65 members of the house voted no, 62 of them were Democrats: https://justfacts.votesmart.org/bill/votes/8289

The only Senator to vote no was Russ Feingold(D): https://justfacts.votesmart.org/bill/3112/7877/55463/usa-pat...

I can't find hard numbers on how many republicans/dems votes yes or no on it, but it passed 98-1 in the senate, and only 66 no votes in the house. Yes a lot of republicans in congress (probably all of them at the time) voted yes on it, but most democrats voted yes on it too.

And the panic will continue because of that. More people will get banned. It isn't a fallacy to believe these things escalate.

During the Bush era, the opposition to the authoritarian trajectory of the war on terror was largely from liberals, although it was often strictly partisan. Conservative media completely fell in line with the Bush administration. I thought this would change when Obama was elected, but it didn't, and authoritarianism remained a driving force in conservative politics and media throughout Trump's presidency.

COVID-19 has brought some more conservatives onto the anti-authoritarian side for sure. But I'm not confident this is a durable change.

https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_...

Republicans have only recently woken up from this due to the absolute madness coming out of the left.

I was a democrat who voted for Biden and has only donated to democrats though I likely never will again.

His whole post was ridiculous; the GOP has always been just as, if not moreso ready to trade ANYTHING for "security" (security theater mostly), usually if there is a correlating premise of ensuring electoral results in their favor, which they usually beat the Dems over the head with as the "national security" party. With the last half decade of debacles under Trump, the "national security" moniker is arguably up for grabs, but the Dems are half-assed and flailing and the GOP is a viscous joke looking for a punchline (hence why I left the latter to go independent, since the former is a lousy home, even if they aren't a traitorous one).

It might do you some good to go back and look at who supported all of it in the beginning. It certainly was not some right wing only endeavor. There were very few politicians opposed to any of it.

For example, the ruling party has strong links into coal, oil and gas companies (big political donations going one way, much bigger grants and subsidies going the other). They cut subsidies for renewables because they “always let the market decide”, and now when older coal power stations are increasingly uneconomic they’re literally bringing in a forced subsidy to keep them going (sold as a “capacity payment” to “ensure reliability of the grid” - even though the clunkers are increasingly unreliable). It’s going to cost somewhere between $150 and $400 a year per-household on our power bills if they get it through.

Other things are like trying to come up with some kind of way to fine or sanction banks who refuse to lend to fossil fuel companies, or stop activist investors trying to force companies to go green. This is all by the side of politics who claim the utmost commitment to free markets and small Government! Same party pushing all these authoritarian surveillance laws too…

People really seem to be hung up on equivocating a sitting president attempting to overturn an election with people on twitter saying mean things.

The FBI concluded in Aug. 2021 that there was no insurrection attempt.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/exclusive-fbi-finds-scant-e...

Note that Pelosi is still trying to suppress why she didn't provide adequate Capitol security as requested for 100,000 attendees.

Late-term abortion at the state level? That's all I can even think of.

I find they are if the discussion is within 140 characters or less.

When the conversation turns long form with details of what's going on and the implications folks tend to get a bit shocked and don't like it.

Long form discussions sharing details are something we need more of. Short form opinions aren't helping us. Many people are just unaware.

It's more painful and fear-inducing to lose something you have, so the more you have the stronger the allure of laws that are sold as reducing your risk of loss.

The distance between rich and poor is now so big, both in economic and cultural terms, that anyone with even a modicum of wealth is obsessed with "not becoming one of Them", and will accept any rule as long as "it keeps Them in their place".

Curious if we saw a similar trend in pre-WWII America. The point being, maybe banding together and tolerating more-authoritarian tendencies is a natural human response to perceived threat. For Australia, this comes from China. For America...I don't know.

There's the PATRIOT Act for GWOT, but a lot of people don't seem to realize it didn't actually give law enforcement new powers. It extended powers they already had for drug and organized crime cases and let them apply to terrorism cases. We had already accepted an erosion of due process and civil liberties in order to defeat the Mafia and fight the War on Drugs.

