5/22/2025 at 3:38:55 PM
Over 30y I've learned that surveillance overreach by Govs never stops or even slows down. Only reporting by the press does.I'm hoping that a historically overt, abusive administration will kick news orgs out of their default complacency - and that they'll take surveillance seriously again. For a time.
That said, I am sympathetic that mental bandwidth is a real issue ATM.
by WarOnPrivacy
5/22/2025 at 4:03:58 PM
"Flood the zone" => The specific strategy put forth and now enacted by the current US admin in order to overwhelm the media's ability to cover issues and therefore by extension the ability for the public at large to keep themselves informed. It's a fundamental attack on one of the pillars of democracy. Mental bandwidth saturation is a feature here, not a bug.Additionally, the gradual removal of personal privacy, and the normalization of it, is another attack on a democratic pillar.
It really does seem like structural cracks are widening rapidly. I too hope that our current realities cause a sort of 'wake up' to occur in the minds of those whom are too busy, deep in "my team" politics or otherwise not concerned about what's going on right now.
by nicholasjarnold
5/22/2025 at 4:28:49 PM
The media does plenty of shooting itself in their own feet though. There was tons of coverage of Jake Tapper's book taking time away from everything that is happening right now.by davidw
5/22/2025 at 6:03:47 PM
The book about how the media covered up the president's decline?by willcipriano
5/22/2025 at 8:58:14 PM
If it was such a big deal, why did they wait to publish it in a book about a guy who will never see elected office again? They do this a lot and it damages their credibility.Also, the current guy is not exactly that sharp, or improving with age, either. But age seems to no longer be of interest to the press.
by davidw
5/22/2025 at 8:00:46 PM
Tapper was like #1 in the coverup lmaoby abridges6532
5/22/2025 at 7:25:03 PM
I’ve been wondering lately why they told us about “flood the zone” and published Project 2025. Is it because they don’t have regular communication with every person who is willing and able to employ these strategies, so they just communicate them in the open?by zzrrt
5/23/2025 at 6:27:18 AM
You need broad support and to recruit. It is hard to do those things while being highly secretive. Besides, who's going to read a 500 page book? They'll read parts, but all of it? Of course not. By just using parts it is easier to dismiss. People don't want it to be true in the first place, so it's easy to buy the lie.The truth requires understanding a lot of moving parts.
The lie is simple. We hate complexity (and long comments ;)
Some people they'll never convince, but they don't matter because they'd resist no matter what was proposed.
I mean look at Russia's invasion of Ukraine. It's a major logistical effort to invade a country. They amassed military forces all along the border. The whole time saying "nothing to worry about" and "if we were really going to invade we wouldn't be so obvious about it!" It was happening for months! (Starting in March!) Meanwhile lots of people, including news outlets, bought the lie. Everything was there plain as day, but it's easy to buy the lie. No one wanted to see war break out. Every day they didn't proved they were right too! Sure, plenty of people asserted that the attack would happen and time showed them correct. But that doesn't change how many misses there were nor did it actually stop the attack.[0] Being right didn't matter
But it's impossible to make an attack without telegraphing it. Same thing here.
[0] certainly all the military leaders responded appropriately. You don't take those risks, especially when so blatant. But that also doesn't mean they aren't going to lie through their teeth trying to prevent public panic. Not when there's the faintest of hopes that a war could be stopped before it happens. Again, you can see similarities
by godelski
5/22/2025 at 7:29:07 PM
[dead]by yeahokbut
5/22/2025 at 5:19:46 PM
It's never limited to a single administration.by gosub100
5/22/2025 at 5:39:24 PM
That is trivially true, but stop both-sides-ing it with false equivalency.At this point, the major party in power is doing all they can to undermine democracy and strip-mine the country for their own benefit and that of their few multi-billionaire sponsors.
The other party is attempting to herd a broad coalition of people to maintain democracy.
Yes, it is imperfect, and the country has fallen often far short of perfection through it's entire history.
