Mission Creep: When Everything Is Terrorism
While I'm not claiming that the US is currently close to totalitarianism, there are some comparisons that have become quite disturbing:<p>1. A regime that justifies itself by claiming to protect the populace from a vague but grave danger. The USSR had the specter of returning robber barons; Nazi Germany, the Jews; and current-day US, terrorists.<p>2. A secret police that collects everyone's metadata and uses it to investigate suspicious activity. (Stasi didn't record everything all the time; they kept files of who communicated with whom, and assigned surveillance assets to the most promising leads.)<p>3. A heavy-handed, militarized regular police that apprehends nonviolent suspects with overwhelming force.<p>I could go on, but the combination of these three is more than enough cause for worry.