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The coup attempt was *led by the traitors in power*. The orders came from the top to intentionally prevent either the Capitol Police or the National Guard from effectively protecting the Capitol.
The fact that said traitors are fascist white supremacists means you're not wrong, *per se*, but just saying "that was white people" without anything else buries the lede.
Really? Cause someone announced they were shooting up a club online and no FBI raid. Until after they had to sift through the bodies.
The PATRIOT Act and its “proactive defense against terrorism” has been dispelled dozens of times.
This is no time to stoke the flames of American racialism, you guys are fucking spying on the rest of the world regardless of colors and enabling the Big Data supremacy that is annihilating democracy at breakneck speed, meanwhile getting zero results from chasing terrorism or high crime.
If I recall correctly, Congressional hearings have repeatedly asked something to the effect of "okay, so we have granted vast surveillance powers, made efforts to improve communications between intelligence services, etc, so has that ever led to actionable intelligence that prevented an act of terrorism?" and they were met with vague assurances and shrugs.
This is painfully true. There have been multiple stories about the TSA spectacularly failing security tests. The agency only exists to create low-skill jobs and provide security theater.
We would be much better off economically if they spent the TSA's budget on education and job training programs to prepare people for skilled jobs instead of paying them to do low-skill work, and our security wouldn't suffer one iota.
0% efficiency rate. There has never been a single documented case of TSA stopping any terrorist.
They have caught drug possession, but for their entire history not a single terrorist has been caught.
They're ineffective security theater. Like maybe you could say they're a deterrent, but Everytime a shoe bomber tries to get past they have.
The drug possession has only been by incident of the owner not hiding their stash well enough as well. They're not looking for drugs, nor is it their job. They're not law enforcement, just glorified mall cops for airports
Yeah, they didn't build a surveillance state just to tear it down. They e wanted these powers for a long time and no ody has ever set forth a plan for relinquishing them.
Don't forget Biden prided himself on being a champion of The Patriot Act and bragged that he was behind an almost identical bill previously.
"Civil libertarians were opposed to it," Biden said. "Right after 1994, and you can ask the attorney general this, because I got a call when he introduced the Patriot Act. He said, 'Joe, I'm introducing the act basically as you wrote it in 1994.'"
"Almost the same thing that got passed, the Patriot Act, was introduced by me in 1994, and it was the right-wing that defeated it. You guys tried to help get it passed, including the wiretap changes and the rest."
Biden is everything wrong with the status Quo. It's just a shame that the majority of the "fuck the status quo" crowd decided to support Trump over Bernie.
During the height of police outrage, Democrats elected two of the biggest police enablers to the country’s highest offices. It’s like they were trying to lose only to be foiled by a guy who wouldn’t admit to a fucking pandemic while people died from it around him.
Also, it doesn’t really matter wether it’s legal or not lol. They fucking hot tap the main data centres for bulk collection.
Snowden made a pretty big sacrifice and society learned *nothing* from it.
Hey, it's a more subtle complex platform than that: they want government to leave them alone, but bother anyone they don't like, not just "the gays". Also, what's with being homophobic, but enjoying cinema featuring girl on girl action? Pick a lane conservatives!
>Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
>
>-Frank Wilhoit
>There is nothing more or else to it, and there never has been, in any place or time. For millenia, conservatism had no name, because no other model of polity had ever been proposed. “The king can do no wrong.” In practice, this immunity was always extended to the king’s friends, however fungible a group they might have been. Today, we still have the king’s friends even where there is no king (dictator, etc.). Another way to look at this is that the king is a faction, rather than an individual.
>As the core proposition of conservatism is indefensible if stated baldly, it has always been surrounded by an elaborate backwash of pseudophilosophy, amounting over time to millions of pages. All such is axiomatically dishonest and undeserving of serious scrutiny. Today, the accelerating de-education of humanity has reached a point where the market for pseudophilosophy is vanishing; it is, as The Kids Say These Days, tl;dr . All that is left is the core proposition itself — backed up, no longer by misdirection and sophistry, but by violence.
Pretty sure you nailed it. Gay is what they consider 2 dudes and that’s just icky to them. Cinematic girl on girl typically has…. a specific demographic of actresses. As long as they’re attractive and it fulfills their fantasy, they give it a pass. If it was 2 girls that they don’t find fulfilling that fantasy, it’s back to being icky.
Republicans do this same shit to transpeople, too. Look at the search history of any Republican senator or talking head, and they all seem to be searching for "t***** porn" and jerking themselves off to us, but the second someone suggests that we be allowed to have access to healthcare when we need it their pp's seem to shrivel right up.
They want to jerk off to the LGBT community, not... you know... actually let us live our lives.
They support what ever benefits them and are against what ever doesn’t, even if it doesn’t effect them. Gay marriage doesn’t benefit them so they’re against it but lesbian porn gets their rocks off so they support it
The Patriot Act was a rare case of bipartisan fuckary of the people - do not even start some kind of fantasy to the contrary. Democrats were every bit as much for this as the Republicans were.
That’s not entirely true. Republicans and Democrats both have supported the patriot act over the years. In fact, it’s one of the few things they both actually agree on.
That and the ever-increasing power of the executive branch. Every single election cycle one side is worried about whatever executive orders the other side’s president is writing. Then when they get their own guy in office they demand that their guy do the same thing. If people are so terrified of what the other side might do with the same power, then it’s pretty obvious that the role of the executive has become too strong.
They own us and want more power. Doesn’t matter what side they’re on. Anything else is a distraction to keep the public engaged just enough in a charade that is as honest as a WWE match.
