America Sucks in a lot of ways BUT....

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America sucks in a lot of ways and I can list you all a number of sh***y things but one thing that I will say is great is the ability to call out BS and nonsense. In America, one has the freedom to call out BS and nonsense. In other places if you do you may be arrested and possibly sent to prison.

In some places, you can be executed (North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Iran, China)

Yes!

Is that really true, though? I get the impression that in many parts of the States, if you call out Christianity or Capitalism as BS - even if you have very good reasons indeed, and genuinely believe what you are saying - you're going to find life very difficult indeed.

In theory you are free to say whatever you please, in practice the tolerance levels for anything "other" seem very low. So you're free to say what you think, provided that happens to agree with what everybody else thinks.

Well, if you grab a megaphone in the US and shout "YOU'RE A BOTTOM-FEEDING, SCUM SUCKING ALGAE EATER, [name of person of questionable moral fibre here]!" in a public park, you are unlikely to get into (much) legal trouble.

But there have - relative recently - been multiple examples of official attempts at the Federal or State level to silence people with more subtle means.

And unlike the constant whining about politically correct Woke SJWs "cancelling" people from private platforms, these are actual examples of government censorship (likely not exhaustive):

From 1996 to 2018, The US government officially cut off public funding for research on gun violence:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dickey_Amendment

In 2011, The state of Florida tried to prevent doctors from advising patients about the dangers of firearms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physician_gag_law

Both the Bush and Trump administration censored research and studies about climate change.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorshi ... ates#2000s

Historically, there have been other instances like the Sedition Act of 1918, McCarthyism and the Pentagon Papers, which involved quite a lot of criminal cases.

Here, free speech often prevailed once the case reached the Supreme Court... but not everyone has the energy and resources to fight such a case in the courts.

Legally, we are free. Socially, we're in a dictatorship.

While these are issues that need to be addressed, I do agree that doctors shouldn't dictate your lifestyle. If it's not hurting you, why should you care? That being said, acting irresponsibly with a gun has its own set of consequences, as it should. And the amount of guns in circulation is ridiculously high, all because of the fear of an assault weapons ban (which is one of many reasons I don't support an assault weapons ban). I just think it's silly how supporting an assault weapons ban makes you a saint and asking why so many a**holes have their grubby hands on (a) gun(s) makes you evil. Why not implement a permit to purchase, as Iowa had done for some time? Apart from that, the other two items don't really surprise me. The Republican Party was, and still is, notorious for being deceptive to supporters. What's worse is that post-Trump America is still experiencing the fallout of the extreme absurdity that turned within their party (it's not as bad as Brazil, but we're not talking about them). A lot of people still treat contradicting evidence as "fake news," even if they can't prove it's fake news. The Republican Party has become so obsessed with being the photo negative of the Democratic Party that they reject reality altogether, culminating in the January 6th insurrection. It's just so frustrating how so many people are easy to fool and how willing they are to die on such a ridiculous hill. I am, of course, talking about QAnon. For any who don't know, it's basically a conspiracy theory that suggests that governments all over the world are controlled by a cabal of Satan-worshipping, cannibalistic pedophiles (I wish I was making this up). It's so embarrassing that people fall for something that sounds like an episode of South Park. It's really not a wonder why the United States has become a global laughing stock. I'd be willing to wear a tinfoil hat and say that QAnon was a CIA operation intended to damage the reputation of the Republican Party and Ted Cruz was the chief operative of this mission, all along. It sounds just as insane and unfalsifiable as Satan-worshipping, cannibalistic pedophiles, so why not? We're in the age of alternative facts, let's have some fun while we're here.

In places like Iran and Iraq, women are so oppressed there, they are basically property and they can go to jail or be executed if they are raped. Also they don't have any freedom so they cannot date and the man is chosen for them by their family.

Sure, you can call it out, but at least half of the country is too ignorant to listen. It's overwhelming.

America is a place to get rich, if you can make into the upper middle class + .

The danger is that can all go away if real civil unrest starts because the government is too corrupt to govern for everyone and only supports the people who give the donations to the politicians. If something like what happened on Jan 6th was driven by a left wing group free speech would be gone in an instant. You better bet Google and Facebook would welcome the neo-McCarthyism. The Pentagon already has "plans" for such scenarios.

If you call out the BS the American military produces, you go to jail for life.
Ask Assange, Manning and Snowden.

World press freedom index rates the US with "satisfactory".
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_Freedom_Index

Even the one thing you highlight as outstanding in the US is actually merely "satisfying" compared to other countries.
sure, it's not Saudi Arabia.....

Yes, you picked two places from the very bottom of the list.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Gender_Gap_Report

Please note that the US is not even in the top 20%

The thing to remember is that there is no utopia. America is not perfect but is better to live in than most other places.

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