I think the government and law enforcement will always take a dim view of anyone who tries to send some “freedom seeds” downrange at them in the name of any cause, whether said cause lines up with the Constitution or not.
Having said that, the signs of encroaching tyranny that I would look out for would be restrictions on purchasing Second Amendment-related items. Is the government tracking who is stocking up? Are they actively trying to make it more difficult for some or all people to exercise this particular freedom? I haven’t seen any obvious indicators of this yet but given the right circumstances, I could certainly see the Trump regime cracking down on who can and cannot own guns or purchase ammo or etc.
See, these statements give the impression that there is a competent, organized CENTER in, well… in the center of things. When you ask, “Is the government tracking…” what do you mean by “the government”? FBI, DOJ, ICE, Homeland Security? Do you think these departments communicate with each other? I’m not sure they did even in The Before Times.
What IS the “Trump regime”? A bunch of destructive, disorganized, mercurial, unstable eejits running around in circles smashing and burning and then frantically trying to put the broken pieces back together.
Not quibbling over the net destruction, just that there is any organizing principle or cohesive Intelligence behind it all. That may be what saves the country: the chaos that will ultimately self-destruct.
Ok so I’m not going to start rationally arguing with what is clearly, nothing to do with valid law enforcement and purely a flimsy excuse to send brown people to camps. But this still pissed me off…
Really!?! MS-13 is such a terrifying existential threat to America that the only way to combat them is to abandon Habeas Corpus and basic human dignity. So the awesome resources of the federal government, unhindered by things like wokeness and the bill of rights, and at huge cost to the tax payer were able to save America by… Checks notes… Shutting down a nightclub that didn’t have the correct licenses. Oh thank God! If we hadn’t elected trump God only knows what kind of unspeakable horrors this would have lead to.
They are so goddamned lazy and incompetent this was the best they could come up with to drum up the MS-13 Boogeyman.
It would be really interesting (and tragic; I’m not pulling for this) to see some MAGA exercise his right to defend his home against a warrantless raid that turned out to be based on an incorrect suspicion, because it would be really interesting to see who MAGA backed.
Well, I said this, and then I came across this article in The Atlantic. We can only hope the whole thing self-destructs before this comes to pass… [Gift link]
If you were tasked with building a panopticon, your design might look a lot like the information stores of the U.S. federal government—a collection of large, complex agencies, each making use of enormous volumes of data provided by or collected from citizens.
Aside: I had to look it up. The principle of a “panopticon” is disgusting and terrifying: “The Panopticon theory holds that people can be controlled when they believe themselves to be under constant surveillance even if no one is watching. The theory stems from the intended effect of having a central guard tower in a prison that all the prisoners could see, even though they could not see the guards.”
Continuing from The Atlantic article:
The federal government is a veritable cosmos of information, made up of constellations of databases: The IRS gathers comprehensive financial and employment information from every taxpayer…
[Cites the vast number and broad reach of various databases maintained by different agencies.]
A fragile combination of decades-old laws, norms, and jungly bureaucracy has so far prevented repositories such as these from assembling into a centralized American surveillance state. But that appears to be changing. Since Donald Trump’s second inauguration, Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency have systematically gained access to sensitive data across the federal government, and in ways that people in several agencies have described to us as both dangerous and disturbing. Despite DOGE’s stated mission, little efficiency seems to have been achieved. Now a new phase of Trump’s project is under way: Not only are individual agencies being breached, but the information they hold is being pooled together.
…
In March, President Trump issued an executive order aiming to eliminate the data silos that keep everything separate. Historically, much of the data collected by the government had been heavily compartmentalized and secured; even for those legally authorized to see sensitive data, requesting access for use by another government agency is typically a painful process that requires justifying what you need, why you need it, and proving that it is used for those purposes only. Not so under Trump.
…
They’ll back ICE. Within hours, they’ll have some excuse as to why the guy deserved to die. Did you hear he had unpaid parking tickets? And I heard he was wearing sports paraphernalia associated with criminal drug gang human traffickers. Obviously some Democrat voting illegal alien invader despoiling our virgins and precious bodily fluids.
If you recall, during his first term, Trump contemplated taking guns without due process. And, of course, to MAGA, he’s still the most pro-2A president ever, and it’s still the Democrats who are trying to take your guns away.
Yes, probably. Take a look at police shootings. Even if the person is a white conservative type, they find reasons to excuse the cops. If it turns into something political, they’ll be even more motivated to find excuses, both to absolve themselves of blame for supporting this, and to reinforce their “It won’t happen to me” bubble.
In response to It’s Hegseth we need to get - Politics & Elections - Straight Dope Message Board, I don’t know, there are so many horrors all over. If you haven’t seen Last Week Tonight With John Oliver from last Sunday (April 27) I can’t even find words to express my feelings. It’s about across-the-board cuts to vital medical research and oversight in America’s key institutions like the NIH, and mass firings in all those places. And the spread of toxic disinformation by RFK Jr, a completely deranged lunatic in charge of it all.
As Oliver points out, in even the best of times it’s hard to restart research programs after they’ve been terminated and the key people have been fired. This cadre of rampaging lunatics will have a direct impact on human health for decades to come. Is Hegseth even worse? It depends who or what you’re more likely to be victimized by, a fatal disease or a fatal encounter with the Trump Gestapo.
I’ll say it again. This is a thousand times worse than I could ever have imagined. There are no checks and balances. Congress is spineless, and the Supreme Court is toothless.
I agree with every word you said, except I would amend your statement where I have placed the emphasis: The Supreme Court is complicit.
There’s a new two-part documentary out by Alex Gibney called The Dark Money Game based on the book by Jane Mayer, who writes for the New Yorker and knows her stuff about dark money in American politics. I knew a lot of it, but I didn’t know all of it. I still feel sick from having watched – but I hope people do, because I think it’s important for people to understand how deep all this goes and what we’re up against. It’s bad. Really, really bad.
One has to wonder – seriously wonder – whether this modern-day supposedly enlightened democracy might be the darkest time in American history. I don’t know what the future portends, but if democracy survives in America, I predict amendments to the Constitution so that lunatics like this can never reign again – even in a nation where elections have to be on a Tuesday because of the time it takes for a farmer’s horse-drawn carriage to get to the Big City after attending Sunday service, praise the Lord.
These assholes are going to walk us straight into another covid style pandemic. I’m not even sure if that’s not exactly what they’re trying to do for whatever reason because, as others have already noted, there isn’t any other rational explanation for any of this. Not for dismantling the healthcare infrastructure in this country which is what they are apparently trying to do.
And that pandemic is going to be a hundred times worse than it was in 2020. Because those infrastructures are not going to be there at least attempting to do their jobs. There’s not going to be a Dr. Fauci this time. There will be zero resistance or pushback internally or behind the scenes.