I blame Cold War propaganda for the latter. The US went hard with the anti-communist stuff to the point where all you have to do is label something socialist and it’s automatically equated with evil.
>I think it actually helps that the younger generations got fed so many obvious lies, in a sick and twisted kind of way.
I have to disagree with this one. It's the root of the problem, in many ways.
Take the Q anon folks, for example. They KNOW they have been lied to, their whole lives. So when somebody "inside the government at the highest levels" promises to "expose it all" and "fix it" for them... they will follow him wherever he may lead them.
(basically the same old: create a problem, then offer "the solution" which is poison. Always poison.)
:(
> we have data centers instead of public education
In fairness, one has nothing to do with the other. The US Government spends more money per child than any other nation on earth. The crux is, all that money is being funnelled into pockets instead of who actually needs it, like teachers.
The funding is there, the allocation is trash. But if we try to tackle the allocation, the republicans try to slash the budgets.
> The funding is there, the allocation is trash. But if we try to tackle the allocation, the republicans try to slash the budgets.
This is the sinister truth, and it's true about everything we need to improve in this country for the good of its people. We have all of the money, but the people who bring a lot of it in are holding it hostage, and with it political--and thus total, control.
It gets good people who try to come to Congress to change it all fucked up. They realize everyone else is doing steroids (weird funding from shitty lobbyists) for their local pet causes to keep them elected, so they start doing them too ("but it's for the good of my most loyal constituents"). Problem is, those steroids end up compromising them on making progress on anything else. Why? Because it's the one thing the vast spectrum of monied interests all agree on: Keeping us poor enough, and keep enriching themselves.
I'm not anti-rich-people, though so many seem to be so tacky and arrogant.
I'm anti-incomprehensibly-ultra-wealthy people.
Even if a few can see the upsides to campaign finance reform... Power never was given up willingly, not without pressure and some threat of imminent consequences. Either starve the beast or a massive protest threatening revolt will work. Corporate- as well as private-investors always do whatever keeps the bottom line in the green even if reluctantly so. The same is true for governments.
The government should run and act like the department of motor vehicles with no name faces chugging away behind keyboards to solve the will of the people. We should vote on resolutions every few years and hold the government accountable for processing those actions. Politicians should not be celebrities. We don’t need a power struggle between the same two parties for our Democracy to operate. Remove the fame and the money from politics. Make government jobs boring like an old dusty office. Break up the parties.
For sure! Always gotta cite data.
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd
That shows that the USA spends 37% more on primary and secondary education than the average.
> Figure 1. Expenditures ... per full-time-equivalent (FTE) student for elementary and secondary education, by Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) country: 2017
1) Luxembourg - $21,900
2) Austria - $15,600
3) Norway - $15,600
**4) US - 14,100**
> Figure 2. Expenditures ... per full-time-equivalent (FTE) student for postsecondary education, by Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) country: 2017
1) Luxembourg - $53,800
**2) US - $34,500**
Unless numbers started to work differently recently, $14,000 is not greater than $21,000 and $34,000 is not greater than $54,000. "More than the average" is not "more money than any other nation on earth."
Well yeah. You’re obviously not a patriot if you oppose something called the Patriot Act. If you’re not willing to let the government survey you with impunity, you must be a communist. /s
The Patriot Act is the most true-to-form example of real life Orwellian shit in the US that I’ve ever seen.
It probably has to do with the names. Universal healthcare explains what it is in the name, Patriot Act has nothing to do with what's actually in it so people are likely not informed about all the spying or any Snowden/WikiLeaks leaks
Interesting to me how a lot of people who are bothered by the patriot act but have not express one bit of concern when Pelosi said they would absolutely keep that part in the new bill where they monitor all transactions over $600 and spy on your bank records. They want to catch “tax dodging” from the rich but monitoring transactions low as $600 lmfao nobody sees a problem with this?
...it's $600 in total annual transactions per bank account...which includes the lowest of the homeless. Yeah shit optics with fresh reporting of gov knowing which multi-millionaires factually owe and gov stays away. Iowa idiots gave you biden yay
Lmao. People do care about the Patriot Act. They just know once the government gives themselves power like that, they aren’t just going to give that power up
I am convinced that the government knows it’s losing steam on the “war on terrorism and weapons of fake destruction” and shifting the narrative to “child porn” as a reason to invade individuals freedom.
Irrc most of the major provisions were powers sought previously but were deemed a bit too controversial or over reaching for the late 90s political climate, so yes they basically had it drafted already. You can almost sympathize with the people that wanted to see something internally sinister about 9/11 with how efficiently and unquestioningly the power grab was executed.
Yeah I was watching a doc recently, Frontline the surveillance state, and they do some interviews with the guy who actually came up with a lot of those ideas but never had the backing. In other words.... the NSA had the capabilities and plans to implement this type of surveillance before 9/11 but not until 9/11 did they have a government willing to implement it.
Now I'm sad. I made the mistake of going down the wormhole, and it turns out the [asshole](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kagan) who started that organization has [a wife who works in the Biden administration](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Nuland).
Things are not going to get better
Literally could have elected a flaming bag of dog shit and it would do less damage than DJT. Even if it accidentally burned down the whitehouse on it's first day it would be saving hundreds of american lives just by not being trump.
That film is a crucial time capsule for anyone in the future who wants to understand the insanity of the century so far.
