[angersock]

Private gun ownership isn't a safeguard against "if things get too bad".

Really? Because it caused us a lot of trouble during our occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan. If anything, that pretty much proves it as a check on US doctrine.

It's also unrealistic and implausible to imagine that the .gov and .mil are going to make "things get too bad".

Fifteen years ago, even in the wake of Ruby Ridge and Waco, I might've been tempted to agree with you. Unfortunately, there's been a whole lot of history since then, yeah?

return to some sort of monarchy

What are your betting odds on Bush III, or Clinton II, again? Your countrymen are apathetic and easily-manipulated when it comes to politics.

[Frondo]

It doesn't make sense to me to compare the military occupation of those countries with the paranoid proposal that things "could get too bad" in the U.S. Too much seems too different about those two to be meaningful; I could point to the strict gun laws in most of the western nations and ask, "why haven't they degenerated into `could get too bad'?"

About the "whole lot of history since Ruby Ridge and Waco," well, I don't see any specific pattern of things getting "too bad". I'm not seeing the history you apparently are.

About the 2016 presidential election, couple of things: the presidency's just a job, and a short-term one at that, and the president doesn't have much power. Presidents run the country, they don't rule it.

[angersock]

What other countries are doing/not doing is a red herring--their people are not ours, their demographics are certainly not ours, their pain points are not our pain points. They additionally don't have the same political foundations and history that we do.

We have seen a continual increase in the militarization of police, the surveillance and fining of private citizens, the violation of privacy, and the bullying and exploitation of the poor.

If you're not seeing the history that I'm looking at, we're considering different news sources. I'm thinking of the Snowden leaks, the killings of citizens by police without cause (some in my own city, sadly), and so forth. I'm thinking of the delightful interplay of the prison-industrial complex with the justice system.

As for the presidency--we've seen pretty much directly the actual effectiveness of the executive branch in causing shenanigans, both in George Bush's administration and Obama's.

~

We're simply going to have to agree to disagree on this.

[Frondo]

"What other countries are doing/not doing is a red herring" ..... but you brought up Iraq and Afghanistan.

I agree about the bullying and exploitation of the poor, I just don't think that's anything new.

I think what's new is that now, techie types like you and me are learning about the police-based murders of black people, and how hard life is for the poor. That stuff's always been going on, it just didn't make it onto our radar until very recently.

[angersock]

but you brought up Iraq and Afghanistan.

Note that example was done specifically as a study of armed irregulars vs the US--your examples of other Western states were in a very different vein. :)