You’re right, Laser. The Great Firewall is the new Western template.
Covid was the dress rehearsal. Emergency powers morphed into persistent infrastructure. Surveillance, speech throttling, and narrative control became policy, not precaution. What was once unthinkable is now default.
I’m not sure how the general population will deal with this. Some have wised up, but others still hold the same conditioning and will sadly still comply.
History shows us that emergency powers are rarely rolled back. After 9/11, the Patriot Act normalised mass surveillance. What was sold as protection became permanent infrastructure.
Covid extended that architecture. Tools designed for a health crisis, tracking apps, speech controls, digital passes, now underpin the legal censorship framework. These tools may not be fully active yet, but the rails remain intact and will likely be developed further.
History also shows how the public reacts. At first, fear makes people comply. Later, inertia keeps them quiet. By the time the danger is obvious, the apparatus is entrenched. A few resist, some adapt, but most retreat into silence, hoping not to be noticed.
Today, that silence is compliance, and compliance is exactly what the system is built to expect.