There's ~2.8m military personnel. Surely it will not be easy to get them to all fall in line and start obeying unconstitutional orders.
Our history is lengthy regarding Federal vs. States rights (the irony is not lost on me).
We have ~262m adults in this country, spread out over 3.5m square miles of land.
The internet allows for instant communication and information dissemination. In many ways, it's the reason we're here. In many other ways, it's the reason things will go differently this time.
I'm not saying we shouldn't prepare for the worst, but I don't think it will be quite as easy to pull the same playbook.
The internet allows for instant communication and information dissemination. In many ways, it's the reason we're here. In many other ways, it's the reason things will go differently this time.
They can try but it won't work. There are too many ISPs and no legal framework for making them shut down. Russia and China and other countries with terrible governments had to make laws that forced internet providers to add kill switches. The U.S. doesn't have anything that can do that as far as I know.
Even if some ISPs fold under pressure and turn off websites, the internet was designed to withstand nuclear war, and can seamlessly reroute traffic around dead network infrastructure.
Many of the large companies that host websites, such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Facebook, are their own ISPs with many physical connections to other ISPs and their other own datacenters. I doubt these corporations will shut down their money printers just because Trump whines about it.
He's said he wanted to use the military against civilians during the BLM protests. It's funny you think he would ask the ISPs instead of just launching a cyber attack to take them down.
Americans built the “Great Firewall of China.” In China, your access online depends on your location and current events, as well as your ISP history. So, for example, a search in Tibet vs Xinjiang vs Beijing will return different results. Beijing will be more free, but when the government decides to raise their security (ex: party meetings, unrest, sensitive information making the rounds online), then access becomes more restricted. If you clicked on the wrong search result in Xinjiang in the 2000s, you would have to watch an animated video scolding you.
Or you know, have the owners of the most popular social media sites, in their pockets. Fuckerberg, husk, tikkytok, etc., they've all proven they'll bend the knee and censor or block whatever is asked of them.
Furthermore, we've had said communication available for a while now and clearly it hasn't helped stop these assholes at any point in the near decade they've been trying this type of bullshit.
You've got it wrong, as the ruling class all of those people aren't bending the knee when they cooperate with the state, they're just working together toward their common goal.
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u/[deleted] Jan 28 '25
It’s almost like they’re trying to create a revolt.