That is no reason to set the perfect as the enemy of the good. Simply declaring "every form of government is (or all parties are) awful" is a cop-out, and the logical conclusion of that is a complete power vacuum which leads only to the population being ruled by rival gangs & fiefdoms.
by toss1
5/22/2025 at 7:34:55 PM
[dead]by yeahokbut
5/22/2025 at 6:19:36 PM
I'll happily stop both-sides-ing it when people stop emphasizing "the current administration" when it's not relevant to the topic. Your guy lost, learn from your mistakes and carry on. Or criticize both presidents equally. If you criticized Biden in his tenure it was still Trump's fault. Believe me, I tried. It's Logical nonsense.by gosub100
5/22/2025 at 6:45:12 PM
> I'll happily stop both-sides-ing it whenNo, you unconditionally need to stop both-siding. When you want to bring a broader issue in the spotlight, do bring the broader issue in the spot light. But when you feel you are inclined to throw in a bothsidism, which is a negative sum contribution to discourse, then the chance that you actually have an insight on the broader issue is quite small.
> Your guy lost, learn from your mistakes and carry on
As a bystander I can say on behalf of the ones that have been "othered" by means of political marketing, there is no guy. The pressing issue at play is the rule of law, separation of powers, due process, fair elections, and basic respect for human rights. If anyone feels they should continue to shout while waiving the merchandise of their favorite team, if anyone thinks this is the right moment to continue behaving like a spoiled hooligan, then they lose the aforementioned basic prerequisites of democracy, and with that, the democratic constitutional state.
by exceptione
5/22/2025 at 6:58:17 PM
[flagged]by gosub100
5/22/2025 at 7:11:51 PM
Why would I hate Trump? He is a minor player. His role is to play the chaos actor, to divert attention. Just useful. For the people with real, material influence he is delivering.The spell is broken if the press can stop wasting our mental bandwidth on the day to day distractions, and start to open themself to the big picture. And yes, doing a postmortem of how they got there is going to be an exercise in self-confrontation across the whole political spectrum.
by exceptione
5/22/2025 at 7:07:48 PM
Disregarding the rest of the content, the poster has every right to do that!by beej71
5/22/2025 at 7:19:04 PM
> Your guy lost, learn from your mistakes and carry on. Or criticize both presidents equally.So, your solution here is for people who think the current administration is particularly bad to either not complain or accept any whataboutisms you have?
Your ‘both administrations’ quip is a vacuous justification for the current administration’s actions. If this is the basis for your justification, then, regardless of the truth of your claim, you’d be inconsistent to then praise this specific administration for anything positive. Thus, outside of nihilist generalizations about the overall structure of the US, you can’t meaningfully contribute to this conversation. Without giving a positive justification for the administrations behavior, your contributions are ‘logical nonsense.’
I’d rather simply complain about the doublespeakers in office at the moment and say it is wrong to do so, and there is no ‘logical nonsense’ in that.
by kurikuri
5/22/2025 at 6:24:00 PM
Is my reading of your comment accurate? If not please let us know."The party not in power also has been doing similar things(in regards to the article) if not worse over the past couple of decades but lets completely ignore that, not criticize them at all, don't even bring it up and blame only the current admin because...<party currently in power is baddd>"
by ivewonyoung
5/22/2025 at 7:06:16 PM
I'm not the parent, but that seems like a pretty bad misread.But to answer, you worry more about the guy waving a knife in your face than other people who have knives and may have waved them in your face in the past.
I'm curious what the worse one is. The Clipper Chip? Seems like a light pleasantry compared to what's happening now.
by beej71
5/23/2025 at 2:15:18 AM
No. It is so inaccurate that you either have serious problems with reading comprehension or are being deliberately disingenuous in order to destroy the conversation as if your Red Team is right.The GP comment was about both the specific "Flood The Zone" strategy promoted by an advisor to the current administration and the overall and absolutely unprecedented assault by this administration on democracy and the rule of law itself.
Yes, I made a reference to the historical fact that the ideals of American democracy have always been aspirational. That is NOT license to whataboutism or claims that "everyone does it".
