https://youtu.be/TQ-Crh3rdQA?t=1946
(BTW - the whole interview is well worth watching).
If you think people lack courage, you don't have to look far as to why.
Also, if this was not a honest question but just a rethorical one: please read and take to heart the HN guidelines [1]. Essential part: It is better to explain why you disagree with the parent poster than to post snarky comments that do not contribute to the discussion.
1: https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/obama-leaves-tr... 2: https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/leak-prosecutions-obam...
first off, that these come up doesn't mean they're wrong, though it does likely mean they're shallow.
more deeply, this is an old, well-known dynamic often decried by the left. the left will dig deeper into often pretty obvious social dysfunctions and pioneer a social critique, analyzing the political and economic structures and systems that underpin it, and turn it into a challenge to existing authorities. This challenge is complicated, it hinges on teaching you political economy first, before it can even start to tell you what the systemic problem actually is. but it touches on real problems people feel every day.
The conservatives make a media thing out of it. Now, mass media, forever, has made their money by selling your prejudices back to you; from entertainment to news, they all basically work this way. Conservatives work this way as well (making for that sweet synergy between the two): it takes a run-down, stripped-down, dumbed-down version of the criticism, strips all political economy analysis from it (can't have them blame capitalism!), frinds some easy scarecrow figures - Gates, Soros, whoever (not that they're not horrible people, but that's not the point really), ascribes "debauchery and corruption" to them (because then the SYSTEM is fine).
In the end, when people then google the problems, they find these easy stories, which makes them associate the identification of the problem with these dumbed-down assaults. Then even mentioning the problem becomes that.
Conservatives will document how a lack of principles means that a mechanism in society will converge to something damaging, to have Progressives shout about how they’re “istaphobes” without that even being a relevant complaint.
They’re particularly vicious about that when conservatives point out that the proposed systemic solution converges to a breakdown in society or worsening of the situation — eg, trying to use systemic bigotry to “solve” systemic bigotry.
These shallow bullying articles get spread around a network of blogs, small media outlets, YouTube channels, etc. and then dominate search results.
They were also correct about the problems with social welfare destroying families and lax enforcement leading to a breakdown of cities, eg Seattle and San Francisco downtowns.
> It sounds, to me, a lot like the "degenerate" label that the Nazis loved to throw around.
Implying that I’m a Nazi while failing to address the specific example in my original post is exactly the bad faith responses we’re discussing in this thread. That kind of shallow ad hominem is corrosive to meaningful dialog.
Thank you for exemplifying.
Even The Atlantic and HuffPo come up higher.
When progressive documentarians Brave New Films even saw fit to make a documentary film about the issue (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Whistleblowers:_Free_Pr...), you know the situation is dire.
Obama's Crackdown on Whistleblowers | The Nation https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/obamas-crackdown-w...
Obama's War on Whistleblowers - CounterPunch.org counterpunch.org
Obama’s Plan to Crack Down on Whistleblowers Leaked https://truthout.org/articles/obamas-plan-to...
Obama’s Legacy: A Historic War On Whistleblowers - LI … https://www.longislandpress.com/2017/01/14/obamas...
Reading Pegasus[0] about Nso groups 0 click exploits used against any dissident journalists in regimes like Morocco, saudi arabia, (was on khashoggi and his partners phones), mexico, france, everywhere. the only thing protecting any of us is those with enough money to purchase software like pegasus don't deem us worthy of the license fee.
Soon as anyone rises above that fee your phone is basically live reporting to anyone with enough money. Doesn't lead to a restful nights sleep that book. They fricken built a turing machine out of pdf interpreter components to escape the encapsulation/vm for incoming files.[1]
[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59808055
[1] https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2021/12/a-deep-dive-i...
I remember several moments in my career when a boss or an investor literally tested me to see if I was a cheater. I suspect I failed these tests and it's why I wasn't promoted and why I didn't receive funding.
It used to be that elite status was acquired through bravery, intelligence and integrity, but these days, not only are elites not self-made, they are actually selected for having the exact opposite characteristics.
