From an early age, US students are taught that the US is the land of the free. Nothing could be further from the truth and freedoms are being consistently taken away.
Over half the population - 165 million females - lost their reproductive rights when the Supreme Court overturned the Roe vs. Wade decision.
In another decision, the Supreme Court made it more difficult to enforce the constitutional Miranda rights given to all citizens.
“Today’s ruling doesn’t get rid of the Miranda right,” said Steve Vladeck, CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at the University of Texas School of Law. “But it does make it far harder to enforce. Under this ruling, the only remedy for a violation of Miranda is to suppress statements obtained from a suspect who’s not properly advised of his right to remain silent. But if the case never goes to trial, or if the government never seeks to use the statement, or if the statement is admitted notwithstanding the Miranda violation, there’s no remedy at all for the government’s misconduct.”
In 2011, the Obama administration passed the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act which included an indefinite detention provision. This was challenged in court by Chris Hedges, Daniel Ellsberg, Jenifer Bolen, Noam Chomsky, Alexa O'Brien, US Day of Rage, Kai Wargalla, and Hon. Birgitta Jonsdottir, M.P. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals threw the case out because the plaintiffs lacked standing. The Supreme Court refused to hear the case. This means that any president can suspend the writ of habeas corpus and detain US citizens (and foreign citizens) indefinitely without any repercussions.
“President Obama's action today is a blight on his legacy because he will forever be known as the president who signed indefinite detention without charge or trial into law,” said Anthony D. Romero, ACLU executive director. “The statute is particularly dangerous because it has no temporal or geographic limitations, and can be used by this and future presidents to militarily detain people captured far from any battlefield. The ACLU will fight worldwide detention authority wherever we can, be it in court, in Congress, or internationally.”
This is what freedom looks like in the US.
The United States - the world’s beacon of freedom and democracy - has the highest incarceration rate in the world and holds roughly 25% of the world’s prisoners. The US has an incarceration rate of 629 people per 100,000 population. In comparison, China has a rate of 119 prisoners per 100,000 population. That is over 5 times less - yet the US often claims China is the repressive regime.
From 2014, statistics from the Prison Policy Initiative - This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
The prison system is also heavily racialized. The increase in incarceration has coincided with Joe Biden’s political career. He has always been the crime bill candidate. He actually pushed Reagan right on mass incarceration.
Biden loves his crime bills. And he continues to push for funding the police and prison system as president.
The US has never been the land of free and under the current system this isn’t changing. There can be no freedom without economic freedom and an end to the repressive police state. What is being celebrated this 4th of July isn’t freedom, it’s white supremacy, patriarchy, and oligarchy.
Notes:
Thanks for pointing out what should be obvious, but for so many, is not.
It’s easy to blame this erosion of what freedom mat have existed in the past on the corrupt political class, or the media. The corporate elites deserve some of the blame too. But we have to acknowledge that most Americans have not been paying attention, or simply take their cues from their corporate media of choice.
In 2024, after 3 more years of far-right Supreme Court decisions and 2 years of a Republican Congress passing more heinous legislation that Biden will probably not veto, we will be given a choice between a mediocre, corrupt status quo politician and a devotee of the lunatic fringe -again. A viable choice could be put on the ballot (unlikely) but the progtards won’t vote for that person for fear of electing the Republican bozo.
Good progressives will follow their MSNBC sheepherders and vote for another corrupt Democrat, unless... Unless we enter a severe depression with an inflation that destroys savings and puts food out of reach for most people. Unless we pass a climate tipping point that renders the southern regions of the country uninhabitable. Unless the neocons and the senile leadership starts a nuclear war,after which there will be no nation left.
I want to be optimistic but I refuse to live in a fantasy world.