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Repression of dissidents is a feature of every political regime. No exceptions.
What is true here is that the US establishment has become a lot less subtle in its repression, and is now forced to employ overt tactics. Since they are foxes who thrive on good optics, this is a show of weakness.
The motte: To the degree that this is true, it is so vague that it is useless. It is like saying "every animal can survive outside water", implying (a) for some non-zero time span (b) in microgravity (c) with the correct air pressure.
The bailey: To the degree that it is non-vague, falsifiable it hints at 'repression is a key element in any regime', or 'the amount of repression is similar between regimes' this is false.
If someone asked you 'I want to have a system with minimal political repression, should I pick Stalin's Russia or Obama's US?' and you reply 'Repression is universal, so it does not matter', that is akin to answering 'what would make a good pet for my terrarium, a hamster or a gold fish?' with 'every animal can survive outside the water, so it does not matter'.
Both have torture and executions. If you are a true opponent of either establishment your fate is almost exactly the same. Misery and death for you and your loved ones.
The answer to this question depends on your own beliefs and how tolerable they are to a a given regime, not how tolerant a regime is, because there is no such thing as a tolerant regime except in the sense that it is secure and unchallenged. Power suffers no competitors. If you are dangerous to the establishment you will be robbed, killed, tortured. No exceptions.
What you're doing here is simply denying moral community to terrorists and other enemies of yourself, a (to a degree) supporter of the establishment. You're fine with some people getting tortured and executed. Because they're not human in the sense you care about.
This is fine. It's nothing special. But if we want to have any sort of reasonable debate about the nature of politics, you have to remove yourself from this ideological frame and consider things from the outside.
I'll gladly embrace the bailey: repression is a key element of every single political regime that has ever existed, including the one you live under right now, and no regime could even exist without it. As for the quantity of the repression, it's a function of how secure the regime is and essentially nothing else.
This comment is unhinged. I'm reminded of the quote (paraphrasing) "You condemn a black-and-white morality as having only two colors; but you replace it with grey, which is only one."
To my knowledge, the Obama administration only sought the torture and execution of one US citizen on political grounds (Snowden). I'm quite happy to deny "moral community" to the nation's enemies, which is why I drew the line at US citizens.
Putin's Russia is wildly different. Take for instance Trump's election while Obama was in power. How does that fit into "Power suffers no competitors"?
What about Abdulrahman al-Awlaki? I suppose being the family of a political enemy is "political grounds" but then that decays into agreeing with me.
Unlike you, I'm not convinced that the ceremonial power structure of the US maps onto its real power structure. In a presidential election, who the ruling class is is almost never on the ballot. And when it is is precisely when the historic assassinations start to happen.
I admit I had not heard of Abdulrahman al-Awlaki before.
https://web.archive.org/web/20121103143344/http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-airstrike-that-killed-american-teen-in-yemen-raises-legal-ethical-questions/2011/10/20/gIQAdvUY7L_story.html
Is that actually the best example you can come up with? I think it proves my point.
I mean we are talking about civilian US citizen casualties of the Obama administration specifically. That's a narrow category that people only really care about because citizenship is supposed to entitle you to some protection from the US government on paper (but does not because power comes first and constitutional decorum second).
We can talk more broadly about how the US treats its enemy populations if you want. People seem to have forgotten about Abu Grahib. I have not.
Fair enough. But you're the one who brought up the Obama administration by specifically claiming it used "torture and executions" (plural) as methods of political repression. To me "political" implies intra-country, not extra-national, but maybe you meant a more expansive definition of that word?
You talk abstractly about vague notions of 'political repression', but I have no idea who, concretely, you're talking about.
I see, well I certainly did not mean it that way in this case. I'm talking specifically about threats to a given established regime. What distinctions or origin we draw I don't really see as relevant. I'm talking about how power treats its challengers writ large.
Anyone who is a political enemy of the United States. In the Obama iteration that means mostly islamists, known or suspected, and their friends and family.
Certainly not friends of your average westerner, but they're not granted trial or human rights which they are entitled to according to the ideological principles of the American regime. Clearly demonstrating that power is ultimately unconstrained by ideology.
And it'd be foolish to think that this is exceptional, given the US has engaged, on its own civilian population, in arbitrary internment and mass immolation even in quite recent history.
At this point I want to stress that I'm not trying to tarnish the reputation of the US in particular, we all have skeletons in our closets, and it's a very nice country indeed. But it is still a country. And power works there the same way it does everywhere else in the world, however much we want to delude ourselves that magical dirt or pieces of paper make it otherwise.
Vae victis.
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