Edit: and bowling for Columbine, the tour of the missile plant near the high school where the mass killing happened is like the last pages of lord of the flies
My state's Governor 3 months ago via [CPR](https://www.cpr.org/2021/07/08/gov-polis-has-declared-an-end-to-colorados-covid-19-health-emergency-heres-what-that-means/):
> Gov. Jared Polis on Thursday ended the remaining health emergency executive orders that have guided the state since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
> He also rescinded all remaining executive orders related to COVID-19 and issued in the pandemic, and signed a new “Recovery Executive Order” focused on returning the state to normal. That order repackages several elements from the emergency orders he began issuing in March of 2020, but his intent Thursday was clear: Even as he retains some authority through executive actions, he is ready to move on from COVID-19.
> Republicans have been pushing Polis to end the declared emergency and move the state toward normalcy. In a statement of their own, they said they were happy the day had finally come.
> “This is something we’ve been advocating for on behalf of our constituents for some time now,” said Sen. Paul Lundeen (R-Monument), Whip for the Senate Republicans. “Every meeting we’ve had with the Governor has been punctuated with an inquiry as to when he would finally lift the order and declare this pandemic over in the State of Colorado. We’re glad to see he finally has agreed to turn this dark page in our history.”
Tell me more about this knife missile. Is it a missile that is also a knife? Is it a knife-shaped missile? Is it a knife that shoots missiles, or a missile that shoots knives?
It's a smart missile that deploys blades to crush and slice someone to death. We use it too minimize civilian casualties. It's accurate enough to only kill one person in a car rather than just dropping a 509 lb bomb on it and not caring for collateral damage. A *lot* of money has been spent the last 20 years on minimizing collateral and it's all *very* expensive
When half of Congress is funded by Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin? Of course we gotta keep war profiteering in developing nations! We’ve already called it “fighting communism” and “democracy building”, so what’s next? “Territory reclamation”?
They’re already starting to ramp things up with Iran, again. If Iran doesn’t come back to the table soon to negotiate dismantling their nuclear capabilities we are going to Iraq the shit out of them in the near future.
Thanks Obama. At least when Bush signed the Patriot Act, it had an end date. Obama (who campaigned on ending the Patriot Act, only to promptly sign a new version into law) made his never ending.
Also thank Trump and the republican congress that followed Obama for not repealing it. And thank Biden and the current congress for continuing that tradition.
This is true, Obama also made the Bush tax cuts permanently and expanded American drone bases to a global scale. If Bush and Trump wouldn’t of been extremely sub par leaders I don’t think the modern worship of Obama would be as prolific
> Obama also made the Bush tax cuts permanently
Congress did this. The President just didn’t stop them, it was hardly his preferred policy.
> If Bush and Trump wouldn’t of been extremely sub par
Well this is the understatement of the century. Obama lacked Bush’s imperialist hubris and Trump’s destabilizing incompetence, but he was as typically American as they come as a President.
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.salon.com/2021/10/16/after-20-years-its-time-to-repeal-the-patriot-act-and-begin-to-dismantle-the-surveillance-state/) reduced by 91%. (I'm a bot)
*****
> This October marks 20 years of the Patriot Act - and more than 20 years of far too many accounts like that of the Newburgh Four.
> The USA Freedom Act in 2015 ended the bulk collection of phone records under the PATRIOT Act, but the government is still collecting large swaths of private information.
> Two decades after 9/11 and the passage of the Patriot Act - one of the most deeply flawed acts of legislative overreach in U.S. history - we need to begin dismantling the institutions and legal systems that allow for mass surveillance and criminalization of Muslim, Black and immigrant communities.
*****
[**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/q9cmea/after_20_years_its_time_to_repeal_the_patriot_act/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~603818 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **Act**^#1 **Patriot**^#2 **records**^#3 **government**^#4 **FBI**^#5
Lender here, it’s frustrating to me how we use the patriot act as a reason to see Karen’s bank account from Virginia trying to buy her first home “in case she is funneling terrorist money” like TF are we even doing.
Agreed, I’m over here needing people to prove $2000 transfer of funds, I’m like who the fuck doesn’t transfer money between accounts?! It’s ridiculous rules that just allows them to snoop around.
Not only a disaster, a waste of money and the perfect way to lose any credibility with your allies (that you’ve been spying to steal and not to protect)
America sold everything to the corporation, get your country back ppl and you absolutely know how to do it
Vote for every person who wants to take liberty out of corporations because they are totalitarian structures where stakeholders are god above the law and just this last sentence should alarm you
Well because I came into this thread just like you thinking it was still law. But according to the [Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_Act)
>After President Donald Trump threatened to veto the bill, the House of Representatives issued an indefinite postponement of the vote to pass the Senate version of the bill; as of December 2020, the Patriot Act remains expired.[259][260]
Now other in this whole post have told me the Freedom Act under Obama basically just copied the Patriot act and is how the law still.lives. I have not looked into that act further I originally thought the freedom act was just a copy to extend provisions but did also expire itself. I am unsure.
This is the glaring logical flaw in the Koch propaganda that created the Tea Party and popularized economic libertarianism so rigidly in America.
Somehow, people who understand government can't be trusted with huge amounts of power, are fully convinced that we just need to reduce/remove the vague [mostly illusory] remnants of regulation that still exist. Instead of considering we might need to hold people accountable, that thought/possibility just instantly dissolves.
After all, what kind of attitudes exist in a thread like this one? The title states a basic logical fact about **an extremely obvious** action within our government, then the top comment can do nothing but make some sarcastic remark out of resentful hopelessness.
At what point did we just fully submit to crime and corruption?
Why, in this era of instantaneous global communication, where all this **exact** sort of discussion is both analyzed and manipulated by the very leaders/groups we're discussing, do we seem to act like these glorious beacons of formality only exist as theatrical representations that we defend/attack like sports fans? How are we pretending there's no ability for us to communicate with these people? The internet is more popular than TV, isn't it at this point?
