8 ms·

What happened in the last few years to allow our civil rights in the most forward thinking countries to unravel so easily? And why do citizens not care? How i

by steven2012 12y ago

What happened in the last few years to allow our civil rights in the most forward thinking countries to unravel so easily? And why do citizens not care? How is it possible that all countries have elected such a group of corrupt, nearsighted politicians to the point where freedom is an inconvenience over them consolidating practically dictatorial power? And again, why does no one care?

toyg 12y ago
It's a combination of unprecedented wealth (let's be honest, modern poverty in industrialized countries is nothing like it was back in the '50s) and the continuous rise of asymmetric warfare randomly deployed by psychopaths. In Sydney, the "cafe kidnap" attack is still fresh in everyone's mind. We've had bombs in London and Madrid, plus a number of other scares, and when a population feels threatened, they'll typically hand power to the first dictator with a minimum of skill. As long as we're free to buy porn and videogames, most people just don't care.
- mhurron 12y ago
  > We've had bombs in London Did they react this way during the Troubles? I don't think they did. I was in London in '92 and there was a bomb threat called in at the tube station one stop over. It delayed the train for a bit, but that was it and everyone continued on like normal. This time the US freaks out because the world came to their doorstep and they flip out because they have no idea how to handle it. The leaders flip out causes the population to freak out and they trun around and grant legal weight to every stupid idea that comes flying out of polititians mouths. It seems the UK learned from this, so when there is a little bomb plot in London, the leaders go full retard, the people get scared and do the same thing. It's like everyone figured out the best way to get more power is to act like you've been caught with your pants down so that you're the one who scared the population, not whatever actually happened. After everyone has finished running around like a chicken with it's head cut off and the dust settles, the government finds itself with all these extra powers.
  - pyre 12y ago
    You're also forgetting the 24/7 news cycle on stations like CNBC, CNN, Fox News, etc.
    - amyjess 12y ago
      CNBC is a finance channel. Are you thinking of MSNBC instead?
  - jgrahamc 12y ago
    > Did they react this way during the Troubles? We had certain other reactions that were themselves troubling. Such as this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988%E2%80%9394_British_broadcasting_voice_restrictions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988%E2%80%9394_British_broadc...
  - toyg 12y ago
    This technique was first theorized and practiced by CIA in Europe (and likely KGB elsewhere) during the Cold War. In Italy they called it "Tension Strategy", as in "keeping people tense" with fear of attacks and bombs so they will allow the government to get and maintain illiberal powers or even allow a Chilean-style coup d'état. During the Troubles, the UK had its fair share of "freaking out", banning public bins (only recently re-introduced), criminalizing the Irish community, and basically allowing police and military to do whatever they wanted in Northern Ireland (with lots of abuses being recognised and pursued only today). A famous Irish comedian joked a few years ago that he loved all Muslims, because they've now replaced the Irish as standard bogeymen ("... and now us Irish are just those funny people from Riverdance!").
    - angersock 12y ago
      The Irish terrorism was pretty impressive, in both tactics and staying power.
    - foldr 12y ago
      > banning public bins (only recently re-introduced) They were banned in train stations and other similar areas, for the fairly sensible reason that they'd been used to hide bombs in those locations in the past.
- gumby 12y ago
  This kind of thing was rampant in the 1910s and 1960s (with the communists and anarchists in the earlier case and various disaffected and political groups in the later). They were also periods of high growth in wealth.
pcrh 12y ago
Technology. Mass surveillance was impracticable 20 years ago, and is now fairly easy (at least on the internet).
- CyberDildonics 12y ago
  Knowing what we know I'm constantly surprised an always encrypted IP layer isn't more of an issue for people.
  - iLoch 12y ago
    Most people don't even know what the green address bar means, let alone actually caring.
fit2rule 12y ago
Decadence. People don't care about civil rights, because those rights don't seem to have anything to do with the lifestyle cults that people are involved in. In Australia, particularly, where the idea of having 'a great lifestyle' trumps all other civic involvement, it should be no surprise that nobody cares - as long as you can drive to the new mall on the weekends for a bit of air-conditioned consumer protection, can watch all the latest crap from the UK/USA on television every day, and can generally just kick back and relax and enjoy 'the good life', who cares what rights are taken from you? As long as "I've got mine", where "mine" is variously defined by corporate masters whose marketing-mind-control rules every aspect of that lifestyle, in an ultimately feudal system, nobody really gives a shit ..
- kardos 12y ago
