The "Singaporization" of the United States

Our common agreement as Americans is the Constitution. If we place anything before it, even a perception of our safety, we merely become one more tribe.
Have you ever spent time in Singapore?
On the surface it's a nice place.. and kind of a man's paradise. For Asia, it's quite modern, in fact, it's not kind of first world.. it is first world.. I have a bunch of friends who used to joke it was the Irvine of the East... referring to the town in Orange County which is corporately organized and is quite modern, almost pastoral, but not the kind of place you see people walking around, people are flying into buildings in fancy cars with parking lots underneath. The Irvine joke suggested a place where neither random life nor creativity seems to occur.. there is order, roads are clean and almost pastoral, in that kind of over-landscaped way (Mexicans in floppy hats working away), people are in cars, and everyone seems to have a place to be. The common description is 'Santized'. If you spend enough time in Singapore, you will find some grit, some character, and some history, it can be a bit of a mans club, but they are hell bent to destroy the old gritty street vibe all the same.. the heart of the country is basically a huge shopping mall, and to quote someone I once hung out with, you have one freedom there, freedom to shop!
You see, Singapore is the worlds most successful dictatorship.. it runs like a clock because of the will of one man, Minister Mentor Harry Lee Kuan Yew, who got some education abroad, and came back a bit embarrassed at the corruption and vices of the predominantly Chinese Singapore, Yew's family included. He took charge, and not heavy handily by world standards, but certainly by western standards, and he went about creating a nation that was so stable and orderly that oil companies would want to refine their oil there, and corporations would want to keep their Asian headquarters there. He traded off the tiny land area and population of his nation to make military service universal, and to endlessly imply that their neighbors Indonesia and Malaysia are unstable and dangerous places, which many if not most young Singaporeans believe, especially after training in their late teens, if at all able, to kill invaders from those two nations.  Picture a jungley Israel, without discourse.
So Singapore went about codifying this orderly very un-Chinese vision, outlawing so many things, from drugs to gum chewing, that a mental disability arose, called 'No U Turn Syndrome'. Singaporeans, after one or two generations were so removed from agency in their own lives by the burden of rules, that they have to be told when it is permissible to turn around or left, otherwise they wont, driving endlessly, and increasing the traffic load on this small but increasingly prosperous country. They do have a good filmmaker who mocks these tendencies, but they are real, and deeply ingrained. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_U-turn_syndrome
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLAz_mia2HQ
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Neo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_Follow_Law
What I am describing is a nation where the needs of the group, as interpreted by the leadership, are placed above the needs of the individual for freedom. Since decision making is considered by some to be the epitome of intelligence, the best use of the gift of our frontal lobes, those with the most freedom tend to stay the smartest one might simply argue. How deep does this run in Singapore.. well, put aside the endless surveillance and cameras found everywhere (you rarely ever see a policeman in Singapore until something goes wrong.. because they are either plain clothed or watching you from a camera), and consider this: you are guilty until proven innocent in Singapore, at least in corruption cases, and I am not sure how many other types. How do I know this? Because I was told this by none other than a spokeswoman for the National Supreme Court during the first ever open house of it's chambers. She then, in a kind of deluded brainwashed spokespersonley way that you see a lot in Asia, actually asked me where I was from after I laughed, and told me that of course my nation must have the same assumption, everyone who is rational must make the same assumptions as Singapore to so strongly trust government authority, and I, not knowing whether to laugh or cry at this point, calmly but firmly stated that my nation had in fact just the opposite assumption, based on our rejection of the dictatorship of the British Royalty.. she was stumped and the next few moments were indeed awkward for all in the crowd, like watching a crab back pedal... What I am getting at here is that Singapore has become a world model for the will of the top and the many over the one, and it is so unquestioned as to be entrenched, and now the country is suffering the fate it fears most, economic hardship, because of it's lack of innovative thinking and spontaneity, and is looking in part to a huge casino complex to jump start things.
So what is the point of this description from the other side of the earth? Well, most people who get wound up about the government tend to talk about the Nazi's a lot, raba raba raba the Nazi's! You've seen it, the pissy white guy born in the 50's....(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=768h3Tz4Qik) obsessed with the Nazi's and the Soviet Union. He is the guy Obama got in trouble for ad libbing about during that dinner in Pennsylvania that was recorded during his first campaign (he was somewhat sympathetic in his description, it should be said), and the mainstream considers this type of guy a joke because his buddies "didn't die face down in the muck so that.. " etc. etc.. Walter Sobchak types are seen to be dwelling in an angry alarmist nostalgia with no departure point from the present. Christians love to talk about how China denies religious freedom.  But these scenarios and the associated gripings have countries going off the rails and into serious foul territory within a few years of administrations taking power.. no one discusses what happens when you slowly sub-urbanize and the culture and social ties of a nation, kind of pit one against another economically through social fracturization, while slowly eroding civil liberties for the 'common good', without ever launching a pogrum, purge, holocaust, or cultural revolution..without ever truly going afoul of the mass of the population. What you end up with is Singapore.. Freedom to Shop, a banal nation of people who weave down a narrower and narrower set of options in life until they become in essence comfortable serfs of what we feared in fascism or communism, life becomes isolated, fear divides groups, but it never goes haywire, never goes off the rails.. it's like slow death to a boa constrictor, never dramatic enough for the mass of people to notice it, and it doesn't necessarily come from evil intent.. just the thousand cuts of well intentioned managers and lawmakers. In Singapore, the Malays hang with Malays, the Chinese with Chinese, people are treated with dignity, and you can go about daily life, unless you rock the boat.. it's subtle... it's like the movie Fatherland.. the dirty heavy lifting has been done.. a bit like Japan, no one wants to question a good thing as long as the good thing keeps rolling.. don't look under the hood.
What makes me think America is moving in this direction?
I just spent a bit of time in Tucson... Tucson is a pretty easy going place... not complaining too much about it.. it actually softens the blow of a lot of the self inflicted wounds of American living, but there was a controversy there while I was visiting that caught my eye... Tuscon is loaded with Red Light Cameras.. a subtle thing.. who could possibly be against saving lives, and supposedly, there are less traffic fatalities in Tucson now than there were before.. seems like a big win, right... well, it's also a big revenue generator, and it just makes Tucson, otherwise a nice place, feel 1984 creepy.. and what happens if I misjudge 'squeezing the lemon' on a late night trip back from the Loft movie theater on Tucson's breezy wide straight boulevards, maybe not thinking.. maybe I don't want to hit the brakes int he monsoon rains, no one gets hurt.. but maybe I get some automatic ticket for 300 bucks... Homo ex Machina.. Man Out of the Machine.. My judgement means nothing anymore, nor the judgement of even an officer, a judge, or my peers.. I crossed an arbitrary line, and now society can act through this instrument to take my money to teach me lessons. The arbitrary line was always there, perhaps credibly, but now it's a 'system' administered, I hate to say it, by a corporation, a defense contractor as a matter of fact in some instances, and although I might be fear mongering by using those descriptive terms to flesh this out, what I am really saying is that they don't have Societies best interests in mind, only their own, and their corporate interests are very narrow.
Here is a list of the actions that keep collectively and unconsciously moving us in that Singapore Direction:

