I do not entirely disagree without, but lack of freedom does intrude into day to day life to some extent.
Accept elected officials whose policies don’t match up with popular opinion and accept standard employment hierarchy.
Prison is at least 3 hots and a cot.
Decent prison conditions tend to overlap with countries with decent human rights.
IN authoritarian countries you might very well be starved or tortured in prison.
You might also just disappear and your body may or may not be found in an identifiable state.
Just because the censorship is outsourced to the private sector, mostly, doesn’t make the day to day any different when you rely on support of the private sector, alongside discretionary support from the state
Visa holders are experiencing detainment for this specific thing, this cycle. And in other western democracies anyone can be fined and imprisoned for it as well
Wishful thinking that there is imperviousness to disagreeing with the state narrative in the west
The reality is that it’s not always on the mind 100% of the time and you learn to appreciate the day to day life under Eastern and Western authoritarian systems
Sounds a lot like having a job.
I recall in 2016 British employers who said they would fire any employees they discovered voted for Brexit - of course the only way they could find out is if people said how the voted but that is a free speech issue.
I think we need legal protections for things like free speech that we have traditionally had against governments to apply to employers and service providers. I think legislation that prevents various forms of discrimination proves it is achievable.
Picking on not the worst country in the world, but one I know (and was living in at the time this was at its worst). Things have changed there since, thankfully.
but not landed you in prison or disappeared, I take it?
Not adequately or safely.
https://impactjustice.org/new-report-provides-first-ever-nat...
Was your school worse than that?
It's typical that when someone is arrested for "X action with Y detail" (e.g. buying a knife with intent to kill someone) people who oppose the arrest will only state the X (and for some reason this works). To correct the record when someone says "I don't expect to be arrested for buying a knife", "I do expect to be arrested for planning to a murder" is a correct response.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_prisoners_in_the_Uni...
Intelligence and genetics.
Genders and gender specific spaces.
Gender and social/professional roles.
Those are topics which have "sky is blue" level ideological certainty, and not open for debate.