have baked in the idea that it's good to die in order to kill invaders. And we've sometimes acted like an evil invader. (See Blackwater atrocities, etc.) It's an invalid comparison because our population isn't motivated in the same way. It's easy to become disheartened with the current state of affairs, but history has shown that ignoring reality doesn't work. Setting aside the question of ethics, the reality is that an armed revolution in America probably can't happen. And besides, there are plenty of other options to explore.
    - fit2rule 13y ago
      There isn't a time since WW2 when America wasn't viewed as an evil invader. It really depends on whether you've got the business end of a weapon pointed at you or not.
    - ds9 13y ago
      "Those people have been indoctrinated since birth to see us as evil invaders ... our population isn't motivated in the same way" It doesn't take religion or "indoctrination since birth" for people to see an invading army as evil - it just takes an invasion. If your country were occupied by foreign armies, you might want to fight back too - or at least you shouldn't be surprised if others do.
    - Zigurd 13y ago
      Calling the people who have a beef against us for occupying their country "those people" and thinking they are in any deep way different from us is a big red flag for lack of understanding. That kind of thinking goes a long way toward explaining how we could blow a couple trillion dollars fighting people who haven't got a single aircraft, artillery piece, or armored vehicle.
- CodeMage 13y ago
  Hasn't there been enough evidence that the system the founding fathers built in has been compromised to the point of irrelevance? What you have today is an illusion of the freedom and the "equal and impartial justice under the law". http://www.popehat.com/2013/12/23/burn-the-fucking-system-to-the-ground/ http://www.popehat.com/2013/12/23/burn-the-fucking-system-to...
  - a3n 13y ago
    You're probably right. I think the Feinstein/CIA spying episode currently unfolding shows that the intelligence services have flipped the fuckit bit, and they don't even try to make it look like they're subject to Congressional oversight. They do still say they're subject, which I guess is something; they just don't try hard anymore to hide what they do.
    - whatevsbro 13y ago
      > They do still say they're subject, which I guess is something Nope, it's meaningless. What else are they going to say? "It's exactly what it looks like! We just don't give a fuck about you or your rights, and in fact, we're an important part of the police state springing up all around you. When you're thinking of rebelling, remember we know where you live, where you are, and pretty much everything else about you! Stay in line, peasant!" That would be fairly accurate, but they're not going to say it. Doesn't the propaganda just keep going anyway, even in North-Korea?
  - Houshalter 13y ago
    No, there isn't. Democracy might not be great, but it is orders of magnitude better than not-democracy. The main function of democracy is to keep true tyrants out of power, and it's very effective at that.
    - collyw 13y ago
      I would call the system in UK, US more of an elected dictatorship than a democracy, as the politicians are not representing anyone other than their corporate buddies.
- chris_mahan 13y ago
  George Washington was a British commander too, as a Colonel in the British Army.
- insuffi 13y ago
  I'm really, really trying not to be snarky or offensive here, but does anybody else think people using the phrase "founding fathers" sound like a part of a cult?
  - a3n 13y ago
    It's a phrase that we in the US grew up with. It means something in our mythology.
- coldtea 13y ago
  >I, for one, continue to be excited about our drone overlords. Genuine question: why do hackers and obviously smart persons believe in this cargo-cult "founding fathers" concept? As if some guidelines set by some 18th century guys are the be all end all in running a state or even mean much after centuries of "interpretation" and changing conditions (including technology). Case in point 1: most of the things people now enjoy, from women's voting to the abolishment of child labor, to work safety laws, to the end of seggregation, were achieved by long, hard, struggles, protests and even martyrs (just like in Europe, for example), and not by some "founding fathers" decree. Case in point 2: an armed population then was a major counterbalance against a corrupt government, being effective almost at the same level as the government's forces (as evident in tons of revolutions and stuggles around Europe for example). Today? Not so much. So this naive belief on the "right to bear guns" for this purpose is mostly BS cargo-cult.
  - Crito 13y ago
    One of the values of a constitutional democracy is supposed to be that it reduces the impact of the "tyranny of the majority". That is to say, that it reduces the likelihood that a simple majority of people will trivially be able to oppress minority populations. This works by setting up a base set of rules that cannot be violated even if a majority of people in the democracy want to. In order to change or amend these rules, a much higher bar must be met. However this idea of restrictions placed on a democracy to keep the majority from oppressing minorities is worthless without actual rules. How do you perform the initial population of this set of specially privileged rules then? Think of it like a problem of bootstrapping trust. A pure democracy cannot be trusted (as a pure democracy trivially allows/enables the oppression of minorities), but non-pure democracies must be conceived and implemented somehow. Can you trust a constitutional democracy that was created by a pure democracy? Arguably no, since the pure democracy cannot be trusted. Can you trust a constitutional democracy that was created by a small set of arbitrary people? Again arguably no, since arbitrary people pulled from the general population wouldn't be any more trustworthy than a pure democracy. Can you trust a constitutional democracy created by a small set of particular people? If you trust those particular people, then perhaps you can trust the constitutional democracy created by them. People want to trust their government, which leads to them wanting to trust in broad terms the general concepts and ideas that this particular founding group had. Personally I think it's all shit. A constitutional democracy does not resolve the tyranny of the masses, it only pretends to. Democracy itself is nothing more than "might makes right" combined with a primitive notion of MAD (with anarchy and civil war being the boogieman, rather than nuclear war). Constitutional democracy is good for little more than lying to ourselves to make ourselves feel better about democracy.
- samstave 13y ago
  We need a tax revolution. Every single citizen should refuse to pay taxes until a rebuild of the system is done.
dllthomas 13y ago
It should also be noted that revolution sucks majorly.
gknoy 13y ago
I think you might want to add an intermediate state, of [ Possibly Very Bad Times ] as a possible consequence of revolution before returning to Good Times. It's not a quick fix, not a panacea.
canvia 13y ago
There is a relevant theory on the topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generational_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generatio...
Houshalter 13y ago
I don't know if history supports the assertion that [revolution] leads to [good times]. I mean maybe on average, and maybe in the long run. However it seems to me the suffering the original government caused is dwarfed by the suffering of a violent revolution. Also that things don't improve as much as expected after the revolution, and that it can just end up a worse government, or lead to more conflict.