• Red Light Cameras
• Address and ID presentation to check into Hotels
• Zip Code input to buy gas, but not with bank card
• ID check with credit card use
• Endless Security at Airports 
• Shoe Removal at Airports, for 10 years so far, based on one attempted attack.
• TSA now pushing people to Pay for Rre Screen, a rapid pass program, so you don't have to remove their shoes. so now they remove your dignity, and instead of working away from that with technology, make you pay to get it back. I had a TSA employee tell me when I made a comment about the absurdity or removing flip flops that I should pay for Pre Screen, like he was marketing it, so now TSA sees it's self as a business, with no free market alternatives.
• Voter ID and disenfranchisement games played by Republicans
• One set of mail attacks leads to endless mail scanning, and security infrastructure spending
• NSA Leaks disclosing endless loop-holing to monitor US Citizens Electronically
• Abuses of the Patriot Act
• Implications that filming police in Action or filming government buildings and installations is Illegal
• Automatic Licence plate scanning by vehicle and cameras in places like New York City
• Municipally Run Camera Surveillance Systems 
• Endless stop and frisk in NYC
• Florida Matrix System
• Checkpoints 50 miles away from US border with Mexico
• Drones
• Domestic use of drones
• Criminalization of Cash by Government, with moves to oblige banks to lower cash limits to 1000 USD from the previously acceptable 10k restrictions for reporting and withdrawals.
• The US Obsession with Terrorism as a Military and not Law Enforcement dilemma
• The Denial of Due Process to Guantanamo Detainees
• Extraordinary Rendition
• Formal or Informal Prohibitions against Smiling for Government ID photos
• The Obligation for foreign passengers to go through US immigration checks even if they are only transiting through the airport to another foreign country.
• The Endless fees imposed on people trying to obtain visa's of all sorts through the US Department of Immigration
• The endless holding of people in Immigration Holding Facilities
• Privatization of State Prisons and Prison Services
• The endless vague color coded Terrorist Threat Condition that has thankfully been retired
• Ag Gag Laws, restricting first amendment rights to protect industrial food practices
• The endless intervention of the Insurance Industry to legislate away potentially dangerous behavior
• civil forfeiture
• The Flood Insurance corporate fix

Each one of these acts or policies is completely justifiable within the logic of prevention of the administration that utilizes it. Collectively they spell a large step towards slowly encumbering and degrading the American way of life and it's Constitutional guarantees and intents. In other words, does this all add up to a death by a thousand cuts?