

 Paradise Lost: Paranoia Has Undermined US Democracy - slashdotaccount
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/paranoia-has-undermined-united-states-claim-to-liberal-democracy-a-932326.html

======
davesims
Well, it ain't exactly Tocqueville, but it does provide an interesting
perspective on how the US is viewed abroad.

The thesis is simplistic though, and can be distilled along pretty obvious
classic political theory: every society has to balance liberty against order,
and decide how to deploy power to defend its borders. It's the essential
question in classic political philosophy from The Republic to Machiavelli and
everything that came after.

It's not enough to simply repeat the ancient truism that "power and fear are
dangerous," which should be axiomatic by now, particularly coming from a
German point of view, which has spent the last half-century-plus contemplating
that exact question, from the point of view of having quite dramatically been
both oppressed and oppressor in that time frame.

The broad question that needs to become visible and widely discussed in
American politics right now is both classic and novel, and quite frankly we
need help in guiding this discussion:

The classic question that needs to be resurfaced is, how does the US become
self-conscious and more transparent about the specific boundaries we draw
between protecting order and establishing liberty?

The novel question in the new post-9/11 context is how to manage that same
balance in the ongoing battle for intelligence which by definition requires
tremendous secrecy and daring.

It's clear that many both in and outside the US are profoundly uncomfortable
with the current state of NSA surveillance and I agree. But what _is_ an
appropriate level of surveillance? How can US citizens take back control of
that conversation and make deliberate decisions about that kind of society we
want to be?

And that's really the underlying problem that I think the Speigel article was
simplistically, indirectly getting at: citizens in the US no longer have the
democratic power to make those decisions. But in order for the governing
powers to trust democratic processes to make those policies, we need to become
self-aware and articulate enough to advocate those policies, and bring up
leaders that energize and focus that discussion with real statesmanship.

Statesmanship! Where is it? Can it exist in the current broken and polarized
political environment?

To the degree that we still have some democratic processes in place we are
responsible to say more than just, "Snowden is right!" We have to know what
kind of society we actually want to be in this new context.

The enemies and threats are new, but the questions are ancient. We have not
yet adapted old answers to the new context. And for that we need not only
novel political theoretical solutions, but the strong statesmanship to apply
them.

~~~
swombat
> _The novel question in the new post-9 /11 context is how to manage that same
> balance in the ongoing battle for intelligence which by definition requires
> tremendous secrecy and daring._

I'll give you the beginnings of an answer by addressing this statement.

The "battle for intelligence" is a fantasy created by those who would wield
fear over you. In any society, there is a risk that some people are crazy and
murderous. The solution to this is not a battle, but a hospital: care better
for the crazy, and the they are far less likely to shoot up their
neighbourhood. Negating that risk through a "battle for intelligence" is like
negating the risk of bullying at school by installing a constantly monitored
camera on every pupil's shoulder and electrocuting any transgressors. It may
work, superficially, but it ain't the right solution. The cost isn't worth the
benefit.

This addresses internal crazies. What about the external ones who want to
destroy America? Same difference. Instead of fighting an endless war, ask why
they are trying to "destroy America" in the first place, and fix that. While I
do not condone terrorists in any way, the US has a deeply hypocritical foreign
policy, and has had that for well over half a century. Change that,
consistently for another half a century, and miraculously the hatred against
America will vanish.

So the problem begins with your assertion that there is any "battle for
intelligence" with a worthwhile definition, let alone one that requires
"tremendous secrecy and daring". There isn't. It's all a paranoia in your and
your compatriots' heads.

Which funnily enough, is precisely the point of the article.

~~~
davesims
I wish this were true, and I share your compulsion, not necessarily a rational
one, to prefer compassion and understanding and detente to bellicosity and
intrigue.

Unfortunately for both of us, the truths of Machiavelli are not easily
defeated, least of all by something as saccharine as "make love not war." The
most tyrannical and imperialistic societies in history, from Rome to Stalin,
often began with variations on such noble sentiments.

