From my personal experience (very anecdotal of course, also Western but outside-US view*) I can't remember a time I've heard someone saying "$dictatorship is ju

From my personal experience (very anecdotal of course, also Western but outside-US view*) I can't remember a time I've heard someone saying "$dictatorship is just as free or freer than the USA". I occasionally heard "it's not as bad as it sounds". On the other hand I hear "USA is on the way to become $dictatorship" almost on a daily basis. But it makes sense because in the way it's meant to be understood it's correct. One is a threshold that's reasonably easy to judge, the other is a process and the rate of advance can be the same whether you're close to the start or end of the process. The rate is the strongest signal, not just the absolute position. If you travel from NY to LA most of the time you can tell if you're closer to one or the other. But no matter where you are on the route, you are indeed traveling from NY to LA. Going back to what I said in my previous comment, you should be scared that it's happening nonetheless. Getting a huge democracy like the USA to start to slide into authoritarianism, even just localized (for now) takes a lot of power and every step towards that destination becomes easier. The hardest part was already done - the inertia was defeated and the train is slowly rolling. Don't sit comfortably thinking "we're clearly freer than Belarus" because you're right today but you won't even notice when you pass the point of no return. Boiling frog and all that. I say this as a person who lived through times like that more than once. Freedoms are lost in the silence of the night but are (re)gained usually with blood, sweat, and tears. Wherever you think you are, be mindful of that. *I have some bias here, I have mostly Western/EU-like views, I'm on forums with more US/EU people where they may complain about their own home, but they're also likely to "silence" opinions like "dictatorship better than your country". Or any opinion that doesn't align with the same Western views. More and more places are open just to pandering to the popular opinion. Like sitting in front of some 1st place football team supporters telling them their team is slipping, you'll still get your clock punched even if you're right.