[diminoten]

Then what he was saying is immensely broad and basically useless as guidance for today. "Bad thing happened at some point in history" is worthless, as a sentence.

And we're not swinging towards authoritarianism. That's absolutely a lie. Want to know the irony in you saying that? That you can say that, and not fear your door being knocked down and you being questioned. You don't know authoritarianism if you think the US is headed that way. Authoritarianism is not being able to criticize the government. Authoritarianism is the inability to change the government. Authoritarianism is a very loaded word, and your misuse of it only clouds the real problems the US government has, of which there are undeniably many.

People like you who go chicken-little constantly by bandying about words like "authoritarianism" create huge political blockage, which causes government standstills like what we're seeing in congress today. Lawmakers are afraid to do anything, because every time they try, it ends with some lawmaker or another being portrayed as eating children under a bridge somewhere, and his/her constituents buy it enough to oust him/her, despite just trying to make this country a better place.

[GVIrish]

Well, just because I can say what I want today, doesn't mean the same will be true tomorrow. We're already past the point that people are beginning to self-censor out of fear of the surveillance state. We already have indefinite detentions, torture, secret laws with secret interpretations, and state-sanctioned kidnappings.

Looking across the pond at England, they went from filtering the internet to block child porn, to filtering the internet to block extremists in less than one year. You have UK law enforcement harassing and intimidating legitimate journalism about the out of control surveillance state.

Maybe none of that is alarming to you, and maybe you don't think any of those things are along the road that leads to an authoritarian state, but I and many others feel differently. Either way, just because my perception of events is different that yours doesn't make my perception a lie.

[diminoten]

> We already have indefinite detentions, torture, secret laws with secret interpretations, and state-sanctioned kidnappings.

And have had them for many many years. Nothing new. We committed a genocide against a people in the 1900s, and enslaved another people in the 1800s, both of which I think are much worse things to do to people than where we are now. If you chart the kinds of freedoms people living in the US have throughout the US's existence, would you really try to say the average person is less free today? Obviously we're not done working on being better at that, and absolutely we slip, but I'm so sick and tired of this attitude that we're moving into a totalitarian state, when we only in the last 100ish years LEFT what amounted to one.

And a small point of order but obviously no, my perception isn't any more valid than yours, but there is an objective perception, and if your perception is not aligned with that objective flagpost, then yes, your perception is a lie.

[ferrouswheel]

If you know anything about neurology or psychology, you'll know that there is no "objective perception". There is science, but that's about repeatability, and the complexity of geopolitics makes situations difficult to reproduce in exactitude. We make assessment based on different sets of experiences and knowledge, and our perception is influenced by our past and present.

No two people have the same life experience.

The very rawest form of perceptual subjectivity can be demonstrated by the interference of vision and sound caused by the McGurk effect. Search youtube for an example.

[dllthomas]

Your argument is invalid. That there are features of "authoritarianism" currently missing doesn't in any way show that we're not "swinging towards authoritarianism", any more than not seeing redwoods outside your car windows means you're not driving towards California.

Being in a place where "authoritarianism" is one bad actor away is not a good place to be. If you feel that we 1) are not in that such a place, and 2) are not likely to be any time soon, then feel free to make that case.

[diminoten]

Which bad actor would it take to put us into an authoritarian state? The president? No, congress would impeach him. Congressional leaders? No, the supreme court would overrule them. The chief justice? No, congress would constitutionalize a law if it's important enough. Checks and balances still exist.

I don't see any position of power that could act in such a way so as to gain unilateral control of the US government.

[dllthomas]

I'm not confident that we are in such a position, but I think we're closer than I am comfortable with. Imagine J. Edgar Hoover heading the NSA, "under" a weak president.

http://www.salon.com/2013/06/17/turnkey_totalitarianism

[diminoten]

I don't think the NSA is an inherently powerful organization.

If they actually were doing all the awful things people keep saying they could do, e.g. congressional blackmail, the person doing those things would be shut down in a heartbeat. Do you honestly think the head of ANY government organization couldn't be dealt with if they went legitimately rogue?

[dllthomas]

I think it's more plausible than you suggest.

[diminoten]

Maybe, but I see no evidence to think that.