The Patriot Act, indefinite detention, torture camps, the NDAA bill, NSA spying, the immense violations by the FBI and DEA when it comes to parallel construction and aggressive localized spying and tracking, StingRay, fake cell towers, local jurisdictions (eg Virginia) compiling phone records and tracking citizens, killing thousands of innocent people around the globe via drones, Guantanamo, arresting people under terrorism charges for joking on Facebook or online games, the TSA, Homeland Security...
And on and on
If you told someone in 1997 that that's how America would look today, they'd never believe it.