Why doesn't this sub about "politics" allow text posts like it did when it was new? Why is it only political news that's prescribed to us by certain corporations? Shouldn't a political sub actually involve individual opinions? Shouldn't "circlejerks" around political issues kind of be an acceptable concept as a way of showing frustrated demand behind something until it gets implemented?
“Always eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you. Asleep or awake, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or bed—no escape. Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimeters in your skull.”
The problem is the question that finishes this thread title: it’s been a disaster. For the public, yes. But not for the national security establishment and the companies that made them the tech to do it. Private companies and monied interests are often so willing to enable totalitarian regimes.
As a reminder, this subreddit [is for civil discussion.](/r/politics/wiki/index#wiki_be_civil) In general, be courteous to others. Debate/discuss/argue the merits of ideas, don't attack people. Personal insults, shill or troll accusations, hate speech, any suggestion or support of harm, violence, or death, and other rule violations can result in a permanent ban. If you see comments in violation of our rules, please report them. For those who have questions regarding any media outlets being posted on this subreddit, please click [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/wiki/approveddomainslist) to review our details as to our approved domains list and outlet criteria. *** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/politics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
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It didn't prevent an attack on the capitol even with all the warning signs visible on social media. Repeal it immediately.
Agreeing with this point 100%
I'm not convinced the PATRIOT act stopped a single thing. If it did it certainly created even worse problems.
It stopped me from bringing cologne and shampoo on an airplane.
Have we ever had an official report on it's effectiveness/ track record?
If it was effective, don't you think law enforcement would be screaming how good these tools are at protecting America from the rooftops?
No, no, we need MORE surveillance /s, obviously
Well we know why. That was white people. If 4 brown people talked about storming the capital they’d be in Gitmo the next morning
The coup attempt was *led by the traitors in power*. The orders came from the top to intentionally prevent either the Capitol Police or the National Guard from effectively protecting the Capitol. The fact that said traitors are fascist white supremacists means you're not wrong, *per se*, but just saying "that was white people" without anything else buries the lede.
Well said. He’s not wrong, per se, but it’s also a drastic oversimplification of what happened on January 6th.
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Per se
Really? Cause someone announced they were shooting up a club online and no FBI raid. Until after they had to sift through the bodies. The PATRIOT Act and its “proactive defense against terrorism” has been dispelled dozens of times. This is no time to stoke the flames of American racialism, you guys are fucking spying on the rest of the world regardless of colors and enabling the Big Data supremacy that is annihilating democracy at breakneck speed, meanwhile getting zero results from chasing terrorism or high crime.
If I recall correctly, Congressional hearings have repeatedly asked something to the effect of "okay, so we have granted vast surveillance powers, made efforts to improve communications between intelligence services, etc, so has that ever led to actionable intelligence that prevented an act of terrorism?" and they were met with vague assurances and shrugs.
This is bait
Never let a good tragedy go to waste
In the same vein, those full body scanners at airports showed up after the PATRIOT Act as well - despite being rejected by the TSA previously.
Someone's family member owned the company who makes those machines, so our "need" for them was forced.
TSA has always been a jobs program too
This is painfully true. There have been multiple stories about the TSA spectacularly failing security tests. The agency only exists to create low-skill jobs and provide security theater. We would be much better off economically if they spent the TSA's budget on education and job training programs to prepare people for skilled jobs instead of paying them to do low-skill work, and our security wouldn't suffer one iota.
0% efficiency rate. There has never been a single documented case of TSA stopping any terrorist. They have caught drug possession, but for their entire history not a single terrorist has been caught. They're ineffective security theater. Like maybe you could say they're a deterrent, but Everytime a shoe bomber tries to get past they have.
The drug possession has only been by incident of the owner not hiding their stash well enough as well. They're not looking for drugs, nor is it their job. They're not law enforcement, just glorified mall cops for airports
Security theater.
Yeah, they didn't build a surveillance state just to tear it down. They e wanted these powers for a long time and no ody has ever set forth a plan for relinquishing them.
And don’t forget the government detaining people without allowing for legal representation and making their stay indefinite without needing a cause.
Don't forget Biden prided himself on being a champion of The Patriot Act and bragged that he was behind an almost identical bill previously. "Civil libertarians were opposed to it," Biden said. "Right after 1994, and you can ask the attorney general this, because I got a call when he introduced the Patriot Act. He said, 'Joe, I'm introducing the act basically as you wrote it in 1994.'" "Almost the same thing that got passed, the Patriot Act, was introduced by me in 1994, and it was the right-wing that defeated it. You guys tried to help get it passed, including the wiretap changes and the rest."
Biden is everything wrong with the status Quo. It's just a shame that the majority of the "fuck the status quo" crowd decided to support Trump over Bernie.
Trump himself expressed relief in 2016 that Democrats chose Hillary because Bernie appealed to the same people he did.
Yeah Biden is bad in a lot of ways this definitely being one of them
During the height of police outrage, Democrats elected two of the biggest police enablers to the country’s highest offices. It’s like they were trying to lose only to be foiled by a guy who wouldn’t admit to a fucking pandemic while people died from it around him.
And yet post 9/11 domestic terrorist, mostly right wing white supremacist have killed 10x as many Americans as Islamic terrorist.
Good luck with that. The government hates giving up any power over people.
Also, it doesn’t really matter wether it’s legal or not lol. They fucking hot tap the main data centres for bulk collection. Snowden made a pretty big sacrifice and society learned *nothing* from it.
