Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2006/08/22/dhs-runs-anticyberhi.html
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@Falcor, is there any way you can at least get these posts to come from ten years in the future instead of ten years in the past? It’d be nice to get some variety.
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Then someone posts the No-Fly List to a public website (third act shocker: it’s all nuns and Massachusetts Democrats)
Now I want to see Mike Dukakis dressed as a nun carrying a tommy gun!
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Oooh, I wonder if that means all of us here, authors and community alike, are on a secret dissent watch list. Will we all be the first against the wall when the junta takes over? Naturally, the military mega-minds may feel tempted to associate constitutionally-protected dissent with an attack to be prepared for and crushed. The problem with this conceit is that the people protesting the wrongfulness are generally the peace-loving sort, so it adds up to senselessness.
It seems the link for the OP citation is bad.
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And we’d have some idea what stocks to buy.
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Anybody can play that game. Who is on your list?
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We’ve got one from five years ago now, does that count as variety?
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Neighbors with Trump signs or bumper stickers? 
Seriously, the Trump supporters are probably better thought of as victims of a failed educational and political system who need pity and some form of help in weeding out extreme and wrongful ideological memes from their confused impressionable minds.
I don’t really make or keep lists, but then, that’s not the sort of world I want to live in. People should do good, want to do good, and should be stopped when they do things that harm others. Nothing more is required to move back toward balance.
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Al Qaeda. Ah, that really takes you back.
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Eh, the ten year ones are still much more frequent:
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I agree. I use the question more as a rhetorical exercise to counter self-censorship. I often encounter people who worry about being on somebody’s list or other. What makes their hypothetical list any more potent than your hypothetical list?
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They’re an authority with recognized and sanctioned powers, and I’m not, and so I start to get a bit anxious when I see them doing something that sounds like it’s some sort of manufactured pretense to go after rival political viewpoints with extreme force and thereby maintain a wrongful grip on and tyranny over a once-free society. I think history suggests that such societies are an easy mark for subversion to authoritarian control.
They think the hippies will hack them? Really? Because that’s what hippies do? But then, I harbor suspicions that whatever constitutes the “leadership” of Anonymous is a likely state actor, so meh; it’s a mystery to me, and it all seems farcical.
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But recognized and sanction by whom? Without personally verifiable evidence, those could be propaganda. After all, they are invested in people caring what they think. But are they really recognized by most people? And are they credible to you?
One of the foundations I think of the egalitarian mindset is the deep knowledge that no tyrannical groups have real superhuman powers, they simply con masses of people - their equals - by exploiting insecurities of human psychology. Their special power is only a consensus, and by buying into it, we would re-enforce that consensus.
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And by ignoring it until it comes for us, we could be swept away and lost to time. No original thought here, however. Just a little history and pattern recognition. But most of this is a thought exercise… until it isn’t. A little cultural hygiene against authoritarianism and political fraud would seem like a possible vaccination against it.
Probably I have too much free time on my hands this morning. XD I don’t want to take any of this too seriously, lest I metaphorically call down the dark gods I fear most by invoking their names too earnestly… Bringing this full circle, the events that prompted this retro-article in the first place may be a warning that a state defense agency that must start looking for new enemies to accost may also have too much free time. If that ‘too much free time’ is because we’re not at war, then perhaps they should happily retire and live at peace.
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