It's fascinating to me that so many (even a majority) of the direct comment replies to this post are a version of "this is nothing bad" or "nothing new to see h

It's fascinating to me that so many (even a majority) of the direct comment replies to this post are a version of "this is nothing bad" or "nothing new to see here" or just arguing semantics about who was "running the govt" at the time (and so again, "nothing to see here"). This really comes across as party partisans, or party stooges, just flooding the conversation trying to massage the consensus. To people who are die-hard members of this political tribe, it's apparently impossible for them to see how vastly illiberal this situation was to regular people, and how uncomfortable it makes true political independents (never mind people on the opposite political tribe, where all it does is to further inflame their belief of being targeted unfairly all the time).