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The US is poised to use terror laws against students. This could be worse than McCarthyism
(www.theguardian.com)
That reminds me, I have to sharpen my guillotine.
this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2025
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politics
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Trump's role model isn't McCarthy. It's a certain failed painter from Austria.
With a smidge of Saudi Arabia thrown in.
Dash of Maos's cultural revolution
Yeah. I just read a bunch of teenage dumbasses are going to rewrite 60 million lines of Cobol code in "months". So definitely more than a smidge: telling some in the younger generation that they are magical beings that just understand everything better than anyone that came before stinks to high heaven of cultural revolution trash.
I wonder what their little red book will be? The Shart of the Deal?
The way you describe it, it sounds more like Dianetics.
It's all part of the same massive con.
It's a bunch of independent cons but they all use the same methods.
I have serious doubts about that kind of timeline, most especially for such a critical system (I write software for a living; no way in hell would I give a timeline of "months" for something like this, but then I have years and years of experience, while Dunning-Kruger is running rampant in our government right now - giving teenagers the keys to the kingdom and constantly praising them for what prodigies they are is going to not end well).
But since our version of Idiocracy includes such Hollywood tropes like "young people just know tech", we are all consigned to this....I'm sure the average magoff is going to proclaim what a "genius" fElon and his techbois are all during the process, too.
Given fElon's many failed delivery timelines on things related to his companies, I expect more of the same here. Sadly, he's going to ruin a lot of people's lives in the process...at least with his bullshit companies, no one has to opt in to that. In this case, he's broken into our government and he's going to impact millions who want no part in his bullshit or his stupid crew of teenage dumbasses. And I bet anything they try to use "AI" to do most of this work.
According to an article in Wired, Elon Musk has appointed a team of technologists from DOGE to "rewrite the code that runs the SSA in months." This codebase has over 60 million lines of COBOL and handles record keeping for all American workers and payments for all Social Security recipients. Given that the code has to track the byzantine regulations dealing with Social Security, it's no wonder that the codebase is this large. What is in question though is whether a small team can rewrite this code "in months." After all, what could possibly go wrong?
https://developers.slashdot.org/story/25/03/28/2148205/doge-to-rewrite-ssa-codebase-in-months
New Slogan be like: ~~没有共产党~~ If it weren't for MAGA, ~~没有新中国~~ There would be no New America
(The crossed out phrase is a common propaganda thing that was taught in mao era China meaning: "If it weren't for the CCP, there would not be a 'New China'... which is BS lol".)
New news is that pro-Israel elements aided in identifying and tracking these students.
So the failed Austrian painter's heinous policies are now supported by the people they were first used against. What's next? Jewish oven operators?
Next? This is already happening in Gaza right now.
I remember getting called a terrorist sympathizer because I opposed the Patriot Act because it could be used for this.
Americans are trash.
Not ALL Americans, Conservative/ MAGA Traitors.
Most democrats also supported the Patriot act
The only people who resisted it were non-conservatives.
So the rest of them are conservatives regardless of party affiliation? I’d buy that.
Too bad they make up over half of the Democratic Party
And before you mention it, yes I do vote in primaries.
I didn't say that at all. Just because someone isn't a Republican doesnt make them a Democrat, and just because someone isn't a Democrat doesnt make them a Republican.
Independents are a bigger demographic segment that Republicans or Democrats, and MANY independents, and many Dems, were against the Patriot Act. It would be nearly impossible to find a Republican who was against it.
Also, there is a big difference between the behavior of craven politicians of any party, and the citizens. Cowardly Democratic politicians voted for the Patriot Act because they were much more afraid of the backlash from terrified citizens in the wake of 9/11, than thinking Americans who could see that this bill was just a disguised Civil Rights grab.
But make no mistake, there were many people who thought the Patriot Act was a VERY bad idea, but NONE of them were Republicans.
So vote Democrat and get the Patriot Act anyway
I remember lying about my age and signing actual ink and paper petitions opposing that when I was barely into my teens. Felt then and honestly still feels now that a lot of this country just jumped squarely up its own ass after 9/11 and simply never came back out again.
Patriot Act on steroids. This is what we gave up after 9/11.
this is also what living in a terrorist state is like. and there's a ton of terrorism that the powers that be simply allow, and that isn't reported on as terrorism. they don't strip our rights away to prevent terrorism, which is how they always frame it. they strip our rights away to make sure the condoned terrorism has the desired effect. how many mass shootings, vehicles driving into crowds, and unplanned televised acts of violence have there been since the patriot act was passed? bear in mind, it's going to be hard to find numbers because these things have become so commonplace that our news magazines of record have given up on covering all of them in large part because they've lost novelty and they don't get the attention from the audience they once did.
but this normalization of terror is part of fascism. it's why the buzz bombs feature so prominently in 1984. we the people are easier to manipulate if we are kept in permanent fear. that's what all these mass shootings, vehicles driving into crowds, and unplanned television violence does for the ruling class. things like the patriot act let them sell their state sponsored terror to the unaware by promising to remedy their constant fear. meanwhile, marginalized people like George Floyd, Freddy Gray, Brionna Taylor aren't made any more safe. in fact they, and everyone else, are made less safe.
let me ask this. did anyone else find it odd that after donald trump's first failed assassination the media decried political violence? because we've been living in political violence. we've been here for years. the fbi spied on us. reagan said on record he hoped kids would get bochalism from black panther school lunches. rodney king was beaten over basically nothing. donald trump himself fomented a violent mod in 2021. they don't want to prevent political violence. they want to protect their overlords. if collapse into technofuedalism we must, then they want to be in position to have an estate and some serfs
i say all this as a warning. "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" is a sick joke, and it's one that consistently works on people the hegemony works for. they don't understand what it feels like to live in terror because the system works for them. but fascists will always narrow their in groups tighter and tighter, and lump more and more people into the out groups until eventually there's an in group of one and everyone else has both reason to fear, and reasons to hide things.
so while you're right this is the patriot act on steroids, it's also the logical outcome of the patriot act. mass surveillance will never benefit you, and will always leave you vulnerable. even seemingly innocuous surveillance like all those ring doorbells and advertising metrics make you less safe
Well said. I'm boarding a flight back to the US now after spending a week in mexico looking for a new home, else I'd comment more... Suffice it to say, I am largely aligned with you.
Wish me luck.
good luck. may ice not disappear you
On 2001-09-12, Al Qaeda and bin Laden became superfluous, because the US and its ‘allies’ stole their playbook, rebranded and packaged it as the Patriot Act, creating the world the original authors had envisioned.
we lost the instant we began the war on terror. you cannot go to war against terror. war is the ultimate expression of terror. by retaliating with force, we increased, not decreased, the amount of terror in the world. all while we preached that we would not be controlled by terror.
see also "we don't negotiate with terrorists" and then turning around and negotiating with white supremacist domestic terrorists. our wounds are mostly self inflicted, and largely towards the benefit of the conservative movement
Could be. They've already disappeared some students, have they not?
Yes, they've kidnapped over 100 I think
This, kids, is why allowing the government to curtail your rights because of "terror" is such a bad idea.
"Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety" - $100 bill man
Possibly not the greatest example. The whole "Japanese internment camps" thing, as well as the (radically less controversial) suspension of habeas corpus for Germans captured on US soil.
Jim Crow. America was scared of fucking everything and everyone not an upper class Anglo-Saxon white man.
US is a failed country.
McCarthyism is going to be McTrumpism
It has earned his namesake. This will be Trumpism in future history books so long as they lose. This will be his legacy.