>>40488194
With authoritarians, its always a matter of possibility. That is, if they can do it, they will. So the "can" part is a big deal, and of course they have all the tech giants on their side because they are either paid for or outright threatened.

This is something I keep trying to hammer into young peoples heads: whatever nightmarish vision you can imagine about government, thats what they will eventually do if they are capable.

We are meant to believe that government, namely huge well resourced ones, are in some alliance with the governed in spirit or identity. In reality, they could care fuckall about the governed because they can just take their money, land or resources, or even ability to live and their very bodies by force. Theres no kindred spirit or culture. Im sure they tell themselves that, that they know what is best and its always about safety or reaction to some manufacture disaster.

But the end result is always the same, the slow march to brutal oppression. The most ambitious displays of this are in civil wars like Israel and Ukraine presently. One has just decided its ok to bomb civilians for their real estate and the other is dragging young men off the street to participate in their own destruction as a country.

And it will certainly come to the US and the rest of western Europe if nothing stops it. These huge conglomerate governments just dont work in the interests of human survival; they are at odds with each other; empires, colonies, unions, federations.

And this is the problem when you have an order that is by definition insurmountable by any other order. The only thing that stops it is picrel.