Freedom is not a goal, but a direction

> A person living alone in the world can be free, but two cannot.

This seems to say that the opposite of freedom is impact. That is, freedom is lost when one person impacts another. I feel restraint is a more effective antonym.

It used to be called boycotting but it, as a thought-stopping cliche, couldn't be assigned to only one party and wouldn't be as catchy so they had to make one up. Same with "political correctness" or "sjw". In the US if you said the wrong things, historically, that weren't politically correct, you'd be ostracized or if you were of the wrong class, race or religion, the social warriors at the time would want justice and seek to persecute you as you upset the order of what they saw as just. This has been going on all throughout history but if you assign them, these actions that you don't like and of a group you don't like, a new name and equate it with a certain political group, you can more effectively distinguish and dehumanize the other group as an out-group.

Personally, Horseshoe Theory makes sense. The extremes of both, as Snowden was implying with China and the US, are more like each other than not. Should any get their way and you're in the out-group, you're on a scale of fucked. Even the "peaceful" religions or ideologies are guilty of persecuting those in the outgroup in sometimes very heinous ways. Incidentally, it's strange, but not surprising, that he didn't mention Russia, his own host, where censorship is even worse than the US.

It isn't to you or me, but some people only have two boxes to put people in.

I'd suggest that rather than losing faith in democracy you could look to the spectrum of democracies and see where India's is failing. In the UK we have to turn to the courts to restrain the horrors that our government commit, more and more of late.

"Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time; but there is the broad feeling in our country that the people should rule, continuously rule, and that public opinion, expressed by all constitutional means, should shape, guide, and control the actions of Ministers who are their servants and not their masters." - Winston Churchill, 1947

[https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1947/nov/...]

Imagine you were a Black woman born in late 1865. You were among the first never to have known slavery. You witnessed the first Black folks elected to Congress and even considered it normal.

Then Reconstruction ends with a whimper. Burning crosses are showing up everywhere. Thousands flee north as a reign of terror grows. Your voting rights are curtailed then eliminated. When Black folks are elected, they are driven out of office by gunfire, and the federal government does nothing. You were never eligible for the same jobs as white folks, but now you can't even drink from the same fountains.

Would you say that woman lives in a democracy/democratic republic or a fascist hellscape?

Then some legislation is passed. The folks wrongly accused remain in jail, the dead remain dead, and the ones who killed them are never brought to justice. The change is considered an injustice by many, who leave their political party in droves and welcomed by the other party in a "Southern Strategy."

Things seems to quiet down a little though representation in media either wholely excludes her descendants or disproportionately shows them on shows like "Cops". The history of that legislation is watered down and most of the details of what happened before are not taught in schools. Some public schools even have teachers arguing the authoritarianism was justifiable. See: Lost Cause.

Then a man with her skin color is elected president. Those same people who claimed that the presidency must hold certain moral and capability requirements are confronted with a man with all required qualifications and then some.

After his largely scandal-free tenure, those same folks, many of whom were alive and among those forced by the National Guard to treat people with his skin color as a human being, gave up all pretense to morality and competence in the presidency to elect a man who had neither.

And then we he lost re-election, they attempted to storm the Capital and kill those that would replace him. This was not quiet either. Folks brought lumber and BUILT a gallows where they chanted for the Vice President to be hung for his lack of loyalty to the outgoing president.

Did I mention the man with a knee on his neck for the better part of ten minutes, whose murderers would have gotten away with it had it not been for uncut civilian video footage of the event from multiple angles?

Or the woman shot in her bed with no one held to account for her death?

Or the literally dozens of instances off the top of my head where a police officer kills or maims someone ON VIDEO with only a slap on the wrist if that?

How about elected officials publicly stating that homosexuality or being trans should be a capital crime?

Or legislation popping up around the country that bodily autonomy is a fundamental right in law unless you are female between approximately the ages of 12 and 50.

I'll restate: racism and sexism and homophobia are all examples of fascism that haven't hit wealthy white men yet.

And unfortunately poor white men and white women in general have failed to recognize the difference between power and proximity to power. To everyone's detriment.