No. The change in America following the Sep 11th attacks was only loosely related to previous Cold War policies. America was in many ways demilitarising and advancing throughout the pst Soviet Union 1990s.
Then Sep 11th came, and the USA went into a supercharged spiral of descent, economically, legally, politically and probably culturally. Like a traumatised patient inflicting self harm, the US continues to tear at the fabric of its own national identity in response to the attacks. I don't think it will stop until the patient is dead, or practically so. Madness does not follow reason.
"Now that we know who the enemy is, It is time for America to Act."
501(c)(4) organizations are for promoting social causes; donations are nondeductible but operations tax-exempt, aka "if we performed these activities as individuals we wouldn't get taxed again so why should we be taxed as a group?" -- they can engage in cause-oriented political spending. 501(c)(3) are charitable organizations and the donations are tax-deductible and the organization isn't supposed to do partisan political spending at all. Then of course there are 501(c)(5)'s, aka labor unions, a left-wing favorite who are given very broad discretion to engage in very overt political spending to the tune of billions of dollars... but that's its own rabbit hole, and I digress.
Anyway. Media Matters would make an okay 501(c)(4), as they clearly have some idea of a social cause, but they go above and beyond that to get outright all-contributions-deductible 501(c)(3) status while their political enemies were denied any tax exemptions at all.
But don't worry! The US left has already proposed a way to resolve these abuses targeting right-wing political activity! Nancy Pelosi would have us take action to ban these vehicles for right-wing political activity altogether. We can also pretend Citizens United never happened.
If this doesn't make you angry, upset and outraged, what will?
I can't get angry anymore.
I've spent the last 12 years watching the western world, and my own country in particular, fall apart in slow motion. Everything I thought I knew about the politics and the rule of law has been been invalidated three times over to the point where I can't make beleive anymore.
How can I be angry at an outcome which I knew was inevitable? And outcome produced by a system that is inherently dysfunctional? I may as well become angry at a bird for eating a worm as become angry at the US government for doing what everyone saw coming since 2001. What happens when a government is given arbitrary powers, an eternal enemy, and a compliant judiciary and media? We all know what happens. The government being in the west does not make it different and anyone who ever thought so (I include myself in this) was a fool.
I used to think that eventually, the political class would stoop so low they would hit rock bottom, and the resulting public outrage would sweep them away. I no longer see a logical rock bottom, apart from a return to hunter-gatherer status. I see a slow collapse of the west in general, and the US in particular, along the lines of the Soviet Union, which spent 80 years dying.
In 100 years time, things may be different. But don't expect anger or change in the next 20. Expect decline.
What's the use of turning off an option in a browser made by a company that acts hand in glove with its domestic intelligence agency? How can anyone trust one checkbox in Chrome after this?
No. I'm not even surprised that the newspapers are surprised.
It's obvious that the media is getting its own back for Holder's tapping of AP phones a few weeks back. This is simply a petty power struggle between a pair of jilted political class lovers.
Unfortunately, the populace is stupid, and so we will continue to see such erosion of privacy based upon the flimsiest of disingenuous excuses.
The population is not stupid. But there's only so much ordinary people can do when the entire state, civic, and industrial apperatus has been seized by an essentially criminal class.
Actually, given the outrightly criminal nature of that banking system, this is not an unreasonable suggestion. We already know that the likes of HFT companies regulalry engage in DDoS attacks against exchanges, so the skillset for this kind of work is there.
My understanding was this wouldn't work well for BitCoin, because the raw computing power people are throwing at it with GPUs and ASICs easily dwarfs even significant numbers of zombies, and even WebGL can't help you (too limited an instruction set).
Of course by this point the matter is hearsay... but still, Bitcoin is a tough nut to crack these days.
Why aren't they making the world better the way I think it should be done?!
Because the industrial and economic policies of their governments are shifting them into increasingly valueless industries.
"Virtually all electric car advocates agree that when toting up the environmental pros and cons of electric cars, it's only fair to include powerplant emissions."
It's like they say... Only Nixon could go to China. Regardless of the merits of their arguments, these guys ain't Nixon. Wake me when the electric car skeptics agree.
There's only one solution to a completely corrupt system. Walk away from it. Broshius made the correct decision by leaving the game behind him.
You cannot change a corrupted institution from within. I'll repeat that. You cannot change a corrupted institution from within. There are too many people inside who have spent their lives justifying and profiting from their misdeeds, who are not about to turn over a new leaf or air their dirty laundry because you've made an appeal to their conscience. They killed theirs long ago.
The best thing to do is leave the rotten ship to sink all by itself. Every honest person who stands by a rotten game, or bankrupted bank, or broken political party is just propping up an at best amoral system, and usually an immoral and even illegal one. There is no obligation to stay loyal or remain in solidarity with a disloyal and dishonest organisation.
Broshius has done more for baseball as a law student that he ever could have as a player or a fan.
If all else fails, lower your standards.
