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i'm really unclear about what you mean when you say that the united states & canada provide "levels of freedom that other countries can only dream of."
i think most of the "freedoms" particular to the united states are formal. it seems to me that, for example, a political system in which the polity is able to vote one day every two years and in which the options that are presented amount to little more than the option of engaging in faction rotation within an oligarchy, and in an information environment that is not at all about providing people with what is required to make informed or rational decisions about issues...that's not real free. being part of a market demographic in the context of which freedom is a word that gets associated with alot of products because it sounds nice, because it's flattering--that doesn't seem to me terribly free.
i think sometimes folk understand categories like authoritarian as requiring a particular type of state action, as if the state is the only institution capable of being such surveillance and management of a population. but those days are long past, and even in the earlier manifestations--say germany of the 1930s--state rule was accompanied by a single dominant media apparatus (radio) and a quite new for the time understanding of the close relation between politics and public relations (edward bernays anyone?)...in the historical treatments of that period, the centrality of radio as an opinion co-ordination mechanism tends to get downplayed and the role of state violence becomes the exclusive center. but that's to make how that particular form of fascism work incomprehensible. and it's always mystified me that this is the case.
i think you get something similar amongst folk who imagine that having a gun makes them anything beyond someone who has a gun--the exclusive object of concern regarding possible outcomes like "tyranny" is the state.
but think about the logic of neo-colonialism for a second: why bother with direct domination when it's much cheaper and more effective to convince people to dominate themselves?
better still if you can convince them that dominating themselves is in their own best interest.
this can only get started if you regard "freedom" as an attribute and not a process. so "freedom" is like the leg of a table. it doesn't require any particular action or doing or process. it's a part of an object that the Bad State can maybe take from you, in the way a bully could take your peanut butter & jelly sandwich from you at recess by the swingset.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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