October 2011 marked the tenth anniversary of the USA PATRIOT Act going into law.
If change from within worked, it would have accomplished measurable effect within the first decade. Voting in the USA, on the federal level, is now demonstrably meaningless.
How many decades will you live there, having liberty only at the mercy and willingness of your government and its large corporations, entertaining this poisonous delusion?
Candidates differ on concrete policy issues which have concrete consequences after elections. If you don't care about those differences, that is your affair - it does not mean that voting is 'demonstrably meaningless.'
Uprooting a life is complex, expensive, difficult, and unpleasant. Nobody's going to do it until it's more attractive than staying. Look at where people immigrate here from, and you'll have a good benchmark for the difference in quality of life that will have to exist in order for it to start looking attractive to emigrate--and remember that even then, the vast majority of people stay because it was easier or they find it tolerable.
Except it is a quality of life issue. Not many people are willing to endure a worsening quality of life simply to achieve philosophical purity. I'm glad that it worked for you, but do understand that simply by being an immigrant you are demonstrably different. That it worked for you is absolutely not a prescription for everyone.
It's been 10 years since the PATRIOT Act was passed, and nothing has really changed here. The consequences of the legislation were vastly overblown.
Also, the ractchet does not only work in one direction. We've had peaks of restrictions on civil liberties far worse than what we have now. E.g. alien and sedition acts, reconstruction, japanese internment, mccarthyism.
You seem to have worked yourself into a froth over nothing.
> It's been 10 years since the PATRIOT Act was passed, and nothing has really changed here. The consequences of the legislation were vastly overblown.
How exactly have the consequences been overblown? The Patriot Act has been used for everything EXCEPT terrorism. That was predicted and that is what happens now.
> If change from within worked, it would have accomplished measurable effect within the first decade.
Why do you think that's true? Is that just a gut feeling, or is it based on some logic that you did not include here?
To be clear, it is far from obvious to me that what you say is true. It seems to me that change from within could potential work, despite the events of the last ten years.
If change from within worked, it would have accomplished measurable effect within the first decade. Voting in the USA, on the federal level, is now demonstrably meaningless.
How many decades will you live there, having liberty only at the mercy and willingness of your government and its large corporations, entertaining this poisonous delusion?
The ratchet only works in one direction.