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There isn't an "authoritarian bit", it's not binary. When I was young the idea that your own computer would spy on you, or the one in your phone, or in your car

There isn't an "authoritarian bit", it's not binary. When I was young the idea that your own computer would spy on you, or the one in your phone, or in your car? That was a William Gibson novel, wiretaps happened to mob bosses, you didn't worry about it happening to you as part of a dragnet. Security camera? You mean in a bank right? Microsoft bundling IE was so egregious that the department of justice took time off from chasing drug dealers and terrorists and came within an inch of being split up if it didn't back the fuck off on strangling the web. Financial fraud on Wall St or in the boardroom? Skilling, Fastow, Ebers. Hard prison time. Clinton lied about chasing skirt in the office, ended his career, real consequences. Even once the Internet was becoming common, the idea that something typed into it might get you fired? Preposterous! I don't know what being a "western liberal" government means to you, but this thing where all the walls have ears and billionaires do fucking anything they want and no scandal can damage a politician and all the surveilance and technology is an ever-tightening noose and everything is on a permanent record? Sounds pretty damned Soviet to me.

XorNot 1y ago
Okay but no scandal can damage a politician because you the American people are currently choosing to let that be the case. Same with the billionaires. The entire problem gets painted as "other" but it's you: you're actually promulgating it by your very choice of language here!
- benreesman 1y ago
  I'm not saying that the decline of Enlightenment values and the rise of crony-nepo-central-committee surveilance nightmare is "other", I'm saying it is indifferent to the stated political system, it's about the de facto political system no matter what you call it. What I care about is outcomes, what actually happens, what norms and institutional posture actually obtains in reality. And on that basis, "western liberal" society has very little business holding its nose up about "authoritarianism" as a blanket term for rival nations in 2025. No one here is talking about Sudan or Turministan, they're talking about other advanced nations with participatory politics, robust social welfare programs, limited influence for oligarchs, and highly competent governance.
- cyanydeez 1y ago
  Sure, but its a boiling frog with cancer. Certain states made choices to skew far right and other states mde choices to "keep business open" and others made choices to remain ignorant. This becomes diffusion of responsibility because every cycle maybe 1% were directly embracing far white religious authoritarian. The consistency of those choices were sticky because the oligarchy spent decades ensuring. The point being, very few people actively participated and there was no progressive decadal length comspiracy. But the reverse isnt true. There was and is a decadal length conspiracy to become a far right ethnostate run by religious minority.
  - Levitz 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - BriggyDwiggs42 1y ago
      The left has… vastly less power than the right, especially the christian right, because the right has money.
      - Levitz 1y ago
        Money? More money than Hollywood? California? Both of which lean left pretty hard? It's not 1980 anymore. "Vastly less power", pray tell, would you rather piss on a Christian cross and post it on social media or a LGBT flag? What do you think would have worse consequences? Can you even imagine a prevalence of corporations showing to align themselves with the Christian right for a month every year? The "Christian right" would, no doubt, sell their soul to have half as much power the left has. It doesn't even come close, it's off by orders of magnitude for crying out loud. If anything this power is exerted so widely you barely even recognize it. You see a pride parade, or any entity making an effort to promote or signal multiculturalism and it doesn't even register as left wing when it evidently is. Can you even picture anything comparable to BLM, on the right? Can you imagine the right managing to pull a display of power comparable to disturbing the meaning of a word as basic as "woman"? Where is this vast amount of power manifested? It's surely not in the form of respect, it's definitely not in the form of demographics, which dwindle year by year. Culture? What references are even there, Jordan Peterson? Nick Fuentes??? I'm just baffled by this perspective.
- BriggyDwiggs42 1y ago
  You could explain any authoritarian regime this way, but how much of what we believe and do is some kind of pure, unconditioned-by-our-surroundings choice?
mattnewton 1y ago
I think we’re in violent agreement about what is bad and what we should fight for. My point is that there is a difference and throwing your hands up and saying everywhere is bad obscures what is being lost and how democracies allow nonviolent ways to seize it back.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
stavros 1y ago
I haven't seen anything more authoritarian than the fact that, when you travel, someone will open your suitcase, rifle through your stuff, then close it again, and maybe leave you a little "you are being watched" note, just to make sure you know you shouldn't try anything funny.
fragmede 1y ago
What sounds pretty damned Soviet is people having to carry their papers around with them in case the gestapo or ICE stop them.
- heavyset_go 1y ago
  And the papers don't matter because the brownshirts signed up to crack skulls, not check paperwork