This absolutely happens as a response to the perception of threat.

In fairness, it's not always clear this is universally wrong. The only reason the US has a federal government and a permanent standing military at all, which were not always givens, is in response to the threat that European colonial powers would have retaken all the land if we didn't, and this was probably a correct assessment.

Maybe rising authoritarianism is simply the natural outgrowth of overusing this impulse. The population, exhausted by the constant blaring of sirens over increasingly esoteric threats, would rather hand over the task of vigilance to some authority so they can finally catch some shut-eye.

We always need high level stress in my opinion. We need to always have a little bit of “it’s bad” in our life to set our priorities. Being comfortable for more than a few months is the absolute worst thing that you can ever do to yourself.

People who have time on their hands at home watch their neighbors and become Karens because they don’t have anything important to deal with.

People who don’t have an existential threat of world wars and a small country taking over the world don’t think it’s worthwhile to guard against that. (Not that I want a world war.)

They say you don’t know good until you’ve had it’s bad and I think that’s so true.

The first two points are fine, obvious even. Although they are not a satisfying answers to the questions "Why are authoritarian ideologies becoming more popular?" These answers seem equivalent to answering a physics question with "we live in a strange world" and then just leaving it at that.

The latter 2 points are bothersome. I much prefer the default "social contract" implied by most messages: "These are my thoughts. I welcome further thoughts or counter arguments. I may or may not participate in further discussion." That goes without saying and seems much nicer than "I'm smart and my arguments are sound, but don't expect further discussion, see ya".

There's an interesting discussion to be had around point 2 and the pros and cons of different ideologies. All of that was buried beneath points 3 and 4, asserting your intelligence and discouraging further discussion.

Especially when people are more safe than ever before, the measures proposed here merit some pushback.

On the other hand, COVID related restrictions are directives that only have authority all under a temporary declared ‘state of emergency’ in each state, by the State Governments. They literally have no on-going effect once those state of emergencies end, unlike the 86 or so permanent surveillance/ “anti-terror” laws the Federal Governments have passed over the last 20 years (which is why I’m really hoping to get the opposition into minority Government next election so the minor parties can push for repeals and reworking of the whole mess).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_emergencies_i...

We're lucky we live in a society where we can dissent without undue risk, at least, to some extent.

We are lucky we live in such a society. We are not lucky that so many people use their right to dissent for such idiotic ends.

Just because you have the right to do something doesn’t doing it is automatically praiseworthy.

Also, what happened to personal choice and personal responsibility? By now it is clear that the vaccines do not seem to prevent you from infecting others so the argument for getting vaccinated so as not to infect others has been made moot. This leaves masks - which have been proven (yes, proven) not to work unless N95 or better types are used and crowding avoidance. In other words, get vaccinated to avoid personal risk of a severe infection. If you decide not to get vaccinated for whatever reason you'll have to accept the possibility of a more severe infection. Keep your distance from others if you want, do not force yourself upon others who have not made clear to be OK with it. All of these are personal choices which you'll just have to accept if you want to continue living in a free society. It sounds like you are willing to give up those freedoms for a misplaced sense of protection?

In 1775 Benjamin Franklin had the following to say: ‘They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.’. He seems to have said it in the context of some people considering a compromise with the Crown over the stationing of British troops in the colonies. His stance was that giving in to these demands would mean the end of any real hope of freedom.

And the vaccines do seem to cut do prevent spread, by preventing a large number of infections. Not sure where you get that from either.

Why does it sound like I’m willing to give up freedoms? I explicitly said it’s great to have freedoms but that you shouldn’t always use them.

It seems like you completely ignored the point of my post.

On the efficacy of vaccination as a means to slow the infection rate there are several sources, once of which [3] was discussed on this site [4] recently. With regard to the "delta"/"Indian" variant the Pfizer/BioNTech mRNA vaccine offers 43% protection against infection while the Moderna "Spikevax" mRNA vaccine offers 76% protection [5].

