Everything _is_ political, as the other comment says. The problem is that no one talks about "governance", they just talk about "politics", which is not the same thing. Governance is the question of what good government should look like. Politics is just about accumulating power.
replythat is a good way of looking at it. I wonder though, if power is a bad thing in and of itself. I know that there will always be power. I would rather have people with good intentions have it then the opposite. Not sure how that will happen. I think when more good people get involved I guess.
replyNope. Power corrupts. Or as Frank Herbert said it, power attracts the corruptible. The solution is to not give anyone that much power over you!
replyI'm afraid that caring about an issue (instead of caring about whatever stance your favorite political team happens to be taking at this moment) has become much less common.
replyWhen both parties threw their weight behind the "nobody is spying on Americans" lie, we went from only the hyperpartisan fans of the right wing making excuses for spying on Americans to the hyperpartisan fans of both parties doing so.
That's the what's required to make propaganda and manipulation work the best.
reply> The problem is that modern Americans politicize everything.
replyEverything is political. Electric cars, crude oil, rocket launches, rare earth metals, cargo transportation, public transportation, housing, taxation, data, compute... which of those aren't political?
The problem is Americans believing obvious lies like "Privacy is a human right" and "Don't be evil" and then blaming the government instead of themselves.
Ironically from the perspective of 2026, the actual "conservative" conservatives were the key opponents. The "total information awareness" and national ID efforts were really killed by the conservatives in congress. The "neocons" and moderate/conservative democrats were mostly fine with both.
replyWhat does national ID have to do with government surveillance?
replyWhy do you think people are having a bird over age verification? Or LinkedIn profiling browsers?
replyTying chain of custody of online actions to identity makes data incredibly valuable information.