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by MisterMower
30 days ago
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Is he wrong though? Lots of bad precedents were set during that emergency, the consequences of which were still living with. The Overton window moved in a deeply authoritarian direction during that time period. Politicians across the spectrum have internalized that move and are restricting freedom in far more overt ways than were possible prior to that emergency. If you want to prevent future abuses, understanding how and why past abuses happened seems quite reasonable. I don’t find such an idea nonsense or disconnected from reality at all. |
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What I saw were a bunch of temporary measures directly supporting public health, in line with past precedents from prior generations, that were eventually ended - which is a lot better than we can say for any teeth in the ratchet of techno-authoritarianism that has been slowly advancing over the past several decades!
The main thing I saw, and it was more of a demonstration rather than a precedent, was how readily people are led to political rallying cries that go against their own stated values, common sense, and the realities of a situation. How quick people are to tear down our institutions given the right leader that plays to their immediate feelings.
To me, that is the authoritarianism we can draw a direct line from to what we are facing today - basically the continued escalation of giant douche vs turd sandwich. But that's not what people seem to mean when they hand wave about authoritarianism during Covid. Rather such gripes are more often an embrace of that trend!