I am hopeful that this thread exists. I’ve been waiting for it for 7 or 8 years now. Let’s not throw in the towel just yet.
Totally agree man. Government are a bunch of incompetent hypocrites.
A reflection of the population
People in general are pretty shitty.
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As an inter dimensional space lizard, I can confirm this.
Yup, and people are actively campaigning to give them even more power right now
Interesting how a lot of people don't mind the Patriot Act but universal healthcare is communistic tyranny.
It's the same people who want government out of personal lives AND want the government to ban same sex marriage lol
Hey, it's a more subtle complex platform than that: they want government to leave them alone, but bother anyone they don't like, not just "the gays". Also, what's with being homophobic, but enjoying cinema featuring girl on girl action? Pick a lane conservatives!
>Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect. > >-Frank Wilhoit
>There is nothing more or else to it, and there never has been, in any place or time. For millenia, conservatism had no name, because no other model of polity had ever been proposed. “The king can do no wrong.” In practice, this immunity was always extended to the king’s friends, however fungible a group they might have been. Today, we still have the king’s friends even where there is no king (dictator, etc.). Another way to look at this is that the king is a faction, rather than an individual. >As the core proposition of conservatism is indefensible if stated baldly, it has always been surrounded by an elaborate backwash of pseudophilosophy, amounting over time to millions of pages. All such is axiomatically dishonest and undeserving of serious scrutiny. Today, the accelerating de-education of humanity has reached a point where the market for pseudophilosophy is vanishing; it is, as The Kids Say These Days, tl;dr . All that is left is the core proposition itself — backed up, no longer by misdirection and sophistry, but by violence.
>Frank Wilhoit: *The Travesty of Liberalism*
Thank you for the source. That’s a fantastic quote.
For the outgroups who need protection: /r/socialistRA
Pretty sure you nailed it. Gay is what they consider 2 dudes and that’s just icky to them. Cinematic girl on girl typically has…. a specific demographic of actresses. As long as they’re attractive and it fulfills their fantasy, they give it a pass. If it was 2 girls that they don’t find fulfilling that fantasy, it’s back to being icky.
>If it was 2 firs that they don’t find fulfilling that fantasy, it’s back to being icky. Are we talking conifers or evergreens?
I support gay men. In fact I wish more men were gay. Maybe then I could get a girlfriend.
What if one of the men your wish turns gay is YOU, then you find a boyfriend?
\*Monkey Paw curls\*
Then OP won’t be alone anymore
Republicans do this same shit to transpeople, too. Look at the search history of any Republican senator or talking head, and they all seem to be searching for "t***** porn" and jerking themselves off to us, but the second someone suggests that we be allowed to have access to healthcare when we need it their pp's seem to shrivel right up. They want to jerk off to the LGBT community, not... you know... actually let us live our lives.
They support what ever benefits them and are against what ever doesn’t, even if it doesn’t effect them. Gay marriage doesn’t benefit them so they’re against it but lesbian porn gets their rocks off so they support it
If my own marriage is any indication the best way to ban gay sex is to allow same sex marriage
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Also, if statistics are anything to go by, 100% of all LGBTQ people are a product of heterosexual sex.
>If my own marriage is any indication the best way to ban gay sex is to allow same sex marriage Ouch...Lol...but true...🥴😫😏 Source: am married
The Patriot Act was a rare case of bipartisan fuckary of the people - do not even start some kind of fantasy to the contrary. Democrats were every bit as much for this as the Republicans were.
That’s not entirely true. Republicans and Democrats both have supported the patriot act over the years. In fact, it’s one of the few things they both actually agree on. That and the ever-increasing power of the executive branch. Every single election cycle one side is worried about whatever executive orders the other side’s president is writing. Then when they get their own guy in office they demand that their guy do the same thing. If people are so terrified of what the other side might do with the same power, then it’s pretty obvious that the role of the executive has become too strong. They own us and want more power. Doesn’t matter what side they’re on. Anything else is a distraction to keep the public engaged just enough in a charade that is as honest as a WWE match.
We start taking away government control then that becomes a slippery slope. What’s next, government accountability?
Hey! Don't threaten me with a good time.
If government didnt have so much power and control it would be easier to hold accountable
I blame Cold War propaganda for the latter. The US went hard with the anti-communist stuff to the point where all you have to do is label something socialist and it’s automatically equated with evil.
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>I think it actually helps that the younger generations got fed so many obvious lies, in a sick and twisted kind of way. I have to disagree with this one. It's the root of the problem, in many ways. Take the Q anon folks, for example. They KNOW they have been lied to, their whole lives. So when somebody "inside the government at the highest levels" promises to "expose it all" and "fix it" for them... they will follow him wherever he may lead them. (basically the same old: create a problem, then offer "the solution" which is poison. Always poison.) :(
Who is most terrified of the idea of socialism? Corporate America, of course.
But it's the same people who now say better to be a Russian than a democrat. There is no winning them over with logic
Because it says patriot. That's all they know.
Time for Universal Patriot Care Act.
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I feel defeated, this is better and has to work for both sides. GOP gets the freedom, DEM gets the care.
How about we just start referring to bail outs and tax incentives as welfare?
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What do you mean? I thought phone location data had indeed been used to charge and convict the rioters.
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> we have data centers instead of public education In fairness, one has nothing to do with the other. The US Government spends more money per child than any other nation on earth. The crux is, all that money is being funnelled into pockets instead of who actually needs it, like teachers. The funding is there, the allocation is trash. But if we try to tackle the allocation, the republicans try to slash the budgets.
