system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
I believe that worrying about the government turning into 1984 is an extreme exaggeration and quite far-fetched.

Wouldn't it be really hard for the U.S. government to go full-1984?
gpt
I would argue that since the year 1984 we have gone more than half the way towards the society in the book "1984."  The major components of that dystopia are:

1) Permanent war.  Well, we've had this since 2001. Sure we are using fewer soldiers, but the threat of terrorism has just been used to justify complete removal of the right to privacy for who you associate with (call or email).

2) The government sees everything.  We now know they can see all your phone calls, and probably all your searches, email meta-data, and who knows what else.  We probably aren't at the point where they can turn on a webcam in every house, but the technology to make this happen probably exists, and the technology to analyze most of this data isn't far off.  The *threat* of big brother is powerful enough to quash dissent.  It doesn't matter if the NSA doesn't catch every single rebellious thought, if they convince the public that they will catch most of it and the punishment is harsh enough, dissent will cease to exist.

Sure the government can't read your thoughts...directly...but private corporations have shown that you can learn a huge amount about someone simply by what they purchase. Modern political campaigns have a pretty good idea of who is likely to vote and who they are likely to vote for.  If you include someone's web and TV habits, you could get a disturbingly complete picture of their views.

3) Criticizing the government results in punishment.  We obviously aren't there yet, and we aren't in danger of sliding there *unless* there is another substantial event.  But over the last decade there has been dramatically more pressure silencing anti-government/police protests.  Most criticism of anti-terror policies is decried as being un-American. The FBI investigated Occupy protesters.

I don't think that we are likely to turn into 1984 soon, but we have taken *major* steps in that direction, and some of those steps have probably resulted in small-scale suppression in the style of 1984.

As a small example, how many American Muslims have been vocally protesting the US government?  Not too many.  For many of them, expressing their views simply isn't worth being branded a potential terrorist.