I do like the quote, but the part which isn&#x27;t incorporated there is the conversion of the populace against the group.<p>It seems as if &#x27;they&#x27; are another entity; but they&#x27;re not, right? The government isn&#x27;t some external group - they are an extension of you and me.<p>The current examples we have are pedophilia and terrorism, which have been painted as crimes so heinous that they must be eliminated from the planet, at any cost. And the general populace do seem to agree with that.<p>Once that happens I feel like we&#x27;re done for, because all ability to debate rationally has been shut down.<p>There doesn&#x27;t seem to be a cost benefit analysis going on - it&#x27;s just all or nothing. One case of child abuse, 20 people shot in a school, and people lose their minds. How can we stop that? Is it the media? Is there something more nefarious going on? I don&#x27;t know.<p>It&#x27;s like - imagine that 90% of Jews were murderous villains. If that were true, perhaps civilization would be on the brink of collapse, and we&#x27;d have to forego the principle of innocent until proven guilty in order to prevent a descent into chaos.<p>But what we actually see is some tiny, minute fraction. 0.001% of users of encryption, say, are murderers. One so small that the world would continue to spin for quite a while, possibly indefinitely, if we simply did _nothing at all_ and waited for suspects to get caught.<p>And people go insane and call for actions against innocents.<p>It&#x27;s just odd. Really odd.