it seems from your link that you mean not "whether the American government has enabled the emergence of an evil and totalitarian regime," but "whether the American government IS an evil and totalitarian regime." And it is.

i'm sure that we've enabled it; i'm not sure that we *are* it. but maybe by enabling it we by default become totalitarian. the things depicted in 1984 will be legal when this passes, pretty much. the question is: will they come to pass?

If I'm following, the thing is that you've got to say that we ARE it, and the suggestion that this might be a rash/extreme/reactionary/etc. position takes over for the "unpatriotic" accusation as the subtle and insidious way to cow dissent. And it's creepier than ever, because the threat of moral and ideological confusion growing among the "ordinary, reasonable americans" who need to take a position against this grows even greater. We need them (the reasonable/the ordinary/the why-can't-I-think-of-a-better-characterization) to take a solid position against this, whereas supporters of death-to-habeus-corpus only need them to be confused and uncertain. And it doesn't matter if this administration sets the ball rolling, only for the situation to then lay dormant for a time. Our country is supposed to be exactly a bulwark against just this tendency among humans in power, and once the fortification is damaged, it's only a matter of time. Doesn't matter if it's 1 or 10 or 100 years. These stale institutions are good for nothing if they cannot aid us in fending this off. Feel free to stop me if I'm off base.