by bananas 13y ago

sillysaurus3 13y ago

Luckily, our founding fathers built in a way to achieve the same effects as a revolution without any violence. If you were to start an armed insurrection, the government would be totally justified in ending you. Not a smart decision given today's level of technology. It was through sheer luck that the American revolution worked at all: the British commanders were so incredibly incompetent that they checkmated themselves.

JoeAltmaier 13y ago
Actually its been remarkably effective in other countries, have you been reading the news? Our own soldiers have not been terribly effective at pacifying unrest, and the locals have nothing but rifles etc.
- sillysaurus3 13y ago
  It's kind of interesting to think about. Remember the hullabaloo just after the Boston bomber lit off the bomb but wasn't caught yet? Imagine all of that societal rage focused on a small group of people who have started an armed conflict and killed a few policemen, and you can imagine how quickly that group will be annihilated.
  - JoeAltmaier 13y ago
    Yeah, you suppose one person - easy to find and contain. But a diffuse population of unrest? Impossible.
  - unethical_ban 13y ago
    When I think about Dorner or the Boston bombers, I think about how much chaos they caused, and the fact that they evaded regional manhunts for days while accomplishing their goal. To contrast your observation: Imagine what a group of dedicated, intelligent agents could do to stir things up.
    - samstave 13y ago
      And now you know exactly why the NSA is doing what it is doing: to protect the oligarchy from exactly an uprising against it from within. There is no terrorist. The system, the agents of the USG have won the coup on freedom. They now exist only to preserve their power, and this is the reason why apologists for the deep state are worse than fools
bananas 13y ago
Firstly, your "founding fathers" - ha now there's a joke. Do you think anyone respects those amendments? Nope. If they thought that, you wouldn't be stocked up with weapons. And we all know how effective that technology is at ending all those pesky terrorists with their zip guns and IEDs...
- sillysaurus3 13y ago
  And we all know how effective that technology is at ending all those pesky terrorists with their zip guns and IEDs... Those people have been indoctrinated since birth to see us as evil invaders. Some of their religions have baked in the idea that it's good to die in order to kill invaders. And we've sometimes acted like an evil invader. (See Blackwater atrocities, etc.) It's an invalid comparison because our population isn't motivated in the same way. It's easy to become disheartened with the current state of affairs, but history has shown that ignoring reality doesn't work. Setting aside the question of ethics, the reality is that an armed revolution in America probably can't happen. And besides, there are plenty of other options to explore.
  - fit2rule 13y ago
    There isn't a time since WW2 when America wasn't viewed as an evil invader. It really depends on whether you've got the business end of a weapon pointed at you or not.
  - ds9 13y ago
    "Those people have been indoctrinated since birth to see us as evil invaders ... our population isn't motivated in the same way" It doesn't take religion or "indoctrination since birth" for people to see an invading army as evil - it just takes an invasion. If your country were occupied by foreign armies, you might want to fight back too - or at least you shouldn't be surprised if others do.
  - Zigurd 13y ago
    Calling the people who have a beef against us for occupying their country "those people" and thinking they are in any deep way different from us is a big red flag for lack of understanding. That kind of thinking goes a long way toward explaining how we could blow a couple trillion dollars fighting people who haven't got a single aircraft, artillery piece, or armored vehicle.
CodeMage 13y ago
Hasn't there been enough evidence that the system the founding fathers built in has been compromised to the point of irrelevance? What you have today is an illusion of the freedom and the "equal and impartial justice under the law". http://www.popehat.com/2013/12/23/burn-the-fucking-system-to-the-ground/ http://www.popehat.com/2013/12/23/burn-the-fucking-system-to...
- a3n 13y ago
  You're probably right. I think the Feinstein/CIA spying episode currently unfolding shows that the intelligence services have flipped the fuckit bit, and they don't even try to make it look like they're subject to Congressional oversight. They do still say they're subject, which I guess is something; they just don't try hard anymore to hide what they do.
  - whatevsbro 13y ago
    > They do still say they're subject, which I guess is something Nope, it's meaningless. What else are they going to say? "It's exactly what it looks like! We just don't give a fuck about you or your rights, and in fact, we're an important part of the police state springing up all around you. When you're thinking of rebelling, remember we know where you live, where you are, and pretty much everything else about you! Stay in line, peasant!" That would be fairly accurate, but they're not going to say it. Doesn't the propaganda just keep going anyway, even in North-Korea?
