It’s a question of scale. We may incarcerate an unacceptable number of our citizens, but we don’t maintain a system of labor camps. Our overmilitarized police forces have issues with the use of deadly force, but we aren’t liquidating the kulaks as a class.
Do you recognize the significant moral difference? I’m not waving pom-poms and saying America is perfect, but we’re better than that.
(Two other things: our “veneer of free speech” is strong enough to allow Nazis to parade peacefully through a town of Holocaust survivors, and I live and vote in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, which is poor as shit and still organized enough to make voting simple and quick.)
