alt Hacker NewsThis is the most important comment here. There is a future reckoning to be had between the radical authoritarian fringe and normal Americans who do not want to live in an open air prison. The conflict is completley preventable, and makes a less safe place to live for us all.
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There isn't a radical authoritarian fringe in the US. There are multiple, competing radical authoritarian perspectives in the US, and I wouldn't be surprised if the sum of them constituted a majority.
They disagree on the authority, not the methods, and help the two institutional parties cooperate to destroy civil liberties by accusing their counterparts of abusing ("weaponizing") civil rights to commit crimes, spy for foreign governments, and/or abuse children.
The back and forth between "the Left" and "the Right" seems to actually be about who gets to run the prison instead of whether we should run a nation like one.
As your net worth increases, the concern about what you have to lose from a personal safety perspective skyrockets. You start becoming far more paranoid and seeing crime everywhere. Tech CEOs and billionaires will build the dystopian panopticon society 100 times out of 100 because they don't care about other people, they just want to feel safe. If that means mass surveillance for the rest of the world, so be it.
If you don't believe me, just look at the CCP. It already happened there.
America is converting into a radical authoritarian state, yes, but they're not a "fringe". They are, by a small margin, the dominant faction in the US. Popular vote counts prove it.