> It says that the government “will prioritize the rapid identification and neutralization of violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender and anarchist” and “will use all the tools constitutionally available to us to map them at home, identify their membership, map their ties to international organizations like Antifa.”<p>So, Democratic candidates who are looking like they will win a seat this midterm cycle are going to get arrested for "domestic terrorism".
Of course, because by the new definition, the leader is "peak American", so everything in collision with his view is naturally "anti-American".<p>The usage of the term "anti-American" by anyone in a public role should be rejected as insufficient definition and unfit for a representative to use. On the spot, immediately.<p>Is it anti-American to brush your teeth after breakfast? or rather before? Is both American? Neither of it?
If unsure, ask the House Un-American Activities Committee.<p>(P.s. don't ask any questions that they don't like, that would be Un-American).
It's like the John Birth society are back in charge <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_Un-American_Activities_Committee#Hollywood_Blacklist" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_Un-American_Activities_C...</a>
I'm pretty sure that's the idea <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unhumans" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unhumans</a>
History sure does rhyme<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_Nothing" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_Nothing</a>
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Scare" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Scare</a>
Don’t give them any ideas.
When Trump calls Democrats "enemies from within," <i>that's</i> anti-American.<p>When Trump refuses to peacefully transfer power to his victorious opponent and instead plays "heads I win tails you cheated," <i>that's</i> anti-American.<p>When Trump sends the FCC chair to suppress speech "we can do this the easy way or the hard way," or yucks it up with the president of El Salvador over suspending Habeas Corpus, <i>that's</i> anti-American.<p>The "American Experiment" isn't an empty concept, but it <i>is</i> about democracy and law and rights as opposed to conservative cultural values, and when people in power start to argue that the former must be sacrificed for the latter they certainly deserve to be clowned on. Not because they are wrong to imagine an American Ideal, but because they have its contents exactly backwards.
While I understand the intention of what you're saying, you're still attempting a definition of the term "anti-American", which needs no definition as the term should be rejected as a whole.
I disagree.<p>I would define confidently that Anti-American is aligned with Anti-Constitutional. By definition, it is this nation's founding document and treatise.<p>An the Supreme Court's ultimate role is to affirm or deny nebulous case law as aligned with the Constitution.
It's just the idea that vague terms get misused so much I demand the specific. "Anti" anything can just mean you aren't "pro" it enough, or not pro a particular version.<p>So for restricting speech, you could say not honoring the first amendment or something like that.<p>I think about this because sometimes people or ideas are described as "problematic". Sometimes for very good reason, but sometimes you find out the speaker has trouble being specific. I like to hear the specific reason when I can to understand the facts or logic. Sometimes these classifications come third hand.
Is it exists, <i>something</i> must be antithetical to it.<p>(Truth is its just rhetoric and it doesn't mean much of anything. That's why its main use is as a cudgel).
I mean, there <i>are</i> American values. The country was built around the idea of limiting the federal government's power, and adherence not a person, but to a set of values (like freedom of speech). We're explictly founded on the concept of rule of law.<p>Through that lens, it is <i>very</i> clear what anti-American means: adherence and loyalty to a person instead of a set of values, expansive government overreach, erosion of individual liberties, including the ability to express dissent.
I mean, to pick what is perhaps the easiest example, wanting to abridge speech is anti-American by its very definition.<p>It is possible to have a thing that is anti-American. So I'm not sure what good it is to reject the term altogether.
It could e.g. be "anti-democratic" by a universal definition of democracy and civil liberties which no single country then gets to fork and redefine...
its encoded in the US constitution, so its anti-american.<p>it can be anti-other things too, but its certainly anti-american
Let's suppose you had your way and the cultural concept of America as a set of ideas and values related to democracy was erased. Would the universal non-national concepts of democracy and civil liberties have been able to inspire Mike Pence to stand up to Donald Trump on January 6th?
Sorry, I don't know what this conversation is about. This is not about a "concept", it is about the label itself.<p>When the term "anti-American" is used, it is a placeholder for <i>"against my values"</i>. Noone is ever anti-American himself, it is only a label applied upon others.<p>That's why IMO it should be rejected when used by people in a public role, see original comment.<p>You are free to think otherwise, which I may then label as "anti-American" in passing, while quickly moving on to you mentioning Mike Pence and some random conspiracy I have /s<p>Again, <i>/s/s/s/s</i>
Ah, I see, it's the same as "un-American", only without being a word too onerous to use (yet) due to obvious historical implications.
> The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives created in 1938. Their goal was to investigate alleged disloyalty and subversive activities on the part of private citizens, public employees, and those organizations suspected of having communist ties. It was abolished in 1975.<p>I'd heard of this but didn't realize it went on for decades.<p>Turning it around, I'd say persecuting political enemies for being "un-American" - or as a recent book declared, "unhuman" - is a very un-American thing to do. At least according to the values for which the nation stands (or supposed to stand).
Not really. America stands for something, they wrote a whole document about it.<p>There is a big difference between being "American" and being something like "German" because Germany has existed for so long as different governments and the thing that ties it together is not an ethos, but an ethnicity. Being American is different, there's no ethnicity that makes one American, there is only it's ethos. The ideals written in the declaration of independence are American values.