  I wonder if this is what you really believe, or if you're a shill paid to perpetuate this line of thinking to discourage/disillusion people who care about their rights. Sure, some people don't care and are blissfully caught up in a manufactured world of consumerism, but that does not generalise to the rest of the population.
  - fit2rule 12y ago
    I'm an Australian who is quite disappointed with his culture - call it cultural-cringe, if you will - and who finds the never-ending encroachment of strip-mall/parking-lot/tract-houses across the beautiful Australian landscape a real travesty. The cookie-cutter homes, the non-stop "New Thing™" to which the Australian Now-generation are endlessly upgrading, and so on. This is all very disappointing to have observed over many decades now. So .. no .. I'm no paid shill, mate - I truly think that Australia is a dystopian nightmare society, caught in a trance of consumption and lifestyle, and which I find less and less appealing as I get older. I'd love to see Australians care more about their rights - maybe you can enlighten me as to where and when that is happening? All I see is loss of interest, and a desire to simply keep calm and carry on, while it all gets eroded towards the feudal master-plan: Sell the resources, keep the change, and don't .. at any cost .. acknowledge the failure of modern Australian civilization to address the wrongs enacted on the natives, newcomers, and boat people.
javajosh 12y ago
It's hard for the public to care when there is no concrete evidence of harm. The government knows this and is working hard to make sure that any harm done by mass surveillance is hidden using parallel construction. What is an interesting and useful game is to imagine a scenario which would trigger massive public outrage over the use of mass surveillance. What would really drive the point home that this is a truly dangerous amount of power? To be honest, I don't think a single major mistake with a citizen would do it (e.g. killing someone based on mass surveillance). Too many apologists would make the case that this is cherry picking and that it's just an exceptional case. A pattern of mistakes would perhaps be better (putting thousands of people on the no fly list for no reason), but these kinds of stories tend to be too cerebral for the general public to focus on (although people like Colbert and John Oliver are really good at solving that problem!) I think the only thing that might do it would be a Watergate style scandal where one group of powerful people use the machinery to mess with another group of powerful people. Consider how much more seriously Feinstein took the CIA when it became clear they were spying on her and her staff during the torture investigations. Or Angela Merkel's reaction to her cell phone being tapped. So, unfortunately have to wait for the machinery to be wielded against the powerful because it's (clearly) easy to get away with wielding it against the rest of us.
- CamperBob2 12y ago
  What would really drive the point home that this is a truly dangerous amount of power? If the abuses of Hoover's FBI weren't enough to make the American people (and especially their Congressional representatives) say "Never again," nothing will. I'm sure Australians can point to similar abuses of government power that are not considered a problem going forward, because, hey, we're all progressives here, right? People are funny. We won't build nuke plants on the grounds that there is a small but finite chance of something going wrong and killing a lot of people, but we'll cheerfully let our politicians put the mechanisms of 1984 into place for our "safety." And we don't even get electricity in return.
  - anigbrowl 12y ago
    If the abuses of Hoover's FBI weren't enough to make the American people (and especially their Congressional representatives) say "Never again," nothing will. Oh come on - how many people did Hoover kill? There isn't even a number. Not because he was a great guy, but because the abuses of government power that have taken place in the US are quite mild in historical terms, when compared to the excesses of colonialism and various dictatorial regimes around the world.
ksherlock 12y ago
Last few yeas? This has been a problem since the 1798 Sedition Act.
e40 12y ago
And why do citizens not care? This is the real mystery. I can't count the number of times I've had conversations with smart people that just don't seem to care. After the PATRIOT ACT was passed I was livid and knew it would be used for non-terrorism things. As we know now, it's mostly used for non-terrorism. People would look at me like I had some tin foil on my head. It couldn't even get people to talk about it. (Lest readers think I'm sort of conversational pariah, I don't recall any other subject that causes this effect.)
- fit2rule 12y ago
  It should be no mystery: people don't want to change their lifestyle, which is going to be needed to address this issue.
- cpt1138 12y ago
  What does "care" mean in your mind? You say were you livid and you expressed your lividity by talking to people? I think a lot of people "care" they are just not given anything actionable to do. Expressing impotent rage on FB is not really helping AFAICT.
  - e40 12y ago
    Expressing impotent rage on FB is not really helping AFAICT. Very nice straw man. I didn't mention FB. And these were conversations in person.
    - throwaway0u43 12y ago
