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Originally Posted by willravel
I honestly don't believe that most people want to be in a police state. To the contrary, I suspect that if they suddenly found themselves oppressed in a direct and obvious way, they'd be up in arms ready to defend freedom. The problem is that of the boiling frog. Toss a frog in to boiling water and it jumps right out. Put a frog in tepid water and slowly bringing it to a boil with olive oil, salt and pepper, onion, carrot, celery, flour, white wine and canned tomatoes, and the frog becomes delicious. If people went from a relatively free society to a very much not free society and they'll know it immediately. They'll stand up and fight and do everything they can to get back their beloved freedom. Erode freedom over a very long time, however, and very few are likely to react. It's hard to notice movement over a long period of time.
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I thought of this when I read what you wrote:
“First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.”
—Martin Niemoeller
So if you have a long term plan to curtail society's freedom, you put up some test balloons and see what the reaction is. If everyone freaks out, politicians will "race to our aid" and denounce the obvious wrong even if they were directly or indirectly responsible for it in the first place. If not, they move on to the next thing on their list.
Seems that in the last few years, lots of test balloons are having no problem going through.