As a person coming from a former Soviet republic - it reminds me of times 30 years ago, where the usual conversation with any official would look like this :
"no"
"why?"
"because the government says so"
No trial, no hearing, someone somewhere in secret made the decision and you had nothing to say in that matter. Or if you tried, you would be charged with interfering with government business, or "national security" and jailed for a random amount of time.
Really that different to what the US government is doing right now?
There are some pretty large differences but it is similar enough that more and more people are making the comparison in conversation. Folks who have read up on the Mccarthy hearings on anti-american activities will see a similar pattern of public backlash developing. s/Communism/Terrorism/g right? It becomes easier and easier to recruit people to vote against the excesses and then these people get booted out of government. Can't happen fast enough for me
Yeah but at least in the USSR you could bribe your way out of this type of situation. Here it's even worse because the people at the bottom (checking counter people) wont take bribes and maybe even can't because the computer will stop them from entering certain info.
Giving a bribe might make a specific situation easier for you, but having a system where bribes are tolerated is cancerous. Few things have such power to destroy a nation.
Brokenness at a high level can be fixed. Brokenness as a result of rampant corruption at all levels cannot.
You can restore civil liberties by enacting or repealing laws. You can't do it when no effective executive mechanism exists (i.e., all your bureaucrats, police, and other officials are on the dole).
Widespread corruption, IMO, is far more dangerous in the long term than what we're seeing right now in the US.
Yes. The people can demand that the government change policies. But if the people themselves are corrupt - the teacher won't teach and the doctor won't treat unless they're bribed - there's nobody left to fix things.
Obviously it's not different in principle, but in practice there are comparatively few people on the no-fly list, and the no-fly list is a comparatively unique mechanism. US citizens aren't typically prohibited from travelling, or corresponding with internationals, or publishing journals and notes, etc...
Yes, this is bad. Yes it should be fixed. But let's check the "ZOMG WE'RE IN A COMMIE GULAG!" hyperbole at the door. The less seriously we take this the more reason the government has to pick the "sane compromise" position which involves no-fly lists and universal-but-mostly-invisible surveillance.
The problem is such hyperbole is the only thing standing in the way of a system going that far. There are a great many normalized restrictions now which were ridiculed as commie gulag fodder not long ago, restrictions which not long ago would have been met with rebellion.
Billions of people have lived in "commie gulags". Most of them could still live their lives, and normalized any limitations they lived under. Stay within those "reasonable" restrictions, and you'd be OK; suggest breaking down those restrictions, and you'd be subject to the wrath of other citizens ridiculing your "hyperbole".
The "sane compromise" is standing by core principles. We learned to institute such principles as foundational law precisely because "sane compromises" and "mitigating circumstances" went very, very bad; if we deviate from them again, we will again learn - the very hard way - why those principles were enshrined in the first place. If the government decides you should be prohibited from doing X, a warrant must be approved by a judge, the restriction presented you in no uncertain terms, your accusers available for questioning, a court available for redress of grievances, and means for acquittal possible involving a jury of fellow citizens - not some secret list you can't even see to confirm whether your name is in fact on it.
I don't understand how inaccurately comparing living with a no-fly list to life in the USSR has anything to do with "standing by core principles". If anything it rather sounds like the opposite.
Stand by your principles. Don't spin the argument.
Core principles: evidence against me must be obtained under warrant, presented in court with my notification, subject to challenge, evaluated by a jury of common citizens, and the verdict subject to appeal. This is absolute front-and-center core principles of our government.
A secret list limiting travel by common means, with no more visibility than a bureaucrat's perfunctory "you're on the no-fly list, go away", with no way to confirm or challenge it, is absolutely a hallmark of life in the USSR.
It's not spinning the argument. It's the point of the argument.
A secret list limiting travel by common means, with no more visibility than a bureaucrat's perfunctory "you're on the no-fly list, go away", with no way to confirm or challenge it
Completely untrue, the ACLU has gotten several people off the no fly list, used FOIA requests to gain access to it, etc.
> US citizens aren't typically prohibited from travelling
Anyone on the no-fly list is effectively banned from travelling, just because the US are such a large country and the alternatives are plainly too exhausting.
Again: most constitutions guarantee freedom of movement. The reason it is written there is because the framers had experience with travelling restrictions and how they were used against political opponents. This last lesson seems to have been forgotten.
Exactly. The no fly list is one step away from becoming like China's Hukou System [0], which was eerily similar to parole restrictions on movement, but without due process (trial and conviction of a crime).
I can't even begin to imagine the burden of being an American living in Alaska or Hawaii and being on the no fly list.
I don't think anyone's saying we're in a commie gulag, but the comparison is still valid. The vectors for abuse of government power are growing and our resources are shrinking. The problem is still bearable, but we're headed in the wrong direction nonetheless.