      And yet, all you did is talk. That is the parent's point. You talked. Maybe you voted for the other puppet of the elites that is ideologically 0.3% different from the current puppet. Maybe you convinced your interlocutors to do the same. But participation in the farce of modern democracy is exactly what you're intended to do. You somehow feel like your talking or voting matters. It doesn't. I'm no different, of course. Our lives are too comfortable. There is only one form of political action that ever works to depose despots, and it's a form that's not worth interrupting our comfortable lives to engage in. At the end of the day, you need to either take real action, or accept that you're too comfortable with your affluent life to risk losing your comforts, and enjoy these comforts without complaint. You've chosen this path, as have I, as have we all. Life is too good to meaningfully rock the boat.
rayiner 12y ago
Unravel relative to what? The 1990s representated the tail of an unprecedented 30-year expansion in civil rights. We're in the middle of a conservative retrenching as of late, but the Overton window has shifted and it's not in the direction people on HN assume. The kind of abuse that routinely happened in the legal system in the 60's and 70's would be unthinkable today.
- api 12y ago
  I've thought something similar about centralization and surveillance on the Internet, calling this the "Empire Strikes Back" period.
vijayr 12y ago
It is happening at a pace that doesn't force people to think about it. If something big and bad happens suddenly, then people are forced to notice. But if the same big and bad thing happens slowly, one step at a time, most people don't notice. And those who notice are aren't able to do much as they are in a minority. Also, many people are more idealistic in their youth - before they have families, careers etc and before putting food on the table becomes a bigger priority. That is why it is easier to protest as a college student, than as a 40 year old with a mortgage and two kids. But that is also getting harder these days - student loans, getting a record etc And above all else, it is easier to numb ourselves these days than ever before with internet, video games, porn, TV, ebooks ("mental porn") etc. Why go out and do something (like protest) and put ourselves at risk, when we can watch Netflix comfortably at home? We are quickly becoming a species that values convenience over everything else, including privacy and civil rights :( Edit: There is another thing - most people genuinely believe that bad things won't happen to them, as they haven't done anything wrong. While that is cute, we know it is not true but most of us have trouble accepting it
- wavefunction 12y ago
  I think you're correct in everything you've written, but I guess I go back to OP's question "why is this happening" and focus on who is driving this and why? Sure, we understand why people are going along with it quite well at this point, but who and what are behind the push to remove civil liberties is the more interesting component to this issue in my mind.
  - vijayr 12y ago
    Agreed, that is a very important question. But, it has always been like this, no? Except may be for brief periods in history. A small group of people have always tried to control the majority - kings, clergymen, military, businessmen etc. We are just more aware of it these days than a few hundred years ago, but other than that what has changed? If anyone has any resource on this topic, please post - this (and environment) might very well be the most important issues of our time.
    - 12y ago
anigbrowl 12y ago
Lots of people do care. However, lots of other people are assholes, and support this sort of behavior. I hestiate to be political, but it's almost universally acknowledged that Australia's Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, is a conservative ideologue (his party is named the Liberal party, but in the economic rather than the social sense; it's broadly center-right) - broadly pro censorship, dislikes immigrants, seems a bit racist towards aboriginals, hostile to expanding women's rights, and famously disbelieves int he idea of man-made climate change and has dismantled Australia's carbon tax. There's a large constituency that supports this sort of thing and who are quite happy to tolerate heavy-handed security measures. Because a lot of people are assholes, thinking they'll be better off by keeping people of whom they disapprove in an inferior position. I apologize for stating my views so crudely, but I think it's politically naive to assume that other people don't care because they don't understand or haven't thought through the long-term consequences. In many cases, they understand just fine,; they don't care because they are selfish and want others to be forced into compliance with their views by the power of the state.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
xnull6guest 12y ago
The old world order is being seriously challenged and the old elite countries can't keep their ideals and their place at the same time. The citizens of course, demand both of their leaders. The leaders are trying to sacrifice liberties in the most subtle and strategic of ways, and the minimal amount possible. But globalized media, (white) propaganda, and availability of information makes this fairly transparent. Citizens do care - this is a sentiment I hear a lot from a lot of people. The politicians are sometimes nearsighted but are also more often than we think imbued with some sense of long term tradeoff.
Sir_Substance 12y ago
Citizens care. I've left Australia. I don't really plan to go back. Most of my friends are doing the same.

