It's incredibly suspect, one (62) is a self-inflicted gunshot i.e. suicide and the second (45) was an infection that advanced quickly and killed him. It's probably just a wild coincidence because there are 10 more whistleblowers they'll need to get on with it. Why bother risking it if there are that many but perhaps they didn't know?
I don't think BB outright said it but alluded to the fact the US has an authoritarian streak in them.
The question probably isn't have they turned into a police state / authoritarian regime? It might not even be a "when" question. It's probably why didn't we all see this decades ago or how has it advanced to the point where it's an open secret.
Just to waffle on about it, its probably fair to say it always has been. The red scare, the rounding up of asian american's at the time of WWII and the cold war gave them ample reason to strip people of their rights. Thats ignoring the racism and apartheid state aspects that went on into the 60s. They have the largest official prison population in the world and they put a lot of those people to work. 9/11, the war on drugs and the war on terror gave them new reasons to suspect everyone. New ways to subjugate any dissent and massive budgets to make it happen.
What is by design and what is the accumulation of fear, scaremongering, and unintended consequences? Incredibly hard to know when you have one side of the Aisle saying things like this:
“We are devolving into a democracy, because congressmen and senators are elected by the same pool,” was how one GOP delegate put it to the convention. “We do not want to be a democracy.”
We don’t? There are debates about how complete of a democracy we wish to be; for example, the state Democratic Party platform has called for the direct election of the president (doing away with the Electoral College). But curtailing our own vote? The GOPers said they hoped states’ rights would be strengthened with such a move.
Some Republicans have been defensive that the party has a strong anti-democratic bent. But the state GOP convention embraced it, writes columnist Danny Westneat.
www.seattletimes.com
My biggest fear living here is some sort of false flag or even a real threat or emergency which would cause the Democrats to make an emotional decision out of fear which gives the GOP powers the Democrats won't or don;t know how to take back. The consolidation of power into party hands, into a smaller group, into a group the GOP can prepare themselves to own.
Its the biggest difference between the two parties. And as the GOP slowly dies as it is doing right now they will become more dangerous, more aggressive and more hungry for power. Their base is dying, literally dying, and where it isn't dying its being eroded ever so slightly, little by little. Old white people and white folks in general are their base. They're almost filibusting voting tho in the sense that they know how to target the weak edges but over time it won't be enough, their base is dying faster than they can get new support. Thats where this new desperation comes from.
www.theguardian.com
