Wouldn't it be weird if that didn't shape their perception? It's not surprising that people are less trusting when an authoritarian is in power.
What's happening right now is not because the government had a database lying around and an unspecified authoritarian picked it up.
What's happening is that after a specific authoritarian staged a coup against the government, he was nevertheless allowed to continue his anti-democratic efforts. Trump should have a 27 year sentence like his Brazilian compatriot Bolsonaro, who in monkey-see-monkey-do fashion, similarly affected a coup against his government. Had we actually prosecuted those crimes the way Brazil did, we could still be talking about how to prevent theoretical authoritarian governments from abusing their power. But now we have a specific instance, and in this case, all the anti-authoritarian measures in the world mean jack if the government just allows actual insurrectionists to run for president, which is barred by the Constitution for a good reason. In that case they're just asking for it.
This was the true motivation for my comment. It's futile trying to design your laws to withstand the dangers of a future authoritarian regime taking power when that authoritarian regime can just as easily change or ignore those laws once they take control. Our government is experiencing a rubber hose attack, the strength of our encryption doesn't matter.
We spent 10 years warning about him, pointing out his specific authoritarian tendencies, January 6 was predicted years before it happened, but when people said "he's not going to leave" they were met with mockery.
Who tf cares about databases when their plan was to just use their power to throw out entire states worth of votes? The entire J6 plot was that Pence was to reject the certification of the vote so that states could send "alternative electors" who voted for Trump, which would have disenfranchised millions of people at once. What is the law supposed to do against such anti-democratic "might makes right" depravity? At that point, the players have abandoned the game entirely, they're playing by different rules, your laws are meaningless.
Edit: to the dead comment below me:
> If you actually believed you were living under a dangerous, authoritarian government you wouldn't be posting about it on the internet. You'd be scared shitless trying to delete any trace of this connected to yourself.
Bro, I'm already labelled part of a terrorist organization by this government for my political beliefs. There's nothing I can say here or elsewhere that would change that, so at this point my fate is locked in because I'm not going to change what I believe.
There's not point in hiding anything, now is not a time for hiding, it's a time for speaking your mind. These people are authoritarians, but they are not all powerful. Yet. They have no consolidated power. Yet. They 100% want to, but that's not going to be possible as long as people continue to speak out. Read Timothy Snyder's, On Authoritarianism. He describes what you suggest is the rational response as "obeying in advance", which is the primary way in which the authoritarians seize power -- it's freely given by people who are too afraid to push back.
Look no further than a typical HN comment thread on a niche public policy issue.
They are rife with people scheming up all sorts of ways to thread the needle of public policy so that government enforcement action far in excess of what the public would support can be brought to bear on whoever is on the wrong side of whatever the issue being discussed is.
That's the mindset of an authoritarian. No needle threading here though, just use "the power of the state to" get our way (no sadness detected).
This on top of the fact that the "law and order" party apparently is only for law and order if it's being used against people they don't like. Evidently most people aren't self aware enough to question their own beliefs, who knew?
Nothing sets me off like seeing people think this behavior from Trump doesn't have shared roots across both parties.
Biden kept kids in cages. Obama bombed weddings. Yes, the current admin is accelerating hard but like, prior admins were accelerating.
People should really try to stop thinking about politics like it's a two party game where you have to pick a side. Figure out your principles, and start finding candidates who match those principles.
By both-sides-ing this, it plays into hands of the people who support the current abhorrent behavior by claiming they're not doing anything different than their opponents have done. That is patently false, and we should not accept it.
It's not both sidesing to identify and critique the role democrats had to play here, especially when I say the gop is clearly worse. A critical assessment of how the Dems failed to protect us is not only not helping the GOP, it's exactly the sort of root cause analysis that helps ensure the mid terms go OK.
Saying now's not the time to criticize Dems is the same sentiment that gets us "vote blue no matter who" when Biden runs but "I think we have to consider our options" when Mamdani runs. It's sticking your head in the sand rather than having to face the fact that the party has a losing platform.
There’s this quote I read recently: “When a political system collapses, the replacement is chosen from the choices available at the time ”.
I think it’s pretty clear to anyone with a brain that neoliberalism has failed the majority of people. Trump provided an alternative, and democrats ran on “nothing will fundamentally change”. The results are what we see today.
Relevant:
https://img.ifunny.co/images/d85bf67967cdc2fd0616343ed6c1004...
Nor it has anything to do with what countries do around the world. You can be democratically elected, law abiding, not overreach and bomb weddings abroad, those are not related.
US has the same constitutional weakness of the countries that went authoritarian in the last decades: a presidential republic.
There's one thing that Russia, Belarus, Philippines, Tunisia, Turkey, Nicaragua made constitutionally simpler to allow authoritarianism to happen, they gave the country a president elected by the government.
Thus enabling: - personality cult - hard to remove individuals - claiming popular mandate despite anything - deadlocks
All those situations are breeding grounds for chaos.
Say what you want about slow Europe, but it's hard, very hard to pull this stuff here where most countries don't have popular elections for presidents.
In parliamentary republics those shifts are very difficult and are generally centred on party-ism, so identification between state and party.
This is the Indian and Hungarian playbook, as the constitutions don't allow individuals to power grab with ease, it's a very tougher game to succeed.
You don't win an election and start firing executive orders and stretching their limits while courts get to decide what the limits are.
No you can't. International law (e.g. UN charters, Geneva conventions, etc.) once ratified become actual US domestic law.
No. I flat out reject the excuse you make on their behalf and consider you lesser than you would be had you not made it.
We're presumably discussing adults, not ten year olds or monkeys. They ought to f-ing act like it.
These people are almost all likely capable of the emotional restraint and logical thinking and sufficient abstract thought to think these things through and decide whether policy or action is good or bad regardless of if it's their guy doing it or their interest being served by it. The fact that they decline to do so is a failing of them. To excuse it only serves to reinforce or validate it and should be ridiculed.
The majority of Americans don't feel that way, but did about the last administration, and enough to do something about it. What's surprising is, given that revelation, a few people still actually think that.