Originally posted by FMF
I will set this poser for you and then count myself out as I already did this myself over 20 years ago, after a fashion, anyway.
Assuming you're now in the country where you feel you belong, and something dreadful happened - politically - the "X" in the thread title - something you simply could not stand for [doesn't matter what it is, chuntering on about wh ...[text shortened]... to offer that country?
And what would you expect to be the problems you'd face there?
My wife and I just participated in a one-day mapping of our travel around town, logging every origin and destination location and arrival time, purpose of trip, mode of travel, who drove, etc. This was for regional transportation planning purposes. Things like bus routes can be adjusted. They offered a small percentage of the participants a GPS tracker, to help. We weren't offered that, so it was all by hand, adding a couple of minutes to each leg of our day's travel. We each had to keep a log, because our travels might diverge later in the day; which they did.
At one point along the way, I thought, a totalitarian government could demand that all residents keep such a log, up to date to the minute, and be prepared for it to be examined by police, any time they wanted. Checkpoints could be set up. All vehicles could have GPS devices. Or everyone's identity card could have one. Being in public without the ID card could be a crime; or being in an unapproved place could be, depending on your "civilian record."
This is the kind of situation I would flee, if I could. And some radio commentator type could say I am obviously the guilty type, why would law abiding citizens object to this?
Such a regime would obviously have other controls in place -- automatic wiretaps, etc. etc. I also do not think it is that far-fetched that somewhere, someday, this could happen. But I'm not paranoid -- It will not happen where I live, anytime soon.
Obviously, I would go somewhere that offers more freedom, where I would get along culturally. It's not important to name the country, in this what-if scenario.