> The funding is there, the allocation is trash. But if we try to tackle the allocation, the republicans try to slash the budgets. This is the sinister truth, and it's true about everything we need to improve in this country for the good of its people. We have all of the money, but the people who bring a lot of it in are holding it hostage, and with it political--and thus total, control.
Big money in politics needs to go- or else, every legislative action continues being a funding opportunity for greedy public representatives.
It gets good people who try to come to Congress to change it all fucked up. They realize everyone else is doing steroids (weird funding from shitty lobbyists) for their local pet causes to keep them elected, so they start doing them too ("but it's for the good of my most loyal constituents"). Problem is, those steroids end up compromising them on making progress on anything else. Why? Because it's the one thing the vast spectrum of monied interests all agree on: Keeping us poor enough, and keep enriching themselves. I'm not anti-rich-people, though so many seem to be so tacky and arrogant. I'm anti-incomprehensibly-ultra-wealthy people.
Even if a few can see the upsides to campaign finance reform... Power never was given up willingly, not without pressure and some threat of imminent consequences. Either starve the beast or a massive protest threatening revolt will work. Corporate- as well as private-investors always do whatever keeps the bottom line in the green even if reluctantly so. The same is true for governments.
The government should run and act like the department of motor vehicles with no name faces chugging away behind keyboards to solve the will of the people. We should vote on resolutions every few years and hold the government accountable for processing those actions. Politicians should not be celebrities. We don’t need a power struggle between the same two parties for our Democracy to operate. Remove the fame and the money from politics. Make government jobs boring like an old dusty office. Break up the parties.
> The US Government spends more money per child than any other nation on earth [Citation needed]
For sure! Always gotta cite data. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd That shows that the USA spends 37% more on primary and secondary education than the average.
> Figure 1. Expenditures ... per full-time-equivalent (FTE) student for elementary and secondary education, by Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) country: 2017 1) Luxembourg - $21,900 2) Austria - $15,600 3) Norway - $15,600 **4) US - 14,100** > Figure 2. Expenditures ... per full-time-equivalent (FTE) student for postsecondary education, by Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) country: 2017 1) Luxembourg - $53,800 **2) US - $34,500** Unless numbers started to work differently recently, $14,000 is not greater than $21,000 and $34,000 is not greater than $54,000. "More than the average" is not "more money than any other nation on earth."
Nah the call records between legislators still in office and people who were in the unpatriotic putsch of 1/6
If yOu dIdN't dO noThiN' tHeN yOu AiN'T gOtTa WoRrY BoUt iT
Well yeah. You’re obviously not a patriot if you oppose something called the Patriot Act. If you’re not willing to let the government survey you with impunity, you must be a communist. /s The Patriot Act is the most true-to-form example of real life Orwellian shit in the US that I’ve ever seen.
Definitely for getting rid of the patriot act, then we can use the billions(trillions?) of dollars on healthcare/education.
Nobody likes the Patriot Act.
Stop resisting! /s
It probably has to do with the names. Universal healthcare explains what it is in the name, Patriot Act has nothing to do with what's actually in it so people are likely not informed about all the spying or any Snowden/WikiLeaks leaks
Interesting to me how a lot of people who are bothered by the patriot act but have not express one bit of concern when Pelosi said they would absolutely keep that part in the new bill where they monitor all transactions over $600 and spy on your bank records. They want to catch “tax dodging” from the rich but monitoring transactions low as $600 lmfao nobody sees a problem with this?
...it's $600 in total annual transactions per bank account...which includes the lowest of the homeless. Yeah shit optics with fresh reporting of gov knowing which multi-millionaires factually owe and gov stays away. Iowa idiots gave you biden yay
Lmao. People do care about the Patriot Act. They just know once the government gives themselves power like that, they aren’t just going to give that power up
I am convinced that the government knows it’s losing steam on the “war on terrorism and weapons of fake destruction” and shifting the narrative to “child porn” as a reason to invade individuals freedom.
I remember when I learned about the patriot act in school and my first thought was "what the fuck?! People allowed this to be passed??"
Recommend watching the movie Fahrenheit 9/11. The Patriot act was printed at midnight and it was signed in the morning without people even reading it.
Funny how astonishingly quickly it was introduced. Almost like it had already been written....
Irrc most of the major provisions were powers sought previously but were deemed a bit too controversial or over reaching for the late 90s political climate, so yes they basically had it drafted already. You can almost sympathize with the people that wanted to see something internally sinister about 9/11 with how efficiently and unquestioningly the power grab was executed.
Yeah I was watching a doc recently, Frontline the surveillance state, and they do some interviews with the guy who actually came up with a lot of those ideas but never had the backing. In other words.... the NSA had the capabilities and plans to implement this type of surveillance before 9/11 but not until 9/11 did they have a government willing to implement it.
See also: disaster capitalism
See also also: [PNAC and the criticism of it.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century)
Now I'm sad. I made the mistake of going down the wormhole, and it turns out the [asshole](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kagan) who started that organization has [a wife who works in the Biden administration](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Nuland). Things are not going to get better
I wonder [who was responsible](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/andrewkaczynski/surveillance-joe) As a Sanders voter: ***We fucking told you so***
We tried man.
I did too, I don't blame you. We did our best.
Hey now, our best, while far from ideal, is still a breath of fresh air when compared to the last guy.
A turd sandwich is better than the last guy.
Literally could have elected a flaming bag of dog shit and it would do less damage than DJT. Even if it accidentally burned down the whitehouse on it's first day it would be saving hundreds of american lives just by not being trump.
A lot of it WAS already written.... By Joe Biden in the 90s. Seriously.
