Thread by @qin_duke

This is your brain on Star Wars / Harry Potter levels of human crisis response. Different groups have different limits. In is a truism that all humans basically desire the same things, but this ignores the different priorities of individuals and most importantly groups. Likewise

People will all respond to external stimuli much the same way, but individuals and collectives will all have their own limits. The self-imagined rugged individualism of the American mythos blinds them to the reality of their own readiness to obey power. They are no longer liminal

peoples along a frontier, but settled stock and the inability to accept this reality leads to an ideological overcompensation. By reaching deep into the Uighur family, the Party State has shown it's power to the current adult population in a way simply unimaginable to the Western

Liberal who fancies himself unbowed. This is simply not true. Coercion is effective, it just has to be tailored to exceed the threshold of the target individual / group. That tiny spark of hate will forever be overwhelmed by the inferno of fear for the vast majority. Even as the

Party State fills itself into all the crevices of Uighur society, there is still a lifeline, that is to mouth the party slogans and to obey which the Uighurs are doing. The idea that defiance let alone active resistance is still realistic at this point is to be blind to the

ease in which his own society has shifted to much weaker stimuli.