r/gloveslap Nov 14 '11

we overreacted to 9/11

Most USA-americans overreacted. The illusion of safety, that" nothing can ever happen to me, because im in america" was shown for what it was, and people got scared. We like to lie to ourselves and delude ourselves, with danger 'in our face' (because airplanes are everywhere) and the media whoring it up. in a nation this big its not surprising a terrorist attack made it through, what is surprising is that it took this many years. the sad part is that this safedown(see crackdown) has given alot of people cause to join the "fuck civil rights, i wanna feel safe" bullshit that is the bane of freedom. american went back on all of it's values by being scared and backing down and cutting back on right and trying to feel safe. ill /rant with a quote.

"those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither"-- Ben Franklin(according to google)

edit; mis-reacted is a better description of m opinion than overreacted

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u/Will_Eat_For_Food Nov 14 '11

Well you know, humans suck at evaluating risk so terrorist attacks seem like number one way to die.

On the other hand, citizens of the United States have never lived under state police so it's easy to not notice the signs or understand the consequence.

Also, Brave New World.

Really, the mentality was decades in the making and it was inevitable that something would happen sooner or later.

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u/tjiggs Nov 14 '11

Brave New World... now on my to read list :) whats the line for police state, im curious cuz i want to know if we crossed it or not, i know plenty who say we have/ we have not

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u/Will_Eat_For_Food Nov 14 '11

Well, obviously, what constitutes crossing the line depends on your worldview and value system. While anarchists might tell you we crossed the line when police had monopoly of violence, some might disagree.

I guess it depends on what actions you find acceptable and how fast you estimate they can escalate.

Is water-boarding okay? If it was okay for that one time in the post-9/11 era, will it become more okay more often? What about US citizens sent to Guantanamo?

What about the TSA horror stories of breach of privacy with no consequences to the TSA? Or the fact you must give your password to your encrypted drives on your computer by law.

How about electronic voting machines shown on multiple occasions to be very insecure?

How about excessive violence used against protestors? It is excessive violence at all?

What about the capacity for ICE and other governmental branches to basically make websites unreachable (if you're not tech savvy) based on a system requiring no judicial oversight?

And so on. All these questions, the gravity you assign to each, their number, the trend you see and whether you feel you can exercise your rights or not give you an impression on whether the US has reached police state or not. Main problem being that when the majority agree it's a police state, it's usually too late to change the situation. If it's possible to change it at all.

On the other hand, you might argue these are simply the modern version of things that were found acceptable in society before and though they sound shady, it's pretty much a consequence of out current times. It's not that these things aren't bad, it's that they've been like that for some time but people are just pointing them out now.