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Notes -
I agree with this in sentiment. Your main point is substantively correct.
Still, there are various facts that we're learning about how the government operated that suggest on that on the sliding scale between "red terror" and "following the rules", they were at least a smidgen over the line.
For example, sure, if you press one button or another (modulo Congress, which I'm still convinced ought to step up to their role they've seemingly willingly abdicated, but that's another thread) then the government changes priorities and spend money on different things. That's well and good, but it seems like we've been granting millions in tax dollars to left-leaning groups to do left-leaning politics is not quite inside the rules. The button-pressing-winner is emphatically not supposed to be allowed to spend government dollars to convince people to press his button again in 4 years.
Does that mean it's the Soviet gulag? Absolutely not, but nuance is good here and despite the histrionics of the reactionary right, they had some nugget of truth in there.
I agree with, but even in countries which Americans considered at least adjacent to Liberty, and not dictatorships, the people in power can explicitly use the fact that they in power and thus have access to the fiscus, to persuade the masses of the correctness of their political views.
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