bluesky is largely convincing itself that as soon as he is elected, trump will start drone striking people who say mean things about him online, which i think is great because maybe canalizing into this belief will get the doomerist panic mongers on bsky to stop doomspiraling themselves for a bit
Two Satans Theory in action: 1) Making credible threats online during an (ascendent or actual) authoritarian regime is a bad idea and a legitimate concern, and 2) there is simultaneously a moral panic that everyone is going to get drone striked and blackbagged for every comment they ever made online
Pretty much. What it mostly boils down to is that most Americans really don’t have the faintest idea what living under modern authoritarian regimes actually looks like, and how it’s often at the same time way more boring and way more scary than they’d imagined.
I used to work in the PRC. It was simultaneously true of the average person that they: a) virtually never had a direct negative experience with the state, and b) constantly self-monitored to make sure they never came to the attention of the state. Both boring and nerve-wracking, at the same time.
Nevertheless there were people like us in China crossing the limit unwittingly; I was called to police questioning back then because I wrote something about accelerationists *in the United States* and triggered the keyword.
Prepare for a lot of ridiculousness if things get as bad in the US
