You act like American moderates are libertarians. They aren't. They're authoritarians

American government exists exclusively in the right-authoritarian side of the spectrum. Biden, being a moderate, also exists on that side.

I believe NPRs shortwave podcasts had a quick segment on facial recognition and racial bias. It was quite informative, explaining why there are issues and the risks of moving forward with it, especially in criminal apprehension and identification.

"hell no, they can't force me to do something like that. I have my rights" few months later, you're jumping on a retard train.
works both for facial recognition response in 2022 /// mandatory vaccination response 2020

Well, the terms "moderate" and "radical/extreme" can refer to both things, to the ideology underlying policy, but also to the means with which policy goals are pursued. Safeguarding tax returns is not an extreme policy goal by any stretch of the imagination, but introducing China-style digital surveillance tech to accomplish this goal is a radical rather than a moderate way of going about it.

If I may ask: what's your preferred term for the middle ground on the Libertarian-Authoritarian axis?

I don't have a term for it.

Remember that Democrats are just as beholden to companies as everybody else is. This is just a way for a company to legitimize facial recognition and get some sales. They contract with the IRS, everybody gets used to it while filing tax forms, it stops being as big of a deal later on when a private entity wants to scan your face on entry to a store.

The root of all changes in America are corporate control and profit. Even progressive changes for things like gay marriage simply do not happen until companies have co-opted the symbols into the system in a profitable way (rainbow capitalism). BLM is the same. The mayor of DC commissioned a big mural that says "Black lives matter" and then uses that as cover to propose legislation in direct opposition to the movement while saying "BLM isn't about fundamentally reforming the police, it's about small changes around the edges". This preserves the status quo, alleviates public pressure, and gives the facade of change that slows down riots. It's all the same source. Corporate power.

This post was edited by NetflixAdaptationWidow on Jan 29 2022 04:22pm

Believe it or not, I actually agree with everything you just said. By the way, note that I never claimed the Democrats were not beholden to corporate power.


The big disagreement we seem to have is that you consider the cultural leftism of the mainstream media, academia, and its embrace by the Democratic party and corporate America, to be meaningless and inconsequential. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to see these things as a mere distraction while I see things like cancel culture, wokeism or increasing government surveillance/control as threats.

Okay I had a fuller response typed but I want to address this specifically.

Increasing government surveillance and control are NOT a feature of the left. You slipping that in along side cultural wokeism is a shitty thing to do, and really shows how massively you're being manipulated. The strongest critics of facial recognition, the NSA, and everything else are firmly on the left, and these tools have been OVERWHELMINGLY for our entire nation's history been used against left-wing organizers. Communists were literally jailed for thought crimes. Environmental protesters are regularly arrested regardless of if they do anything wrong. Peaceful BLM protesters were literally black-bagged on camera and journalists were explicitly targeted by the police for covering the events. This is a consistent thread throughout all of modern history and not in any way shape or form limited to the red scare.

No, having a vaccine card is not comparable in terms of scale or function to national surveilance or government control, and government control has ALWAYS been massively and disproportionately used against the left.

This post was edited by NetflixAdaptationWidow on Jan 29 2022 06:04pm

I'm fully aware that government control has historically come more from the right. I've lived through the GWB era, patriot act and all that. Here in my country, where there's three distinct parties on the right-of-center half of the political spectrum, this is very easy to see. The pro-business, classically liberal Free Democrats are strongly against government control and in favor of civil rights and personal freedom. The mainstream conservative Christian Democrats are favoring a strong-arm government and wide-ranging authorization for the police and the security apparatus. And the far-right, more populist-leaning Alternative for Germany falls somewhere in between these two poles. Similar splits when it comes to civil liberties versus state authoritarianism ofc also exist on the left. In the U.S., these similar divisions exist within the two major parties. It is no surprise that Republicans have become less authoritarian as they went from neocon Bushism to populist Trumpism.

My main point is that there has been an ideological swap going on around the world over the past 8-15 years. Over this timeframe, the political right in most countries has become more libertarian and critical or wary of strong governments, collectivist ethics and calls for top-down transformations of society. Meanwhile, the forces of the political left have become more authoritarian, more willing to steamroll individual rights and freedoms in pursuit of the greater good and all that.

Going back to the U.S. specifically, the crackdown on whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning or Julian Assange happened under Obama, not Bush or Trump. The expansion of government surveillance by the NSA took place under him too. And note that business executives, the intelligence community and the officer corps, which have traditionally been deep-red constituencies, have grown significantly more Democratic in recent years. And no, this trend is not just a reaction to Trump's unique awfulness, it predates him. The FBI had already been heavily politicized, and its top brass strongly aligned with Democrats, before Trump even took office.

Even extremely smart (and liberal) pundits like David Shor have been talking extensively about this phenomenom of formerly deep-red elite groups drifting toward Democrats, so that's not some bullshit I'm making up in my ill-informed, propaganda-infested, out of touch mind or anything like that. When the generals, C-suites and intelligence community become more Democratic and less Republican, it is of course the expect development that authoritarian, pro-state-control policies will increasingly get adopted by Democrats and criticized by Republicans.
https://twitter.com/davidshor/status/1258756577877725190?cxt=HHwWjMC0sYecgPgiAAAA

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Jan 29 2022 06:35pm

You are, again, equating Democrats with the left. Democrats are not the left in the absolute sense, nor in the relative sense. Democrats are to the right economically, being against a national healthcare plan, being against raising taxes significantly, not engaging with even very popular issues such as gay marriage, etc. etc. The only way Democrats are on the left is if you intentionally take the most narrow and meaningless possible view of American politics. You have to actively exclude all time that isn't the present, and actively restrict the playing field to only the mainstream views of politicians, who lean massively more right than the electorate and even themselves from just 20 years ago.

You have now devolved to the point where you forgot what we just talked about. Seriously. Are you fucking immune to synthesizing information?

This post was edited by NetflixAdaptationWidow on Jan 29 2022 06:42pm

lolwut?

I am talking about the political spectrum in the US as it exists. Of the 50% of the US political spectrum which lies to the left of its center, the Democratic party is representing some 40-45%. So yes, Democrats are the left of US politics in a relative sense.

You are talking about the ideological/political spectrum in an absolute sense and then essentially argue that the dastardly corporate Dems are so staunchly right-wing that the dividing line between mainstream Democrats and the tiny bunch of genuine leftists in America is much more meaningful than the divide between Democrats and Republicans. You basically argue that political debates should focus on this demarcation between TrueLeft™ and the rest, rather than the divide which shapes actual politics, decides elections and defines the future curse of the country. I get where you're coming from and why you argue this way, but come on, that's ridiculous.