At least you have police that respect the constitution. Here in Cuba for example: if someone robs you and you call the police, they can take up to 24 hours to arrive. However you go out with a sign asking for freedom or saying down with communism, they arrive instantly, beat you up, violate your constitutional rights and hold a private trial where they charge you with sedition and contempt of court. They give you from 15 to 25 years in prison.... this is the free Cuba that the dictatorship does not expose to the world. Greetings and an excellent post.
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You'd think they would respect the constitution they swear to uphold, but they enforce laws which blatantly violate state and federal bills of rights and literally rob people under the guise of "civil asset forfeiture." Sure, they're less bad on speech than in some countries, but it's not unheard-of for cops to punish people for speaking out.
Of course, I understand your point of view, you are right. I guess in theory that should not happen, why does that happen in a country where there is separation of powers?
What "separation of powers"? Three branches of federal government is still one federal government. The old idea of state, federal, and local governments has largely resulted in practice as power centralizing over time.
Good. From what you tell me, the separation of powers only works in theory. Here they don't even try to fool you with that. The State pays the salaries of the police and prosecutors and they are subordinate to the party... in theory and in practice they represent the interests of the State.
Authoritarianism is at least honest. Constitutional republics and democracy slap a veneer of legitimacy over the top of the brutality. Arguably, it does mean some of their own enforcers still believe in liberty to some degree, but it also makes it so much harder for the general populace to believe the government is their enemy.
One of the major problems that cause this citation is corruction. But don't think that authoritarian countries are exempt from it. You should know that communist propaganda is based on lies and deception, to achieve indoctrination. It is also real the situation that the United States has been going through for years, the rampant migration and increased crime are factors that can de-activate and fracture civil rights.
Would you believe that violent crime has been declining in the US since about 1990? I don't trust the government or law enforcement, but one of they few things they seem pretty honest about here is FBI crime data. The Clinton-era gun ban did not cause the decline, because it was imposed after the trend began, and the trend continues after the ban ended. It continued to taper off even with the post-9/11 economic crisis and war propaganda, and has remained fairly stable in spite of economic crisis and civil unrest. Only the reporting has changed.
Migration is another issue blown way out of proportion by people with an axe to grind. Only empires at the tipping point or beyond truly fear poor people coming in. Meanwhile, the drug prohibition and enforcement is what fuels gang violence more than anything else, and the solution is freedom, not border walls and more cops.
That made me chuckle.
You know I'm a dictator, right? - Aleksandr Lukashenko