And that's the weak link of tying ideals and values to a location like a country:<p>The group elected to lead and represent this location also represent ideals and values, so THEIR ideals and values become inseparable of the location they were elected to represent.<p>For a certain period in the mid-1900s, "German values" meant something different than it did before and after, because Germany was represented by a different leader...
> And that's the weak link of tying ideals and values to a location like a country<p>My entire post is about exactly how this is not the case, American values are defined in a document[1].<p>[1]<a href="https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript" rel="nofollow">https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcrip...</a>
And what I'm trying to explain is, that this paper doesn't matter if it is represented by someone who doesn't uphold its content.<p>Germany had the Paulskirche-, the Bismarck- and the Weymar-Constitution, all of them before that certain Leader elected into power. He got to define who is worthy/unworthy, decide how to read the document his party represents and change the definition of "un-German"
> this paper doesn't matter if it is represented by someone who doesn't uphold its content.<p>Not at all...that's when the paper matters the most, because the electorate can see that the person in charge is not upholding our values, purely in contrast to the document. The document sets the baseline. Writing things down has value.
The words on the paper represent the ideas of what it means to be American. Trump has nothing to do with that. His actions, when the do not align with that paper, can be described as "anti-American".<p>The US has had a total of _one_ government and what it means to be American is in the founding document of that government. To be German is to lay claim to a history and cultural lineage that is filled with many different governments and even different states all-together.<p>The US has distinct regional and cultural identities as well, to be a Texan means something more akin to being German. Texas has a history that extends beyond the US. One can be American and Texan precisely because they are describe a different thing.<p>To be American is to ascribe to a certain set of ideals and, as far as someone isn't living up to those ideals, they are "anti-American".
Germany specifically <i>hasnt</i> existed for very long. its a younger country than the US, but it was made to combine people of an ethnicity
> <i>The "American Experiment" isn't an empty concept, but it is about democracy and law and rights as opposed to conservative cultural values, and when people in power start to argue that the former must be sacrificed for the latter they certainly deserve to be clowned on. Not because they are wrong to imagine an American Ideal, but because they have its contents exactly backwards.</i><p>From the many responses on this thread, it appears that many either don't want a defintion of "pro-American" or "anti-American" or "an American Ideal" or don't have one but these are core to your point.<p>How would you define each?
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<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_January_6_United_States_Capitol_attack" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_January_6_Unit...</a>
If you go far into the user you’re replying to’s post history, you’ll find them unambiguously referring to the Jan 6 crowd as terrorists. They are <i>very aware</i>.<p>I know there’s a pretty strong norm against dragging people for their posting history here, but that’s in service of maximizing light vs. heat and I feel like pretending to be ignorant of recent events in order to relitigate something unrelated in the comments is wholly unproductive.
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The peaceful tour of the capital by pro American demonstrators (sorry, peak Americans) interrupted the proceedings. They were very close to pulling off a strategy of having the senate override the vote, if they hadn’t reconvened before midnight and had Pence left the Capitol like secret service were urging him to do.<p>Anyway this argument has occurred a thousand times on these boards so if you saw January 6 as peaceful and harmless I can’t change your mind.
that an inssurection was stopped doesnt make it a peaceful transfer of power.<p>the thing about the US system is that the president doesnt do the transfer of power. they just lose power on a certain day, and congress grants it to somebody new
<p><pre><code> The American people deserve to know that President Trump
and his advisors didn’t just ask me to pause, they asked me
to reject votes, to return votes, to essentially overturn the election.
To keep faith with the oath that I made to the American people and
to almighty God, I rejected that out of hand
and I did my duty that day.
- Vice President Mike Pence
</code></pre>
This is why the Jan 6 crowd was carrying around an improvised gallows and chanting "hang Mike Pence." The crowd was there to serve as a pretext for what Trump wanted Pence to do, but Pence refused to do it so the self-coup attempt failed.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_fake_electors_plot" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_fake_electors_plot</a><p>Show me where this happened in every other election.
What you're doing is shameful.
When a coup fails, that doesn't mean it didn't happen.
You are literally claiming the Jan. 6 murder of police officers was "peacefully transferring power".<p>It was never claimed that it was successful.
While the exact point at which it becomes "anti-american" isn't clear there's certainly a category of rhetoric in which people peddle subservience to the state (usually dressed up in obfuscating words, like they'll use "society" instead of "the government") that is undeniably "anti-american" except perhaps by some obtuse technical interpretation of all the words. And I will die on the hill that those who peddle such ideals are bad people and ought to be looked down upon the same way we'd look down upon someone peddling phrenology as a basis for racism.
The red scare of the 1950s was ridiculous enough, but at least the Soviet Union was an actual threat. We are now at a point where “pro-transgender” is the new threat?
> but at least the Soviet Union was an actual threat<p>The 'threat' was also the reason many working class Americans had generally higher standard of living than they do today
The administration doesn't like it, therefore it's a threat. Similar to negative news, which are fake, and contrary opinions, which are woke propaganda.<p>Many symptoms of undercover fascism.
This is the outcome that every privacy advocate has been warning about for decades and being increasingly challenged by people who were fine with it as 'they have nothing to hide and do no wrong'.
