Why the USA is losing international support

[FZR1KG]

This sums it up pretty well. Liberty and freedom are the foundations of the USA but some are more liberated and free than others

Welcome to Animal Farm 2008 and onward.

[geonuc]

Yeah, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is awesome, isn't it? Not.

[Rommie]

I often wonder how much in the USA it's the frog in boiling water effect. I say this because many people know there are many bad things, but no one seems to really care on a serious level or know what to do about it, or think it's going to change soon. Or I often get told that people don't want to end up "like Europe," which tells me it's the classic mentality of someone who isn't really informed. Perhaps hyperbole to mention it, but it always reminds me of how people in North Korea when they flee will say things like how they knew it was bad there, but they were always assured/assumed that things were far worse elsewhere.

I mean to be fair, I like the USA and I we have had plenty of issues in history (I mean, I went to uni near a campus where in the 1970s the National Guard literally shot to death innocent students going to class). But geez...

Btw, for FZ, only tangentially related but was listening to a podcast the other day where there was a line I thought you'd like- "in order to be a great man in history you need to be a bad man first." Episode was about Ghengis Kahn and the point essentially was if you look at famous people in history it's almost always a requirement that you have to be willing to murder innocent children (or at least order it), and most of us never will and will thus never be "great." (Only exceptions I can think of are artists/musicians/scientists etc) Thought you might be interested in that line.

[Sigma_Orionis]

Well, at least it came out in the open. Which still gives hope for the US

[Swift]

The whole survellence program smells like dead fish. But I don't think the Yahoo thing has anything to do with the title of "Why the USA is losing international support". I think, for the most part, the average foreign citizen, or foreign government, doesn't give a rat's ass what the US government does to its own citizens, unless they can use it as propaganda points in support of their own actions (like Putin complaining about US civil rights violations, to excuss the shit it does to his own people).

[FZR1KG]

The whole survellence program smells like dead fish. But I don't think the Yahoo thing has anything to do with the title of "Why the USA is losing international support". I think, for the most part, the average foreign citizen, or foreign government, doesn't give a rat's ass what the US government does to its own citizens, unless they can use it as propaganda points in support of their own actions (like Putin complaining about US civil rights violations, to excuss the shit it does to his own people).

You need to re-read the article as you've missed the point of my title.
The whole thing was born into legitimacy by the US government allowing surveillance of information that went to/from foreign sources. They even stated that's how they bypassed the 4th amendment. Since foreigners aren't US citizens it doesn't apply to them so the US feels it's legitimate to open and read mail to and from foreign sources. They claim try to minimize the possibility of US citizens who might get their emails searched and stored because they are not allowed to do that deliberately (it's going against the 4th American rights you see) but because it's a side effect it's tolerated.

IOW, there are two classes of people, Americans who are free and liberal, and everyone else.
Hence the Animal Farm reference.
Speaking of which, the opening of mail by foreign governments for surveillance is standard procedure in all Communist countries and a violation of privacy in Democratic ones.
Most people consider email similarly to postal mail, both ethically and legally though some governments do not.

[FZR1KG]

Btw, for FZ, only tangentially related but was listening to a podcast the other day where there was a line I thought you'd like- "in order to be a great man in history you need to be a bad man first." Episode was about Ghengis Kahn and the point essentially was if you look at famous people in history it's almost always a requirement that you have to be willing to murder innocent children (or at least order it), and most of us never will and will thus never be "great." (Only exceptions I can think of are artists/musicians/scientists etc) Thought you might be interested in that line.

To be a great leader you have to be a leader first then be put in a position where you are forced to make hard choices. Usually that means war and casualties.
I just find it weird that people associate "greatness" as being put into a position where you have to conquer or resist but if you weren't put into such a position somehow you aren't. Greatness is also written by the winner in most cases. Great leaders can't be great if they lost to a larger power regardless of the impossibility of the situation.
Exceptions though rare also rely on the tactic they used to have won them the war rather than lost it, Ghandi stands out to me quite clearly there.
Another, and maybe others will disagree is Gorbachev.
He was a great leader who unfortunately couldn't hold back the tide that was coming even though tried and,stated that the Soviet Union must to head to Democracy slowly to allow people to adjust and to provide a minimum impact. He was right but paid the price for that position. The reason Russia is in such a mess now is that they got freedom too quickly and no one could adjust to it. Then we get the shit stain Putin who wants to take things back to the way they were.

Speaking of freedom. It's my belief that what freedoms a person has at any particular instance isn't how we should measure freedom.
It's how they got to be given those freedoms that is more important. So tests of how free a country is based purely on its current laws or policy is flawed.
e.g. Let's say that Communist China decided that as of right now, there will no longer be any political prisoners. They release all theirs as a gesture of that principle.
Does the average person on the street suddenly feel free to go and protest their government?
Nope. What they have right now isn't what defines a persons sensation of freedom. It's how they got it.
It will take years for that to go and then there will be the standard overshoot where people will push beyond what they would have if they were born into the same freedom. naturally it will then swing back and forth till it settles. That swinging (we call ringing) is where the unstable part is of a country.

It's why Gorbachev wanted to slow things down so the country could be stable and not risk falling back into where it was.
Unfortunately most politicians have about as slightly more understanding of this as an ant does about the internet but less chance of learning more.