The Secret Police
20th January 2023
ZMan’s weekly podcast. Highly recommended.
Ten years ago, if you asked people if the government was involved in manipulating public opinion or leaning on social media companies or spying on presidential candidates, very few people would have agreed. Those who did think this was the case were branded conspiracy theorists. Today, most people just seem to accept that this is now the way things are done in our democracy.
It is hard to know if this is really the case, but the lack of public outrage over the stream of revelations about government pressure on social media companies suggests people are not surprised by it. Maybe most people are still processing it, as no one was raised to think they lived in a police state. Possibly the lack of mainstream coverage lets the public ignore what they would prefer not to face.
January 20th, 2023 at 14:31
Every time I see the words “our democracy” in articles about contemporary politics, I want the writer to put scare quotes around it.