My entire family grew up in Dictatorships. I spent years dating a girl who grew up in a dictatorship-turned-wartorn dictatorships. I am a historian and I take a special interest in totalitarian States. And might I just say, Slakinator, that you are one of the most ignorant, sheltered, pampered, typical American idiots I have ever met.

I could write pages on this, but I’ll ask you to do a little of the footwork yourself: Do some research and tell me why Antonio Salazar’s fascist regime was a ‘dictatorship’ and not a free and fair democracy. After all, they had free, unrigged (excpt once) elections, which Salazar’s party won every single time. They had most of the rights and freedoms given to Americans, and even more rights and freedoms given to Canadians. So why were they a dictatorship? Because every fucking person who presented any kind of opposition vanished. How? Because of a little law that looks exactly like how those suspicious clauses in the Military Commissions Act.

Giving the Administration/Cabinet/Whatever the right to imprision indefinitely without trail has *always* been used as a tool of totalitarianism, with no significant historical exceptions that I’ve been made aware of. What makes any American so genetically unique to think that no member of any future administration will take unfair advantage of this legislation? Do you think you people are somehow above human nature and the entire weight of human history. It was one of the main freedoms the American forefathers fought for *inspite of the fact* that even the Brits considered it oppressive and made it illegal. You modern Americans now have less political freedom than the Brits did on the eve of the revolution.

Most people are put under the yoke by the threat of the gun or the blade. The Americans have let themselves be yoked by their own ignorance, laziness, and a silly blind faith they put in partisian bickering. For Americans to let this happen to themselves, I can assume the only cause is some kind of rampant whitey birth defect of the type Slaktinor is showing in abundance.

@Slak: I’ve lived four different States for about six years, added up, plus I’ve visited about thirty states. Also, I’m a ten minute drive to the border and I usually do all my shopping there. I might sound contemptuous of Americans, but I really do like the country. I’m not some ignorant Brit pulling some Eurotrashgasm here.

I’m fully convinced that only a few suspicious people are being harassed by the law right now, and I’m fully convinced that the Bush Administration actually did mean it as a way of preventing terrorism. But it’s the potential of it all, slak.

You’ve got an election coming up, yeah? All you know about the candidates is meaningless bullshit campaign rhetoric, and there’s virtually no good info to base your decision on. And you definitely do not know what kind of apointees these people are going to pick. I want you to keep in mind here, that this gives the power to a random, unelected apointee to make you vanish.

Ze Padilla is nothing compared with what could happen. A friend of yours could simply disapear. The cops wouldn’t know. The FBI wouldn’t know. The President himself wouldn’t know (he only appoints). Only an all-powerful commision with no burden to carry out trails or disclose any form of information would know. It hasn’t happened yet, but the very fact that it could happen should make every American piss their pants in fear.

Things are too good with Americans. You’ve never lived in that kind of society and most Americans only know about it in propaganda. It’s just another silly thing on TV to them. But it’s the most common thing in the world and it could happen in the US just as easily as anywhere else it’s happened. You know, on my father’s side, an aunt and uncle and two cousins just vanished one day in Brazil. No one “knows” what happened, but a few months later their farm, including employees was auctioned by the government. Once the dictatorship ended, we haven’t been able to find anything: Even records that the farm exists before the transfer of deed have vanished. On my mum’s side, most of my Grandfather’s (pre-war landowning politician) family vanished during the Stalin years. Once in a while we’ll get a letter in Polish saying they’ve indentified a skull in a mass grave.

Now, Slak, it hasn’t happened, but all the mechanisms are in place. Unless this law is gotten rid of before one oppurtunistic, power-hungry psycho comes along, or this COULD easily happen in the US. This is something to be very afraid of.