Revolution is the only way out.

The representative democratic ideal is ultimately revealed to be a fiction, and the rule of law is a falsehood - for without a universally applied rule of law, there is no rule of law - just authoritarianism - and our rule of law is decidedly not universal, and never has been. One set of rules for us, one for them.

All representative democracy eventually declines under the same disease of creeping authoritarianism due to the inevitable desire of entrenched power structures and bureaucracies to self-sustain and expand. This should not be mistaken for malice, rather it's the inevitable output of a system optimised for self-preservation.

The only solution to my mind while maintaining a democratic ideal is either strict sortition, or direct democracy.

You mean, the phone drone whose job it is to go "sir, burglary is a civil matter, you will need to pursue it yourself"? Already have.

- Do you for speeding.

- Protect the establishment.

- Threaten violence.

- Prop up the prison-industrial complex for the benefit of private corporations.

They are categorically not there to help you. They never have been. This is a misapprehension that has been around since the days of Peel. A police force is the state's visible threat of violence against its populace, in order to exact control and to keep the powerful powerful.

Had a fascinating chat with a Latvian chap who was telling me how literally every business in the country keeps two sets of books.

I do all, and many more such engineering/mechanical/creative type things, and I know many developers who are as adept at hacking in the real as in the aether.

Anyway, my point I guess is that it's all the same domain, and the skills are eminently transferable, and the internet fills in the knowledge blanks to a large extent.

In the UK, there's a fairly complex framework as to where you can shoot, how much you can shoot, and when you can do it. To this end, he's developed, single-handedly, iOS and Android apps for hunters to manage such and record their kills, principally for compliance purposes but also for their own edification.

Either way, it's been fascinating watching him learn - his approach has been to learn on the go, and iterate. He's gone from hacked-together PHP obscenity to android/iOS APIs and frameworks in about two years.

I walked out of it unscathed, but was a kid made of rubber. Dare say these days I'd have smashed ribs and so-forth from the same - at the least.

> They can start by asking nicely.

"Can you please kindly, stop perpetuating your morally bankrupt spy-state?"

Gosh. That achieved a lot.

An American president with a moral backbone?

Give me a break.

That's like expecting it to rain candyfloss.

The presidency is a hollow man, a figurehead - it's all just a show to make you think you have a democracy. The tail wags the dog, and entrenched non-elected interests run the show, through corruption, lobbying (corruption), and special interests (corruption).

I smell bullshit, unless the entire thing is procedural and so not DRY it's not funny.