I think a major difference between now and then is that the world was a far more adverse and chaotic place for many reasons; people died frequently from all sorts of diseases, there were more wars and invasions, traveling to other countries was potentially life-threatening (e.g. you could be killed by the natives or succumb to previously unknown threats like exotic diseases, spiders, snakes, lions, tigers, poisonous plants, etc... Not to mention the substantial difficulties involved in communicating with locals in a foreign language). There really wasn't any support or fallback if one's plans failed; you would just die, no second chances.
The elite of today couldn't hold a candle to those who came before them. Today, they're mostly a bunch of spoiled brats who inherited a lot of wealth and never faced any real adversity in their lives (which wasn't of their own making to begin with)...
Horrible as that sounds, think about it from the other side's perspective. The one-way trade of silver was putting huge strain on the global economy. Opium was the _only_ thing people in China would buy with silver (illegally, obviously). They didn't have alternatives as China wouldn't circulate silver back out of the country. What Warren Delano was doing was in most nations' interest at the time.
Heavy trade imbalances almost invariably lead to wars throughout history.
Back then economies were extremely dependent on silver for international trade and only so much of it came from so many places every year. Trade depended on recirculation of silver.
The closest you could get to that today would be one country hoarding the shit out of US dollars and somehow the US being unable to print more.
If you look back to the 90s/00s when the US was heavily importing from China and China had no local buying power, the trade imbalance was combatted by the US Treasury creating debt instruments for exclusive buying by China. This diplomatic/economic tool benefited both sides at the time.
It used to be that people tried to manipulate public perception to appear brave, intelligent, ...
What has primarily changed is the quantity of levers and how massive the levers are at their disposal. The surface area of potential corruption has radically expanded in the US over the post WW2 era (part of that expansion of power was the military industrial complex and the superpower bureaucracy that went along with it). The larger and more complex the government, the more laws it has on the books to utilize, the greater the corruption, inevitably.
Oh, and now every idiot has easy access to an epic scale bullhorn via social media. That's amplifying the stupid, which would not have received much press time or public discourse time in past generations.
What probably happens though is that there are some very corrupt people in power who attentively watch any political movement and they take steps to corrupt them by infiltrating them up with corrupt individuals under their control... That way when these political movements reach their climaxes, they have completely deviated from their original course and have become totally ineffective as a political tool for change.
Even inheritance can be argued as the kid was most likely raised by corrupted individual in the first place.
I often receive tips from police officers regarding what they perceive to be misconduct. I always investigate those tips.
Sometimes, it's bad. Sometimes it's really bad. But oftentimes, it turns out that everything was fine, and the tipster didn't have all the information necessary to understand what was happening. I'd be happy to share an example if you'd like.
I am not an apologist for bad actors. I have exposed them and I am will continue to do so. But I have to acknowledge my full experience. I interact with government officials and agencies every day, and the more insight I have into government, the more confident I am that power does not corrupt nearly as much as some people think.
It's a warning that if your goal is having power and nothing else then you are susceptible to corruption. It's also a warning that having power tends to reveal how useful it is and thus tempt you to schedule more of it.
Same thing happened to me with my boss literally winking sarcastically during a critical argument (which I ignored).
This guy who I’ve worked with for ~12 years barely did any real work and was heavily into office politics.
Kinda reminds me of the opening scene in the movie Training Day when Denzel tested Ethan after they found money under the floor.
Ellsberg himself has commented on this extensively as well. Wiki [1] mentions moment where he finally decided to do it:
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[Ellsberg] experienced an epiphany attending a War Resisters League conference at Haverford College in August 1969, listening to a speech given by a draft resister named Randy Kehler, who said he was "very excited" that he would soon be able to join his friends in prison.[12]
Ellsberg described his reaction: And he said this very calmly. I hadn't known that he was about to be sentenced for draft resistance. It hit me as a total surprise and shock, because I heard his words in the midst of actually feeling proud of my country listening to him. And then I heard he was going to prison. It wasn't what he said exactly that changed my worldview. It was the example he was setting with his life. How his words in general showed that he was a stellar American, and that he was going to jail as a very deliberate choice – because he thought it was the right thing to do. There was no question in my mind that my government was involved in an unjust war that was going to continue and get larger. Thousands of young men were dying each year. I left the auditorium and found a deserted men's room. I sat on the floor and cried for over an hour, just sobbing. The only time in my life I've reacted to something like that.[citation needed]
Decades later, reflecting on Kehler's decision, Ellsberg said: Randy Kehler never thought his going to prison would end the war. If I hadn't met Randy Kehler it wouldn't have occurred to me to copy [the Pentagon Papers]. His actions spoke to me as no mere words would have done. He put the right question in my mind at the right time.
