>I have found the people who tried to debate these matters with me utterly unconvincing. I would love to be shown that this country is not what I believe it to be but that seems increasingly unlikely.
There's nothing that I can say that you aren't going to ignore, because you are smarter than me and you cannot think that your conclusions are wrong, either because you think you are 100% logical or because you don't see how your emotions are clouding your thoughts. I was exactly like that some years ago, before therapy. I would suggest the same for you, but you will probably consider that gaslighting. Again, you are smart, which makes hard to accept that you are not being rational as you think you are. A good therapist would have the tools to help you realize that.
>And my fears are not at all unfounded. They've prosecuted completely normal people who criticized them in the past. They've gone after teenagers over online comments. I'm taking risks by posting here because of my sense of justice. I'm just too disgusted and disillusioned by what's happening in this country to keep quiet about it.
I know people who spend most of their online time posting about this topic on public social media, some of their posts getting very close to death threats, every day, and nothing happens to them. Some of them works as public legislative servants, what makes them an easy target for censorships. We have elected people posting all day about it, some of them asking for military coups, and nothing ever happens to them. The probability of you getting arrested because of comments on Hacker News are so low that I cannot see that thought as something different of delusion.