The US is more akin to Russia or Poland than it is to Western Europe in terms of democratic freedoms. I can’t speak to Indiana specifically but Florida, Texas, Wisconsin, and more all have the GOP entrenched in power in some way or another. There’s gerrymandering, restrictive voter ID laws, and a few places it’s now illegal to hand water out to people in line to vote.
Thing is…north American countries like the United States and Canada were founded and expanded in order to conquest the indigenous people. In the United States, it was called Manifest Destiny, and it was the idea that (white) Americans were divinely anointed to create a nation from “sea to shining sea”. It’s taught like a good thing in school, but it reveals that at the heart of American society is ideals of subjugation and conquest that have been tempered and sanitised through our culture.
Before the Supreme Court ruled on it in the 1800s, you straight up had individual states trying to institute State Religions and censorship regimes because they tried to argue that the Constitution only applied to the federal government.
Most “good” things in American culture and history happen in spite of the ruling authorities at the time. Hollywood was forced to censor itself from the 1930s-1950s under the Hays Code. Comic books too, but because it was industry self-censorship, the US gets to be “free” because it’s not the government doing it.
That’s not even getting into the state-sanctioned witch hunts for “communists” in the McCarthy era of the 50s.
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