Originally posted by ConSigCor:
I mean seriously, the ratio of enforcement vs those who don't want to be enforced upon is not happening in this country any time soon.
But the same was true 70 years ago in Europe. Most people refused to believe a 'civilized' country could be so barbaric. Most wanted to believe the government propaganda.
There are never enough gestapo to enforce the new order...unless the people lack the will to resist.
And, that's the real question. Do we have the will??? Hitler never went below 60% public support, Stalin was considered to have around 70% consistently. Only Mussolini dropped down into that 20-15% scale, and of course due to making deals with the Nazis who got extremely brutal with the Italian opposition, got lynched in the street.
Stalin actually delegated a lot of authority downward, to the point that a lot of bad stuff was actually decisions made at the lower levels of his regime and then he would support it after the fact. Nazi society had very high levels of party participation, but they were looking at having a ruling elite of 1-5% at the max. In occupied countries, they were looking at an elite of 1 in 10,000. Only the top rungs of society in their eyes would be party members.