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[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ellsberg#Disaffection_w...
> The UCMJ was established by the United States Congress in accordance with their constitutional authority, per Article I, Section 8, which provides that "The Congress shall have Power . . . to make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval forces" of the United States.
It's sort of like that and not at the same time. Under the UCMJ, refusing a lawful order can put you in the brig, or a variety of punishments applied (NJP, loss of rank, loss of pay, etc.). Under most circumstances, forcing a service member to ingest an unknown drug is not a lawful order. Under official civilian authority you can be highly encouraged to take an untested vaccine or some such, and refusal, while not disobeying a lawful order, can end up with you receiving unpleasant treatment. (You are there under contract for a set period of time, after all, so a long period of time of unpleasant treatment can be motivation enough to do things you wouldn't normally want to do.)
I was able to avoid the anthrax vaccine around 2000 by refusing to sign a waiver. I ended up getting transferred to a new command shortly thereafter which was scheduled long before this anthrax vaccine situation, but I can't be certain that there were going to be any repercussions regardless of my decision because most of my fellow service members at that time were unwilling to be test subjects as well.
The information I have been able to find suggests that anthrax vaccine refusal rates were very low.
"An analysis of active-duty personnel deployed in an area potentially at risk to biological warfare reported just 5 out of 10,000 soldiers refusing the anthrax vaccine. Most of these cases were personnel that did not desire to stay in the military. While official records of total vaccine refusals are not available, it was reported that Pentagon statements estimated 350 servicemembers had refused the vaccine between 1998 and 2000."
Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9376337/
A good example - the Sikh believe that men should maintain their beards, and should wear a specific head covering. Freedom of religion/expression laws in the US prevent schools, or public institutions, from requiring those men to remove their head coverings or to shave. However, for the longest time, Sikhs who wanted to serve in the US armed forces had to chose between being religiously observant,or being eligible to serve (saying "no" in boot camp when they come by with the clippers does not a happy career make).
Even now, there's a dispensation for Sikhs, but in times of war/necessity, that goes out the window. (Tangent - the reason the armed forces have facial hair regs for men is a) conformity but also b) so that gas masks/CBRN protective gear can get a good face seal. Additionally, and this sounds dumb but it's true...helmets aren't designed for people to have a lot of hair under them, which is something women in combat conditions she had to encounter as well)
Both took a courageous step in leaking documents they knew could lead to their execution for simple moral convictions. That alone makes them more alike than not to me.
Snowden (veteran though acting in a civilian role) has had far more impact.
What Ellsberg and Snowden both managed to do was to make the story compelling and the information unescapable.
Consequences (your argument) or civillian status (raised elsewhere) are both exceedingly red herrings.
If Donald Trump had declassified the docs and shared them publicly, we would be having a totally different conversation, and he wouldn’t be under federal indictment.
The reality is that what Trump did by hiding the papers was much more consistent with the spirit of classification than what the NYT did with the Pentagon papers.
Trump’s hoarding of classified documents and refusal to give them back did nothing to increase transparency, because Trump did not make any information public. So it’s not surprising that the NYT views Trump’s actions differently than Ellsberg’s.
The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers is a great documentary about him.
Fun fact: Mike Gravel was an Alaskan senator. When he heard Daniel had the papers, he convinced Daniel to send them to him. Then Gravel went on a filibuster to prevent funding of the Vietnam war, and he chose to read the Pentagon papers aloud in the filibuster. By doing so, he ensured that they would legally be accessible to the public, because they were now part of the congressional record.