ACLU will have a field day.
yes probably, and ive been calling this as their playbook for about a year<p>Make no mistake, this is not some sophisticated conspiracy. This is pure laziness and abuse of power. They have been using "domestic terrorist" as a button to slap anytime they dont want to be questioned. the phrase no longer means anything besides "this person questioned authority"<p>ICE has used it to label people they shot for videoing them. Note that they knew the video evidence existed and labelled them anyway, assuming they would be able to avoid court altogether and prevent the video evidence being seen. In at least one case, this didnt work and the victim was correctly identified as such.<p>So this isnt hypothetical. It is a playbook being used right now, and people are testing the waters for how much they can get away with.
That is extremely unlikely. There are definitely some people in Trump's camp who would love to do that, including probably Trump himself. However, Trump does not have enough public or institutional support for him to risk doing something that blatant.
Phew, as an anti-American, radically pro-transgender Marxist-Leninist I should be safe; bloody anarchists.
And in the 30s germany started branding things as being anti-german, we all know where that led us. This isn't a new play book by any means. Seeing so many comments debating terminology worries me, we should be discussing the implications.
As a trans woman, enough is enough! I’m tired of us being made into the scapegoat while literal pedophiles and sexual criminals not only walk free but gain ever greater power and idiots keep blaming us for their problems as they close their ears and stomp their feet’s on the ground
<a href="https://tr.ee/ttp-read" rel="nofollow">https://tr.ee/ttp-read</a><p>If it helps, ^^have a brochure explaining all of the ways folks are dramatically misunderstanding us right now. :(
As a fellow trans woman, we've been the scapegoat for reactionaries, at least documented, since the rise of the Third Reich. And if we're honest, probably before that.<p>Fixing society-scale problems is really hard. Being angry at people who make you feel a bit weird inside is easy. People reliably choose easy.
I'm not going to pretend to understand your stuggle, but I will echo it through my lens. I am not trying to hijack your point, inasmuch support it with my view.<p>I uses to think that it was about fear of the unknown, or as you've said "Being angry at people who make you feel a bit weird inside".<p>I now firmly believe that it's a modern form of tribalism. Having an "other", whether as a scapegoat, a fear inducing device, or a target is simply too convenient to ignore. Whether or not one is a globalist is orthogonal to the fact that people ultimately decide, or evolve to see through a different lens.
One look no further than Vietnam for how the government learned to use intranational xenophobia to manipulate different slices of the public into identifying as separate groups that could then be played off of each other. Since then, there has never been as successful a political movement, because we have been turned against each other by state-driven manipulation. AFAIK, this is well-documented policy intended to “maintain civil order” (i.e. prevent the revolution that is so richly deserved).
I would say it slightly differently: humans themselves are tribalistic, and politicians are looking for ways to tap into that to gain and hold onto power.
It's not while, it's because. They have to create a "threat" that's of the same "magnitude" as their actual crimes, vectoring out from the subjective origin of "traditional" man/woman identity and relations. They do that by casting transgenderism not as the benign and modest personal identity that it is, but as the same kind of sexually aggressive comportment as their own; something that you do or perform willfully instead of what you are compelled by natural and intrinsic impulse to be.<p>The first step in defeating it is untangling the action/identity conflation.<p>You are: someone who is biologically non-female, but whose gender identity is that of a woman.<p>He is: a businessman and politician.<p>You do: upstanding, normal folk things.<p>He does: reprehensible shit like assaulting teenagers and bragging about "grabbing [women] by the pussy."<p>Hopefully people are able to see who in this comparison is in the wrong.
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but... but the bathrooms! and the children's sports! /s<p>it's still baffling to me how incredibly irrelevant niche cases dominate the entire discourse.
I don’t have a strong view, but I don’t think that should baffle you, you think the reaction comes from nothing at all? One side is pushing to “wedge” (sort of) into a very low level space so that it cements itself at a foundational level and there’s no repeal or return from it - all or nothing view. The other side picks up on that and doesn’t want to let big changes go unchallenged. It’s a pretty understandable process. The niche cases allow the challenging party to present evidence for a consequence or concern that’s difficult to convey.<p>HN does this constantly with the surveillance, bring up one case of police abusing it, it’s exactly the same thing.
> HN does this constantly with the surveillance, bring up one case of police abusing it, it’s exactly the same thing.<p>Because in this case, we're talking about maybe a few dozen (if that) relevant cases in trans youth [1]. With police/secret services abusing surveillance... it's huge enough that LOVEINT [2] is a term, and <i>at least</i> 50 cases were serious enough to be brought under official investigation [3].<p>[1] <a href="https://glaad.org/fact-sheet-for-reporters-transgender-participation-in-sports/" rel="nofollow">https://glaad.org/fact-sheet-for-reporters-transgender-parti...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOVEINT" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOVEINT</a><p>[3] <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/08/02/how-police-officers-used-vast-network-cameras-spy-their-exes/" rel="nofollow">https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/08/02/how-pol...</a>
They do it because it wins them elections. It's a 90/10 issue and national democrats are on the losing side.
As someone who struggles with my position on some of these topics, one of my major self criticisms/fear is the tyranny of the majority. Even if (and that's a hypothetical if) my values would reject transgenderism, my values of freedom and fairness conflict with forcing another human being onto a specific path, especially with the use of force (government). So even if 90% are cisgendered (I didnt look up the real stat), that doesn't mean we vote to make our world cisgendered... A right and fair leaning is to create the freedoms we'd want if the tables were turned.<p>I say this all to say it surprises me how many republicans I know are pro freedom until it hits certain topics... Pro 2A and anti-(an adult can choose a different hormonal profile for their own body) is an odd pairing in my mind. Pro free-speach like Alex Jones / Citizens united but anti-(choosing to wear clothes or other adornments/appearance of the other gender) is an odd pairing in my mind.