toyg 12y ago

It's a combination of unprecedented wealth (let's be honest, modern poverty in industrialized countries is nothing like it was back in the '50s) and the continuous rise of asymmetric warfare randomly deployed by psychopaths. In Sydney, the "cafe kidnap" attack is still fresh in everyone's mind. We've had bombs in London and Madrid, plus a number of other scares, and when a population feels threatened, they'll typically hand power to the first dictator with a minimum of skill. As long as we're free to buy porn and videogames, most people just don't care.

mhurron 12y ago
> We've had bombs in London Did they react this way during the Troubles? I don't think they did. I was in London in '92 and there was a bomb threat called in at the tube station one stop over. It delayed the train for a bit, but that was it and everyone continued on like normal. This time the US freaks out because the world came to their doorstep and they flip out because they have no idea how to handle it. The leaders flip out causes the population to freak out and they trun around and grant legal weight to every stupid idea that comes flying out of polititians mouths. It seems the UK learned from this, so when there is a little bomb plot in London, the leaders go full retard, the people get scared and do the same thing. It's like everyone figured out the best way to get more power is to act like you've been caught with your pants down so that you're the one who scared the population, not whatever actually happened. After everyone has finished running around like a chicken with it's head cut off and the dust settles, the government finds itself with all these extra powers.
- pyre 12y ago
  You're also forgetting the 24/7 news cycle on stations like CNBC, CNN, Fox News, etc.
  - amyjess 12y ago
    CNBC is a finance channel. Are you thinking of MSNBC instead?
- jgrahamc 12y ago
  > Did they react this way during the Troubles? We had certain other reactions that were themselves troubling. Such as this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988%E2%80%9394_British_broadcasting_voice_restrictions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988%E2%80%9394_British_broadc...
- toyg 12y ago
  This technique was first theorized and practiced by CIA in Europe (and likely KGB elsewhere) during the Cold War. In Italy they called it "Tension Strategy", as in "keeping people tense" with fear of attacks and bombs so they will allow the government to get and maintain illiberal powers or even allow a Chilean-style coup d'état. During the Troubles, the UK had its fair share of "freaking out", banning public bins (only recently re-introduced), criminalizing the Irish community, and basically allowing police and military to do whatever they wanted in Northern Ireland (with lots of abuses being recognised and pursued only today). A famous Irish comedian joked a few years ago that he loved all Muslims, because they've now replaced the Irish as standard bogeymen ("... and now us Irish are just those funny people from Riverdance!").
  - angersock 12y ago
    The Irish terrorism was pretty impressive, in both tactics and staying power.
  - foldr 12y ago
    > banning public bins (only recently re-introduced) They were banned in train stations and other similar areas, for the fairly sensible reason that they'd been used to hide bombs in those locations in the past.
gumby 12y ago
This kind of thing was rampant in the 1910s and 1960s (with the communists and anarchists in the earlier case and various disaffected and political groups in the later). They were also periods of high growth in wealth.

pcrh 12y ago

Technology. Mass surveillance was impracticable 20 years ago, and is now fairly easy (at least on the internet).

CyberDildonics 12y ago
Knowing what we know I'm constantly surprised an always encrypted IP layer isn't more of an issue for people.
- iLoch 12y ago
  Most people don't even know what the green address bar means, let alone actually caring.

fit2rule 12y ago

Decadence. People don't care about civil rights, because those rights don't seem to have anything to do with the lifestyle cults that people are involved in. In Australia, particularly, where the idea of having 'a great lifestyle' trumps all other civic involvement, it should be no surprise that nobody cares - as long as you can drive to the new mall on the weekends for a bit of air-conditioned consumer protection, can watch all the latest crap from the UK/USA on television every day, and can generally just kick back and relax and enjoy 'the good life', who cares what rights are taken from you? As long as "I've got mine", where "mine" is variously defined by corporate masters whose marketing-mind-control rules every aspect of that lifestyle, in an ultimately feudal system, nobody really gives a shit ..

