This is a guy from the 18th century speaking his thoughts about his time, which was quite violent. There is no reason to believe he was a prophet seeing 250 years into the future of the nation he helped create, or even that he was some kind of ultra-insightful historian who understood all the cycles of the world better than all the historians before or since his time.

He was just a guy in a time. A smart one, but just a guy.

Yes, critical thinking is hard.

If I believed in a god I’d ask them to save me from the baby communists who see a sickle and hammer on a flag and insist they must have represented utopia.

First, I dig this meme. I’ll probably share it elsewhere.

Second… “POV” just means “hey look at this,” now?

Not in my experience. Liberals criticize their parties and communities constantly, at least in the circles I know. The criticism is most often about treatment if others in ways that don’t affect the person themself. Sometimes it even seems like status seeking and gets obnoxious. But I’ll take a movement where status can be had by advocating for others over over where it comes from selfishness.

They have access to it if they threaten/indimidate/blackmail you into giving them access. Dummy phones are a real thing; saw a post today on masto by a company… person (?) who said they keep a stash of clean burner phones for when employees travel through US borders. These are all reasonable, and maybe even CalyxOS’s decoy partition (does it still have that?). The larger problem is that few people will use these things, not even bringing a clean phone. And once they start threatening your family and your long-term safety and freedom, it’s highly likely you’ll give them access, if they know there is any access to be had. Which they increasingly do, because universal surveillance blah blah.