Telescreen monitoring would have required a crazy amount of manpower.
Probably the closest real-world analog was the East German Stasi, which may have accounted for nearly 1 in 6:
The ratio for the Stasi was one secret policeman per 166 East Germans. When the regular informers are added, these ratios become much higher: In the Stasi's case, there would have been at least one spy watching every 66 citizens! When one adds in the estimated numbers of part-time snoops, the result is nothing short of monstrous: one informer per 6.5 citizens. It would not have been unreasonable to assume that at least one Stasi informer was present in any party of ten or twelve dinner guests. Like a giant octopus, the Stasi's tentacles probed every aspect of life.
— John O. Koehler, German-born American journalist, quoted from Wikipedia
In the USA is it common to have self service tills at supermarkets that accept coins?
If it accepts cash, it should accept both coins and bills. Any change I manage to accumulate usually gets fed into the coin slot at a self-checkout before I swipe a card to provide the rest of the payment. It's better than handing it off to a Coinstar machine, as those skim off a percentage of what you feed them.
If they want to win, the people need to see and experience the true impact of the laws passed by the Republicans.
That has been happening. More importantly, people need to see that Democrats are willing to stand up and fight rather than just rolling over for every nasty thing the Republicans are doing.
The Democrats are just terrible at strategy. Really, really bad.
In the sense that the elder Democratic Party leadership kept trying to play by the rules while the Republicans proved they are dishonest sociopathic fucks incapable of fair and honest behavior, you are correct. What we are seeing right now is that the younger Democratic leadership are taking charge and not playing along with Republican dishonesty any more. And again, part of the Democratic Party regaining support is proving by action that they are willing to fight.
Add to that, government shutdowns are just stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid. The laws have already been passed, and now we just have to write the check to pay for what was already done. And trying to use it as a tool to force Republicans - many of whom would be happy if the government were shutdown forever - to negotiate? Not going to work.
Democrats negotiated and the party consensus is that Schumer "caved" last March during the prior budget negotiations. And what happened right after March? Republicans promptly RENEGED ON THE AGREEMENTS anyways, first canceling many promised policy votes and then using "rescission" to remove approved funding from various programs. The Republicans proved that they cannot be trusted.
So now the Democrats are actually fighting. And they're making it clear that this time, they're not just going to cave. And the proof that it's actually working? Look at Tuesday's election results.
EVERY open governor's race went Democrat, and not only that, all three beat the polling predictions by a pretty big margin.
California voted to redistrict and say "Fuck Texas" by an almost 2/3 majority.
Pennsylvania retained all 3 Democratic supreme court members by double-digit margins.
FORTRAN is a good example of a language which is easier to parse using ad hoc techniques. -- D. Gries [What's good about it? Ed.]
