The peasants gotta do something enjoyable. Even in, or especially in, these times.The soul crushing grind will be back on Monday.
What’s happening with surveillance is relatively new. The freedom part has been a tradition for longer than any of the surveillers have been active. That’s how two diametrically opposed ideas can happen. The authoritarian folks will lose their grip. Freedom will reign.
Hey, the country isn’t perfect. There are a lot if things you could have listed after the word “while,” several of which I’d argue are greater threats/impediments to freedom.
But you can still run for office as a Socialist and win if you get the votes. You can still protest the government without getting beheaded. You can still practice the religion of your choice, or none at all, without losing basic rights. You can still expose your hair in public without going to prison. You can still move here with nothing and start a small business to put your kids through school. You can still marry the person you choose, and live together wherever you wish.
But you can still run for office as a Socialist and win if you get the votes.
That “if” is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Many jurisdictions require a petition with X number of signatures to be even be put on the ballot. That alone is prohibitively difficult for a majority of people who work for a living. Once you’re on the ballot, it takes a ton of time and money to even get your name out there so people know who you are, not to mention how much it costs to fight off the smear campaigns for being a “radical left woke terrorist”.
You can still protest the government without getting beheaded.
No, but you can get shot in the head with your own gun, deported, or taken to a secret holding site and released after 48 hours with no charges filed (hope you don’t miss work!)
You can still practice the religion of your choice, or none at all, without losing basic rights.
Unless receiving an abortion is a basic right in your religion, then, theoretically, yes.
You can still expose your hair in public without going to prison.
For now.
You can still move here with nothing and start a small business to put your kids through school.
Our credit score system and banking regulations literally makes it easier for a foreigner to do this than an American. Citizens must have “good” credit, but people from countries without our credit system (all of them) are exempt from this requirement and assumed to be loan-worthy until they don’t pay one back.
You can still marry the person you choose, and live together wherever you wish.
For now. SC has teased overturning their ruling and over half the states have laws on the books banning it that will instantly go into effect if that happens.
Let’s also take a moment to recognize, if you have to compare the richest, most powerful nation in the world to authoritarian third-world regimes to make them seem free, that’s a pretty good sign there might be some room for improvement in that area.
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