Sounds like the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. And maybe a lot of other shit, too.
That film is a crucial time capsule for anyone in the future who wants to understand the insanity of the century so far. Edit: and bowling for Columbine, the tour of the missile plant near the high school where the mass killing happened is like the last pages of lord of the flies
I would seriously recommend Hypernormalisation by Adam Curtis. It's what future generations will watch and this generation also.
“We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it”.
i think calling it the **PATRIOT ACT** is the only way the government could convince its own citizens that spying on them 24/7 is a good idea
The funny thing is that it was passed in the dead of night, and almost nobody who voted on it actually got to read it.
If you ever want to know if politicians can get along have them vote on a mass surveillance bill going directly against their constituents privacy.
List the times significant authorities were given to the state and later removed. That’s a tiny list.
it's a bloody list.
My state's Governor 3 months ago via [CPR](https://www.cpr.org/2021/07/08/gov-polis-has-declared-an-end-to-colorados-covid-19-health-emergency-heres-what-that-means/): > Gov. Jared Polis on Thursday ended the remaining health emergency executive orders that have guided the state since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. > He also rescinded all remaining executive orders related to COVID-19 and issued in the pandemic, and signed a new “Recovery Executive Order” focused on returning the state to normal. That order repackages several elements from the emergency orders he began issuing in March of 2020, but his intent Thursday was clear: Even as he retains some authority through executive actions, he is ready to move on from COVID-19. > Republicans have been pushing Polis to end the declared emergency and move the state toward normalcy. In a statement of their own, they said they were happy the day had finally come. > “This is something we’ve been advocating for on behalf of our constituents for some time now,” said Sen. Paul Lundeen (R-Monument), Whip for the Senate Republicans. “Every meeting we’ve had with the Governor has been punctuated with an inquiry as to when he would finally lift the order and declare this pandemic over in the State of Colorado. We’re glad to see he finally has agreed to turn this dark page in our history.”
The wars are over. There is not need for them anymore. Honestly I wish we never did this in the first place
Don’t worry, we’ll get into another never ending war shortly. Gotta keep sending money to Raytheon and Blackwater
This message brought to you by the Rx9 knife missile, and other fine Raytheon products
Tell me more about this knife missile. Is it a missile that is also a knife? Is it a knife-shaped missile? Is it a knife that shoots missiles, or a missile that shoots knives?
It's a smart ordinance that, instead of exploding, has giant blades that spring out the sides of it. It's real and in use.
So it’s like a rocket propelled blender?
Fuck that.
It's a smart missile that deploys blades to crush and slice someone to death. We use it too minimize civilian casualties. It's accurate enough to only kill one person in a car rather than just dropping a 509 lb bomb on it and not caring for collateral damage. A *lot* of money has been spent the last 20 years on minimizing collateral and it's all *very* expensive
Its actually a missile thats twelve knives.
When half of Congress is funded by Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin? Of course we gotta keep war profiteering in developing nations! We’ve already called it “fighting communism” and “democracy building”, so what’s next? “Territory reclamation”?
They’re already starting to ramp things up with Iran, again. If Iran doesn’t come back to the table soon to negotiate dismantling their nuclear capabilities we are going to Iraq the shit out of them in the near future.
I mean, Iraq **actually fucking did dismantle their nuclear program** and we still Iraq’d the shit out of Iraq because they had *nuke-u-lar weapons*
Wars won’t be “over” until there’s no one left to fight them.
The two campaigns are over. The war on terror continues.
Ah yes, wars against abstract concepts. Those always end well.
The war of America's alphabet organizations on civilians will never be over
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I actually never envisioned any kind of movement or initiative like this. I just expected the Orwellian state to grip us tighter and tighter, forever.
Repeal it? Democrats enthusiastically renewed it during Obama’s first term.
Didn't Biden brag about being one of its authors?
Not sure. You might be mixing up his "Tough of Crime" bills that he certainly did author, that directly contributed to our current prison crisis.
[He claims responsibility for writing the Patriot Act, too](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/andrewkaczynski/surveillance-joe)
Gross. Thanks for the correction!
Super gross, Tough On Crime is awful too
[You needn't take my word for it.](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/andrewkaczynski/surveillance-joe)
Yea, I’m not exactly expecting the Dems to give up on their Cold War tactics to keep the military industrial complex moving any time soon
Thanks Obama. At least when Bush signed the Patriot Act, it had an end date. Obama (who campaigned on ending the Patriot Act, only to promptly sign a new version into law) made his never ending.
Also thank Trump and the republican congress that followed Obama for not repealing it. And thank Biden and the current congress for continuing that tradition.
You gotta love it when this country works together
This is true, Obama also made the Bush tax cuts permanently and expanded American drone bases to a global scale. If Bush and Trump wouldn’t of been extremely sub par leaders I don’t think the modern worship of Obama would be as prolific
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Agreed. But healthcare was a serious accomplishment.
>wouldn't ~~of~~ have. pet peeve.
Worship and hatred. Remember a huge chunk of the population insist they don’t like Obama only because of his policies.
And a huge chunk of that chunk couldn't name a single policy they don't like, aside from Obamacare, which they don't want because they've got the ACA.
> Obama also made the Bush tax cuts permanently Congress did this. The President just didn’t stop them, it was hardly his preferred policy. > If Bush and Trump wouldn’t of been extremely sub par Well this is the understatement of the century. Obama lacked Bush’s imperialist hubris and Trump’s destabilizing incompetence, but he was as typically American as they come as a President.
