Chris Abraham

When people reach for “US = Nazis,” I think the better cautionary mirror is the GDR/DDR. Not because we’re recreating East Germany, but because the mechanics are closer: a society that runs on surveillance, files, permission, and social compliance more than torchlit ideology.

Quick primer: the GDR was East Germany (1949–1990), built in the Soviet zone after WWII. It had elections and slogans, but real power lived in the party and the security apparatus. The Stasi (state security) didn’t just “spy”; it built a world where people assumed they were being observed. It recruited ordinary people as informants. It kept dossiers. It used “lived off others” style moralizing about “antisocial” types and parasites to justify pressure, and it made travel, jobs, school, and housing feel conditional. Often the point wasn’t prison. It was making life awkward until you complied.

That’s why I say the US feels more DDR than SS: less mass rallies, more bureaucratic choke points. Today the “file” is your data trail. The “informant” is the tip line, the screenshot, the group chat. “Rat on your neighbor” turns into report buttons, call-outs, and doxxing. The punishment is frequently exclusion: lose the account, lose the job, lose the bank, lose the room in polite society. It’s not one villain; it’s a thousand institutions “just enforcing policy.”

Also: the GDR was uniquely German in its vibe. It inherited a German love of administration, records, and credentialing, then welded that to Soviet-style party control. It wasn’t only a Soviet copy. It was an efficient, paperwork-heavy, domestically staffed system that could feel normal on the surface while quietly coercing underneath.

None of this is sky-is-falling. It’s just a reminder: you don’t need cartoon evil to get real-world control. Sometimes it arrives as “for your safety,” “for trust,” “for the children,” plus a database and a culture that enjoys snitching.

Abigail Spanberger presents herself as a moderate Democrat. But moderation isn’t defined in the abstract—it’s defined by context.

Virginia has long occupied a middle ground in firearms policy. Not constitutional-carry absolutism, but not Maryland or DC either. A balance that allowed broad lawful ownership while maintaining certain guardrails. That balance is part of the state’s political identity.

When proposals include bans on widely owned semi-automatic rifles, 10-round magazine limits, and the absence of meaningful grandfathering, that isn’t perceived as incremental. It’s perceived as a structural change.

You can argue the merits of the policy. You can argue public safety. You can argue comparative standards. But calling it “moderate” depends entirely on what you’re comparing it to.

If the baseline is California, New York, Maryland, or DC, then yes, Virginia’s proposals may seem restrained. But if the baseline is Virginia’s own legal and cultural history—its military presence, hunting tradition, and large population of lawful gun owners—then this feels like a directional shift.

That’s the disconnect.

This isn’t about rhetoric or partisan labels. It’s about alignment with the expectations of the state being governed. For many lawful Virginia gun owners, the current agenda does not feel like moderation within our own political tradition.

And perception, in politics, matters as much as intent.

I watched most of the State of the Union without commentary—no panel, no fact-check crawl, just the podium and the room. And what struck me wasn’t policy detail. It was structure.

It felt less like a legislative address and more like a long-form roast. Not “haha” funny, not loose, not chaotic. Controlled. He handled interruptions the way a seasoned comic handles a tense crowd—turning toward hecklers, using them, keeping rhythm. Democrats became the foil. His own side got warmth and affirmation.

The patriotic beats were deliberate and heavy. Olympic victories still fresh. Hockey wins. FIFA coming. The 250th anniversary approaching. The 2028 Olympics on deck. The speech leaned hard into pride and national momentum. No language of shame. No historical apology. Just forward-facing confidence.

At certain moments he softened—especially when highlighting victims or Americans framed as heroic. Then the tone hardened sharply on immigration. The language narrowed to “killers” and “murderers.” The empathy had edges. It wasn’t universal; it was bounded.

The camera did its part. Spotlight a guest. Cue applause. Cut to Democrats sitting. Whether fair or not, that visual contrast is brutal on television. The person standing looks expansive. The people seated look small. He understands that dynamic.

It wasn’t vulnerability. It wasn’t “I feel your pain.” It was projection—strength, inevitability, control. And watching it raw, I could feel how it works on people who aren’t living inside political commentary all day.

The only thing I posted afterward—on a channel where I don’t do politics—was three words:

“What an entertainer.”

Most of human history did not treat “progress” as the engine of the human condition. Many societies were organized around continuity, sacred order, ancestral duty, hierarchy, and survival, not permanent reinvention. The modern idea that history moves in a single forward direction toward greater freedom, rationality, and liberation is not a universal human instinct. It is a historically specific worldview that became dominant through Western power, institutions, and global reach.

That matters because what the West calls “progress” is often experienced elsewhere as disruption. When democracy, rights language, development policy, or social reform is exported, it often carries a double message: “We honor your dignity” and “your inherited norms must be remade.” Even when the goals are humane, the method can feel like moral intervention backed by money, media, NGOs, diplomacy, and sometimes force. From the receiving end, it can look less like partnership and more like a civilizational rewrite.

This is why progressive politics can function imperially, even when it sees itself as anti-imperial. Older imperial projects spoke in the language of civilization, order, and empire. Newer ones often speak in the language of rights, inclusion, democracy, and public health. Different vocabulary, same temptation: to assume one moral framework is universal and that history itself authorizes intervention.

That does not mean all universal claims are fake, and it does not mean every local tradition deserves protection from criticism. Some traditions are cruel. Some anti-imperial rhetoric is just a shield for local elites preserving power. The point is not “tradition good, progress bad.” The point is legitimacy.

Who decides what changes? By what means? At what pace? With what consent?

Progress becomes imperial when it is imposed from outside, accelerated beyond social legitimacy, tied to humiliation, or enforced selectively. It becomes credible when it is argued locally, translated into local moral language, adopted through consent, and allowed to emerge at a pace a society can absorb.

So my view is not that progress is a lie. It is that progress becomes dangerous when it stops being a tool and starts acting like a secular religion, complete with missionaries, heretics, and a mandate to remake the world.

Here’s what I actually think. SNAP isn’t some Hallmark Channel compassion program. It survives because it moves money. Fast. Direct. Predictably.

Benefits can only be spent on food, and they get spent immediately. That’s straight pass-through revenue to grocery stores — Kroger, regional chains, independents, convenience stores. In low-income or rural areas where margins are thin, predictable monthly demand changes the math. If you know a certain volume of food spending is federally backed, opening or staying open becomes less risky. That’s not charity. That’s revenue certainty.

Food deserts don’t disappear because people care. They disappear when the numbers work. SNAP makes the numbers work more often.

Same logic with remittances. I’m not saying immigration policy is secretly designed as a master plan to stabilize Latin America. I’m saying the effect is real. Remittances often exceed foreign aid and flow directly to households. That stabilizes local economies without IMF bureaucracy. Whether intentional or not, it functions as decentralized economic support.

My broader point is about incentives. Programs endure when they align with economic throughput. SNAP pushes money through retail food infrastructure. Remittances push money into origin economies. These are structural effects.

You don’t have to romanticize it. You don’t have to demonize it either. Just follow the money.