Maybe I am wrong about your willingness to give up freedom, this is the impression I get from your approach to those who dare to dissent. When it comes to freedom of speech it is exactly the type of speech which goes against the common narrative (while staying within the bounds of legality) which should be protected [6].

[1] https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-6817

[2] https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/07/commenta...

[3] https://www.science.org/news/2021/08/grim-warning-israel-vac...

[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28395776

[5] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.06.21261707v...

[6] ...which does not mean you need to agree, not even that you need to listen.

> the Pfizer/BioNTech mRNA vaccine offers 43% protection against infection while the Moderna "Spikevax" mRNA vaccine offers 76% protection

So while the vaccines may not cut transmission among people who get infected while vaccinated, they still massively cut the spread by cutting down on the number of those infections that happen in the first place, even with the delta variant. So vaccination is still a public health measure and not merely a personal choice.

> Maybe I am wrong about your willingness to give up freedom, this is the impression I get from your approach to those who dare to dissent.

My approach that I explicitly said was great we have the right to dissent, but should choose where when to use it? The same damned approach you espouse when you say things like - "do not force yourself upon others who have not made clear to be OK with it" ?

Yes, free speech should be protected, that doesn't mean I can call my mum a the C word and be free from her being offended, because muh freedom of speech. Free speech and freedom to dissent doesn't mean that dissent on covid vaccination is a virtue. It means that that speech doesn't get punished. You can be on the right side of the law and still be doing the absolute wrong thing. Dissent for its own sake is childish, especially where it causes harm, not something to praise. Which is what I was replying to - the assertion that dissent is a virtue.

Not in all circumstances it isn't. Not purely as a kneejerk.

Yes...

> Yes, free speech should be protected, that doesn't mean I can call my mum a the C word and be free from her being offended,

...but the government is not your mum. Also...

> because muh freedom of speech.

...most of the dissent I see does not come from people who speak like that - this is not a dispute between "uneducated rubes" and "enlightened followers of The Science™", nor is it clear which of the positions leads to the best overall results. From what I gather comparing the outcomes in places with severe restrictions - The UK, New Jersey, New York and California come to mind - with those where the approach is more based on personal responsibility - Sweden and Florida are two examples - there is no clear "winner" [1,2]: the UK has a higher death rate than Sweden, New Jersey has the highest death rate in the USA, Florida and California are comparable while Florida has a much older population and as such would be expected to rank higher.

The core of the dispute is whether people can be trusted to look after themselves or whether they need some authority figure to tell them how to behave. Given access to means of protection - vaccines, behavioural changes, PPE - the results seem to show that there is no significant difference in disease-related outcomes between the former and the latter while the former retain a larger amount of freedom compared to the latter. As to whether this larger sense of freedom translates in a higher trust in authorities is unclear, at least here in Sweden where the rather soft-handed approach is often portrayed as being due to incompetence and lack of direction. Something which is clear is that places which are or have been under severe lockdown will suffer in other ways with children who have not seen their friends for months, small businesses which have been forced into bankruptcy while behemoths like Amazon thrive, social cohesion taking a hit due to the fact that people are starting to see others as sources of infection first, people second, substance abuse increasing, lack of exercise due to restrictions leading to worse health which directly increases the severity of any SARS2-infection, etcetera - the list is far longer than can be discussed here.

Suffice to say that - when regarding liberal western societies - I see the authoritarian approach as the wrong approach which will end up doing more damage to society while not significantly reducing the impact of SARS2.

[1] https://c19.se/global - sort the table on deaths per million

[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109011/coronavirus-covi...

But you go for it, you beat the shit out of that straw man.

Also, what are those weird ideas about vaccines I am supposed to have? I see nothing weird in what I described in the previous posts, just a summation of data from what I assume to be reputable sources. Wherein lies the weirdness?

Sure, it supposedly is, but there is also evidence saying it's bad. [1]

As for vaccination, it should be a risk-based analysis, but instead, we are simply told to get it, no exceptions. That doesn't sound very scientific to me.