The number of people abject enough to end up with transphobic views is thankfully nowhere near that. Most people, as it turns out, are not creepily obsessed with other people's genitals. Most people also aren't driven by a horrible urge to find minorities to torment. Though those who are would sure claim otherwise, of course; trying to normalize their awfulness is part of the playbook.
Yeah, I don't get this. If they're niche irrelevant issues that affect ~nobody, why not just concede them? Republicans could hardly dominate the discourse with these topics if there was nobody to discourse against.
This isn't a fight we can avoid by retreating. They would just advance and the same battle would happen on different ground. If we abandon the trans, the culture wars will be about the gays. If we abandon the gays, the culture wars will be about blacks or hispanics or jews or god only knows. There's something to be said for picking firm ground to fight on, but there will be a fight and it cannot be won by retreating.
Why am I being interpreted as advocating for abandoning the trans? I don't want to do that and I don't need to be convinced by my empathy for gays or blacks- I care about trans people themselves! I'm saying if an issue doesn't matter- according to the trans people in this thread- and it's a losing issue, why are we insistent on fighting it anyway? Who benefits from this?
Because then they'll move on to the next victims and in having surrendered without even a fight you've granted them momentum for no good reason whatsoever, and you'll have fewer allies left too.
Is there a reason to believe this is how things work? Rather than "within a democracy as long as 'trans rights' means something that most people disagree with, it will be harder to advance the pro- side of the issue"? Is there evidence of 'momentum' being a real thing in politics, as opposed to the 'pendulum' that I've witnessed over the last decade?
> Yeah, I don't get this. If they're niche irrelevant issues that affect ~nobody, why not just concede them?<p>Because there's about 1% of people who are trans in the US [1] and most other populations, on top of that come a further about 1.7% people who are somewhere on the intersex spectrum [2].<p>Democrats aren't willing to throw <i>literally millions</i> of people under the bus. Republicans aren't just willing to cast them aside - they are knowingly driving trans people to extinction.<p>[1] <a href="https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/trans-adults-united-states/" rel="nofollow">https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/trans-ad...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/sexual-orientation-and-gender-identity/intersex-people" rel="nofollow">https://www.ohchr.org/en/sexual-orientation-and-gender-ident...</a>
But this is not throwing millions of people under the bus. At least according to this thread, there are fewer trans women in sports than bills stopping them. If this issue does represent throwing literally millions of people under the bus- driving them to extinction-, why are you saying upthread that it's niche and irrelevant?
Because Republicans get fucking dog-walked on any issue of any importance. The only things they can ever even come close to claiming "victory" on are irrelevant nonsense that no serious person gives a fuck about.<p>There are now more bills attempting to "solve" the problem of trans girl's in sports (and it is girls, to be clear, trans boys are never an issue) than there are trans girls in sports. It's fucking pathetic.
The funny thing about that is - it's a solved problem. The reason you heard about it for a while is that they hadn't tightened up the rules yet. As with anything, problems are highlighted, they are studied, and new rules are put into place to account for what was learned. Right wing media of course discovered a boogeyman that was so useful they will be using it for years still, even if it doesn't exist.
It wasn’t a problem to begin with. Meta studies recently showed trans women have no biological advantage over cis women after HRT, certainly nothing than cis women don’t have biological variation within anyway. All the rule updates did was exclude and further marginalise an already marginalised extreme minority. There are very few trans women to begin with, fewer of us still are competing in sports. Nothing was studied here, the people who made the rules aren’t scholars, they’re bigots. They’re using us as a distraction from their poor governance.
Yeah, you have to conjure a really weird scenario for there to be any advantage.<p>Something like waiting until male puberty is already pretty far along and doing extensive strength training and then transitioning and competing immediately in a sport that puts a heavy premium on strength. I think most sports already have rules that would prevent this.<p>For someone following a more normal transitioning trajectory, there would be zero advantage; probably a significant disadvantage.<p>A blanket ban is just pure bullying, especially for childrens' sports (which are primarily a social activity, not a consequential competition). Individual sports can have rules to prevent the (primarily hypothetical) abusive cases without preventing children from participating in normal social activities. No one is saying that someone who's 200 lb of solid muscle and started HRT a month ago should be able to compete against girls in football or powerlifting, but pickleball, sure go for it.
> A blanket ban is just pure bullying, especially for childrens' sports (which are primarily a social activity, not a consequential competition).<p>That I think is the core issue. Way too many people try to live way too hard through their children. Wherever you look, either in the US or (where I'm from) Germany... you'll find absolutely absurd behavior from completely unhinged parents. Just yesterday, that was a topic discussed here [1].<p>[1] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49686134">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49686134</a>
"After HRT" is the key word. The new regulations I am referring to had to do with how soon after was sufficient to remove advantages due to residual testosterone. There were other regulations which were total horse shit to your point.<p>I would agree that the number of people we are talking about is very small. It was to begin with a very niche issue.
