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A comment on US citizen charged after GrapheneOS phone wipes during airport search. Parent comment

Re:US citizen charged after GrapheneOS phone wipes during ai... by vkou on Monday July 27, 2026 @12:32AM (#49065220)
The law wasn't in the state that you ascribe to it for the other 99% of its history if you were, say, African-American. Other less-extremely obvious examples also abound.

Liberal democracy with sometimes-fair application of it is the aberration.

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Re:US citizen charged after GrapheneOS phone wipes during ai... by mmooss on Monday July 27, 2026 @01:27AM (#49065481)
By that reasoning any advance is an aberration and thus hopeless, but we've had liberal democracy for a long time. Again, certainly not perfect.
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Re:US citizen charged after GrapheneOS phone wipes during ai... by vkou on Monday July 27, 2026 @12:19PM (#49071807)
Advance or regression is not the way you probably want to look at it. There isn't a lot of evidence for historical inevitability.

And no, we have not been a liberal democracy for 'a long time'. We have been an illiberal democracy with very limited suffrage and distribution of rights for a very long time.

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Re:US citizen charged after GrapheneOS phone wipes during ai... by mmooss on Monday July 27, 2026 @06:34PM (#49076350)
> There isn't a lot of evidence for historical inevitability.

You're the one arguing for that; I'm saying it's up to us whether we advance or go backward. Generations before us have moved us forward, so it's definitely very possible.

The definitions are just a distraction.

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