We want your data. Or else

This has been a law a long time: Border Control has a right to search any and all electronic device you bring into the USA, 4th Amendment be damned. Obviously the Founding Fathers felt that laptops don't fall into the same category as sealed letters. Obviously. And it happens in Canada, too.


So this happens, and then the whole of Western world applauds US politicians expressing concern about data privacy laws in China and Russia without any obvious discomfort from cognitive dissonance. Where is this concern when it comes to the USA?

The latest furore in certain parts of the media when it actually happened to a real person (meaning: American) is quite loud nevertheless.

Let's stop for a second and think about this, shall we? Aside from the strange legal twisting of the Constitution so that you can claim that it is legal to essentially seize anyone's most private information at the border, there are things to consider here. One thing particularly.

The US is claiming it can do legally what even the Stazi, the KGB and the Gestapo could not really hope to achieve: get everything, every single piece of data you own. You have to give them access to all your files, all your information, otherwise you are either denied entry and/or arrested. It claims powers that the only the most autocratic regimes have ever claimed: an absolute right to every single piece of your private life. (The US also claims it has an absolute right over your life -namely it can end it without any legal processes, but it's also something we should not discuss at this present junction.)

Because let's face it: nothing can be hidden, unless you are content living in the Virginia mountains along with the rest of the nutjobs who are stockpiling canned food and ammunition before the inevitable FEMA crackdown on freedom (sorry, Freedom) comes. We all have our lives encoded in bits and bytes; it's a fact of life. Regardless how it's stored, you should still should have right to privacy. The US can just force anyone to give it up (the parts they have not already captured through the NSA) and -aside from some "fringe" lefties, like Chomsky- nobody is raising an eyebrow.

So where was the furore from these very same media outlets over these years? A couple of feeble articles on how to deal with the situation were all I could find from the "mainstream"; some reports on the CIA's capacity to hack into anything, and use cars to kill people; it's hardly the angry media response on an unprecedented infringement on personal privacy by the torch-bearer of freedom.

Despite of this we still claim the US is a liberal democracy. All this after the NSA, illegal wars and torture. Weird, isn't it?

How shady statistics is used to lie -poverty in the US and around the world

So here's the thing. I lived in the US and I've lived in several European countries. I know the US-as far as you can know a continent-wide country-, and I have first-hand knowledge how poor people (one in six, apparently) are in the US and what challenges they face; after all I was among them. (I made 16K which was skirting the poverty line in the early 2000s. Later on I made much more, so I got to experience middle class standards as well.)

Same with Europe: I grew up poor, later I experienced the middle class experience, and I've obviously seen how my friends and colleagues live, and obviously talked to people.

So I have no illusions; I've seen all over Florida, South Caroline, Washington DC, New York State, Virginia; I have seen how poor poor people really are. And then you get these articles.

Especially this graph is telling:

Apparently the author thinks that the bottom 10% poor in the US live almost as good as the top 10% of Japan (and Poland?? How did Poland get to the same level as Japan? What arcane statistical methods they used?), they live about the same as the top 10% of Israel, and they live considerably better than the top 10% of Portugal.

Just let it sink in for a while. It might make someone living in a Salt Lake City suburb feel awesome about himself (time for some 'Murrica! shouts), but just stop for a second and really think. The richest 10% of Portugal apparently live on food stamps, have no health insurance, and cannot afford higher education. Really. (Interestingly the author himself admits he lives in Portugal; apparently he is unfamiliar how Portuguese people live, or he is unfamiliar how the bottom 10% of the US society lives; either way it's strange.) Let's compare how the Swedes and the Germans live. Or even Italy -you know the place where the upper 10% lives lives that are as bad as the lower American 10%'s. Child mortality, healthcare costs, class divide, prison population size... hardly seem like the Americans get the better deal. Or perhaps mention the inequality adjusted HDI. How about increases in life expectancy worldwide? Perhaps not being able to afford life-saving drugs? But let's move on, since it does not fit our agenda.