- Houshalter 13y ago
  No, there isn't. Democracy might not be great, but it is orders of magnitude better than not-democracy. The main function of democracy is to keep true tyrants out of power, and it's very effective at that.
  - collyw 13y ago
    I would call the system in UK, US more of an elected dictatorship than a democracy, as the politicians are not representing anyone other than their corporate buddies.
chris_mahan 13y ago
George Washington was a British commander too, as a Colonel in the British Army.
insuffi 13y ago
I'm really, really trying not to be snarky or offensive here, but does anybody else think people using the phrase "founding fathers" sound like a part of a cult?
- a3n 13y ago
  It's a phrase that we in the US grew up with. It means something in our mythology.
coldtea 13y ago
>I, for one, continue to be excited about our drone overlords. Genuine question: why do hackers and obviously smart persons believe in this cargo-cult "founding fathers" concept? As if some guidelines set by some 18th century guys are the be all end all in running a state or even mean much after centuries of "interpretation" and changing conditions (including technology). Case in point 1: most of the things people now enjoy, from women's voting to the abolishment of child labor, to work safety laws, to the end of seggregation, were achieved by long, hard, struggles, protests and even martyrs (just like in Europe, for example), and not by some "founding fathers" decree. Case in point 2: an armed population then was a major counterbalance against a corrupt government, being effective almost at the same level as the government's forces (as evident in tons of revolutions and stuggles around Europe for example). Today? Not so much. So this naive belief on the "right to bear guns" for this purpose is mostly BS cargo-cult.
- Crito 13y ago
  One of the values of a constitutional democracy is supposed to be that it reduces the impact of the "tyranny of the majority". That is to say, that it reduces the likelihood that a simple majority of people will trivially be able to oppress minority populations. This works by setting up a base set of rules that cannot be violated even if a majority of people in the democracy want to. In order to change or amend these rules, a much higher bar must be met. However this idea of restrictions placed on a democracy to keep the majority from oppressing minorities is worthless without actual rules. How do you perform the initial population of this set of specially privileged rules then? Think of it like a problem of bootstrapping trust. A pure democracy cannot be trusted (as a pure democracy trivially allows/enables the oppression of minorities), but non-pure democracies must be conceived and implemented somehow. Can you trust a constitutional democracy that was created by a pure democracy? Arguably no, since the pure democracy cannot be trusted. Can you trust a constitutional democracy that was created by a small set of arbitrary people? Again arguably no, since arbitrary people pulled from the general population wouldn't be any more trustworthy than a pure democracy. Can you trust a constitutional democracy created by a small set of particular people? If you trust those particular people, then perhaps you can trust the constitutional democracy created by them. People want to trust their government, which leads to them wanting to trust in broad terms the general concepts and ideas that this particular founding group had. Personally I think it's all shit. A constitutional democracy does not resolve the tyranny of the masses, it only pretends to. Democracy itself is nothing more than "might makes right" combined with a primitive notion of MAD (with anarchy and civil war being the boogieman, rather than nuclear war). Constitutional democracy is good for little more than lying to ourselves to make ourselves feel better about democracy.
samstave 13y ago
We need a tax revolution. Every single citizen should refuse to pay taxes until a rebuild of the system is done.

dllthomas 13y ago

It should also be noted that revolution sucks majorly.

gknoy 13y ago

I think you might want to add an intermediate state, of [ Possibly Very Bad Times ] as a possible consequence of revolution before returning to Good Times. It's not a quick fix, not a panacea.

canvia 13y ago

There is a relevant theory on the topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generational_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generatio...

Houshalter 13y ago

I don't know if history supports the assertion that [revolution] leads to [good times]. I mean maybe on average, and maybe in the long run. However it seems to me the suffering the original government caused is dwarfed by the suffering of a violent revolution. Also that things don't improve as much as expected after the revolution, and that it can just end up a worse government, or lead to more conflict.