"Care better for the crazy." In other words, anyone who means to do harm to
the republic should be institutionalized? How? By force I assume. Who defines
"crazy"? The history of international conflict unfortunately is not a story of
the rational and benevolent vs. the "crazy and murderous", but of competing
ideologies, scarce resources, and plain corruption.

The problem with such naivete is that it assumes the problem is theoretical,
and merely needs the correct sociological constructions and psychological
theory implemented by benevolent institutions.

But how do those institutions grow over time? Who governs them, and which of
the many competing and contradictory sociological and psychological models do
we apply, first of all to define and identify "crazy," and then to apply the
appropriate remedy? Further, what concrete example of such an application can
you offer as proof that such a program works consistently on the local
individual level, much less the international level?

Further, can you show through examples how such an institution sustains and
protects itself through means other than power and violence?

~~~
swombat
> _I wish this were true, and I share your compulsion, not necessarily a
> rational one, to prefer compassion and understanding and detente to
> bellicosity and intrigue._

No, I don't think you do. First of all, you dismiss it as an irrational
fantasy. How would you feel about my opinion of your "compulsion" if I
dismissed it as an irrational brand of paranoia? Not chuffed?

It feels like you're deliberately twisting my points, from which I surmise
that you are merely starting from such a completely different set of
assumptions that there is no possible conversation between us. However, I will
attempt it nevertheless. Probably all this is a waste of time. Arguing on the
internet, yay.

> _Unfortunately for both of us, the truths of Machiavelli are not easily
> defeated, least of all by something as saccharine as "make love not war."
> The most tyrannical and imperialistic societies in history, from Rome to
> Stalin, often began with variations on such noble sentiments._

The "truths of Machiavelli" were written down in 16th Century Italy, in a time
of constant warring and feuding between petty little dictators, at a time when
it was acceptable to saw your enemies in half or cut off their balls and make
them eat them, where rape and pillage were the way to conduct war, where
assassination of political rivals was a primary political tool. They are not
fit to be quoted in a discussion of how to conduct a democracy.

> _" Care better for the crazy." In other words, anyone who means to do harm
> to the republic should be institutionalized? How? By force I assume. Who
> defines "crazy"? The history of international conflict unfortunately is not
> a story of the rational and benevolent vs. the "crazy and murderous", but of
> competing ideologies, scarce resources, and plain corruption._

That's a ridiculous straw-man interpretation of my statement. Your country has
a great combination of a shitty healthcare system that is well known to fail
the mentally ill (unlike the functioning healthcare systems of other
countries) and wide availability of firearms. Strangely enough, this results
in a higher incidence of shootings and other violent mass killings. Want to
solve the problem? Reduce the number of guns and increase the number of
services taking care of the mentally ill. How to diagnose them? The same way
as in every other country.

> _The problem with such naivete is that it assumes the problem is
> theoretical, and merely needs the correct sociological constructions and
> psychological theory implemented by benevolent institutions._

No, the problem is deeply practical: how to have less violence both from the
inside and from the outside. The solution is deeply practical too: take better
care of the mentally ill who tend to become mass murderers so they are in
hospitals shooting valium instead of in school shooting toddlers, and don't do
the multiply fucked up foreign policy things the US does that result in crazy
people outside of the US wanting to cause it trouble.

> _But how do those institutions grow over time? Who governs them, and which
> of the many competing and contradictory sociological and psychological
> models do we apply, first of all to define and identify "crazy," and then to
> apply the appropriate remedy? Further, what concrete example of such an
> application can you offer as proof that such a program works consistently on
> the local individual level, much less the international level?_

See earlier point about how other countries "identify" mentally ill people. My
understanding is that it comes through a combination of family and friends and
medical professionals making assessments. Seems to work fine for the rest of
the world.

~~~
davesims
> (Machiavelli's teachings) are not fit to be quoted in a discussion of how to
> conduct a democracy.

