"You Have a Monstrous Ideology": How the United States Has Changed

At no point in the films is there any suggestion that one ought to put an abstract ideological or ethical commitment above a specific obligation to family.
Sociologically speaking, this is a classic moral outlook of a low-trust society . . .  - Matthew Yglesias

The Loyal Opposition: "a minority party esp. in a legislative body whose opposition to the party in power is constructive, responsible, and bounded by loyalty to fundamental interests" - Merriam-Webster Online

"The country I stayed in was a different America, a long time ago" - Daniel Ellsberg

"A fear society of arbitrary, disproportionate punishment"

A pair of recent articles have suggested that the United States has become a harsher nation with less tolerance for dissent, whistle-blowing, constructive protest, or civil disobedience. Jathan Sadowski wrote, of Edward Snowden's exposé of massive NSA surveillance:

If Snowden were sure to receive a fair, just trial, he might not have chosen to embark on his journey around the world, from hideout to hideout, potentially sharing more valuable secrets with countries that America isn’t on the best of terms with. The way whistle-blowers are persecuted now, though, leaves little reason to believe Snowden would enjoy such treatment.
Yes, Snowden could walk with head held high into federal custody. But it’s not clear that this would do much of anything besides ensure that the rest of his life is hell.

Later in another magazine, Eric Levenson wrote:

Unlike Snowden, after leaking the Pentagon Papers in 1971 [Daniel] Ellsberg did not flee the U.S. and faced trial for his leak, but "the country I stayed in was a different America, a long time ago," Ellsberg writes in a column that The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald calls a "must-read." Ellsberg's trial was thrown out due to "the revelation of White House actions against a defendant that were clearly criminal in Richard Nixon’s era — and figured in his resignation in the face of impeachment — but are today all regarded as legal," including denied bail and post-arrest isolation for Bradley Manning that would be applied to Snowden, too.

The erosion of liberty, and the transformation of the open society intended by the Founders into a fear society of arbitrary, disproportionate punishment, has proceeded by slow, steady increments in the last half century. The incarceration society,  the prosecutorial society, the society in which Bradley Manning is casually abused in an overlong wait for his day in court—a court whose impartiality and equity we have reason to doubt—these are the symptoms of the transformation of a free country into a regime which no longer appears to be any such thing.

At the same time the liberal democratic principle that the party out of power is, ethically, the loyal opposition ("a minority party esp. in a legislative body whose opposition to the party in power is constructive, responsible, and bounded by loyalty to fundamental interests"), has been obliterated by movement conservatism's unbelievable betrayal of what the Founders stood for. In The Guardian, Michael Cohen writes that the GOP has become the heartless party of cutting food aid to the poor, abortion bans and denying people health coverage:

Never before in American history have we seen a political party so completely dominated and controlled by its extremist wing; and never before have we seen a political party that brings together the attributes of nihilism, heartlessness, radicalism and naked partisanship quite like the modern GOP. ...
In the narrow pursuit of political gain, Republicans have adopted an agenda that is quite simply, inhumane and cruel. Even if one is charitable and defends it on the ground of adherence to an ideological agenda of smaller, less intrusive government (except in the case of lady parts) it can't be defended. If one's ideological predisposition means denying food assistance to people who are laid off from their job or forcing a woman to carry a dead fetus to term or preventing individuals from getting health care coverage, then you have a monstrous ideology.

In the past such "crises of the Republic" been met with a fervent, often religiously based revival movement by the people. The last such was perhaps Martin Luther King's civil rights crusade—don't forget, he was a Baptist minister who spoke in a southern preacher's stirring sonorous crescendo—but is any such voice on the horizon? Would it be heard in the present absorption with the relentless trivia of social media?