I agree that 9/11 primed America for totalitarianism, but as someone who was tear gassed protesting our invasion of Iraq and the Patriot Act, I don't think we're living in an autocracy. I've lived in too many autocratic countries now to think that that's anywhere close to the truth..America cannot possibly be compared to China or Russia in terms of the freedom living in the country to say (and do!) what you want, protected by a fairly rigorous rule of law that is still not subject to the whim of the ruling party. America more closely resembles an anarchic zone between a failed or wannabe autocratic regime and two anti-government movements, one right-wing and one left-wing. It's a nutty situation, but it definitely prevents either party from implementing anything even remotely resembling autocratic rule, to the extent that term has meaning in any other part of the world. Any sort of objective look at American political debate makes this patently obvious.
The closest parallel to America right now is Argentina prior to the dictatorship. If or when the real dictatorship comes, you'll know it, because just as in Russia you won't be publishing articles about it.
The Military Industrial Complex is the autocracy - the revolving door between the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the CFR - which are the entities really running the country (for the purposes of massively profitable military mis-adventures).
From a certain angle, it actually looks less like an autocracy and more like a military junta which has captured both 'sides' and puppet-masters either one depending on the mood of the masses, according to the needs of the MIC - which gets everything it wants without interference by "The People".
That's nonsense, clearly, because we've just elected two - no, make that four Presidents in a row who used the Military Industrial Complex in radically divergent ways to different ends.
If we test the theory that American Presidents are beholden to the military industrial complex and not vice versa, compared to actually authoritarian countries in which the military basically is the government, we can see all sorts of civilian controls which restrain our government versus the others.
When I said it was like Argentina in the 60s, I meant that it definitely could become a quasi-mitary autocratic regime, but at the present moment it is not. It's just in the throes of populist movements which might ultimately lead to such a thing. Any objective glance at actual military regimes, any knowledge whatsoever of the rest of the world's history, proves immediately to a casual observer that the United States is not currently comparable to a military dictatorship.
The attempt to frame it as one, however, is blatantly ignorant of the current state of the world, to the degree that the motivation behind doing so is suspect. Really, only a shill for a dictatorship is interested in trying to prove that America is analogous to an autocratic state. An objective observer who wasn't being paid or hadn't bought into authoritarian propaganda would at least compare and contrast our legal system with the true, terrible, and numerous actual dictatorships all around the world.
"The world needs American war crimes", said nobody ever. Your Presidents changed flavor according to the whims of the superficial pretend-democracy culture, such that it is - the very real victims of their crimes however, didn't.
>An objective observer who wasn't being paid or hadn't bought into authoritarian propaganda would at least compare and contrast our legal system with the true, terrible, and numerous actual dictatorships all around the world.
A superficial argument to make given the million dead Iraqi's, the countless ruined states in the middle east, the funding of terror around the world by the American people and the ongoing genocide which wouldn't be happening if America's military might was truly bound to morality.
>United States is not currently comparable to a military dictatorship
Perhaps this is true from the perspective that the military dictatorship isn't directly oppressing its citizenry as you would expect from a 'traditional military dictatorship' (except of course, in reality it really is oppressing American citizens' lives), but if you are a non-American, the evil effect of the US' oppressive military organ is very, very evident...
The closest parallel to America right now is Argentina prior to the dictatorship. If or when the real dictatorship comes, you'll know it, because just as in Russia you won't be publishing articles about it.