kardos 12y ago
I wonder if this is what you really believe, or if you're a shill paid to perpetuate this line of thinking to discourage/disillusion people who care about their rights. Sure, some people don't care and are blissfully caught up in a manufactured world of consumerism, but that does not generalise to the rest of the population.
- fit2rule 12y ago
  I'm an Australian who is quite disappointed with his culture - call it cultural-cringe, if you will - and who finds the never-ending encroachment of strip-mall/parking-lot/tract-houses across the beautiful Australian landscape a real travesty. The cookie-cutter homes, the non-stop "New Thing™" to which the Australian Now-generation are endlessly upgrading, and so on. This is all very disappointing to have observed over many decades now. So .. no .. I'm no paid shill, mate - I truly think that Australia is a dystopian nightmare society, caught in a trance of consumption and lifestyle, and which I find less and less appealing as I get older. I'd love to see Australians care more about their rights - maybe you can enlighten me as to where and when that is happening? All I see is loss of interest, and a desire to simply keep calm and carry on, while it all gets eroded towards the feudal master-plan: Sell the resources, keep the change, and don't .. at any cost .. acknowledge the failure of modern Australian civilization to address the wrongs enacted on the natives, newcomers, and boat people.

javajosh 12y ago

It's hard for the public to care when there is no concrete evidence of harm. The government knows this and is working hard to make sure that any harm done by mass surveillance is hidden using parallel construction. What is an interesting and useful game is to imagine a scenario which would trigger massive public outrage over the use of mass surveillance. What would really drive the point home that this is a truly dangerous amount of power? To be honest, I don't think a single major mistake with a citizen would do it (e.g. killing someone based on mass surveillance). Too many apologists would make the case that this is cherry picking and that it's just an exceptional case. A pattern of mistakes would perhaps be better (putting thousands of people on the no fly list for no reason), but these kinds of stories tend to be too cerebral for the general public to focus on (although people like Colbert and John Oliver are really good at solving that problem!) I think the only thing that might do it would be a Watergate style scandal where one group of powerful people use the machinery to mess with another group of powerful people. Consider how much more seriously Feinstein took the CIA when it became clear they were spying on her and her staff during the torture investigations. Or Angela Merkel's reaction to her cell phone being tapped. So, unfortunately have to wait for the machinery to be wielded against the powerful because it's (clearly) easy to get away with wielding it against the rest of us.

CamperBob2 12y ago
What would really drive the point home that this is a truly dangerous amount of power? If the abuses of Hoover's FBI weren't enough to make the American people (and especially their Congressional representatives) say "Never again," nothing will. I'm sure Australians can point to similar abuses of government power that are not considered a problem going forward, because, hey, we're all progressives here, right? People are funny. We won't build nuke plants on the grounds that there is a small but finite chance of something going wrong and killing a lot of people, but we'll cheerfully let our politicians put the mechanisms of 1984 into place for our "safety." And we don't even get electricity in return.
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  If the abuses of Hoover's FBI weren't enough to make the American people (and especially their Congressional representatives) say "Never again," nothing will. Oh come on - how many people did Hoover kill? There isn't even a number. Not because he was a great guy, but because the abuses of government power that have taken place in the US are quite mild in historical terms, when compared to the excesses of colonialism and various dictatorial regimes around the world.

ksherlock 12y ago

Last few yeas? This has been a problem since the 1798 Sedition Act.

e40 12y ago

And why do citizens not care? This is the real mystery. I can't count the number of times I've had conversations with smart people that just don't seem to care. After the PATRIOT ACT was passed I was livid and knew it would be used for non-terrorism things. As we know now, it's mostly used for non-terrorism. People would look at me like I had some tin foil on my head. It couldn't even get people to talk about it. (Lest readers think I'm sort of conversational pariah, I don't recall any other subject that causes this effect.)