Sorry, I should have qualified that, because I wasn't endorsing Machiavelli,
only acknowledging his influence on our current context.

You're right about the violent times of _The Prince_. You're wrong about two
things: the notion that it is removed at all from our contemporary environment
(such brutality has not been surpassed _in extremis_ in the last century
alone? Please...), and the idea that the fundamental turn from the idealism of
Plato and the ancients to the pragmatism of the moderns was not prefigured and
in fact architected by Machiavelli. The philosophies of _Real Politic_ and
Neo-Conservatism (at least) are fundamentally Straussian/Machiavellian in
origin.

All I can say about the rest of your points regarding the mentally ill is, I
wish mental health was the world's biggest problem as you seem to think it is.
But in this discussion it's a complete _non sequitur_.

------
cryptolect
Surveillance capability has advanced beyond broader public awareness and
legislative controls. The gap between what can and what cannot be monitored
continues to shrink. It's in the various intelligence agencies best interest
to not educate the public, so they don't.

This is why recent revelations have proved so shocking. There has always been
an assumption that checks and balances would prevent such fascist behavior
from taking root. Instead, it's being legalized in secret courts without any
public involvement. Now that behavior has been exposed, laws are being drafted
to publicly legitimize what's been performed in private
([https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/10/sen-feinsteins-nsa-
bil...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/10/sen-feinsteins-nsa-bill-will-
codify-and-extend-mass-surveillance)).

All this in the name of security. In a country where the loudest politicians
are publicly 'fiscally conservative', yet somehow the US still spends more on
its military than the next 10 highest defense budgets combined
([http://pgpf.org/Chart-Archive/0053_defense-
comparison](http://pgpf.org/Chart-Archive/0053_defense-comparison)).

Where truly can the US go from here?

~~~
davesims
This is _exactly_ the question. If the channels of democracy still exist in
any form (and the alternative is unthinkable), then we have to take control of
them and put forth real statesmen to answer this challenge. The consequence of
failing to do so is a society that steadily descends into complacency and
despair.

EDIT: BTW, I've no idea why your comment is not higher. Anyone downvoting it
is not paying attention imo.

~~~
VLM
"If the channels of democracy still exist in any form (and the alternative is
unthinkable), then we have to take control of them and put forth real
statesmen to answer this challenge."

Of course the alternative is thinkable. History and politics and sociology
classes are not that carefully censored and some people actually like the
liberal arts. World history did not being with the US constitution and it'll
go on past it, its already just a piece of paper as our leaders say, so I
guess we are already in a post-constitutional era.

You won't be permitted to change things by voting. As has been said before, if
voting could change anything it would be outlawed. You'll be given two
choices, one who is in support of the NSA and says he opposes abortion but
won't do anything about it, and the other who is in support of the NSA and
says he supports a womans right to choose but won't do anything about it,
because divide and conquer is how you control uneducated people, and no one is
more uneducated than your average American, although there is a cultural goal
to obtain training to obtain credentials to obtain a job to become a consumer.

The purpose of a democracy is to provide a tranquilizing influence on the
masses once mass media exists, until mass media is conglomerated and mergered
into only a few large controllable corporations. At that point democracy is
not even needed as a soporific. This is the stage we're at now, confusion that
we're subjects or serfs but not fully realizing it yet, just kinda confused.

This isn't just being grouchy or pessimistic; its a blueprint for the future.
Want to know what will happen next election? Closest thing to a time machine
ever invented? Read the above closely and guess what happens next based on it.
History never repeats itself, but it does occasionally rhyme.

~~~
davesims
"History and politics and sociology classes are not..."

"its already just a piece of paper..."

"You won't be permitted to change anything..."

"if voting could change anything it would be outlawed..."

"You'll be given..."

"This is the stage..."

"The purpose of a democracy is..."

"its a blueprint..."

A litany of declarative bromides, delivered with pseudo-authority and strung
together without forming a coherent thought, call to action or proscription
for remedy. Such could only ever be pointless, nihilistic, and and anarchic.

Demagoguery in the making.

