[ss108]

This isn't new, but most Republicans didn't care when the brunt of this was felt by Muslims and others. Only when a far-right politician who plays to white supremacist tropes wanted to buy political dirt from an American adversary who was also emgaged in a digital misinformation campaign against the politician's opponent did they start to act like this was some abuse of power.

Meanwhile, during peak "War on Terror", they routinely accused people who raised concerns about law enforcement abuses of being unpatriotic "bleeding hearts"

[philippejara]

And now most democrats don't care when the brunt* of this is being felt by those who they are against and seem to be in love with the organizations doing the acts they once protested as long as it is against their political opponents. During new revelations of impropriety of the FBI, at times admitted by the FBI themselves as incredible as it seems, they routinely accuse people who raise concerns about its actions as being unpatriotic "russian assets", as they have been doing with zealous fervor for over half a decade already.

I completely agree with your position that the stance on the war on terror was abhorrent - although I wouldn't claim it to be as uniquely republican as you make it out to be, democrat warmongers were and are aplenty, and it was under obama that the biggest surveillance scandals of this century occurred-. All this shows is that both sides are about as hypocritical as the other really, three letter agencies are good when they're on my side, bad when they're on the other side, the population in general be damned.

*:curiously they may not even have been the brunt of people that felt it, due to its use on the george floyd riots.

[bmelton]

If there's a lesson to be learned, it's that everyone needs to appreciate that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.

I have little faith in efforts to criminal justice reform, because just about everyone, regardless of party, has a crime for which the mere allegation is enough to justify throwing the book at the alleged perpetrator. This seems just as true with government abuses (at least in the social media era -- no idea what the real median is) -- but the far left seems more than happy to allow the government to abuse the rights of the far right, and vice versa. The degree varies depending on what suspected wrongdoing has occurred, but the point of rights is that if they don't apply in the worst cases (e.g., hate speech "exemptions") then they don't really exist, so nobody should be surprised when the government does a poor job of protecting them.

[DrThunder]

If you're referring to the Patriot Act, neither party cared. Democrats loved the war on terror just as much as any Republican. Obama loved the Patriot Act so much he EXPANDED IT.

I don't really care who was "cared" 20 years ago. There's a problem that needs to be fixed now. It's a wasted of time to whine about different people at a different time not being upset at a similar thing that was going on.

[shadowgovt]

To start addressing this problem, I think one has to understand why someone actively supports this state of affairs. Don't start from "They're under-informed;" that's hubris (and studies show trying to reason someone out of a hard-felt feeling makes them far likelier to just tune you out than change the feeling). Consider the voter who thinks being spied on by the FBI is great. How do you reach them.

I give as an analogy nuclear weapons. People are pretty universally in agreement that the threat of global armageddon is, well, bad, and we could really minimize it if we just ditched the nukes. Even unilateral disarmament, given the massive disparity of the US stockpile vs. other stockpiles, would take a huge chunk out of the apocalypse pie-chart.

... so why is suggesting unilateral disarmament absolutely horrifying to so many people?

People vote their hearts. Dig into the feelings underpinning support for a surveillance state and address them, because if the feelings don't change the votes won't change. Propose alternatives to the surveillance state that address those feelings.

Americans just watched a faction try to take over the government with violence. There's a story that can be told there, and told one way it creates feelings that encourage more centralized surveillance, and told another way it creates feelings that encourage far, far less surveillance.

[DrThunder]

I agree with most of your comment.

I do not agree with this "Americans just watched a faction try to take over the government with violence."

The think they watched someone try to take over the government because that's what the media and certain politicians wanted you to think. In no way was that a government takeover unless you're talking about the actors (cops) that opened the doors and led clueless people inside. No government takeover consists of unarmed people with zero plan, where the only person killed was one them doing nothing.

[shadowgovt]

> No government takeover consists of unarmed people with zero plan

Certainly no successful one that I can think of. But that doesn't mean it wasn't an attempt. Also, they were not unarmed (https://www.npr.org/2021/03/19/977879589/yes-capitol-rioters... ); they were (thankfully) under-armed to deal with the resistance they encountered.

> where the only person killed was [the] one [of] them doing nothing

I'm assuming we both saw the same video. That's definitely not "doing nothing." Never was and never has been, and the question has already been litigated and put to bed.

But all that aside, to determine whether they were trying to take over the government, one need merely ask: had they succeeded in getting to the floor while the Senate was still in session, what did they want to do? What did those who spoke about their intentions say they were going to do?

[0zemp2c]

the largest expansion of the "five eyes" program, and the high-profile fallout of Assange and Snowden, all happened during the Obama presidency

[ModernMech]

Yeah, there's a certain karmic justice to all of this. It really restores my faith to know that what goes around really does come around. Helps me strive to be a better person myself. It shouldn't be lost on anyone that the FBI was founded by a Republican, and has always been controlled by Republicans, at this very moment no less. Really no one to blame but themselves.