In a democracy, all the branches of govt (exec, ligislative, judicial) and the institutions of society (press, industry, academy, finance, religion, sport, charity, orgs, etc.) are ALL independent, balance power throughout society, and work for its advancement as best they can.
Under authoritarianism or fascism, all those branches and institutions are coerced or corrupted to concentrate power and serve the executive.
Never in the history of this country has any administration even come within orders of magnitude of this regime's attempt to cut off democracy. They are abusing the power of the state to coerce an corrupt every single branch and institution they can, starting with the judiciary, lawyers, press, and academia.
If you have actually "won young", you should take your gift of time and freedom to learn some history. Particularly relevant are how democracies are converted to autocracies, and it did not just happen in Germany in the 1930s, it happened today in Russia (ya, short weak democracy, but it didn't have to go that way), Venezuela, Hungary, and more; and the current party in power is abdicating it's legislative responsibilities to try to make it happen here. You might think you are safe because of your privilege of wealth, but if they succeed in their efforts to kill the 14th amendment and Habeas Corpus, you are not. Again, history is a guide, and the bog-standard authoritarian playbook is being run in broad daylight and secret Signal chat groups.
by toss1
5/23/2025 at 12:15:48 PM
> attempt to cut off democracyYou must have misspelled government waste. All of this was exposed by doge and trump and the first thing you did was start minimizing the damage, saying we waste way more in other places, and telling me that the world will end if these lazy wasteful socialist institutions get their fat lips yanked off the teat. I didn't believe your lies then and no matter how much you squeal I don't believe them now. Your whole party has perfected it's use of language control, redefining words, and catastrophizing everything. These aren't MSM viewers in here, you're not fooling anyone. Fix your party by delivering social improvements not just fantasizing and warning about the "end of democracy", and minimizing waste. Fear mongering is not helping your situation if you have any hope of your candidates ever winning again.
by gosub100
5/23/2025 at 1:56:58 PM
And, just this morning's headlines:The President makes a direct threat to Apple, that specifically their products will be made in the US or he will put a 25% tariff on them
This is nothing resembling policy or democracy. This is straight-up autocracy — an autocratic leader with zero input, specifically ordering a single company to take specific actions or he will personally set penalties.
This is not language trickery. This is reality.
by toss1
5/23/2025 at 1:25:50 PM
So, which version of "government waste" propaganda do you believe? The $2Trillion, $1 Trillion, $150 Billion (7/1000 of the initial claim), or any of the other mostly disproven by their own documents claims in the few $10b range?Do you believe the Musk's line that "40% of all calls to Social Security are fraudulent", or what he actually found after creating massive IN-efficiencies, both drastically worsening service AND costing more, that only 2 in 110,000 calls might have fraudulent indicators. [0]
The examples would go on for many pages.
And what institutions do you think are actually wasteful? All the scientific research that creates most of the advances that employ most people in this forum, medical research that saves lives every day, disaster recovery programs that restore distaster-hit economies to productivity more rapidly, initiatives to re-shore manufacturing to the US and build infrastructure for the next-generation economy, or just programs to ensure everyone actually has healthcare, or predict the weather so people can get severe storm warnings in real time instead of the next morning after their family got killed?
>>delivering social improvements OK, do you not consider workers' rights, 40-hour workweek standard, overtime pay, ending child labor (remember, 5-year-olds working was common) and building education programs and requirements kids stay in school, requiring a level of workplace safety actual social improvements? Because those were NOT brought by "conservatives", but by "liberals".
Without liberals fighting, and often dying, your life would 99% likely be born poor, to a mother who bore a dozen other siblings, you get no real education, start work in a factory by age 5, and you are lucky to survive to adulthood, as only 1-2 of your brothers and sisters make it. That was life 120 years ago before work standards, education, public health, and many other "liberal" innovations happened. Just got look at an old graveyard and notice the ages on the tombstones - they are overwhelmingly infants and children. And those are the ones wealthy enough to have marked graves.