> trans women have no biological advantage over cis women after HRT<p>As someone who's been into weightlifting and only casual observer-like in regards to testosterone therapy, this doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. After taking TRT/Steroids a person retains a good deal of the muscle/strength they gained <i>even after cessation</i> ... It surprises me to hear that this wouldnt carry over to sports where muscle/strength/power matter.<p>Additionally, you have to realize that a major concern on the right is that academia itself has become ideological to the point where only politically acceptable studies can be 1) studied and more importantly 2) published. There's a lot of people out there afraid to speak what appears to them (and their work) to be truth for fear of the backlash and career consequences.
Also a weightlifter (masters olympic weightlifting, nationally ranked). TRT and steroids are actually the opposite. Once you go off of them, your body starts to revert, muscle mass is lost, and often by more than you started with (because the body's natural production rates change with supplementation). It does take time, which is why sports regulatory bodies typically require specific time periods of hormonal therapy before they can participate, but their bodies will eventually adjust.<p>Sports regulatory bodies still test for hormonal PED, but their concerns have long swayed away from them because of the fact that they are so easy to detect and have the built in disadvantage of potentially altering your life negatively outside of sport. The current concerns have shifted to peptides and other forms of PEDs, because they are much harder to detect because they are 1) often naturally occurring but in smaller quantities, 2) don't actually directly act on the musculoskeletal system, but rather trigger natural processes that act on the system, and 3) often have half-lives dramatically shorter than most drug tests can even account for, and therefore require near continuous monitoring.
Agreed you lose your peak, however once a steroids user you will mostly retain <i>more mass than a natural</i>. It only takes a fraction of stimulus to retain mass versus adding it.<p>The extrapolation I'm making, and admitting it's an extrapolation, is that a sexed at birth male competing in womens sports will have had a developmental period of hormonal advantage over females which follows them regardless of gender identity.
> Additionally, you have to realize that a major concern on the right is that academia itself has become ideological to the point where only politically acceptable studies can be 1) studied and more importantly 2) published.<p>Quite the contrary. If you want to publish something going <i>against</i> "the narrative" (if something like that exists in the first place) has never been easier than now. Proper keywords and the far-right and their pseudomedia are going to give even the worst quackery a time in the spotlight - just look at RFK Jr.
> Additionally, you have to realize that a major concern on the right is that academia itself has become ideological to the point where only politically acceptable studies can be 1) studied and more importantly 2) published. There's a lot of people out there afraid to speak what appears to them (and their work) to be truth for fear of the backlash and career consequences.<p>Oh complete and utter twaddle.<p>Academia trends toward progressive views because the more educated you get, assuming you have principles and employ critical thinking consistently, the more ridiculous the positions of the right tend to look. You cannot look at the totality of climate change data and go "well clearly it's not man made" unless you either don't understand it, or cherry pick it to oblivion. You can't look at the history of Austerity politics, deployed both here and in the UK by our respective free market goblins (Reagan and Thatcher) and hold that it's good for anyone at all apart from those who are already wealthy.<p>This boogeyman of BIG SCIENCE holding down all the conservatives is complete and utter dreck. Show me literally one example of it. Show me one individual who's life was ruined and their career decimated to uphold ideological ends.
So the broken records are just coincidence? There's no need to study this a priori, just let them compete and see all records get broken. I don't see why people even discuss it. Just let women not win anything for a few years and this discussion would be over.
And as a fellow enjoyer of HRT, I assure you it didn't enhance <i>shit</i> for me, beyond what I was hoping to get: longer, more full hair, boobies, and smoother skin.<p>My muscles are <i>gone</i> y'all. Like I've had to buy more breaker bars and larger tools so I can keep working on my cars, otherwise I simply could not break bolts anymore.
I used to be able to do 12 pull-ups, and I did get de-trained but now I can barely manage a single one. I lived and did cardio in the mountains for years and now I get winded up way easier. Maybe the politicians making these rules should go on HRT before making unsubstantiated claims.
I've had to explain to people that lifting something as simple as a case of bottled water can be <i>genuinely</i> difficult after eight-ish years of feminizing HRT.<p>It's gradual, it's not all at once and I am still slightly taller and heavier-set than the average American woman, so I do have an advantage through having more mass, but anyone that's larger than the average American woman will also have that so it's not really an advantage, just a fact of having a larger body.
Btw, feel free to reach out to me I love connecting with fellow trans women in tech :)
Heh, now as an Austrian, why does that all sound so familiar?<p>> The police, "suspecting the conflagration to be the first of a series of Communist acts of terrorism", have arrested a number of Communist leaders.<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/1933/mar/28/leadersandreply.mainsection" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/news/1933/mar/28/leadersandreply...</a><p>Huh.
That's inline whit some of the goals of the people behind Project 2025 are calling for.
another important part isn't just the ideology targeting - it's the directive for local and national law enforcement for form Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs) targeting individuals and organizations in this vein. JTTFs are already mobilized and targeting people - see <a href="https://atlpresscollective.com/2026/06/12/federal-prosecutors-charge-two-cop-city-protestors-as-part-of-nspm-7-initiative/" rel="nofollow">https://atlpresscollective.com/2026/06/12/federal-prosecutor...</a><p>I think of that poem, First They Came:<p><pre><code> First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
</code></pre>
replace 'Jews' with the current minoritized target demographic (ie immigrants of any stripe) and we're already fairly far down that list. see the case of David Huerta for the targeting of unions: <a href="https://www.courthousenews.com/los-angeles-labor-leader-arrested-at-ice-raid-released-on-bail/" rel="nofollow">https://www.courthousenews.com/los-angeles-labor-leader-arre...</a>
No, Dem candidates are safe. The culture wars benefit both parties and their billionaire owners.