XorNot 1y ago

Okay but no scandal can damage a politician because you the American people are currently choosing to let that be the case. Same with the billionaires. The entire problem gets painted as "other" but it's you: you're actually promulgating it by your very choice of language here!

benreesman 1y ago
I'm not saying that the decline of Enlightenment values and the rise of crony-nepo-central-committee surveilance nightmare is "other", I'm saying it is indifferent to the stated political system, it's about the de facto political system no matter what you call it. What I care about is outcomes, what actually happens, what norms and institutional posture actually obtains in reality. And on that basis, "western liberal" society has very little business holding its nose up about "authoritarianism" as a blanket term for rival nations in 2025. No one here is talking about Sudan or Turministan, they're talking about other advanced nations with participatory politics, robust social welfare programs, limited influence for oligarchs, and highly competent governance.
cyanydeez 1y ago
Sure, but its a boiling frog with cancer. Certain states made choices to skew far right and other states mde choices to "keep business open" and others made choices to remain ignorant. This becomes diffusion of responsibility because every cycle maybe 1% were directly embracing far white religious authoritarian. The consistency of those choices were sticky because the oligarchy spent decades ensuring. The point being, very few people actively participated and there was no progressive decadal length comspiracy. But the reverse isnt true. There was and is a decadal length conspiracy to become a far right ethnostate run by religious minority.
- Levitz 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - BriggyDwiggs42 1y ago
    The left has… vastly less power than the right, especially the christian right, because the right has money.
    - Levitz 1y ago
      Money? More money than Hollywood? California? Both of which lean left pretty hard? It's not 1980 anymore. "Vastly less power", pray tell, would you rather piss on a Christian cross and post it on social media or a LGBT flag? What do you think would have worse consequences? Can you even imagine a prevalence of corporations showing to align themselves with the Christian right for a month every year? The "Christian right" would, no doubt, sell their soul to have half as much power the left has. It doesn't even come close, it's off by orders of magnitude for crying out loud. If anything this power is exerted so widely you barely even recognize it. You see a pride parade, or any entity making an effort to promote or signal multiculturalism and it doesn't even register as left wing when it evidently is. Can you even picture anything comparable to BLM, on the right? Can you imagine the right managing to pull a display of power comparable to disturbing the meaning of a word as basic as "woman"? Where is this vast amount of power manifested? It's surely not in the form of respect, it's definitely not in the form of demographics, which dwindle year by year. Culture? What references are even there, Jordan Peterson? Nick Fuentes??? I'm just baffled by this perspective.
BriggyDwiggs42 1y ago
You could explain any authoritarian regime this way, but how much of what we believe and do is some kind of pure, unconditioned-by-our-surroundings choice?

mattnewton 1y ago

I think we’re in violent agreement about what is bad and what we should fight for. My point is that there is a difference and throwing your hands up and saying everywhere is bad obscures what is being lost and how democracies allow nonviolent ways to seize it back.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

stavros 1y ago

I haven't seen anything more authoritarian than the fact that, when you travel, someone will open your suitcase, rifle through your stuff, then close it again, and maybe leave you a little "you are being watched" note, just to make sure you know you shouldn't try anything funny.

fragmede 1y ago

What sounds pretty damned Soviet is people having to carry their papers around with them in case the gestapo or ICE stop them.

heavyset_go 1y ago
And the papers don't matter because the brownshirts signed up to crack skulls, not check paperwork