Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're talking about that effective soft power, yes. There are some smarter authoritarians still maintaining it, but when things get overt it loses a lot of efficacy. We've swung from 1/2 to 1/3 support for Republicans, despite most people going about their lives more-or-less normally outside of one small city. So that swing is attributed to a failure of soft power. Check out opinions in Minneapolis to see what appli…
> outside of one small city We're conveniently forgetting Chicago, Portland, Houston, Charlotte now?
Where where ICE kidnapped a bunch of folk who were legitimate parts of our community.
Where my anarchistic line of "I have stopped caring about the law and have a hard moral boundary that if a person can live here and keep up a house and job and contribute to our community they are as 'legal' as anyone else" is starting to get a real hold even among my historically Democrat-voting friends.
But yeah, I wouldn't forget those comparative metropolises, because I'd figure that the sentiment is even stronger where even more people can see the reality of which humans are being trafficked by the US gov.