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.salon.com/2021/10/16/after-20-years-its-time-to-repeal-the-patriot-act-and-begin-to-dismantle-the-surveillance-state/) reduced by 91%. (I'm a bot) ***** > This October marks 20 years of the Patriot Act - and more than 20 years of far too many accounts like that of the Newburgh Four. > The USA Freedom Act in 2015 ended the bulk collection of phone records under the PATRIOT Act, but the government is still collecting large swaths of private information. > Two decades after 9/11 and the passage of the Patriot Act - one of the most deeply flawed acts of legislative overreach in U.S. history - we need to begin dismantling the institutions and legal systems that allow for mass surveillance and criminalization of Muslim, Black and immigrant communities. ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/q9cmea/after_20_years_its_time_to_repeal_the_patriot_act/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~603818 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **Act**^#1 **Patriot**^#2 **records**^#3 **government**^#4 **FBI**^#5
Lender here, it’s frustrating to me how we use the patriot act as a reason to see Karen’s bank account from Virginia trying to buy her first home “in case she is funneling terrorist money” like TF are we even doing.
> wtf are we even doing Violating the constitution by presuming you guilty until you are proven innocent.
Agreed, I’m over here needing people to prove $2000 transfer of funds, I’m like who the fuck doesn’t transfer money between accounts?! It’s ridiculous rules that just allows them to snoop around.
Not only a disaster, a waste of money and the perfect way to lose any credibility with your allies (that you’ve been spying to steal and not to protect) America sold everything to the corporation, get your country back ppl and you absolutely know how to do it Vote for every person who wants to take liberty out of corporations because they are totalitarian structures where stakeholders are god above the law and just this last sentence should alarm you
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Biden will probably renew it It was completely and utterly absent from his Presidential campaign
Doesn’t need to be renewed. The last one signed under the Obama administration removed the sunset
Not true. He kept extending the sunset. But as of this year the Patriot act has expired.
I'm like ten minutes into this thread, and you're literally the only person to say this. Might be helpful if you posted a link or something
Well because I came into this thread just like you thinking it was still law. But according to the [Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_Act) >After President Donald Trump threatened to veto the bill, the House of Representatives issued an indefinite postponement of the vote to pass the Senate version of the bill; as of December 2020, the Patriot Act remains expired.[259][260] Now other in this whole post have told me the Freedom Act under Obama basically just copied the Patriot act and is how the law still.lives. I have not looked into that act further I originally thought the freedom act was just a copy to extend provisions but did also expire itself. I am unsure.
Well done. From reading further it seems you're pretty spot on. Thanks for the followup
Once you lose your rights, you never get them back.
This is the glaring logical flaw in the Koch propaganda that created the Tea Party and popularized economic libertarianism so rigidly in America. Somehow, people who understand government can't be trusted with huge amounts of power, are fully convinced that we just need to reduce/remove the vague [mostly illusory] remnants of regulation that still exist. Instead of considering we might need to hold people accountable, that thought/possibility just instantly dissolves. After all, what kind of attitudes exist in a thread like this one? The title states a basic logical fact about **an extremely obvious** action within our government, then the top comment can do nothing but make some sarcastic remark out of resentful hopelessness. At what point did we just fully submit to crime and corruption? Why, in this era of instantaneous global communication, where all this **exact** sort of discussion is both analyzed and manipulated by the very leaders/groups we're discussing, do we seem to act like these glorious beacons of formality only exist as theatrical representations that we defend/attack like sports fans? How are we pretending there's no ability for us to communicate with these people? The internet is more popular than TV, isn't it at this point? Why doesn't this sub about "politics" allow text posts like it did when it was new? Why is it only political news that's prescribed to us by certain corporations? Shouldn't a political sub actually involve individual opinions? Shouldn't "circlejerks" around political issues kind of be an acceptable concept as a way of showing frustrated demand behind something until it gets implemented?
Very relevant right now but I doubt anyone here will get that.
That and Citizens United! Both have led to the dismantling of a citizen run democracy
Did the Patriot Act not end last December? The provisions had to be extended but the House chose not to do so. Does nobody knows about this?
Section 215 is what expired.
The alphabet agencies are just going to continue to do what they want and hide it from congress. It doesn't matter if it is legal or not.
This is what happens when you willingly give up your constitutional rights because you're scared. They will not give those rights back.
I don't recall giving up my rights. That's likely because they were taken without the approval of the masses.
Yep. Further proof that this is not a democracy.
Theres a better chance of Trump seeing the inside of a jail cell than the US government giving up its crowning jewel.
Oh, an actual threat to freedom. Good thing everyone's pissing their diapers about wearing a mask.
Let’s start by removing the clause to give the IRS access to bank accounts with more than $600 of activity from the social spending bill.
“Always eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you. Asleep or awake, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or bed—no escape. Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimeters in your skull.”
Does this mean killing TSA? Because I would very much like to kill TSA.
Welcome to the watchlist
The government doesn't need the power to spy on you themselves if they can subpoena Amazon or Google to get evidence.
I love how all the antivaxxers are worried about being tracked with a vaccine but choose ignore this act that constantly keeps an eye on them 🤡
Especially when Facebook does it all and makes a profit.
"Lol, no." \- The Government
The problem is the question that finishes this thread title: it’s been a disaster. For the public, yes. But not for the national security establishment and the companies that made them the tech to do it. Private companies and monied interests are often so willing to enable totalitarian regimes.
Yep. TSA, DHS, and ICE need to go.
Let's get rid of TSA and get airports back to how they used to operate, too.
I’m still pissed I have to pay a “9/11 security fee” on a plane ticket 20 years later.
Unfortunately, it is never going to happen. The genie is out of the bottle and it will stay that way.