The differences are a lot more than the current state of affairs. My great great grandparents were serfs, so I’ve heard quite a bit of stories about what it was like. As bad as stuff is right now, we are still worlds better off. Thanks to relatives that are still there today, I’ve been to where they lived during the serfdom, and saw the work they had to do. They slept on what looked like picnic table benches. Two people per bench face down with their arms and legs hanging over the sides. One tiny house, for a family with 7 children. They were constantly sick and weak from lack of food, despite growing it. Almost everything was taken from them from the insane taxes. Moving was not an option because they were bound to the land. Every day, they had to walk up and down a mountain to tend sheep. The one advantage over slavery is that they could only be bought and sold with the land they were bound to. So families couldn’t be split apart. It was also illegal for owners to murder their serfs. Slaves, on the other hand, would have been legally considered dead in the court of law.

That said, the oligarchs absolutely want to bring back both serfdom and slavery. Prison labor will be the means of slavery. Freedom cities will be the path to serfdom. The fact that there is a long way to fall to get to that point should absolutely terrify us because YES, it gets MUCH worse, and yes, we are taking an express train straight to that dystopian reality. There is no bottom for billionaires. There is no road too low. The most horrible things imaginable are part of their plan. The road doesn’t stop at late stage capitalism. Late stage capitalism leads to oligarchy, authoritarianism, and corporate feudalism. And the horrors of that we cannot yet comprehend.

Or suppressed. I’ll give some anecdotal examples. I have a friend that lives in a major metropolitan area with over 2.6 million people. When he applied to get a photo ID (he lost his previous one and needed a new one), the soonest appointment available for the entire metropolitan area was 3 months out. That’s just for the appointment to apply for the ID, not actually receiving the ID. You are required to have a photo ID to vote. Then, voter registration in itself must also be completed at least a month before an election. Now, let’s talk about the process of actually voting. I’ve personally stood in line for over 6 hours to vote. A lot of the people waiting in line had to leave to pick up their kids and other things. If you don’t pick up your kids from school or daycare at very specific times, there are serious penalties. While I was waiting, there must have been at least 40 people in front of me that had to leave before voting. Many of them had waited in line for over 4 hours. For most people, waiting in line is the only way to vote. Only the elderly and disabled qualify to vote by mail. Make no mistake, voter suppression is very effective, and it is implemented specifically in areas that vote against what the ruling party wants. In Trump leaning areas, the lines were no longer than a two minute wait if they existed at all. Trump never would have won either election if it wasn’t for voter suppression.

You can online. And if you haven’t ever had curry ketchup, prepare for your life to change.

Actually, that is probably exactly what he was going for. Mussolini was a huge proponent of the Italian Futurist movement, and he had a lot of weird ideas about what was futuristic. Stuff like, “In the future, people will make their clothes out of milk.” Anyway, aviation and representing aviation was a huge part of that, and he frequently used it in his propaganda.