~~~
VLM
"Such could only ever be ... "

You missed predictive in your list. A model resulting in falsifiable
observationally verifiable prediction about the future, resulting in the model
either living to fight another day, or being disproven. I'm optimistic about
my predictions and model passing the test, how bout you?

Not liking the future results of the theory, doesn't disprove the observation
or theory behind it.

Also the "its just a piece of paper" is a quote from a recent former
president, not me.

~~~
davesims
The difference between your declarative and mine is scope. Mine focused on one
person's statement; yours was a sweeping historical generalization.

"falsifiable observationally verifiable prediction..."

Go back and read _The Open Society and Its Enemies_ or _Objective Knowledge_.
and you'll find this statement constitutes a fundamental misreading of Popper.

Never mind the fact that Popper was basically wrong and the notion of
'falsifiability' is a non-starter when it comes to practical application of
political theory, Soros notwithstanding.

------
scrrr
Maybe it's a silly theory, but just I thought the other day that the increased
fear of disaster is a result of less spirituality in the west. (= decline of
christianity, increase of atheism) And also a result of detachment from nature
(= life in cities, spending lots of time in cyberspace etc.)

Perhaps the less you believe in life after death or a meaning of life, the
more afraid you are of terrorists. The less likely you are to smoke
cigarettes. The more you start to believe in technology. And so forth..

As if any of that would prevent the inevitable..

These thoughts are probably just the direct result of my current location
(Buddhist Asia) and the South Park episode about NSA-surveillance. ;) (but its
a good episode.)

I guess my point is: People need/want/tend to believe in something, and if
that something isn't religion, it's something else.

~~~
VLM
"People need/want/tend to believe in something"

Isn't there data that correlates an inverse relationship with education?

Combine that with a system intentionally designed to de-educate children and
culture in general, and the future results aren't pretty, but are predictable.

I think you might be missing an aspect where "fear of terrorists" is an
extremely thinly disguised "fear of non white people". or an aspect of
"Finally, an excuse to attack Israel's enemies". Aside from the obvious
military-industrial complex profit seeking corruption.

------
rainsford
It's a little hard to take someone seriously when they come up with a grand
theory on some particular topic and then use a TV show as their supporting
example. I had the same problem back in the Bush years when people would
support torture by saying it worked on '24'.

I understand that nobody is REALLY saying that something is valid just because
it was in a TV show. But the fact that they couldn't think of a real life
example of their position suggests to me that maybe they aren't informed
enough to be having such strong opinions in the first place. For the Hacker
News audience, it would be like opening an article on computer security with
an example of "hacking" from the show NCIS (anyone who's ever watched it knows
what I'm talking about).

------
tptacek
Wow. This is among the worst political articles I've ever seen posted here;
its lede is literally _about_ a cable soap opera about the CIA, and its
premise is that the US shares a memetic heritage with other "paranoid"
democracies like Israel and South Africa. Absent is any real comparison to the
democracies of Europe, or for that matter any analysis of US democracy that
wouldn't be available to a US high school sophomore sitting on his couch.
That's because it's not actually analysis, but rather a rageview-generating
provocation gussied up as one.

How did this get voted up onto the front page? Are people forgetting the flag
button?

------
andyl
_Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary
Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety._

------
mixmastamyk
I found the author's main idea valid and the connection to the threat of
Native Americans interesting but a stretch. The details are what sink this
piece. Perhaps a great-great grandfather of mine worried about Indians, but
its likely most have zero connection to that mindset today (attacks from
similar).

------
VLM
One interesting analysis is cause and effect and minimizing total casualties.

9/11 resulted in preplanned implementation of security theater, because good
security can be inconvenient, anything inconvenient must be good security,
right?

(something that didn't happen) results in preplanned implementation of big
brother style surveillance of the entire worlds population. Its profitable for
contractors and hardware mfgrs and great for industrial espionage etc etc.
Also it makes a population of dunces feel safer because (something that didn't
happen) could have been prevented, in theory, by the new, Bigger Big Brother.

