Almost like someone made a few phone calls.
It's really an amazing system we have. The government and media tell you how free you are and how wicked all these other people are, and everyone just eats it up. Anyone who questions is ostracized and sidelined. Way more effective than a brute dictatorship.
Also, I just find it interesting you feel compelled to defend a dictatorship.
"Bad guys bad!" is much less interesting, especially when it's only the bad guys you've been told to hate.
https://observer.com/2017/08/court-admits-dnc-and-debbie-was...
That being said still not a theocracy.
In the US, the allowed opinions are actually a tiny band, socially enforced. You don't get to be an opinion maker unless you're in band.
Technically we're way freer, but practically? A little bit at best.
The real world difference is huge no matter how you try to portray it.
Noam Chomsky