The culture wars are explicitly a tool of the right to provoke fear, anger, and hate against others.<p>The left gets trapped in it because every single culture war issue (LGBQT+, racism, feminism, reproductive rights, freedom from religion, etc) are <i>responses</i> to the rights reactionary drive to claw back rights from everybody who is not a white male christian.
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Sometimes I wonder what goes on in someone's brain to think these things.<p>Then I realize I'm probably better off not.
relevant username lol. I tend to agree though...establishment democrats are a major problem for americans who want to be free of the problems that trump brought to us. Their only complaint about him seems to be that he's on the wrong team and has poor decorum. That's why so much emphasis has been placed on electing non-establishment democrats this time around. But the establishment is pro-corporate and pro-israel and they have all the money.
Totally agree. Establishment Democrats are against these expansion of powers, but then when they have the opportunity to roll them back, they treat them like they got free stuff instead of inheriting toxic waste.
I'd love to see a democratic presidential candidate who vows to openly exploit all of the illegal powers that Trump did, but in a way that hurts republicans and red states, and vow to continue doing it until constitutional amendments are passed to prevent it. Republicans would jump on board because they have no real ideology that they aren't willing to abandon for more power, and democrats would reluctantly be forced to do it because they care so much about being seen as hypocrites. Maybe a silly and potentially dangerous way to solve the problem, but at this point I'd try anything.
Be careful what you wish for, this seems to be the Newsom approach, and he may have a real chance at the presidency. California Uber Alles.<p>I saw a poll recently showing that close to half the country expects a civil war, and a disturbingly large portion of that group <i>wants</i> a civil war. Cross-spectrum as well.
I mostly agree with you, but the DSA (the only remaining organized anti-establishment political force) is still making real progress. So much so that Third Way is actively allocating resources to fighting them. And winning NYC was a huge step.<p>Trump and an army of paid influencers completely broke up the America First coalition, who had pinned their hopes on Trump being “their guy”. Now they’re all infighting, so the DSA is the only tangible threat to the establishment at the moment.<p>It remains to be seen if the DSA has shaken off attempts at disruption. It’s hard to be a small-d democratic organization when your opponents can afford to send endless streams of wreckers into your midst.
The politicized take on this is not correct. More importantly, it's not helpful.<p>When the "left" (Democrats) had power recently in the U.S., they were very happy to try to criminalize the protected speech of their enemies. Their tack was to define speech they didn't like as "hate speech", which luckily isn't actually a thing in the U.S., legally. But they were trying to make it happen.<p>I don't mean to defend one or the other side, merely to point out that this is a non-partisan issue.
Surveillance and totalitarian control is a downward spiral of misery and suffering for everyone, even those in power.<p>It reminds me of some quotes from the Tao Te Ching -<p>Restriction breeds the disorder it's meant to prevent (ch. 57)
The more prohibitions there are in the world, the poorer the people become. The more sharp weapons, the more the state falls into confusion. The more laws and edicts are posted, the more thieves and bandits there are.<p>The world isn't a thing to be managed (ch. 29)
The world is a sacred vessel; it cannot be manipulated. Whoever acts on it ruins it; whoever grips it loses it.
Yet there's incentive structures that push it forward.<p>It's a classic example of us being dragged along by incentives and emergent patterns against our individual wills and better judgement.<p>People think it's a conspiracy of the elite, but the last part of your message is true and it makes me wonder to what extent everyone is being dragged along by everyone else and nobody can stop because nobody can stop.<p>I mean if I were a multi-billionaire, I'm not sure I could do anything. I could piss into the wind with a somewhat larger amount of piss.<p>I've come to believe that our lack of agency over emergent behaviors in our own societies and economies is a central problem of the human condition.
Well said, I have exactly the same thoughts.<p>However, overcoming these forces is something people did successfully in the past. I think right now we are just in a cycle of mass confusion caused by the technological revolutions, which prevents us to see clearly (as it happened in the past as well).<p>Without alignment we just drift by natural forces of a system in place in whatever direction. When we adapt and if the world survives, this should not be an issue.<p>The problem of billionaires is that they are one level below from the top in abstraction of a society. They are required to play by the rules of the state designed by someone else, and they lack the knowledge and experience to go one level higher and think about the policies and rules for society itself - and this is much harder than doing business, and requires completely different skills.<p>Because of these factors, we see them being able to hoard wealth but unable to influence the system in any positive way, except for the ones which the system was already designed for (create jobs, innovate, etc.)
I mostly agree with your take. The ultra wealthy are entrapped by their own minds & machines of wealth that have tight demands.
Hold on. Panama papers. Epstein files. CointelPro -> NSPM-7.<p>There absolutely, without a reasonable doubt, is a conspiracy of the elite -- the billionaire class.
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It's a great write up thankyou. I propose we build and distribute easy to use services designed to run on our own devices, in our own homes, to take full advantage of 1st and 4th amendments, then distribute these services widely with billboards so that people have alternatives and can take advantage of these protections.
