Sh-h-h, don’t sign petitions, don’t even talk about it

Once they have the guns they can just march you to “Indefinite Detention.”

“….He vigorously exercised unprecedented war powers, including the arrest and detention, without trial, of thousands of suspected secessionists….”

Basically if at first a politician asks you what you think and then they hear something they don’t like, well, they just plug their ears – symbolically.