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By the way, the following interpretation of the intent and gist of this essay is presented to you by Google's Bard (the fucktard):

The article, titled "Why Can't We Be Citizens?", by MD C. Bowen, argues that the United States has a long history of denying citizenship to certain groups of people, and that this trend continues today. Bowen begins by discussing the history of citizenship in the United States, noting that the original Constitution only granted citizenship to white men who owned property. This meant that women, African Americans, and Native Americans were all excluded from citizenship.

Bowen then goes on to discuss how this history of exclusion has continued in the 21st century. He points to the fact that undocumented immigrants are not allowed to become citizens, even if they have lived in the United States for many years and have contributed to society in many ways. He also notes that the Trump administration has made it more difficult for people to become citizens, and has even tried to deport naturalized citizens.

Bowen concludes by arguing that the United States needs to change its laws so that everyone, regardless of their race, gender, or immigration status, can become a citizen. He argues that this is essential for creating a more just and equitable society.

Here are some additional details from the article:

The United States was founded on the principles of equality and liberty, but these principles have not always been applied equally to all citizens.

The history of citizenship in the United States is one of exclusion and discrimination.

The Trump administration has made it more difficult for people to become citizens, and has even tried to deport naturalized citizens.

The United States needs to change its laws so that everyone, regardless of their race, gender, or immigration status, can become a citizen.

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There is a huge glaring problem with Johnathon Rauche's Quotes on liberalism.

1. Nobody has final say.

2. Nobody has special authority.

Okay.... here comes the problem.

Egos, like the or not, are universal in that basically everyone has one; and only very few are in control of theirs. The rest, given the chance without consequence; will act like absolute jack-napes. (Trying to be swearword free today, forgive my... imaginative wording.)

So those two quotes are flawed insofar that they do not have something acting as a check and balance against them; due to the fact that most people won't obey them anyways. Again, egos.

To make matters worse, these people mostly just follow each other and their favorable opinions. Not a terrible thing if these are intelligent opinions; but alas they oft are not. Even when the mob thinks itself intelligent, it oft isn't.

The problem is that all of this is why democracy and liberalism fall flat on their face almost every time that populism of the extremes occurs. It's one thing when everyone is being reasonable in their populism based ideas and such. It's a whole other when those ideas and opinions are coming from literally some of the worst people of our societies.

Democracy and liberalism as defined by those quotes, when presented with this problem I write to you; requires essentially an adjudicator to be able to be that one who has that final say, and has that special authority.

But who dare we give it to?

The problem, is that when everyone thinks their opinion is worthwhile, none are. Why?

Because even if just one opinion had enough validity to be more worthwhile than all the rest; the idiots will keep you from ever finding out. They'll drown it out with their stupidity.

This is why mob mentality, group think and many other psychological curses of improper education for decades now, is a huge problem for us.

OH, P.S. I'm speaking from the Canadian side of this. All you in America have it far worse, because your idiots think they can say anything they want just because they want to. We at least have some slight restrictions in our freedoms insofar that you must be considered reasonable.

That has other problems attached to it; but it at least keeps our stupidest from being even worse problems... like you are experiencing.

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A noble project! I admire your vision, guys. It fits with the insight tenaciously held by John Adams. (We've just finished watching an HBO-Max series (from 2008) based on David McCullough's book titled using that founding father's name; and I'm also reading the book, same title.) Here was a guy who dedicated his entire life to "civics" — a rare generosity given to build community. "Build it, and they will come?" Hope so! Perhaps a sleek open-source tool will stir passion from the ashes of our Soul, sparking genuine care for neighbors and nation.

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This is a good and ambitious idea, worthy of deep thought and purposeful development. Blockchains and smart contracts for the first time strike me as having the necessary utility to underpin something practical as an agent for change. As an expatriate American living in a foreign country, I want to go away and think about how this could be effective in the sense of global organization leading to local action. In addition, Mr Alinsky's methods come to mind for a hint of iron-fist-in-velvet-glove kind of effectiveness.

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This article was of particular interest to me, Michael, because for a long time I thought about something very similar to XR. My own version was much more narrowly based on transparency with regards to voting, spending and donations I guess (kind of a opensecrets on steroids). But I also thought of incorporating things like legislative alert systems, push-button petitioning, WISIWYG legal contracts and so forth. The features begin to sprawl and creep, when we think of what a true Digital Citizen toolset would look like.

I guess there were two problems I kept running up against in the early design phase. On the one hand, I would always find RW vulnerabilities, and get lost in the weeds coming up with workarounds that weren't ultimately self-defeating. But I think the bigger problem I had was a pair of (related) conceptual paradoxes: Would we be building a tool to keep tabs on the princes, or one for them to keep tabs on us? To build lists of snoops and other potential troublemakers? And if they are princes, and this tool truly threatened their power, couldn't they simply roll the truth-train a bit further down the tracks, and start using our own system to feed us false data? Some might say "If they could do that, they already would have. But I've noticed that people (and especially venal, corrupt people) usually don't work to change the status quo until something forces them to.

That said, the idea still haunts me, because I think something like it which worked as advertised would be game-changing, and perhaps on a planetary scale.

Maybe you would consider posting a link to this in #skunkworks on Deimos? It sounds like the kind of project where many of us could get our heads together on it, compare notes, etc.

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