Event as a then leftist, I used to be skeptical of this rhetoric until I saw every single establishment come out the woodwork to smear Jeremy Cromblin for being the minorest of threats to bourgeois power.

Major newspapers with front page news 100% seriously accusing him of being a soviet sleeper agent, the head of the armed forces (who is legally obliged to be impartial) went on the BBC news to specifically criticise Corbyn and talk about how he'll let everyone die to nukes, the notorious BBC moment of portraying him outside the Kremlin in a Ushanka like he's V fucking Lenin himself, not a single major media outlet accurately reported on how the antisemitism report entirely cleared Corbyn, or how the chief UK rabbi fueling the smears is literally a childhood friend of .

I dunno, I could go on forever with examples - But that year I truly lost all hope in electoralism, and truly appreciated the bourgeois hold on fucking everything. I saw the machine come out in full force and it was scary.

As a youth, I remember media talking heads using the term managed democracy being used to describe the various "regimes" that had free elections, but which in no sense did citizens democratically determine the direction of the country's government. It didn't take much introspection to apply that logic to the USA, but apparently introspection is a rare trait.

As Nyerere said, the United States is also a one-party state but, with typical American extravagance, they have two of them. We get to have free elections where the only thing we decide is to what degree of depravity the government will treat marginalized people.

that is a very good way to phrase it.