[1]: https://thefederalist.com/2021/09/02/a-look-at-scientific-ev...

As much as many of us would prefer this to be the case, this is clearly false.

Newsom’s anti-recall ad is entirely about mask and vaccine mandates. In fact, I believe it mentions no other topic.

If you are an IT professional, and earning 100k+ a years, there is no wonder you didn't meet much of these before. There is simply not a lot of opportunity for social classes to cross in daily life today.

We, rich people, learned it the hard way in Russia 20 years ago.

I call it a "revenge voting": https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/10/electi...

I really believe the West needs to learn from how the early modern Russia unravelled, and how it came to 1991 being undone through effectively a democratic process.

I see similar on the left. You see a lot of people who had good things to say marginalized because they pushed back against the current populism or people who should know better embracing it so save their own hide (my senator being one of the latter).

Things will change. They always do.

Second to it, is the reality on the ground is that the latter outnumber the former tens of times over.

It ain’t poor people running these countries.

One of the elites who is on the outs or doesnt have a path forward uses it as a tool to grab power for themselves, then uses that power to do what elites always do.

It's pretty much NEVER that one of the lower classes is the one that rise up and gain power via populism. Even Stalin would be "Elite" in that he went to Seminary.

Freedom of speech and anonymity is being weaponized and used against the west.

I think the trolls, shills and agitators are a symptom of dysfunction rather than the cause. And I think the idea that more authoritarian states are stronger/more stable/better because they don't suffer this is deeply misguided.

In the United States, our political class is deeply and fundamentally unserious. Our legislators seem uninterest in legislating and in general seem to believe that their main job is re-election, and not the work they were elected to do.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but if 'the west' has a coherent set of moral principles at all they are probably inextricable with the idea that more authoritarian states are more brittle/more stagnant/worse. Even if it's true that free speech is being used against 'the West', turning our back on it in response would mean there's nothing there to defend.

Going to attempt a fix

Our legislators seem uninterest in legislating and in general seem to believe that their main job is re-education, and not the work they were elected to do.

Indeed, "Let them eat cake." is the most famous thing Marie Antoinette never said, judging by the various anonymous and pseudonymous pamphlets and other printings that popularised during her time that and many other slanderous or otherwise hurtful remarks.

(( And no, I'm not saying a police state or anarchy would be an appropriate outcome. ))

To quote chief Nazi propagandist Goebbels from 1928:

We enter the Reichstag to arm ourselves with democracy’s weapons. If democracy is foolish enough to give us free railway passes and salaries, that is its problem… We are coming neither as friends or neutrals. We come as enemies! As the wolf attacks the sheep, so come we.

The modern-day far right is following exactly the same almost-100-years-old playbook, and there are still people who don't recognize that we are letting history repeat itself. What would your (great-)grandparents have thought if you told them that there would be open marches of swastika flag-bearing people in the US?

That happened to a far greater degree in the 1930s. There is nothing comparable today. Formal, large, organized groups representing literal fascism and communism were present in the US back then. Those great-grandparents were certainly aware of it. The US is a large and diverse nation - formed of the world's peoples in many regards - and you're allowed to follow almost any ideology you choose. That means extreme, violent statist-type elements - socialist, fascist, communist, theocratic, et al. - will never cease to be present.

"When Nazis Took Manhattan"

https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2019/02/20/695941323...

"American Nazis in the 1930s—The German American Bund"

https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2017/06/american-nazis-in-...

Their goal is to make our system dysfunctional by destroying people's trust in the information presented them.

It is what the Rand institute calls the "firehose of falsehood" https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html

And they have been very successful at it.

Isn't this just the ol' "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" problem? Hundreds of years of ago we couldn't see germs with a microscope doesn't mean they weren't effective in our lives.

And because we couldn’t see them we misattributed their effects and treated people with bloodletting. Confidently declaring your understanding of an unseen enemy and applying seemingly-appropriate countermeasures is likely to be harmful.

https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Pillars-of-...

