life under authoritarian regimes is like war: most Americans don’t know that it’s often really normal and boring, up until the rarer, horrible moments when it isn’t
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.
The damage this causes across generations (even if the regime is short lived!) is so hard to grasp if you haven’t lived with it. It touches every aspect of life. It makes trust impossible, and without some level of trust and a belief in the possibility of justice, *nothing in society works.*
china is the lowest trust, most every man for himself fuck you got mine place i have ever experienced. if americans think it's like that now oh boy you have no idea how much worse it can get once society itself is destroyed
Given the experience of social climbers right here on this Web Site I’m starting to think that some investigative agency would be among the least of our concerns once folks try to suss out Ways To Stay On Top out of greed, desperation, or outright maliciousness
one of those things I just think about is like, how it was something I think on the order of 2.5% of East Germany's population being informants for the Stasi which is just equivalent to one in forty people.
