And if the politicians do nothing, they will be castigated by the media and by the public. Don't oversimplify such a difficult issue.my first reaction wasn't concern for the people who got hurt, it was concern over which oppressive and ineffectual security measure is going to be put in to place because of this.
That's the end result though. I'm not concerned with the welfare of a politician - though I understand that a politicians career effectively comes before the good of the public - because I am not a politician. I'm concerned with the welfare of ordinary people. What we've ultimately seen in the post 9/11 world is a series of crackdowns on maybes. Are there terrorists sneaking through the airport right now? Well there might be so we decided to up the security, please remove your shoes. Are there terrorists planting bombs in the street? Well there might be, so please, don't mind the security cameras. Are there some American terrorists? Well there might be, so let's just give the President the ability to bomb U.S. citizens. I understand that taken individually these are not actually huge deals. I mean, after all, some more security at an airport isn't terrible right up until they start sexually harassing people, but its just security right? Same with the camera. After all, its not ACTUALLY a private space, you shouldn't be saying things out in public you don't want heard in public anyway, right? And no President would DARE use a drone strike on an American, right? That'd be crazy. They'd never do that until people start showing how much they are willing to put up with until it eventually becomes something people don't even think about. I'm sure everything was suggested with good motives in mind, even if I disagree with how the issues were handled, but good motivation does not make for good action. When you start setting these precedents, you open up massive opportunities for abuse that becomes perfectly legal. Remember when the United States bombed Al Jazeera? When that becomes okay, what else does? The precedent is already set, and undoing something is a lot harder than people think. Quick aside, there's a middle ground between searching everyone entering and leaving the city and doing nothing at all. That middle ground could be, oh, I don't know. Reforming bomb search tactics to better counter the tactics used at the bombing? Increasing the number of police officers in the field, a tactic proven to reduce crime that would also give more coverage in the future? Funding for mental health institutes and works inside the city to create a better environment? When the measures taken to prevent an attack create an environment that is incredibly stressful, where people are constantly paranoid and questioning what they can say and do, what is actually being set up is not a peaceful, secure society, but another attack. When you feel you can't speak any other way, violence becomes a very strong language.
My thoughts on what I consider to be a ridiculous and overblown argument on the part of libertarians everywhere is elsewhere on hubski. You're using the same tired slippery slope argument. I don't feel like getting into that again.
Your thoughts, however, are *completely fucking wrong.* Restating them does not give them weight.
I work on a college campus, and if we took all the cameras away, there would not be a single working piece of equipment anywhere in a five mile radius the next morning. You can throw questionable studies cherry-picked from a targeted website at me (although next time if you want to be a little more polite about it I might give an in-depth response), and it won't change that.
I have several friends that work on college campuses and if you leave that shit unattended it's going to walk the fuck off. That doesn't give you the right to videotape my ass. Those studies were commissioned and paid for by the British government. Referring to them as "questionable" and acting dismissive as if you've somehow provided any real evidence for your claims guarantees that I will never be more polite about this. You are wrong. You are baselessly wrong. You are condescendingly wrong. And should you attempt to insinuate that your opinions are somehow facts, I will be right behind you to make you feel bad. That's a promise.
Not trying to be condescending. I just don't feel like having this discussion when you approached it the way you did. If someone speaks to me like that in my daily life, I walk away from them, so I'm figuratively walking away from this. We've had multiple conversations and I think you know I'm not the sort to make baseless claims; I stand by my beliefs on this issue. I read a couple of the studies on the list you linked and skimmed a couple more. I'm not being dismissive of your argument, I'm being dismissive of your manner. That's my right, I think. Sorry. Maybe next time.
Its an eerily accurate argument though. Let's take a look see. We've got a highly monitored culture where people have gotten used to being watched. We don't think about it all that much and often rationalize any surveillance as for protection, regardless of how correct that assumption is. Along comes the memo fom the IRS stating they can view anyone's email without a warrant. Or the other incalculale number of bills infringing on various constitutional rights. What do people do? Rationalize, for better or worse, and without regard to how effective that law will be, or what exaclty that ability will do. There are very basic questions that most audiences do not receive answers to or even hear in the first place, and yet the rationalization takes place. I mean, they need to shut down cell phone service in Boston. They could use them to set off more bombs. Its not about waking up in 1984 come this weekend. Its about waking up in 1984 in twenty years, or in the best case, having to spend time and effort just getting half the laws repealed. I also do not at all consider myself a libertarian. I just believe governments of any kind should think first and then act. Take more time deciding on what to say and do than it takes to make a good lunch.
You missed the point of my first post. Politicians do what they do because they want votes. They know that if they act a certain way in a time of crisis -- by ramping up security measures pointlessly after the fact, or by allowing BPD to shut down all cell service -- they will get votes next time they run. So they do it. Find the root source; don't stop at one of the links in the chain.