We are trying, but the interop of these self hosted services currently suck. Fediverse is hard to get in to unless you have many users or you just have to join a popular instance. Who knows what they do in this instance, and it turns back into a loop.
I just don't think it's gotten to the point that anyone is interested. I wonder if we did do a better job that the aggressive filtering and monitoring wouldn't naturally move down the stack.<p>for example we could completely obviate Facebook by having a standard mechanism for something like an rss feed. individuals or organizations could publish my stream(s) from their own leaf connections, set up cloud instances, or pay someone to host them. there could be a whole ecosystem of readers with various UIs and policy filters. people/organizations could add value by aggregating trusted streams or filtering them for content some people might find offensive. and at the end of the day it doesn't require people who just want to use it to set up persistent networking and storage.<p>in any case we just got suckered into handing the keys to the internet to companies like Meta and Google, which make vast amounts of money to control the discourse in corrosive ways. all because we bought into the notion that nothing is real unless someone is making a buck off it.<p>having a standard and a whole space of compatible programs doesn't preclude people from making lifestyle money selling filters and aggregators and content, but it kind of removes the Meta-style leverage over the whole system.
How about this, but also send them usb sticks with loads of data available on them that they thought was "private" including surveillance footage taken from flock cameras etc. That might be good motivation to be more aware. Not sure about the legality of this though lol
You mean the 3rd amendment, right?
Third Amendment is about not quartering troops. Fourth Amendment is protection against warrantless seizures.<p><a href="https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-3/" rel="nofollow">https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-3/</a><p><a href="https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-4/" rel="nofollow">https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-4/</a>
I'm pretty sure 1st and 4th are the ones GP meant.<p>The 1st amendment (free speech) in order to protect the right to host the service in the first place and the 4th one (unreasonable search and seizure) to protect against surveillance.<p>Not sure how the 3rd (lodging of soliders in peacetime) would be relevant.
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Proposal: limit access of these camera networks to local jurisdiction. Just like rip-stop fabric and cell walls, boundaries are required for stability, and making it where federal agencies have eyes everywhere is far too dangerous.
It isn't going to stop until it becomes a national security issue. If your can spy on your citizens , your enemies can potentially gain access to the same surveillance and hit high profile targets.<p>We live in war times and will soon see it happening
When those in power regard the people as the enemy their natural allies are other governments with similar attitudes. So you don't need to wait until another government gains access, you offer it instead.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes</a>
I suspect that Mass Surveillance is here for good, and the real project is to regain control of who gains the power and benefits. There are dozens if not 100s of ways that mass surveillance can improve human life. There are also as many where it can be abused to create suffering. I think the real issue is we're trending to the latter. In order to safely continue down this path we (USA) need:<p>1. EU style governmental pushes to defend digital rights. Data needs to be our own property that we can lend, but can never give up our right to revocation.<p>2. Stricter controls, and stricter still penalities, need to exist against misuse and abuse. Many of the stories of abuse of data are most stark in their lack of repercussions, some of this is police unions, some of this is "deep state" people who scratch eachother's backs and grant eachother free accesses and immunity. Some of this is a voting issue as in we need to make it known to our candidates that it matters to us, and then push real political power in their hands.<p>Just to help the imagination of all here's where mass surveilance could plausibly add good to society, all stemming from legitimate use:<p>1. Criminals like porch pirates can be caught using a neetwork of Ring cameras<p>2. A lost pet/child can be identified and found by drone surveillance<p>3. Usage data of roads can be updated in realtime<p>4. Trends and Sentiment could be used to guide the government intra-elections improving the way government serves us<p>5. Police officers can avoid risky situations using drones as eyes instead of putting their own bodies in harms way
6. who controls and accesses the data will change over time<p>7. authoritarians and evil men can have a one-stop shop to know where to round up political opponents<p>8. power becomes increasingly entrenched and concentrated<p>9. See 7
Your points are, essentially, always true of all power for all time. (Or mostly true of most power for most of time)...<p>Humans have frequently created systems which contradict steps 6-9, or atleast from Monarchy to Democracy. Constitutions, legal systems, laws et al. have generally served as barriers to abuse. The question is how do we continue to uphold and increase the value for individuals and decrease the expected return of abuse.
> EU style governmental pushes to defend digital rights.<p>No, I don't think we need Chat Control in the US or our government forcing ISPs and CDNs to block whole swaths of the internet just because a soccer game is on TV.
Fair points, I did not mean undermining encryption or privacy, I meant like GDPR and right to erasure.<p>It'd be even better if there was some form of royalty structure on our data used by companies. It'd be nice if I, at least, received a royalty check each time a data broker sold my data to the CIA.
All of your positives are possible without mass surveillance.
> There are dozens if not 100s of ways that mass surveillance can improve human life.<p>There are dozens of ways living in a cage can improve human life.<p>You won't be exposed to dangerous ideas and you might get a calorie allowance. There's little danger of an unwanted pregnancy, and you might be given labor-related chores or exercises to occupy your time.<p>The danger with all of these systems is what happens when they are abused. That's not a matter of if, just a matter of when.<p>We are building a cage around society. It's so slow you don't realize the shackles being placed around your ankle and your neck. But one day, when it's too late to protest, the switch will be flipped.<p>We're already living in 1984. We are always just a few election cycles away from 1934.