So... what was (something that didn't happen)? Were we as a nation planning on
nuking SV and leaking the reaction plan before it happened eliminated the
reason for us to nuke SV ourselves? We "need" a reason to attack Iran to
extent WWIII in the ME, so I could see if some Cuban citizens nuke SV so we
invade Iran and publicize the "new" spy programs. In that way, looking at what
it cost to implement 9/11, program leakers are probably saving thousands of
lives, maybe more, by skipping the Reichstag fire and going right to the
oppression stage. How many people, as a country, were we planning to kill to
implement the recently revealed spy programs?

------
siculars
Brody actually was a terrorist. Who's paranoid now?

------
LekkoscPiwa
This article presents typical left-wing German point of view to the point of
predictability. As a dual Polish/US citizen I understand and can relate to a
lot of this what the article author says, but on the other hand what is
striking in German liberal left is this: world is nice, safe place and any
indications of terrors done by communists, or terrorists, etc. are widely
exaggareted. I remember how I lived in Communistic Poland and during the
Martial Law imposed by Communist Generals in 1980s Reagan not only called them
Evil, he also started helping Polish resistance including food donations. I
was one of these little kids really grateful for American food I got through a
local church courtesy of the Paranoid US Tax Payers. Thank you for that guys.
I still remember this tasty yellow cheese. Will never forget it. At the same
time the West German political class was downplaying the Martial Law in Poland
and refuse to criticize Polish GOvernment trying to "understand". And I see
they continue doing this stupid thing. On the other hand after WW2 there were
some extreme changes in German society. Pacifism uber alles instead of
Deutschland uber Alles. And this is stereotypical article in that sense. In
the sense of "All Germans and pacifist to the point of imposing danger on
themselves and others".

On the other hand I sincerely believe that the US is way over the top with the
reaction to 9/11\. The terrorists wanted to destroy our fundamental liberal
freedoms. By taking away those freedoms the uS Government seems to be confused
on which side it is really fighting for.

~~~
jivatmanx
The USSR had dozens of nuclear ICBM's pointed at every major European city,
and, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, U.S. city. They also had massive armies.

If war had occurred, The U.S. could have been completely annihilated, utterly
destroyed, ceased to exist. That's simply not the situation we face with today
with Islamic terrorists.

It's reasonable to ask the question if we might be willing to accept a handful
of causalities in exchange to remaining a free country. Than, take the money
we're spending on the MIC and use it for safer pools and bathtubs, saving an
order of magnitude more lives.

~~~
davesims
It's a reasonable question, but is it practical? 9/11 only killed a fraction
of the number who probably died in the last few days in the recent typhoon,
but the effect was to bring the entire country and economy to a halt.

The US would need statesmanship beyond that of Churchill to galvanize and
harden society against those eventualities.

Moreover, in an era of dirty bombs, chemical weapons and even full nuclear
devices, the consequences might not always be merely a "handful of
casualties," and the grotesque effects of certain weapons, particularly on
children, would be images that would be highly likely to incite increasingly
aggressive responses.

The US historically is not a society that is accustomed to the idea of being
under any kind of siege, nor of allowing its families to remain under threat
of any kind. That's not the underlying narrative, and it's just _not_ in its
DNA.

~~~
jivatmanx
I really don't think asking too much of our presidents to try an instill in
the public the value of Liberty and Democracy; nor is this some Herculean
task. It costs nothing, nor does it require a PHD from Harvard to explain, but
it's an investment that will continue to pay off for generations without end.

As for Nuclear Weapons, Al Qaeda obviously does not have the technology to
make them, so their safety is almost entirely a factor of international
cooperation in regarding their security in countries that do. Such cooperation
regarding their most sensitive and strategically valuable weapons requires
trust, something that will be in shorter supply if we continue unhindered
economic and political espionage.

