With the best of intentions, I hear people repeatedly bellow "'the algorithm' makes things seem worse than they really are";
inflexibly I see people trot the same tired overplayed litanies of "evidence" to this point, "research" and "studies" and "polls" that definitively "prove" that "we 'overestimate' the differences between us and them";
as if optimism at all costs is the solution to hollow and false, easy and romantic, untruths and mistruths.
:eyeroll:
Enter the Police State
(i)
There isn't "a side" that sold us on the "promises" of the "strengths" of the police state. Nor "a side" that guaranteed "protections" from the "weaknesses" of the police state.
For every "side" sold us.
The "side" that wanted "to save" the "children";
the "side" that wanted "to lock up" the "criminals";
the "side" that wanted "justice" to be "fair" and "informed" by "facts";
the "side" that wanted "to live" without "fear";
the "side" that wanted "to feel safe" within "big beautiful bubbles";
and every "side" that wanted "to swear and affirm":
"law and order" by definition, will always mean "to serve and uphold" here, where the grass is green and the sky is blue.
(ii)
Such that all the word-wrangling to explain this "house" "promises" built -
to moralize the reality of this "bed" "protections" made -
because what really happens in police states is what is really happening now -
is after-the-fact bullshit laid brick by brick by all of us -
because what really happens in police states is "the public" is pacified by hollow and false, easy and romantic, untruths and mistruths,
until optimism at all costs is at once compulsory and "reasonable".
(iii)
As for what prayers and what winks and what promises sold us this "house" and this "bed" and this brick "road" of bullshit -
see (i) above and
case in point:
the police state's solution to "a public demand 'to save' the 'children'" isn't to efficiently and materially address "harms" to non-adults across public and institutional environments, but rather, to criminalize any and every non-adult based on "institutional policies and practices" and "official rules and recommendations" that allow disproportionate, asymmetric, prejudicial, etc. treatment of non-adults, as if
when a police state answers our "payers", we should see nothing but wholesomeness and decency and say nothing but praise and apologisms and do nothing but be grateful and submit;
the police state's solution to "a public demand that 'justice' be 'fair' and 'informed' by 'facts'" isn't to exemplify transparency or integrity, but rather, to criminalize any and every individual human being and corporation à la fictional "personhood" and organization à la collective of autonomous beings because unilateral power without tangible, realized, actual unitarian power isn't powerful at all! as if
when a police state "winks", we should laugh at the "joke" because everybody knows that a police state's ride or die is absolute power, hahaha;
the police state's solution to "a public demand that 'law and order' by definition, will always mean 'to serve and uphold' here" isn't to abide or respect a fair or just legality or jurisprudence in a republic or a democracy, but rather, to criminalize any and every act that defies, opposes, rejects, etc. "legalism" and its dominion in all but name over free people, free states, and free nations everywhere; as if
when a police state "promises" us the world and everything therein, we should not trust in the sincerity of plainly despot-adjacent hyperbole but fake-adjacent piety should be believed;
etc.
(iv)
Such that it bears iterating clearly:
police states are indefensible
because what really happens in police states is not a joke;
it is a reality laid by prayer by wink by promise by all of us sold on "powerful" and "anointed" mortals on gilded thrones
and it can be undone
when we face what is worse than what wind-up plastic rictus-faced monkeys say things seem, when we face things as they really are, including the differences between us and casually evil cheerleaders of police states because "our differences", at once profound and granular, are self-evident "disunions" between us
and a representative government that disavows its oaths, including, the oath of every republic and every democracy to serve the people;
as if optimism at all costs isn't a gift to police states, arising from the hearts and shores of republics and democracies everywhere,
a gift repaid in hollow and false, easy and romantic, untruths and mistruths, including the hallucinatory homily that
we the people approve a police state for our children, our neighbors, and ourselves because we the people voted for a joke of a republic and a farce of a democracy.
More
On "optimism at all costs", #policestatepacifier and #policestateally.
(i)
First, "early adopters" or "forerunners" or "target softeners" of the police state break everything.
Institutions, e.g. traditional or linear news media, public early and higher education, safety nets (food banks, homeless shelters, addiction resources), the economy (banking, currencies, exchange markets), foreign aid (medical supplies, disaster assistance, refugee resources); and
governments, e.g. the legislative branch (à la because an allegiance to "their God" or "their Leader" is "higher" - forswearing an oath "to serve the people"), the judicial branch (à la exploiting asymmetric "lawfare" to prejudicially uphold or "strike down" laws at will), the executive branch (à la despite such "power" not explicitly conferred to "the executive office" - acting unilaterally); and
so on and so forth.
(ii)
Then, the police state declares its "revolutionary" solution:
itself.
It parades litanies and homilies and sermons and preaches the "glorious righteousness" of the police state -
and -
it violently attacks any and all opposition with disproportionate hostility and militancy.
(iii)
Then, all of us
see nothing and say nothing and do nothing -
or -
we cheerlead the police state, including, as amplifiers of hollow and false, easy and romantic, untruths and mistruths.
(iv)
Which is to say, when we are encouraged or compelled to leap into a bottomless pool of "optimism at all costs" because this repels apathy and paralysis, hopelessness and despair, cynicism and pessimism, and the like -
this is a kind of dishonesty and deception that treats us like we can't handle the truth,
this is a kind of untruth and mistruth that infantilizes us -
such that buying this is little different than buying the hollow and false, easy and romantic, untruths and mistruths of every police state
and tell me: what happens when this illusion is exposed? as a fiction? a fraud? a lie? buyers of illusions simply buy another, including every police state's tried and true
illusions of success, illusions of approval, illusions of gratitude, that is,
fictions, frauds, lies -
for this is a willful rejection, if not repudiation, of the truth that police states dismiss and redact and expunge and rewrite, the truth that's worth fighting for, the truth that's real.
M
*
Note or Further Reading
On "the politics" that presage police states and "autocracy-adjacent" precursors of police states, see Seed Con (January 19, 2025, tca).
M
