New NRA ad calls Obama hypocrite for USSS protection

[The Kernel]

You're wasting your time, dude. He literally says it's not 'tyranny' or 'tyrannical' unless you're killing heaps of a minority in some kind of state-sanctioned ... Hang on, let me start over.

Blatant lie and easy to disprove given that my posts are on the same fucking page.

[Stark]

Do 'elections' and or 'free speech' make oppression or tyranny impossible, in your view?

Actually dude when you say 'when the US has the equivalent of the night of the long knives', it's just funny when ethnicly targeted imrpisonment and torture could be said to be occurring. Maybe you should choose a different Godwin.

[The Kernel]

You are clearly just trolling not making any actual argument so this entire discussion is pointless. There's a fine line between sniping at people's sacred cows and trolling but you've crossed it and then some.

[Stark]

I haven't even mentioned trust funds yet!

Its just a bit sad that after a reasonable respectful discussion and poor Simon being hapless, you had to come and take a huge dump on whatever discussion might have existed by simply repeating STARK IS A TROLL. With Aaron it was even worse: he wanted a discussion and you just gave him abuse. You're like the poster child for 'destructive habits I learned on SDN'.

In my view, when people say things like 'when the US becomes tyrranical', they are not speaking in terms of the dictionary definition you had to look up. They're speaking about when America stops being 'free' or whatever metric they have. As a not-American, I consider the abuses perpetrated by the US government to be pretty 'un-free'. Citing elections as freedom when your own intelligence services spent decades fixing elections (and training others to do it) is funny, but not very instructive. Democratic societies can be oppressive. What level of oppression is 'too much' for an American?

Sorry. FUCK YOU OMG U TROLLZ

[Spoonist]

See, I'm not looking for an argument, nor do I care about establishing whether America is a police state right now. I'm curious as to when you as an American say "ok this would be tyranny" and what Americans could do to avoid that.

1-When there are major clamp downs on free speech perhaps? 2-When political discourse becomes entirely one dimensional? 3-When people stay silent for fear of political persecution?

Me personally I wouldn't call the US a tyranny but your examples are strange to me. I've numbered them for ease of use.
1-All through US recent history there have been major clamp downs on free spreech. Starting with the civil rights movement, the McCarthy era, the Vietnam era, etc. All the way to the last election cycle.
2-I give you this one. But coming from over the pond I think that the dualism in US politics is very dangerous. You are slowly coming closer and closer to this.
3-This has happened throughout the 1910s up until now. The examples are too numerous to count. But where it differs from tyranny would be that the persecution doesn't necessarily come from the Federal governement, instead it is usually the local or state governement that has done this.
Up until now when the anti-whistleblower policies and culture is so pervasive that congress wants to shut down their only real Anti Corruption agency and censor its members.

Now since you have two parties those in those main groups don't usually feel this but all the ones around the margins etc would have felt 1 and 3 distinctly.

[The Kernel]

1-All through US recent history there have been major clamp downs on free spreech. Starting with the civil rights movement, the McCarthy era, the Vietnam era, etc. All the way to the last election cycle.

Bullshit. Prior to the Civil Rights and Suffrage era I would have agreed with you given the systemic attempts to suppress the vote but since then there has been virtually unlimited free speech and public discourse.

Did you forget how Richard Nixon was tarred and feathered out of office for Watergate or how the public discourse was monopolized by the Iran Contra and Lewinsky scandals? I have a hard time seeing how a tyrannical government would permit news networks to openly discuss such things.

Hell, speech may be too open in the US as we have hate groups like the Westboro Baptist Church that is allowed to do shit like this:



Under a tyranny these are the first people that would get their heads put on pikes outside Federal Hall.

Also I think you forget that it was the American legal system which destroyed McCarthyism. It may have taken several years for the Supreme Court to finally put the matter to rest but it was done and McCarthy has earned his place as a reviled figure in US history texts.

2-I give you this one. But coming from over the pond I think that the dualism in US politics is very dangerous. You are slowly coming closer and closer to this.

You think the increased polorization of US politics is bringing us closer to a one person or party rule? Justify that.

