| ▲ | LeoPanthera 4 hours ago |
| America is really now two Americas. The divide between traditional freedoms and neo-authoritarianism is getting wider. But America is so large that even the minority (just) that believes in freedom is still 167 million people. Even if only a small percentage of that number, from either side of the divide, believes in violent activism, things are going to get worse before they get better. |
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| ▲ | jvm___ 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| They talk about a K shaped recovery in economics. It just depends on if you're on the up portion of the K or the down stick. The larger picture might show an increase but if you split the data apart one leg is actually declining while the other is growing. |
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| ▲ | etrautmann 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | while an important consideration, I'm sure there are many on the up side of the k-economy that don't believe that persistent surveillance is warranted or ethical. | | |
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| ▲ | sigwinch 30 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Trump won the election with less than 50% of the popular vote. He has never enjoyed an approval rating equal to or higher than 50%. |
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| ▲ | josefritzishere 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| This is the most important comment here. There is a future reckoning to be had between the radical authoritarian fringe and normal Americans who do not want to live in an open air prison. The conflict is completley preventable, and makes a less safe place to live for us all. |
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| ▲ | LeoPanthera 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | America is converting into a radical authoritarian state, yes, but they're not a "fringe". They are, by a small margin, the dominant faction in the US. Popular vote counts prove it. | | |
| ▲ | mrtesthah 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Unfortunately this country has literacy and education problems, and many voters were plainly ignorant of what they were voting for. |
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| ▲ | pessimizer 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | There isn't a radical authoritarian fringe in the US. There are multiple, competing radical authoritarian perspectives in the US, and I wouldn't be surprised if the sum of them constituted a majority. They disagree on the authority, not the methods, and help the two institutional parties cooperate to destroy civil liberties by accusing their counterparts of abusing ("weaponizing") civil rights to commit crimes, spy for foreign governments, and/or abuse children. | |
| ▲ | boc 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | As your net worth increases, the concern about what you have to lose from a personal safety perspective skyrockets. You start becoming far more paranoid and seeing crime everywhere. Tech CEOs and billionaires will build the dystopian panopticon society 100 times out of 100 because they don't care about other people, they just want to feel safe. If that means mass surveillance for the rest of the world, so be it. If you don't believe me, just look at the CCP. It already happened there. | | |
| ▲ | newfriend 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Being anti-crime doesn't mean lacking compassion. Crimes have victims, and reducing crime results in fewer of them. Poor people don't want to be victims any more than rich people do. | | |
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| ▲ | slowmovintarget 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The back and forth between "the Left" and "the Right" seems to actually be about who gets to run the prison instead of whether we should run a nation like one. | | |
| ▲ | add-sub-mul-div 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | The right has become so untenable that the only viable defense of it is a bad faith distraction tactic to pretend that it's comparable to the left. | | |
| ▲ | scottyah 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | You're in a bubble. It's not wholly a bad faith distraction tactic, and denying wrongdoing by anyone flying the "left" banner is a scary thought. | | |
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| ▲ | stuffn 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| You're implying here, I assume, that anyone who voted R is pro neo-authoritarianism. It is interesting too that you've also implicitly stated that the D's are pro-freedom. Both statements are false on their face and highly influenced by terminally online behavior. I would suggest you go look at polls. Dems have been polling in the dirt among their own party since they decided to usurp Bernie in 2016 and embrace the rich, Repubs have been polling in the dirt since Trump took office last year. Absolutely no one is happy about the state of America. You can argue semantics, but it's pointless navel gazing at the larger national issue. No one, of any political affiliation, believes the government can govern. It's probably the single uniting factor across all political stripes. No one is happy. No one believes America has gotten measurably better in the last 10-15 years, and everyone is suffering in one way or another. The flock/authoritarian bent is simply the last gasps of a neoliberal government that has realized there's no easy way out of the last 40 years of anti-citizen policies. |
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| ▲ | kobieps 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Yeah, it doesn't seem productive to paint this as a partisan issue | |
| ▲ | LeoPanthera 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Your assumptions are probably reflective of my downvotes, but I choose my words carefully. | | |
| ▲ | stuffn 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Downvotes are a good sign you made someone think about their own internal biases and they didn't like it. So they lash out in the only way the know how. Pathetic and weak. |
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| ▲ | novemp 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | No one said the Democrats are pro-freedom. Both parties are authoritarian. One is just less effective. |
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