Okay, so let's trace this back. Problem start: Politicians perform ineffectual acts to improve the perception of security within the city, which have no real effects and increase alienation and hostility, which results in more crime. Why? Because they get votes for it. They get votes because people feel like they need to see that the government is doing something, even if that thing is ineffective. People feel like they need to see that because people do not have the time in the modern world to thoroughly research every single issue, which would give them a wider perspective and thus a better understanding of the problems at hand, which would at the very least lead to the demand for a more effective solution. People do not have the time to research every single issue because people are generally employed in busy, high stress environments and have various other responsibilities which remove leisure time beyond the weekends. People have this high stress environment because the philosophy of a modern corporation - which we'll just group in to one for this dumbed-down thought experiment here - is that the work day is not actually 9-5, its any time they can be called on a cell phone, thus removing the normal safety net of relaxation that comes from having a job with predictable hours. Businesses think that they can do this because people have been trained for their entire lives to think that competing for a job is incredibly competitive and that if you are not working hard you are somehow immoral, and that hard work requires sacrifices in order to succeed. People think a lack of sacrifices and a lack of hard work is immoral because of the tradition of the Puritans in America to follow the teachings of Calvin as well as the more modern teachings of puritans in England, who believed that material wealth was a measure of the likelihood of a person to get in to heaven. The Puritans in England believed that material wealth became a measure of a person's success because it was deemed to be God's reward for living a godly life. This belief truly stemmed not from religious disagreements but from the necessity of Puritan life in England; with no other place to work, no ability to really go in to politics or law, the Puritans were forced to become industrialists. They were forced to become Industrialists because the Anglican Church banned the Puritans from holding most public offices and from becoming ordained ministers, which traced back to the Oliver Cromwell and his role in the two English Civil Wars. Oliver Cromwell only took part in the wars due to the conflict of interests between the authoritarian crown and the consitutionalist Parliament. This divide traces itself back to the Magna Carta, which only existed because of the belief that feudal lords in England had that the King was limited by the power of law as well as certain individual rights and protections against various malpractices in the government. So the Magna Carta is basically the root of all problems because it created an environment where Puritans couldn't run for office, so they became industrialists and reconciled their religious beliefs with the necessities of industrialist living, which created an environment in which people believed that wealth was an indicator of morality, which persisted as a system of values still in place in the United States today, which in turn caused an environment where people make sacrifices to work harder because it is viewed as morally correct. These sacrifices included free time, which means less time for researching issues such as national security, which means people are unable to accurately assess if an action taken by a politician is actually effective, but they still require some fulfillment on an obvious problem, so they demand that some action be taken regardless of what it is. Or it could be a political agenda, it could be the conflicting values of security versus freedom, it could be people's inherent belief in their right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness coming in contact with the desire to remain private individuals. Do you know how many roots there are to problems? You can't go back to the root of the problem and just tear it up or try and fix it because the root of the problem influences the world we live in so heavily we wouldn't exist without it. You can't tackle roots, because problems aren't a weed. Problems are conflicts of values, and you have to resolve the conflict to actually overcome it. Now I don't know the answer to this problem, and I really can't be expected to know. I know what's ineffective, and I know what is a breach of trust, and I know what's done for politics and votes. I don't know how you give the public a solution that is also actually beneficial, but I can guess it involves researching the crime, and making changes, real changes, that will prevent the crime from happening in the future. It could be better, cheaper housing, it could be getting more work for people, it could be mental health care and anonymous treatment, it could be more police officers in the area to reduce crime or even lighting the streets up more. Or it could be the problems of the city themselves; maybe there just aren't enough trees, someone gets super stressed because they don't see trees any more, it compiles everything wrong with their life, and they blow up. I don't know. But a politician should. They're the ones with power, they're expected to have solutions that are effective. That's the whole point of this civilization thing, its why we trust people with power in the first place. Yes, at any point the President could probably just nuke North Korea and say fuck it, but we're putting trust that he'll try and do something better than that, something that provides a long-term solution rather than a short-term bandaid. Eventually people are going to realize that security measures like these, with all of the cameras and the service shut-downs and the searches, those don't actually solve anything. They're a bandaid patched on to a gaping wound. And then the politicians who took part in it, their votes will dry up. I know its hard to see it these days, but people actually do like honest politicians, and people like it in the long-term when the hard decisions are made. Yes, there will be complaints. There will always be complaints, from everyone, about everything. That's not important. If you put an honest effort in to doing something good and effective, even if the change is small - hell, it might just be getting more lights and more trees in the city - then people will remember it. And votes will come.