It's amazing how naive and gullible people are even after all the many thousands of examples of lies and gaslighting over many generations now. It seems to be a permanent characteristic of a certain subset of people, and seemingly a majority of people, at least in the west and at least in this era.

It always gives me the "he only beats me because he loves me" or "he wouldn't beat me if I knew how to behave better" vibes. It's not healthy, not sane, not rational.

One disagreement though; I don't even think they will lock people out of their devices outside of very narrow and specific instances or examples to "cut the grass" as the Israelis call it, to scare and remind people they are the slaves and the long arm of the tyranny can reach out and crush them if they don't self-censor and self-subjugate. Psychological and ideological control has very much proved itself far more effective than physical control in all circumstances. They want to be able to monitor and then use methods and technologies to control that have not really come to light in society even thought they were systematized through the Iraq war. You are now the "insurgents", are you old enough to remember those, those insurgents in their own country?