All quiet on the western front

[Tyler Durden]

A. Melon wrote...

"There are very few in the general population that are cut to be true
dissenters and act upon it. Now this age brings in the additional
requirement: they have to also be decent engineers. As a result, there
are very few left."

I agree with this assessment, but would also suggest that Tim May's 
old-fogeyism has some validity to it. As far as I'm concerned, the state has 
successfully bonded with big media to pretty much stifle a lot of critical 
thinking, particularly about what other Americans believe. We saw it with 
the war protests--despite the fact that the numbers were larger than during 
Vietnam, the media was successful in (first of all) convincing Americans 
that the vast majority of Americans supported the war/troops/president. 
After that, since most Americans believed the right thing was to support the 
war (because "everybody else supports it"), they then came to quasi-support 
it, or at least shut up about it. And still, no Osama, no Saddam, and no 
WMD, but only "kooks" and "commies" are screaming about it.

Thus, to go back o your point, you're starting off with a small population 
of dissenters, so that once you pass down through the needs for engineering 
and math skills, you're left with very little.

On the other hand, the only thing that's stopping me from coding up my 
"eJector"  is a full time job and trying to live in the little spare time I 
have. So I guess I'm in the population you describe and will be, as long as 
I remain employed.

But then again...if someone I actually know gets tortured or whatever, that 
could change at any minute. Then I'll be the REAL...

-Tyler Durden



>From: "A.Melon" <juicy at melontraffickers.com>
>To: cypherpunks at lne.com
>Subject: Re: All quiet on the western front
>Date: Wed,  2 Jul 2003 23:06:14 -0700 (PDT)
>
>Hi, Tim,
>
>I'm glad that you have a bout of lucidity.
>
>The government essentially won the crypto battle, marginalizing crypto
>proponents, quietly getting media and corporations under control when
>crypto is concerned, and generally rising the stakes. Those of you who
>have access to corporate product development documents that relate to
>communications know what I am talking about. CALEA etcl. It's there,
>it's real and I think that about 5-10% of development resources are
>taken by it.
>
>Most cypherpunks were relatively highly paid engineers with
>comfortable lives and some time on their hands, so while crypto was
>fashionable it was cool to hang out at meetings and have pipe dreams
>about taking on the state. Even then, scum like del Torto started to
>bank ahead and sell to the "freedom fighters" and "good cops".
>
>But then it got much worse. After the WTC theater, being present at
>essentially anti-state meetings was not considered totally benign. And
>also the salaries were gone, so this beer and TV Saturday alternative
>suddenly stopped being alternative at all.
>
>So we're back to the fact that highly paid engineers in crypto field
>are really not automatically revolutionaries. On the contrary.
>
>There are very few in the general population that are cut to be true
>dissenters and act upon it. Now this age brings in the additional
>requirement: they have to also be decent engineers. As a result, there
>are very few left.

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