I'm the one bringing up Alex Jones, as a way of being
  derisive about people who equate the US and China on the
  auspices that "the US has made policy mistakes and China
  has made policy mistakes so what's the difference?". I'm
  sorry that I accidentally implied that you, specifically,
  were regurgitating Infowars points.

No problem. I just wanted to make it clear that I wasn't.

  Yes, this is a clusterfuck.

That's something we definitely agree on ;)

  That's a problem. But it's not a sign that the US is gradually
  turning into a dystopian hellscape.

At the risk of sounding crazy myself, I've seen too many recent videos of "peace officers" dragging peaceful protestors into the streets by their hair and group beating them with batons before handcuffing and arresting them, to believe that myself. But that's my opinion. And I really do wish that was the case.

  I don't care, except for two things. First, when people bring
  up the NDAA, they set off a "someone's wrong on the Internet"
  sensor that, as a nerd, I am unable to suppress. Second, as much
  as Internet psuedo-activists do not want to hear this, the "NDAA"
  issue is in fact a corner case in US policy. Indefinite detention
  of political dissidents in China is not a corner case. It is a daily
  fact of life, as it is elsewhere in the world.

I don't have any examples of the provisions outlined in the NDAA and documents prior being used, so I can't speak to that.

  You can make millions of dollars spinning conspiracy theories
  about the evils of the government and big corporations in America,
  and the reality is, nobody really cares. Try doing that in Russia;
  see how long it takes for you or your coworkers to end up dead.

"Try doing that in Russia; see how long it takes for you or your coworkers to end up dead." Let's be fair, you could make that same case for the death of Andrew Breitbart.