Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has endorsed President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign, a sign of the president’s strength in uniting his party to have the backing of one of its most liberal members
Bro I am a near-total prison abolitionist, and even I know the difference between a place with poor policies driven by an increasingly dangerous internal threat of authoritarians and countries that regularly disappear dissidents.
My point wasn’t to say that they’re one and the same. I just think that any American politician who isn’t actively trying to abolish the Department of Homeland Security and permanently repeal the PATRIOT Act has no business condemning authoritarianism. I think that defending Biden or a Democrat for this reinforces the idea that it is somehow different or indicative of something else when we do it vs when China does it.
It reflects a worldview that the US is neutral/good at its core, one that I don’t share given what I know about US history. It’s barely qualified as a liberal democracy for most of its history/
When book bans happen in the US, western media doesn’t frame it as an inevitable outcome in a country with a long history of right-wing nationalism, unlike when book bans happen in China, where it’s framed as a product of communism/socialism.
Likewise, the US prison population is framed as a mistake, an error, something that “shouldn’t happen” in a “free country”, when it’s literally a legacy of Jim Crow laws (which themselves get framed in US history/media as a regrettable period, and not something that is inherently a product of the United States’ ruling social and political class).
Lastly, the US state of Florida is already practically a single-party regime under Desantis. He’s actively trying to purge the Universities down there, which is something straight out of 1930s Germany.