> The media multiplier effect can, at times, create disinformation storms with potentially dangerous effects for those Russia perceives as adversaries at the international, national, and local level. In the past, Russia has leveraged this dynamic to shield itself from criticism for its involvement in malign activity. This approach also allows Russia to be opportunistic, such as with COVID-19, where it has used the global pandemic as a hook to push longstanding disinformation and propaganda narratives.

> A key element of Moscow's strategy this election cycle was its use of proxies linked to Russian intelligence to push influence narratives- including misleading or unsubstantiated allegations against president Biden- to US media organizations, US officials, and prominent US individuals, including some close to former President Trump and his administration.

> Throughout the election cycle, Russia's online influence actors sought to affect US public perceptions of the candidates, as well as advance Moscow's long-standing goals of undermining confidence in US election processes and increasing sociopolitical divisions among the American people.

> Foreign intelligence services are certainly doing a lot of crap online but it's not clear whether they've actually accomplished anything.

?

Government resource allocation is seldom based on a rational cost / benefit analysis.

> Throughout the election cycle, Russia's online influence actors sought to affect US public perceptions of the candidates, as well as advance Moscow's long-standing goals of undermining confidence in US election processes and increasing sociopolitical divisions among the American people.

The confidence undermining was all a local issue; Russia had nothing to do with it.

If you were buying a microwave oven via Amazon, you could take a gamble and trust Amazon product reviews by people you don't know or have any real reason to trust. Or you could pay an independent party to review it on your behalf[2][3]. Or you could look for a random reviewer on YouTube that receives free samples from manufacturers and compares multiple models side by side, careful to only highlight positives of each product. In any of these cases, the real identity of the reviewers is largely irrelevant. The YouTube reviewer could be wearing a clown suit and go by the name 'SillyClown123' and the review could be far more trustworthy and helpful than other types of review. What you actually want to know, and may not be able to determine, is the motivations for conducting the review, whether the reviewer has manipulated and narrowed (possibly inadvertently) the field of products compared and whether their criteria and weightings for review align with your own expectations.

[1] https://www.modernretail.co/platforms/how-amazon-sellers-are...

[2] https://www.choice.com.au/home-and-living/kitchen/microwaves...

[3] https://www.consumerreports.org/products/microwave-ovens-289...

"Better Amazon reviews" and "fewer Reddit shills" aren't worth much.

> I'm not suggesting stripping anonymity or free speech, I'm just pointing out the problem with anonymity online.

In the context of an article about removing anonymity, I don't think it's possible to set "removing anonymity" aside.

Privacy, however, is something that needs to be strongly enforced, and that means you have complete control of what personal and private information and communication is available to third parties. Anonymity and Privacy are necessary in places (journalists, dissidents, etc), but many people tend to think of anonymity and privacy as one in the same.

Social media with anonymity allows bad actors to masquerade as whomever they want, say anything without recourse or accountability, and social engineer people at large scales. The issue is that we tend to trust people, and if those people are foreign disinformation agents then we end up with the division we have today. Social media should be private - complete ownership of your data and audience - but it should not be anonymous.

People that call for accountability are modern witch hunters in my opinion. The try to put blame on people that are probably not responsible for perceived ills.

I am pretty aware of the difference between anonymity and privacy and there is a strong correlation in many cases.

Do say, 2OEH8eoCRo0!

The net certainly increased possibilities for foreign actors to reach domestic audiences, but claims of such cases are vastly exaggerated in my opinion.

That said, troll, shills, agitators and propagandists might have a good understanding of peoples fears and desires and will use that against you. More effective the more you know about the target. This is why surveillance is dangerous.

THAT is one of the most authoritarian things I've ever read. You're full on down the fascist road once you start believing things like that.

Do you have a good source explaining concretely how a handful of people, even sponsored by enemy states, can cause such harm? It's hard to imagine that they would have such influence without the general population being more than receptive to it.

Where were you going with this?

I’m talking about the model of decision making and how distributed it is. That is fundamentally more important.

Ironically, HN is throttling my account for talking about this.