I’m not selling that, so I’m not sure who you’re talking to. I always thought that Fukayama’s “End of History” premise was just another instance of Whig History, and that the cyclic nature of history ensures that we will always have unfettered and brutal secret police organisations in one form or another somewhere in the world as long as the modern nation-state exists.
Regardless of ideology, these organisations tend to attract the same types of sociopathic “employees”: sadists, criminals, ambitious bureaucrats with zero scruples. Sometimes one of those individuals can amass so much power that he becomes the ruler of a country; Putin, former KGB/FSB man and former associate of the Stasi, is today’s textbook example.
I’d disagree here, but I understand how your personal experience might cause one to blur together all instances of state oppression – regardless of degree or quality or breadth of targetting or the presence of independent oversight bodies or government term limits – into one large amorphous lump where Obama is as bad as Putin (with the understanding that Obama did plenty of awful things).
