[JumpCrisscross]

> regularly reach out to my representatives in writing. Nothing ever comes of it. None of the issues I bring up are ever brought into discussion

Where are you? Can you share a sample of the text you reach out with? Have you ever organised a group of people to sign on to what you’re advocating?

> too many competing interests within that group (as opposed to an upper limit per representative like it used to be @80,000)

You have no state representatives with smaller parcels?

> are fundamental and foundational to the functional operation of any feedback system. Its based solidly in actual history, not hyperbole

It’s hyperbole: the Stasi used violence as a political tool. Normalising them with rhetoric such as yours legitimises all of the mechanisms you describe escalating to including violence in their portfolio.

[advael]

> the Stasi used violence as a political tool

This point is extremely silly. In the modern US, violence is an essentially omnipresent political tool, both at home on every level and abroad. In many cities across the country we just saw police violently crack down on protestors in universities protesting the US support of Israel's present massacre in Gaza, but this also happened at the protests against police killings and bigotry throughout 2020, or at Ferguson before that, or before that against students protesting the Vietnam war, or before that against civil rights protestors, and those are just the really famous cases in living memory. Relatively recently, an activist in Georgia protesting the demolition of a big chunk of forest for the planned enormous training facility for the already armed to the teeth police of that area was essentially gunned down by a whole firing squad of said police, extrajudicially, and you likely didn't even hear about it.

On a federal level, the FBI has been constantly deployed to attack political dissidents with national fame in more targeted ways, and the DHS and DEA were both essentially invented to do this with more impunity under very broad mandates surrounding very nebulous crimes. You could argue that ICE often functions this way too. The NSA's PRISM program is a surveillance apparatus the Stasi couldn't have dreamed of, and that's just what got leaked, and it was at this point like a decade of both capabilities growth and political unrest ago

Political violence is so normalized that when people are scandalized by our use of it abroad (usually via the CIA), it is when they use the tool of political violence for the benefit of American businesses rather than some perceived "pure" political motive, because it smacks of corruption of one of most important functions of US foreign policy, "necessary" political violence against the sovereignty of perceived potential threats

I agree that it is hyperbole to compare the modern US and its various forms of police to East Germany and its Stasi. The Stasi employed a much smaller scale of political violence than the modern US has, and had nowhere near the capacity nor appetite for widespread surveillance, which nonetheless is further dwarfed by that of its corporations, although of course these are often intertwined

[trod123]

> Where are you.

Doesn't really matter. It was drafted and professional, included known problems such as fake jobs and lack of accountability. Recipients included assembly members, house, and senate. To date, only boilerplate responses, no action, and only an increase in spam related to requests for donation for support during re-election.

> It's hyperbole.

It is not exaggerated, and by definition cannot be hyperbole.This is false.

The observations, and references stand on their own and are testable, when following rational methods. Social contract theory is well established, so is much of the referenced history.

Since you did not follow rational norms nor provide specific examples one can only assume you are referring to the entirety of my initial post as being exaggerated, which is an 'all' claim which are the most trivial to contradict as an overgeneralization and thus be shown to be false.

The claim that communicating facts about past events somehow legitimizes and justifies unrelated acts of violence, and causes it, is fundamentally unsound.

Violence absent survival (existential threats) as a general rule can never be justified, or legitimized.

Any good person knows this, and wouldn't try to justify because false justification is an act of self-violation, and this is how you become an evil person (who has willfully blinded themselves).

There was a time when evil people were killed because they had to be stopped otherwise they would bring destruction on everyone, these times were existential threats. WW2 against the Nazi's was one such time. They threatened the world, and your argument against communication for organization and response is an obvious contradiction during those times.

The structured reasoning you use is a foundational example of flawed thinking (fallacy) and an example of tautology, ad absurdum (by contradiction).

The consequence of an action or event, being the causing action of the event may be narrowly valid in some cases, but never sound (and it must be true in all cases to be sound), this is why it is generally considered fallacy, and by contradiction discounts agency and environmental factors, and overgeneralizes by claiming supposition-al elements are the same when they are not. You can't use circular self-reference when seeking sound argument.

As a result, you have made false claims, while choosing to ignore rational norms (given the ambiguity and dissembling). This is twisted.

Needless to say, there can be no rational discourse if you do not follow rational norms. I've shown that several of your statements are false claims, this informs on your innate credibility for future claims.

Without credibility, you don't have any basis for standing and by necessity, your future rhetoric must be considered false and discarded until you can prove rationally that it is not.

The nice thing about following rational rules and norms is it does not require credibility; only unbased rhetoric has that requirement.

Lies, deceits, and falsehoods are easily discarded under rational methods. Dissembling, discrediting, nullification all cease being useful when you have lost credibility and have no standing.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Doesn't really matter. It was drafted and professional, included known problems such as fake jobs and lack of accountability

On multiple occasions the text I drafted was passed into state and twice federal law, in red states and blue. I’ve also guided staffers, when they were dealing with a new field which I was familiar with, on how to sort the nutters from the informed but powerless. (They’re good at identifying those who can organise a constituency, informed or not.)

I was trying to figure out how you can be more effective. Not fight you.

> observations, and references stand on their own and are testable, when following rational methods

By classic rhetorical methods, you left unchallenged my inequivalence claim in respect of the use of violence by the Stasi and our present governments. Herego, I win by default. (Obviously not how conversation works. But at least more precedents than “rational norms,” which is not standard rhetoric.)

Also, “it is not exaggerated, and by definition cannot be hyperbole” is argument by tautology. Hyperbole means exaggerated. You say it isn’t hyperbole because it isn’t exaggerated. You say it isn’t exaggerated because…well, that’s never argued.

You called out argument ad absurdum, too, though I’m not sure you know what that means—neither of us used it, correctly or not, except in misinformation.

> Since you did not follow rational norms nor provide specific examples one can only assume you are referring to the entirety of my initial post as being exaggerated

…did you use this tone in your letters? “Rational norms” are not conventional English.

On a stylistic level, you used the word “rational” in almost every sentence. That’s fine. But it puts your writing into a specific corner of the internet better known for flat Earthers than reasoned policy.

Good luck. I’m signing off this thread.