One specific example: device attestation and Web Environment Integrity, combined with the internet being increasingly controlled or mediated by a handful of middlemen who would absolutely love to turn this on (Cloudflare, Apple, Google, etc) but if they do it too early there’ll be revolt.<p>It’s had a couple attempts that got shot down so far, but the pushback gets weaker as time goes on, and as the troublesome/less-compliant generations age out and get replaced by generations who’ve grown up accepting this stuff as the water they swim in.
Even if you trust all current actors, the tapes of forever.<p>The extremely detailed "Metadata" they have on you will still exist in your children's time.
NSPM-7 is about to make mass surveillance magnitudes more oppressive and ever-present.
I think we have to face the fact that we cannot unring this bell. There will be holding actions against things like Flock but in the end they will fail, and at best we will have a loosening of the laws that Flock is being used to enforce and more draconian enforcement of the laws that remain.<p>Like many on this site I'm in violent agreement with Schneier and have been ever since "security theater" entered the lexicon. But this is a hopeless fight.
“Temporary” surveillance powers are never temporary.
mass surveillance is like nuclear weapons.<p>it will never go away.
At this stage I'd settle for echelon era surveillance and consider it a win...<p>Ad tech/tiktok has proven its possible to deduce what people are think at scale from subtle signals, now sifting info at scale is possible thanks to LLMs and a large portion of everyone's online history is likely to become vulnerable to store now decrypt later attacks. Get rid of cash, force identity verification for every online service, sprinkle some flock cameras on top and you've got a complete surveillance state. Oh and of course you need some goons to scare people into compliance & later in some self-censorship for good measure. We could call the group "Frozen water".<p>...and we're basically already there on all of it except perhaps the "decrypt later" on https (and even that has rumours).<p>Genuinely don't think this is stoppable anymore.
how not? All of this is "soft" control, if tomorrow 75% of the people in any country decided "this can't keep on going on", all relevant public buildings would be occupied everywhere and the relevant government imprisoned promptly.<p>On a more positive note, the fact that this doesn't happen indicates things aren't that bad right now. No amount of KYC or age verification can stop large amounts of angry people who want one thing.<p>People sometimes bring up China - which isn't relevant because people still remember being extremely poor, thus being grateful to the Party - or one of those dictatorships as counterexamples for this, but see the Arab Spring (food got more expensive -> revolutions), Nepal recently... etc.
> One of the many legacies of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 is the government-wide shift from targeted surveillance—such as individual wiretaps or pen register/trap and trace orders—to mass surveillance techniques—such as tapping into the internet backbone or mass collection of telephone or internet metadata.<p>In other words, we gave the terrorists the victory by accepting being terrorized at the country level from a single act and destroying a lot of our freedom. Yeah us.
There’s lots of questions around who was actually behind 9/11, looking at who benefited the most is helpful. We may never know the truth but we know who the real “terrorists” are, because they’re terrorizing everyone now.
No Comrade Premier, it has only just begun.
25 ? She must be new here.
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_the_United_States" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_the_Unite...</a>
> One of the many legacies of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11<p>I see this more as an excuse used by a small corrupt elite
wanting to enslave the people. The problem is that you do not
have a real democracy in the USA. The current orange clown
brigade shows this best (corrupt to the core), but it is not
really much better with other roleplaying administrations.<p>Sooner or later people will realise this too, even the not too
terribly bright.
<a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/government-elections-politics/united-states-of-secrets/the-frontline-interview-william-binney/" rel="nofollow">https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/government-election...</a> Here's a fun little interview. They had a program that apparently worked, for much cheaper than Michael Hayden's program (I think Trailblazer). Got shelved apparently due to "not expensive enough". 9/11 happens and Binney contends his ThinThread program could have stopped it. You don't want more dragnet surveillance; even beyond the abuses, it leads to it being harder to catch things
No it is not, and it will get worse. No matter who is in power, power stays. And power by definition is the capacity to control and plunder without restrictions<p>All these years reading about liberty and philosophy has taught me that the only way out is to make money and disappear, be an eagle, watch the lions eat the sheeple from the top of a mountain, because the sheeple don't want to be freed and worse yet, they will point at you as if you're an outlier, a misfit, a problem that must be fixed by force, their 'democratic' force<p>So fly high, find your peak and watch from there, we only have 100 years to live as we please, not to spend it fighting for those who don't want to be saved<p>Do like Nero, let the world burn and enjoy watching, from afar...
Mate I am afraid the world governments are just starting.
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I find it ironic that in the US, there's this social movement against Flock cameras - which have shown real results in tracking down criminals - while everyone walks around all the time with a personal tracking device in the form of a smart phone. That's wayyyy more invasive than cameras along roads.
Don’t be That Guy please. This tired talking point gets walked out in every privacy discussion. Both things can be (and are) bad at once, but just because one problem exists doesn’t mean that others aren’t worth solving.<p>In any case this article is about the whole spectrum of mass surveillance, not one specific company.
Phone data requires some actual process to access. It should be more restrictive than it is, but I don’t believe the information is made available to random police officers who can search for whatever they want with no real justification.<p>The problem with Flock isn’t the cameras, it’s the system built on them that gives panopticon powers to any random law enforcement officer.
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