How....do you have internet? Van life seems so appealing but also so scary.

I dont know why this is relevant. Either he prevented from running, in which case this doesnt matter; OR he IS running in violation of the law, in which case this doesnt batter because if he is willing to break an established precent and law then he would not leave his third term open to chance by having free or fair elections.

I do not want to be seen as defending fascists or being obscurantist but I regularly encounter normal people who literally never learned how to identify a fascist. To them, it vaguely means authoritarian and imperialistic and deploying it in conversations within an american context seems unnecessarily inflammatory. The average person has neither the time nor the inclination be as plugged into politics as we are. Words actually do mean things...just different things to different people.

These people, man. They just do not hear themselves. How embarrassing.

The capital gains tax is hilarious. I wish some public figure would put out a public service announcement where they explain it "Bruh, if you buy $100 worth of stock, and then you sell it for $200, then you get to keep $185 (netting $85 in profit). If you think this is a problem, you are either a demon or a moron."

I suppose it really depends on what freedoms you consider important and how much you weigh things. It is true, in china, you cant be openly critical of the regime. FWIW, that is increasingly true in the US.

However, in china, you are free to not be killed by violence. You are free to get affordable healthcare. You are free to get affordable high quality food. You are free to get affordable housing (outside of Beijing and a few other financial centers). You are free to get an affordable high quality education. I dunno. There are tradeoffs. The US is increasingly offering less and less by way of substantive freedoms and is becoming more and more authoritarian.

Also, have you actually been to china? How much of what you know about china is based in outdated information from 30 years ago or might just be straight up propaganda? I have been in the last 10 years and it blew my mind and changed a lot about how viewed the country.

In the presence of hierarchy, there will always be those in the underclasses who will betray anyone to secure their place as "first of the least". It is why white women vote republican in such large numbers. It is why so many among the working class clamor to defend billionaires. 'Notice me, senpai' as ideology.

They arent cops but they do derive their authority the same way cops do: the govt imbues them with that authority.