But evidently, you think it is less "wasteful" to just let 85% of the humans born work from the age of 5, have nearly no education, and die before adulthood.
All this is reality, not some linguistic trick, and if all you have to deny reality is a claim that reality is some linguistic trick, you have a very weak argument.
>>aren't MSM viewers in here I'm no MSM viewer either, and if you think the MSM is "liberal" you are at least several decades out of date. Just look at the ownership, where 90% of the MSM and all local media outlets are owned by just six major corporations, who are all-in on promoting oligarchy.
[0] https://www.yahoo.com/news/doge-fraud-tracker-social-securit...
by toss1
5/22/2025 at 4:17:59 PM
Humanity needs a lesson that would be remembered in their bones.by xeonmc
5/22/2025 at 4:36:21 PM
For a generationby glial
5/22/2025 at 4:57:08 PM
That's strontium-90, but can we really say we've learned the associated lesson?by nancyminusone
5/22/2025 at 5:47:15 PM
One would think the Snowden Leaks was that moment, that was the moment I'll never forget personally. Basically most of what we thought were crazy conspiracy theories was confirmed by multiple independent journalist organizations to be true.by diggan
5/22/2025 at 5:01:30 PM
If WWI with a followup WWII reminder hasn't done it, not sure what willby gxs
5/22/2025 at 5:51:03 PM
>If WWI with a followup WWII reminder hasn't done it, not sure what willIt did it; for two generations. The GI's and the Silents were the most civic minded generations we ever had. But those were our grandparents (or great grandparents) now, and living memory has finally faded. Here's hoping it doesn't take another Passchendaele or Hiroshima to reignite it.
by ramesh31
5/22/2025 at 5:56:03 PM
>It did it; for two generations. The GI's and the Silents were the most civic minded generations we ever hadAnd the mass buy-in resulted in the building of systems, creating of institutions and setting of precedents that were and are being used less than civic purposes. So unfortunately I'm not sure that's sustainable either.
by potato3732842
5/22/2025 at 6:36:26 PM
The fact that institutions can be corrupt (or corrupted) doesn't invalidate the concept of an institution. Humans must coordinate their efforts to have widespread impact, and institutions are the de-facto way to coordinate effort: from marriage, the nuclear family, and extended families to local clubs, churches, companies, non-profits, and governments at various levels.Ever since the counter-culture movement of the 1960s, it's been cool to "stick it to the man", which unfortunately translates to anti-institutionalism too often. Tearing things down never yields a positive result when no good institutions exist or are created to fill the vacuum.
by TimTheTinker
5/22/2025 at 7:49:16 PM
Institutions and organizations ought not to be architected in a manner that makes them useful to the corrupt. This is the defining failure of 20th century western governments. They were so "all in" and had so much public support they shape shifted themselves into these things that are magnets for the corrupt and self serving (and arguably tempt their leaders to become those things).by potato3732842
5/22/2025 at 7:42:22 PM
Institutions are not corrupt, people are. Corrupt people like to blame the problems onto institutions, that serves them well.by maigret
5/22/2025 at 10:44:46 PM
Yes and no. Corrupt leaders corrupt institutions. But for large enough institutions, institutionalized corruption tends to transcend the corruption (or lack thereof) of its current leaders.At that scale, it takes a lot of power, courage, and integrity for a leader to reform the institution. Power itself can be a corrupting influence when too much is vested onto a single person -- hence the necessity of integrity.
by TimTheTinker
5/22/2025 at 10:02:38 PM
You mean the same people that built the CIA and NSA?You are literally talking about the founders of the surveillance state.
by rxtexit
5/22/2025 at 5:59:26 PM
> It did it; for two generations.On the specific issue of internal surveillance and its abuses, that is laughable, given the way that accelerated after WWII, with no substantial attempt at checking it until some fairly limited reforms were adopted in the 1970s after the Nixon-era abuses, with those restrictions being fairly flagrantly ignored (and formally weakened) after 9/11.
by dragonwriter
5/22/2025 at 3:41:28 PM
[dead]by decremental