But in the meanwhile, we also have reports like this. Also stories showing people not being able to afford other food than McDonald's -contributing to obesity and other food-related health issues. (As a side note: it's really astonishing; I found that it's cheaper to buy fast food than to buy stuff for a picnic in a supermarket, for example. A sandwich with some fries and soda will cost you about 6 bucks. If you want to make sandwiches and have some salad, you'll spend about 25 for two. Which tells you a lot about healthy choices and money.)

But let's just forget the poor and how they live better than those even poorer Europeans. (Although let me tell you: I'd rather be poor in Hungary than in the US; at least I would get healthcare.)

Let's just think about the quality of life. How do you define quality of life? Does a middle class American with no maternity leave, hardly any vacation time and almost no sick leave have a better quality of life than someone who does not have to worry about his  health insurance if he loses his job? (Or she, but it would make the sentence clunky to specify.)

Does having a mortgaged house, a crippling student debt that cannot be defaulted, and an almost complete lack of social safety net really makes your life better?  How about the people who cannot get insurance because they have preexisting conditions? Does having two cars in the family and a crappy house in a suburb in the middle of nowhere make up for the choice between an expensive -and life saving- treatment or sending your kid to college? Or how about a friend of mine who did not get to see his GP about his diabetes for six months because he just graduated with his PhD and was temporarily unemployed?  Does it sound like a well-off nation? Does it even sound like a civilized nation? Has the author ever toured the slums around (and inside) big cities? Are those -usually black and latino- people really better off than the richest 10% of Portugal? Are they even better off than the lowest 10% of Portugal? I kind of doubt it.


I'm really stunned by these articles; either the authors are stupid or they think everyone else is, but regardless which option is true, it's just astonishing. The media creates a narrative which seems to become truth. Incredible.

So here's an amazing analysis from Reddit about the issues concerning tribalism, the Left and Right.

I'm just gonna post it in full. (It's a tendency of all the "big" media outlets to steal shit from Reddit; at least I'm properly crediting it.)

All I'm saying is if someone does something bad in a protest, that doesn't make the protest bad.

I think you've chosen the wrong argument here. I think what you should say is that the reason for the protest might not be wrong just because it turns violent, as in the position or argument that the protestors are basing their protest on can stand regardless of the protest actions. That could be true.

However, a protest is what happens at it. A protest that turns violent is, by definition, a bad protest. There is a difference behind the position of the protestors and the behaviour of the protestors. Bad behaviour doesn't mean a bad position, true, but the protest itself is the behaviour, not the position. You can hold the position with or without protesting. The behaviour is the protest and the protest is the behaviour.

Being "in the right" or "in the wrong" is also multifaceted. If I tell you that 2+2=5 and you say, no, it's 4, and I disagree, so you punch me in the face, then you are factually correct in your information but morally wrong in your actions on how to convey that information.

Beyond that academic discussion, there is a deeper issue though. Resorting to violence itself tends to come from a few main sources. People who resort to violence generally often can't win the argument on merits and get frustrated, so turn to violence because they truly believe something even if they can't demonstrate it to be true or articulate it. For example, the claims that Milo is a white supremacists, racist, sexist/misogynist, Islamophobic, or otherwise are baseless because there's both no evidence of any of that and there's plenty of evidence he isn't. But, he tends to vehemently criticize the "social justice" left, so they hate him and either tend to shout him down or turn to violence, since they can't win by debating on facts and reasoning. (I say this as somebody who disagrees with much of what Milo has to say in academic terms, but his critics are more wrong than he is.)

Another related reason people turn to violence is they've fallen prey to ingroup/outgroup tribalism, which is perhaps best modeled by Realistic Conflict Theory and best demonstrated in the Robbers Cave Experiment (RCE).

Essentially you can create hatred, vitriol, and violence between groups is two easy steps. Step 1 is to divide people into groups. That can be random as in the RCE, arbitrary such as the eye colour in Jane Elliott's classroom experiment, or essentially any differentiator: political leanings, favorite sports team, religion, nationality, accent, height, PC vs Mac, Android vs iOS, Coke vs Pepsi.

