it is more frightening how quickly citizens of most countries willingly give up their privacy and freedoms to their government over the promise of a cookie or promise of keeping other people away from the same cookies.

politicians in the West excel at exploiting fear and jealously to obtain more authority, divide and conquer.

The US would only end up in dictatorship through court packing or a moral authority faction taking over; by moral I do not mean religious. pretty much look at countries where politicians declare a group of haves to be illegal or unjust and you get the idea.

> politicians in the West excel at exploiting fear and jealously to obtain more authority, divide and conquer.

I don't think that's a trait unique to politicians in the West, and in fact I'd say that Western politicians tend to exploit fear and jealousy less than those in the developing world. You've got ethnic cleansing going on in Myanmar, ethnic and religious conflict in Kashmir, and the extrajudicial killings of drug dealers and users in the Phillipines, to name a few instances.