Godwin's Law, rather than a criticism of childish comparisons to Hitler ("What do you mean I can't go to the dance with Timmy? You're literally Hitler!") has mutated into an entire philosophy about the irrelevance of history.
Under this philosophy no comparisons can be made to history because invariably one of the two situations is more extreme than the other (inviting cheap intellectually bankrupt "Do you REALLY think that Foo is as bad as Bar?!?" comments that exclude the possibility that a metaphor may not be implying exact equivalence, merely parallels. Think about it, if I call a friend "Benedict Arnold" for abandoning me at a bar, am I actually accusing him of treason? No, of course not.) or circumstances were different ("Yeah, but those were Bolivians. WE are Alabamans. These are not comparable.")
Godwin's Law, despite its good intentions, has become a monster.
This line of thinking predates Godwin's Law, as a misunderstanding of comparisons in general. If there is any difference between the things being compared, even if it is not relevant to the aspects in the comparison, people of this philosophy will declare the whole matter to be "apples and oranges." Of course, this makes the entire practice of comparing things pointless, because under that thinking, things can only be compared to themselves.
On the other hand, I think people have an anti-Godwin reaction where they assume this is happening even when the comparison really is bad. To me, the value of Godwin's Law is to remind us that comparisons to Nazi Germany usually carry more emotional weight than actual insight, and when we encounter them, we need to ask ourselves whether the aspect of Nazi Germany being called out was integral to its evil or just incidental. A lot of so-called comparisons are just thinly disguised slander of the form, "Our government officials are drinking a lot of water these days. Do you know who else drank water? Hitler!"
> To me, the value of Godwin's Law is to remind us that comparisons to Nazi Germany usually carry more emotional weight than actual insight, and when we encounter them, we need to ask ourselves whether the aspect of Nazi Germany being called out was integral to its evil or just incidental
While it is important to keep this in mind, one must also always keep in mind that many valid comparisons to emotionally charged events will be made. Nearly everything in recent memory that is worth making comparisons to will have emotional baggage. Forcing people to tread lightly around issues that could have an emotional impact has a chilling effect on discussion, particularly when there is no similar weighting against comparisons to events with positive emotions.
Compare someone to MLK or Churchhill and few eyebrows will be raised; compare someone to the relatively mild Khrushchev and you will have half a dozen objections within seconds.
It is almost as if the meme of anti-bullying made the jump from schoolchildren to world leaders.
Note that the original Law wasn't even a criticism of anything, simply an observation that comparisons with Hitler became inevitable if a discussion went on long enough.
Such comparisons are rhetorical devices to substitute emotional appeals for rational argument; its a good thing that people tend to dismiss them.
Make the case for what the problem is with what Bush or Obama is doing, fine; after you've made the case use an example of an act of Nazi Germany that is genuinely similar in the relevant respects to make the point that the problem isn't merely theoretical, sure. But directly compare Bush/Obama to Hitler ... well, unless your goal is to provide an emotional boost to people who have already bought into the substance of your complaint, you shouldn't do that, and its quite right that people start tuning you out when you do that, especially when you open with it.
I have a hard time accepting any such argument could be "dead accurate". To make such a comparison would most likely require exaggerating specific similarities while downplaying significant differences. In the end, it's either a bad comparison or blatantly dishonest manipulation, and people will respond as they see fit.
In the end, manipulation will just polarize, as the targets of manipulation accept the party line or reject it, which then adds distrust to all information coming from that source.
I don't think it's "dangerous" to dismiss facile comparisons thrown out instead of explaining why policy X and Y is actually bad. I think it's dangerous to make them
If your argument is that Obama's endgame is subjugating all political critics in preparation for the extermination of Muslims and invasion of Canada, then please actually articulate it (but yeah, you can probably expect people to stop listening and get mad). If that isn't your argument, why try and insinuate it?
There's a big difference between examining the past for critical similarities to current events and exaggerating the current situation to make those connections closer than they are.
The former is important and useful, the latter is counter productive as the people that realize you are exaggerating then have a reason to discount everything you say without examining it to closely, as you've already shown yourself willing to manipulate to get your way.
That is certainly a lot of words up there without actually addressing the point at hand. Should we or shouldn't we compare the surveillance society in US with the situation in other authoritarian societies. (hint, yes.)
If the only difference, by your own admission, is how many such awful things there are, then why shouldn't we start comparing it to places like the USSR?
Obviously it's not different in principle, but in practice there are comparatively few people on the no-fly list
Yeah but if it's YOU, it's 100% of people as far as you're concerned. No one cares that you're a 4 year old, the computer says no boarding and it is so.
"no"
"why?"
"because the government says so"
No trial, no hearing, someone somewhere in secret made the decision and you had nothing to say in that matter. Or if you tried, you would be charged with interfering with government business, or "national security" and jailed for a random amount of time.
Really that different to what the US government is doing right now?