3-This has happened throughout the 1910s up until now. The examples are too numerous to count.

Once again bullshit. Have you ever been to a city hosting the RNC or DNC and seen the loonies that come out to protest? There are no practical limits on free speech in the US.

But where it differs from tyranny would be that the persecution doesn't necessarily come from the Federal governement, instead it is usually the local or state governement that has done this.

What exactly are you talking about?

EDIT: Also keep in mind that even if you can prove this, it isn't an example of tyranny at all. Tyranny is consolidated control, it is not distributed at the local level. I still don't think what you are saying is true (at least not since the Civil Rights era ended) but even if it was it doesn't support your point at all.

Up until now when the anti-whistleblower policies and culture is so pervasive that congress wants to shut down their only real Anti Corruption agency and censor its members.

The amount of corruption in the US is not any different from other first world nations.

Besides, corruption isn't necessarily indicative of a tyrannical or oppressive government. There are plenty of examples of highly corrupt yet impotent regimes (Mexico and India come to mind) and also examples of oppressive governments with relatively low corruption.

Now since you have two parties those in those main groups don't usually feel this but all the ones around the margins etc would have felt 1 and 3 distinctly.

Once again BULLSHIT. I am an atheist and hold several left-of-mainstream views and I have never felt like I could not openly express them. During the runup to the Iraq war I was a vocal opponent of the manufactured conflict as were a decent number of people, although it was a very unpopular opinion back then. Never once has my ability to express that opinion been marginalized, threatened or infringed.

The fringe of politics is alive and well and there is no attempt to curb speech. When people like Rush Limbaugh can go on the radio and say things like: "You know how to stop abortion? Require that each one occur with a gun" then I don't see practical limits on political discourse. Or how about how we have openly socialist members of Congress like Bernie Sanders and (former) Congressman Dennis Kucinich who have long had an open podium to express their views? Ditto for hardliners on the right of all flavors like Tea Partiers or Libertarians (via the patron saint Ron Paul)?

I don't know what planet you live on to think that the US doesn't enjoy unfettered free speech but it's ridiculous to conclude otherwise. There are no practical limits on speech in the US whatsoever.

[The Kernel]

Also I should say that free speech in the US is a very complex issue, but I think this paper perfectly encapsulates the state of free speech in the US. The general thesis is that the US actually has less restrictions on speech than most liberal democracies and that this can be a fault since we have no laws against hate speech and such laws may in fact be against our Constitution (it has not been tested out all that directly).

I also agree with the author that this isn't necessarily a good thing but it certainly shows that the US is unique in just how unlimited our speech is.

[Spoonist]

@The Kernel
Uhm, wtf was that? I explicitly stated that I don't think that the US is a tyranny and yet you aggressively strawman my opinion as if I did???

Your backpedaling doesn't make any sense. Lets just walk down the MacCarthy, during that it is obvious that a major clamp downs on free speech and people being afraid to express their views existed. So if you use that as criterium (which I don't think you should) then you are on thin ice.
This was why I pointed out to you that your examples for what would be a tyranny was strange to me. By pure laziness in your statements you set the bar so low that the US easily passed at least two of them.

What I think you meant was that although the US has had, and still have, instances of these tyrannical features. However they are not the hallmark for an actual tyranny since a lot of those things are corrected over time by the systems in place and that those instances are seperated by time and local so not indicative of a larger system of oppression. Plus that in some of those instances the system also prosecutes or removes such a behavior. With some nice sprinkling of lots of examples of where minority views which had been clamped down on or where people were afraid, now enjoy more liberties.
But you are too busy being angry to make a coherent argument. Instead you try to claim that they don't exist and that it is bullshit to say that such instances still exist. Its like you never heard about the ACLU or their lists of 1st amendment violations every year. Just put each of your lame excuses into google with aclu and violation as search tags and you'll find examples aplenty.

[Metahive]

I would say the repeated attempts of the GOP to disenfranchise large swaths of voters from the voting booth surely do count as steps towards tyranny. It's another thing why I welcomed Obama's victory.