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10:27

(In »The free and open Internet versus the ecological apocalypse«)

Time after time throughout history it has been shown that, as soon as they find themselves under the slightest external pressure, liberal societies rapidly transform into totalitarian power apparatuses that shy away from both public accountability and democratically elected control. This applies not least to the country that, more than any other, has acted as the emblem of liberal democracy, the USA. This once proud defender of universal freedom – in pace with an increasing number of hysterical narratives of fabricated external threats having been put forward – has been reduced to a lobby-controlled plurarchy in the hands of religious extremists and intelligence bureaucrats that operate in secret, backed up by interests that represent an enormous and thus depleting drain on resources (such as the NSA). It has gone so far that it is no longer the dream of individual freedom that is the engine in the American identity, but instead the collective paranoia. To be an American is no longer about being a citizen in the land of the free and the home of the brave on Earth, but is nowadays equivalent to an overindulgence in paranoid conspiracy theories.