Back in 2022, there was an episode of the T.Rex Talk podcast titled “Putting the ‘Total’ in Totalitarianism”. At 1:58, Isaac Botkin explains how he thinks about that term:
The textbook definition is usually this idea that totalitarianism is when one person or one party has control of the government. But that doesn’t actually hold up. A state can be assumed to have total authority over the lives of its citizens even if it is run by multiple parties or by bureaucrats, as is often the case. Totalitarianism is when the state itself has unlimited jurisdiction — when it can control the totality of life. Obviously there will always be physical limits to a state’s power, but totalitarianism is when there are no limits to the scope of its authority.
Isaac goes on to describe how if there are no constraints on a government’s scope of influence, scope creep leads inevitably to his definition of totalitarianism — a situation where government involves itself in every corner of society.
If you grant the premise that government can be involved in everything, that leads inevitably to the idea that government should be involved in everything. That’s how you get the scope creep of “there are a lot of murders in <city> → let’s ban guns in <city> → guns are still showing up → that just means we need to ban guns nationally → guns are still showing up → so we just need to ban more types of guns and magazines → guns are still showing up → let’s make social media companies deplatform gun content → guns are still showing up….”
Totalitarianism turns a local murder problem into a mandatory national program at all layers of society, imposed at gunpoint.
— Open Source Defense in Totalitarianism is partly self-inflicted
When we talk about “mission creep” in the context of government, what we are really referring to is evil politicians and bureaucrats pushing the envelope to see how much they can get away with.
The only difference between evil politicians/bureaucrats and violent rapists/murderers is that most evil politicians/bureaucrats have better impulse control and usually try to sell their actions as somehow being for our own good. The end goals are the same, though.
You are looking into the faces of the United States versions of Nicolas Maduro.
The evil politicians and bureaucrats prove through their actions that the end justifies the means. They are evil and they don’t care about “we the people” and they continuously seek ways to exercise and impose unjust, unconstitutional laws upon “we the people”.
In short, they are the very thing(s) that they accuse good citizens of being.
Who is the lady in the picture?
Mr Epps, from left to right:
Governor of california, illinois and new york.