politics

this is also what living in a terrorist state is like. and there's a ton of terrorism that the powers that be simply allow, and that isn't reported on as terrorism. they don't strip our rights away to prevent terrorism, which is how they always frame it. they strip our rights away to make sure the condoned terrorism has the desired effect. how many mass shootings, vehicles driving into crowds, and unplanned televised acts of violence have there been since the patriot act was passed? bear in mind, it's going to be hard to find numbers because these things have become so commonplace that our news magazines of record have given up on covering all of them in large part because they've lost novelty and they don't get the attention from the audience they once did.

but this normalization of terror is part of fascism. it's why the buzz bombs feature so prominently in 1984. we the people are easier to manipulate if we are kept in permanent fear. that's what all these mass shootings, vehicles driving into crowds, and unplanned television violence does for the ruling class. things like the patriot act let them sell their state sponsored terror to the unaware by promising to remedy their constant fear. meanwhile, marginalized people like George Floyd, Freddy Gray, Brionna Taylor aren't made any more safe. in fact they, and everyone else, are made less safe.

let me ask this. did anyone else find it odd that after donald trump's first failed assassination the media decried political violence? because we've been living in political violence. we've been here for years. the fbi spied on us. reagan said on record he hoped kids would get bochalism from black panther school lunches. rodney king was beaten over basically nothing. donald trump himself fomented a violent mod in 2021. they don't want to prevent political violence. they want to protect their overlords. if collapse into technofuedalism we must, then they want to be in position to have an estate and some serfs

i say all this as a warning. "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" is a sick joke, and it's one that consistently works on people the hegemony works for. they don't understand what it feels like to live in terror because the system works for them. but fascists will always narrow their in groups tighter and tighter, and lump more and more people into the out groups until eventually there's an in group of one and everyone else has both reason to fear, and reasons to hide things.

so while you're right this is the patriot act on steroids, it's also the logical outcome of the patriot act. mass surveillance will never benefit you, and will always leave you vulnerable. even seemingly innocuous surveillance like all those ring doorbells and advertising metrics make you less safe

On 2001-09-12, Al Qaeda and bin Laden became superfluous, because the US and its ‘allies’ stole their playbook, rebranded and packaged it as the Patriot Act, creating the world the original authors had envisioned.