fit2rule 12y ago
It should be no mystery: people don't want to change their lifestyle, which is going to be needed to address this issue.
cpt1138 12y ago
What does "care" mean in your mind? You say were you livid and you expressed your lividity by talking to people? I think a lot of people "care" they are just not given anything actionable to do. Expressing impotent rage on FB is not really helping AFAICT.
- e40 12y ago
  Expressing impotent rage on FB is not really helping AFAICT. Very nice straw man. I didn't mention FB. And these were conversations in person.
  - throwaway0u43 12y ago
    And yet, all you did is talk. That is the parent's point. You talked. Maybe you voted for the other puppet of the elites that is ideologically 0.3% different from the current puppet. Maybe you convinced your interlocutors to do the same. But participation in the farce of modern democracy is exactly what you're intended to do. You somehow feel like your talking or voting matters. It doesn't. I'm no different, of course. Our lives are too comfortable. There is only one form of political action that ever works to depose despots, and it's a form that's not worth interrupting our comfortable lives to engage in. At the end of the day, you need to either take real action, or accept that you're too comfortable with your affluent life to risk losing your comforts, and enjoy these comforts without complaint. You've chosen this path, as have I, as have we all. Life is too good to meaningfully rock the boat.

rayiner 12y ago

Unravel relative to what? The 1990s representated the tail of an unprecedented 30-year expansion in civil rights. We're in the middle of a conservative retrenching as of late, but the Overton window has shifted and it's not in the direction people on HN assume. The kind of abuse that routinely happened in the legal system in the 60's and 70's would be unthinkable today.

api 12y ago
I've thought something similar about centralization and surveillance on the Internet, calling this the "Empire Strikes Back" period.

vijayr 12y ago

It is happening at a pace that doesn't force people to think about it. If something big and bad happens suddenly, then people are forced to notice. But if the same big and bad thing happens slowly, one step at a time, most people don't notice. And those who notice are aren't able to do much as they are in a minority. Also, many people are more idealistic in their youth - before they have families, careers etc and before putting food on the table becomes a bigger priority. That is why it is easier to protest as a college student, than as a 40 year old with a mortgage and two kids. But that is also getting harder these days - student loans, getting a record etc And above all else, it is easier to numb ourselves these days than ever before with internet, video games, porn, TV, ebooks ("mental porn") etc. Why go out and do something (like protest) and put ourselves at risk, when we can watch Netflix comfortably at home? We are quickly becoming a species that values convenience over everything else, including privacy and civil rights :( Edit: There is another thing - most people genuinely believe that bad things won't happen to them, as they haven't done anything wrong. While that is cute, we know it is not true but most of us have trouble accepting it

wavefunction 12y ago
I think you're correct in everything you've written, but I guess I go back to OP's question "why is this happening" and focus on who is driving this and why? Sure, we understand why people are going along with it quite well at this point, but who and what are behind the push to remove civil liberties is the more interesting component to this issue in my mind.
- vijayr 12y ago
  Agreed, that is a very important question. But, it has always been like this, no? Except may be for brief periods in history. A small group of people have always tried to control the majority - kings, clergymen, military, businessmen etc. We are just more aware of it these days than a few hundred years ago, but other than that what has changed? If anyone has any resource on this topic, please post - this (and environment) might very well be the most important issues of our time.
  - 12y ago

anigbrowl 12y ago

Lots of people do care. However, lots of other people are assholes, and support this sort of behavior. I hestiate to be political, but it's almost universally acknowledged that Australia's Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, is a conservative ideologue (his party is named the Liberal party, but in the economic rather than the social sense; it's broadly center-right) - broadly pro censorship, dislikes immigrants, seems a bit racist towards aboriginals, hostile to expanding women's rights, and famously disbelieves int he idea of man-made climate change and has dismantled Australia's carbon tax. There's a large constituency that supports this sort of thing and who are quite happy to tolerate heavy-handed security measures. Because a lot of people are assholes, thinking they'll be better off by keeping people of whom they disapprove in an inferior position. I apologize for stating my views so crudely, but I think it's politically naive to assume that other people don't care because they don't understand or haven't thought through the long-term consequences. In many cases, they understand just fine,; they don't care because they are selfish and want others to be forced into compliance with their views by the power of the state.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

xnull6guest 12y ago

The old world order is being seriously challenged and the old elite countries can't keep their ideals and their place at the same time. The citizens of course, demand both of their leaders. The leaders are trying to sacrifice liberties in the most subtle and strategic of ways, and the minimal amount possible. But globalized media, (white) propaganda, and availability of information makes this fairly transparent. Citizens do care - this is a sentiment I hear a lot from a lot of people. The politicians are sometimes nearsighted but are also more often than we think imbued with some sense of long term tradeoff.

Sir_Substance 12y ago

Citizens care. I've left Australia. I don't really plan to go back. Most of my friends are doing the same.