The UK and Australia are certainly experiencing some authoritarian tyranny. They’re not dealing with the decay that the US currently is, but it’s clear that wealth and power are consolidating there.
I’d blame years of softening up with neoliberal policies. That may not be the only factor, but a lot of economists are saying it is a factor.
As for freedom in the US, we lost a great amount of it during the George W. Bush administration, quietly, as SCOTUS carved to pieces the fourth and fifth amendments to the Constitution of the United States. Slowly but surely, poor whites were getting the same treatment that blacks and browns had been getting through the twentieth century, though Karens often don’t know they’ve lost those rights until confronted by law enforcement. The US saw the true nature of police in the US during the Ferguson unrest in 2014 after the killing of Michael Brown, which was streamed to the public via social media, rather than filtered through mainstream television news.
Since then we learned that Blacks couldn’t own guns or would risk summary execution by law enforcement, and that policy has been extended to anyone caught in opposition to a state agent. Meanwhile right-wing civilians bearing arms and aligned with the police are given leniency when they kill someone.
In fact, we Americans have not had liberty for a long, long time.
The UK and Australia are certainly experiencing some authoritarian tyranny. They’re not dealing with the decay that the US currently is, but it’s clear that wealth and power are consolidating there.
I’d blame years of softening up with neoliberal policies. That may not be the only factor, but a lot of economists are saying it is a factor.
As for freedom in the US, we lost a great amount of it during the George W. Bush administration, quietly, as SCOTUS carved to pieces the fourth and fifth amendments to the Constitution of the United States. Slowly but surely, poor whites were getting the same treatment that blacks and browns had been getting through the twentieth century, though Karens often don’t know they’ve lost those rights until confronted by law enforcement. The US saw the true nature of police in the US during the Ferguson unrest in 2014 after the killing of Michael Brown, which was streamed to the public via social media, rather than filtered through mainstream television news.
Since then we learned that Blacks couldn’t own guns or would risk summary execution by law enforcement, and that policy has been extended to anyone caught in opposition to a state agent. Meanwhile right-wing civilians bearing arms and aligned with the police are given leniency when they kill someone.
In fact, we Americans have not had liberty for a long, long time.