QuoteThe author of GPG, Werner Koch, would have been in his late 20s when the Berlin Wall fell, so he'd have very good memories of the bad things that can happen in an authoritarian state (though I believe he grew up in West Germany).We're slowly losing these people, and that is a problem. Wars and state antagonism are now distant memories for most, and almost the subject of myth for the younger generations. I don't wish for people to be haunted by the past, but it seems that the 'Nazis' and 'Communists' are no longer real historical entities to people today. You might as well summon up Jack and the Beanstalk as a warning to future generations as those ideologies. They have been reduced to mere caricatures of their true selves. I see practical examples of fascistic and communistic thinking in the mainstream, even true examples of thoughtcrime being prosecuted and convicted and wonder what my parents or grandparents would have made of today. I think we are the frog in the warming water pot when it comes to people's intuitions about their various freedoms. This Third Way, this defunct and impotent centralism between socialism and capitalism is going to turn the screws on the younger generation and they have no feasible way to defend themselves in today's surveillance states. Some people here including yourself think of me as an optimist, but I think it's going to get ugly before it gets better. Don't think I'm alone in that intuition either, I think a general sense of unease, a great malaise sprawls across the body of the West. You don't need a background in politics, economics or history to sense a yawning gulf ahead. The trouble is that I no longer am sure the West is the West. I think our traditions\philosophy moved Eastwards, and the true West, in terms of general trajectory on almost every descriptor is now China, while we're creating a new tradition which seems more similar to China's imperial past.Anyway, there is nothing I can do about it, but apply a little crypto and wait. Hopefully it is just a transient phase that sometimes countries go through as part of the economic cycle.