The government has a history of taking advantage of panic and fear to pass egregious legislation. Another famous example is the Patriot act, passed during the height of "terrorism" hysteria.
Americans demand this kind of action during emergencies. The widely accepted idea that the government is capable of protecting us from events like this is tacit acknowledgement of the government's right to closely monitor society.
To put it another way: as soon as you start blaming the government for a terrorist attack (or something), you are rather close to condoning government surveillance of the citizenry (or whatever extreme measure).
Sure, however this case in particular is a bit of a counter point because covid-19 isn't causing anyone to become a child predator, nor has there otherwise been a recent tidal wave of child predators that appeared out of thin air. Seems they pushed the bill off for a bit but this whole thing was introduced at an odd time.
I would say that the people demand action of some kind, not necessarily action that violates civil rights. A wise leader would know how to satisfy the populace without sacrificing liberty in the process.
yes to action, not surveillance. but i remember the patriot act having lots of popular support (but not from me). it still makes me mad thinking about it.
police powers (internally delegated coercive power) are largely the domain of states and localities, not the federal government (who's responsible for externally targeted force), along with an FBI that's limited to federal concerns, like interstate commerce and crimes against the federal government.
citizens need to be ever vigilant about maintaining those distinctions.
It's never terrorism when the US government murders civilians. Clearly murdering civilians is simply an accepted practice at this point, and not "terrorism".
Because it's not called terrorism when very similar incidents are perpetrated by citizens or residents, despite having very similar motivations, and especially not when it's the government telling us to call it terrorism going over and doing worse in other places.
Because outside the little western bubble it might be understood more accurately along the lines of self defense, or a response to aggression and political interference motivated by any shady bullshit from proxy wars to controlling oil supply.
Because "weapons of mass destruction" definitely deserves the quotes and was used for a similar purpose.
But mostly because giving something scary a name that abstracts away everything except that it's scary not only makes it super easy to sell publicly, but also makes it super easy to aim the public response to said fear at whatever the label can be twisted into applying to.
> Because it's not called terrorism when very similar incidents are perpetrated by citizens or residents, despite having very similar motivations, and especially not when it's the government telling us to call it terrorism going over and doing worse in other places.
Similar incidents? I don't recall any similar incidents of ~20 Americans working together for years to hijack 4 planes and collapse multiple large buildings killing ~3000 people.
The patriot act may have been a bad idea but it was a response to a real, significant event and is not based on totally incoherent reasoning. We had surveillance capabilities that detected the 9/11 attackers ahead of time, but arguably due to the separation of foreign and domestic intelligence, that information was not acted on. You can argue the costs of breaking down that separation aren't worth it, but don't bullshit people with word games.
9/11 was a terrible thing for sure. Think a little bit about why it might have happened. How many thousands of people have died as a direct result of American intervention in the middle east, or do lives not matter unless they're American? How much cultural and economic regression and political instability have the military inverventions caused? All with super dubious justification pre-2001. How would that not provoke some kind of extremely violent response? Maybe without the intervention there wouldn't have been a response?
Nah mate, pushing past the knee-jerk reaction of fear takes too much effort, empathy is too hard, my life is easy and thinking about what my lifestyle costs other people is too unpleasant. Just slap a terrorism label (or maybe 'think of the children', or maybe 'war on drugs', or...) on it and call it a public license to go round fucking up cultures/demographics/human rights/geopolitical regions with impunity.
The main tangible thing that gave the label it's public power.
And at the same time, did everyone expect an entire geopolitical region to just sit there and let themselves be curb-stomped by various international superpowers without at least trying to retaliate? And in lieu of making a dent on the military front, and noting the impact of curb-stomping on civilian life, where else would you expect the response to be aimed?
The mental gymnastics this must take. I would be impressed to see how you claim flying airplanes full of civilians into building full of civilians is “defense”.
Don't forget about the corporate welfare. 2008 resulting in 2 bailouts totaling nearly $2T for the banks.
At a time when American's are staying home and not being paid, Trump is continuing to focus on the stock market. He will soon pass a nearly $1T bailout for businesses...American workers will be lucky to see a single check in the next 2-4 weeks.
It will be tough times for workers and their Social Security funds, and bailouts for the employers who used their last round of giveaway money on stock buybacks.
Banks only got loans in the crisis, not free money.
Let me see if I understand the thought process by this propaganda. Extra loans for unemployed people isn’t really palatable so we use the word “bailout” to make it sound like free money so we can advocate for handouts. Is that right?
And that is only for big businesses that are listed in the stock exchanges. All other businesses are left to struggle on their own. Thousands of small businesses are going to have to shut down for good.
Billions will be poured into the SBA, so they can claim billions went to small businesses, but that money will all be given to businesses with political connections.
And they will never mention those thousands of small businesses you reference that will go under, just like politicians never once spoke of American's who lost their homes and became homeless, instead mentioning only the banks problems.
I'm not a fan of the banks, they were encouraged to loan to risky borrowers, people who bought as much as they could with little more than a pulse. This behavior began under Clinton. This was during the era of easy credit where college kids could get massive credit lines. Source: I was one of these kids and I also worked for a Real Estate Web host during the boom and bust.
>I'm not a fan of the banks, they were encouraged to loan to risky borrowers, people who bought as much as they could with little more than a pulse.
There is so much to unpack in this sentence, this alone could be a book about the financial/housing collapse.
Yes, in Clinton's years the banks lobbied and successfully had regulations rolled back so they could underwrite loans on stated income from broker applications. For purposes of culpability/intent, look no further than these lobbying efforts (I am skipping the other deregulations they successfully lobbied for: 103% financing/nothing down/adjustable rate mortgages).
With these new rules its fair to say banks encouraged brokers to in turn encourage borrowers to make up numbers because now they would not be verified.
When it all blew up, the banks blamed the borrowers for lying on mortgage applications, making themselves out to be the victims.
