to clarify: life under authoritarians is often boring and normal for many people until it all of a sudden isn’t, and of course it’s that uncertainty that causes the corrosion.
yes, it's the constant background stress, unless you kinda self-lobotomise by buying in, which is a pretty understandable survival trait if you're that good at convincing yourself of stuff to feel better.
A lot of Americans do know what it's like to live under an authoritarian regime. My parents do. Many immigrants ended up in the US because they were fleeing authoritarianism (sometimes US backed). Offhand Haitians, Dominicans, Salvadorans, Nicaraguans, Koreans all know.
A coworker of mine is from Poland, and I recently learned her parents were active in the resistance. I can’t imagine how awful living in that type of fear would be for a child, even if they knew it’s “the right thing to do.”
I recall a Russian protest with a lady was screaming at a cop "your violating the constitution", and the narrator noting "people did nothing and lost those rights 19 years ago" and even if somehow it were fixed they would do it again, too. This seems America's future now.
People who want a solid but emotionally survivable primer on what life is like under authoritarianism should consider reading Bulgakov's MASTER AND MARGARITA.
The dreariness interspersed with terror--it's all there, but it's made digestible by one of the finest senses of humor in all writing.
In the days just after February ‘22, as Putin began to crack down on dissent, I saw a photograph of some graffiti (which I can’t seem to find again)—“First you didn’t care about politics—now, you’re cannon fodder”
Trump says he will use the military to deport immigrants. Running guerrilla battles in large cities (NYC in particular for his revenge) will burn a lot of neighborhoods to the ground.
This is in agreement. Which is the point for those regimes.
Psychologically, being on edge at all times is very hard to do. Our brains stop being able to process it effectively and our body/mind sorta just "give up" and it becomes learned helplessness.
Yeah - and I think it's worth mentioning that it's different if you're just a miscellaneous person who would is personally opposed to the regime, rather than a person in a group being particularly targeted by the regime.
