How to own an airline in 3 easy steps and grab the TSA nofly list along the way

I don't think it's anything like authoritarian regimes, wherein a single individual (DPRK) or party (PRC) maintains absolute power. However, it is authoritarian in its representation of its single interest: billionaires and corporations (which famously have personhood in the usa and are explicitly granted political power via legislation).

I wish you wouldn't take a bad faith interpretation of my position by strawmanning me as if I'm claiming the usa is like the DPRK. I'm not alone in my viewpoints, and considering the rise of leftism in the usa, at the very least you would be well served to pay attention to what we're saying if nothing else so you aren't blindsided by a sudden wave of anti-establishment blowback. Read Cory Doctorow's "Radicalized" for some fun fiction on the dangers of laughing away criticism of the problems in the usa as just silly disaffected leftists who aren't "realistic."

In any case I doubt what I'm claiming, if you take it in good faith, is really all that controversial.

Do you want to live in a country where you could be churned through viciously unfair court systems for potential years because you used JavaScript to access APIs that you didn't know were intended to be accessed only by humans through web browsers? Because that's happened to people in the usa.

Do you want to live in a country where you could go to jail for fixing your own tractor, or iphone? That's what the American government is leaning towards.

Do you want to live in a country where human rights aren't guaranteed if the State can pick a demographic trait about you that renders you inhuman in certain situations? The USA is doing that right now to women and their bodily autonomy, and transgender people for same.

Do you want to be a target when you travel because your government armed revolutionaries and then radicalized them against The West by pillaging their country for natural resources? This America has done uncountable times.

So why deny reality? Don't you want the usa to be a better place? You don't have to be a communist to think so. You can simply want the things I mentioned to go away. There's no reason America can't just be a milquetoast capitalist state with whisps of socialism in their healthcare and transportation industry like plenty of nations across the world. Why assume that's a slippery slope to whatever scary thing you think I believe?

Certainly one way authoritarianism manifests itself is through blatant restrictions on freedom of speech.

America, being a nation of highly evolved authoritarianism, has found better ways. Nobody on earth does better marketing than the USA. Nobody. And what else can we call marketing when a government does it other than propaganda? Get someone leaking that the government was doing illegal spying? No worries, he's a Russian agent! Got some upstart kneeling on a football field to protest police brutality? Champagne socialist, race baiter, disrespectful of the American flag, boom, done, we can keep doing police brutality. And bonus, we now have a new angle to culture war: pro and anti cop. Tie being pro cop to owning a pickup truck and just like that you've got people making it their entire identity. Easy! Didn't have to arrest a single person (other than a couple hundred peaceful protestors of course).

No need to arrest the person shouting that the president is an idiot, or a fascist, or whatever. That doesn't matter because the American electoral system is rigidly locked into two parties that serve the true electorate regardless of which is in power: billionaires and corporations. Shout all you want! It doesn't matter all that much.

But should you challenge the true electorate, that's an entirely different story. Why is stealing from the cash register come with a quick trip to jail, yet the largest form of theft in the usa is wage theft, the punishment for which is at worse a fine? And that's if you can hire a lawyer to do the hard work for you: unlike when you steal from the cash register, the State is unlikely to send an attorney general to launch an investigation on your behalf.

Authoritarianism can manifest itself in many ways when you're smart about it. Try to repair a John Deere tractor on your own, lemme know how it goes. Try to grow what you want on your farm, lemme know how it goes. Try to get a medical procedure, well the State might let you, unless you're a woman or transgender.

Grow your own marijuana and then smoke it, lemme know how that works out.

You may be allowed to protest the president, but stand in front of a courthouse with a sign that says "Google jury nullification," let me know how it goes.

Stand in front of a police station with a sign that says "Black Lives Matter," tell me how it goes.

Stand in front of a Whole Foods with a sign about pissbottles, let me know how far the cops force you to move on threat of arrest.

I triple dog dare you to walk into an American police station and request to make a complaint against an officer. I quadruple dare you to change your mind and try to leave if they ask for ID during the process.

Ever driven in South Texas? Lemme know what happens when you try it and refuse to stop at the random border patrol points that aren't on a border, despite being constitutionally "guaranteed" to not need to randomly show proof of citizenship to jackboots asking.

So you can shout about the president. Big deal. You can do that in many places. The power of the authoritarianism isn't vested in that office in the usa. The president is an agent of those interests. The tricky thing about the usa, and the reason it's not a fully fascist state, is those interests are just diverse enough to be unable to collude fully. I think it's on that path though.

People comment mostly when they think they have something topical to add that hasn't been said. And pronouns are something people feel much more able to have opinions on that doing scans for open servers.

The vast vast vast majority of people of any age won't comment at all.

Good rule of thumb: NEVER assume that the views of commentators are in any way representative.