An example of the imperial boomerang [0]. People who salivate over the latest military tech in the same way as the new iPhone are blind to the fact that these weapons/surveillance platforms could be used on them as well.
Well people who salivate over military tech tend not to attend protests. There are many people who (probably correctly) believe the tech won’t be used on them because they would never do anything against the status quo and belong to an economic strata + dominant ethnic / religious group.
I’m not disagreeing but I am saying that unfortunately I think many voters are completely fine with the boomerang effect.
The funny thing is, the iPhones are also weapon and surveillance platforms that are used against us.
Predator drones can monitor protests, but so can the phone company, only in greater detail, with knowledge of exactly who everyone in the crowd is, how long they've been there, where they came from, where they went when they left, who their friends are
More like WILL. It's the nature of all empires, first to grow, and then to shrink. But, the empire's mechanism of repression won't suddenly become humane and forget all its tools and tactics for torture, rape, extralegal imprisonment, etc. As the shrinking empire causes friction at home, those same techniques will be unleashed to suppress dissenters.
Schmitt's friend-enemy distinction doesn't save you from this either, because you can still group your red-blooded countrymen into those brackets arbitrarily once you have plenary powers.
There was also a hot-air balloon program that would persist at stationary at high altitude and track all moving targets over a metropolitan area for up to a month without maintenance.
The news article which said the project was called "Basilisk Stare", seems to have vanished now though from all search results. Edit: Maybe I'm misremembering and its actually Gorgon Stare.
Urban sprawl is an effective defense against protests. You tax buildings and convince everyone that single-family living is the best, and do some rent controls that won't actually help rent, so that people think dense housing and rentals are inherently bad. Then they'll spread out thin across acres of land in single-story detached houses.
Even though this costs more in infrastructure and requires everyone to maintain a car, and car insurance, people seem to be okay with it.
But then, with everyone spread out, public spaces hostile to any kind of sitting, and no public toilets (America doesn't pay to piss! Because we have no public toilets at all!), it's difficult to find parking for a big protest, it's difficult to carpool with the strangers you live miles away from.
In any city that's too small to be walkable, it's hard to consistently show up to protests even when you want to, because the car dependency adds a lot of friction.
An example of the imperial boomerang [0]. People who salivate over the latest military tech in the same way as the new iPhone are blind to the fact that these weapons/surveillance platforms could be used on them as well.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_boomerang
Well people who salivate over military tech tend not to attend protests. There are many people who (probably correctly) believe the tech won’t be used on them because they would never do anything against the status quo and belong to an economic strata + dominant ethnic / religious group.
I’m not disagreeing but I am saying that unfortunately I think many voters are completely fine with the boomerang effect.
The funny thing is, the iPhones are also weapon and surveillance platforms that are used against us.
Predator drones can monitor protests, but so can the phone company, only in greater detail, with knowledge of exactly who everyone in the crowd is, how long they've been there, where they came from, where they went when they left, who their friends are
>could
More like WILL. It's the nature of all empires, first to grow, and then to shrink. But, the empire's mechanism of repression won't suddenly become humane and forget all its tools and tactics for torture, rape, extralegal imprisonment, etc. As the shrinking empire causes friction at home, those same techniques will be unleashed to suppress dissenters.
Schmitt's friend-enemy distinction doesn't save you from this either, because you can still group your red-blooded countrymen into those brackets arbitrarily once you have plenary powers.
Fascism occurs when imperial tendencies point inward. And if there are imperial tendencies, it's only a matter of time until they point inward.
https://archive.ph/2025.09.22-131843/https://www.latimes.com...
Note that a conspicuous capability of a Predator drone is to track people's heat signatures, with limited capability into buildings.
More than likely that conjectured capability is the yesteryear Predator.
Seems tech may have received some upgrades:
https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/06/27/238884/the-penta...
There was also a hot-air balloon program that would persist at stationary at high altitude and track all moving targets over a metropolitan area for up to a month without maintenance.
The news article which said the project was called "Basilisk Stare", seems to have vanished now though from all search results. Edit: Maybe I'm misremembering and its actually Gorgon Stare.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon_Stare
I have nothing to add so I'll go on a tangent.
Urban sprawl is an effective defense against protests. You tax buildings and convince everyone that single-family living is the best, and do some rent controls that won't actually help rent, so that people think dense housing and rentals are inherently bad. Then they'll spread out thin across acres of land in single-story detached houses.
Even though this costs more in infrastructure and requires everyone to maintain a car, and car insurance, people seem to be okay with it.
But then, with everyone spread out, public spaces hostile to any kind of sitting, and no public toilets (America doesn't pay to piss! Because we have no public toilets at all!), it's difficult to find parking for a big protest, it's difficult to carpool with the strangers you live miles away from.
In any city that's too small to be walkable, it's hard to consistently show up to protests even when you want to, because the car dependency adds a lot of friction.
I'm not sure you need to defend against protests. Free speech and all that.