Step 2 is to set the groups in conflict, either via a competition (rewards, punishment, social status, attention, special privileges, etc.) or sparked by group-based insults ("fascist right", "communist left", "criminal blacks", "privileged whites", "terrorist Muslims", etc.).

That's it. Then buy some popcorn and watch it degrade into violence. In the RCE there were fistfights, sabotage, burning of other teams flag, and so on. In Jane Elliott's class, the different groups oppressed each other given the chance.

In addition to the violence and hatred, the groups tend to create in-group social norms arbitrarily and out-group narratives, typically with "us" being saints and righteous and "them" being evil. Both sides tend to rationalize, including rationalizing violence because "they" are evil, and the ends justify the means. Facts be damned.

In the U.S., this tribalist behaviour is clearly demonstrable in the massively partisan division. On top of that, you have the fringe voices becoming the justifications. On the fringe right you have the white supremacists who statistically represent a small rounding error of Trump supporters yet these are who the political left use to smear Trump supporters. On the fringe left you have the "social justice" activists and anarchists who represent only a fraction of the anti-Trump crowd (and/or Clinton supporters), yet this is who the political right use to smear anti-Trump supporters. (Milo is one of them too, who equate SJWs with liberals or anyone left of center, which is where he is very wrong of course.)

It also happens that these are the two groups that instigate Steps 1 and 2 of Realistic Conflict Theory. The fringe bigots on the right group people by traits: skin colour/race, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, and so on. They put them in a competition in a hierarchy with the dominant/majority at the top and the marginalized minorities at the bottom, and suggest everybody must conform to the interests of people at the higher end of the hierarchy.

The social justice left also group people by traits: skin colour/race, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, and so on. They put them in a competition in a hierarchy with the marginalized minorities at the top and the dominant/majority at the bottom (known as the progressive stack), and suggest everybody must conform to the interests of people at the higher end of the hierarchy. And, they refer to groups having "voices" and treat people based on their grouping. It tends to derive from a form of Marxism of flipping the powers as applied to minority status instead of by peasants vs industrialists.

Voila, both of these fringe groups both contribute to creating hatred between groups. Both contribute to each others existence and power, and both pull the partisan politics to more extremes. And both are very, very wrong. Both commit the fallacy of division, assuming things that apply to the groups as a whole apply to individuals described by those groupings, and both commit the base rate fallacy. The fringe right confuse the fact that "most terrorists are Muslim" (true) with "most Muslims are terrorists" (not true). The fringe left confuse "most privileged people tend to be whites/males" (true) with "most whites/males tend to be privileged" (not true).

The correct answer is for both fringes to stop treating people as being part of a group defined by traits, and instead treat people as individuals who have traits. Treat them by the content of the character (merit), and not the color of their skin (race). This is, in fact, what is written into human rights codes, that all individuals are equal to other individuals and have the right not to be judged based on such traits, except where the trait is the merit of interest itself. It is then violations of that rule that are bigotry, and that applies equally to all people of all races, sexes, gender identities, nationalities, ethnicities, and so on. It's the violation of the principle that matters, not the particular race or group that matters.

So what does this have to do with violence and protests? Protests often turn violent when the protesters are themselves subject to tribalist tendencies; the "us vs them" mentality. This is why right-wing racists turn violent against racial groups and fringe left-wing groups, and why left-wing Marxists tend to turn violent against right-wing groups. It's also why liberals, libertarians, and moderate conservatives don't tend to turn violent, because they are based on common rules for all and equal freedom and equal rights for all, not group against group fighting for power.

So, in that context, a protest turning violent is an indicator that the protestors are not doing so based on taking a reasoned position, but rather are being tribalist. It's not so much your example, "if an anti-fascist protest happens and a protestor punches someone", it's more that the "anti-fascist" protest is very likely wrong that the people they are protesting are fascist at all.