We have always been like this. We've never really been the land of the free. Imagining otherwise is a collective fantasy and acceptance of the big lie.

Yesterday it was Land of the free...so long as you're born into the right caste.

Today it is Land of the free...so long as you buy your freedom.

America has always been a slave economy to varying degrees and intensity. In both the chattel system and the fiat system, even the "free" people who are not trapped in literal bondage are slaves, as the base layer of their livelyhoods makes them shambling addicts to the violation and destruction of souls - a vampric thing.

"Free America" never was. It has always and only ever been becoming...

Freer that other places (perhaps) still ≠ free...