How the Red White & Blue has oppressed you

[Sticky Killer Jones]

Explain in as much detail as you wish how the government has oppressed you in your personal life. Actual oppression that has prevented you from a specific personal freedom you are entitled to, to the point of even causing legal, fiscal, physical or even emotional distress. Maybe even actual harm to your health or death/imprisonment of a loved one.

This oppression has to be afflicted on you by a policy or action imposed by Congress, any government official, state or federal, or by a public funded institution. NOT by a private institution/business, like a church, Christian school, a restaurant that had the right to fire you for any reason they wished or a private clinic that refused you specific medical treatment because it went against their religious beliefs. Or a restaurant exercising their right to donate their earnings to a political/religious organization that's working towards attacking the civil liberties/health of others.

I specify those in particular because although they feel 'wrong' or 'oppressive', they're not being publicly operated to abide by the agenda of the state. Although, there are laws by the government that do enable them the right to run their establishments/institutions as they wish. They are 'free', and you are 'free' to avoid them or do business with them without complaints, fully understanding what you were getting into.

Example of private institution failure that led to American suffering: The financial crash years ago was due to the shady choices of banks, lending and credit businesses and very lax corporate regulation. Not something that was directly caused by Bush or Obama. The same can be said for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. BP was responsible, the government never bothered/was lobbied by oil companies for less safety regulations.

Example of government failure that led to American suffering: The extremely poor infrastructure of the state built levees in New Orleans that were never updated or checked for stability busting and flooding the city, killing over a thousand people and displacing thousands more that still haven't come back to their home city, much less the state of Louisiana.

Don't tell me NDAA, mainstream media not reporting your favorite conspiracy theories, or how using a seat belt or needing an ID is oppressive regulation by the nanny state. Give me a personal story, not stuff you scare yourself on the internet about that is very unlikely to cause you direct oppression in your life, much less direct pain. I personally won't feel any empathy towards you if the definition of oppression to you are things that has no relation to you and how not being able to smoke a joint while you play your XBox is making you suffer more than people being tortured and murdered in Mexico for the distribution of that joint.

I'm genuinely curious. If you are not American, you are also free to share stories about your country or of previous countries you or relatives lived in that were oppressive. Or how the American government has caused grievances in your country. My question is directed at Americans more specifically because there is a growing sentiment that we are oppressed or progressively becoming more oppressed, usually in the Orwellian sense. As an American myself, I've yet to meet anybody who shares that sentiment who's ever been oppressed by the government directly/indirectly, or had a family member who has.

The closest example is a friend of mine who has family that are very sick from living in military bases with gas leaks and water contamination, the military refusing to aid/acknowledge a child in the family had died specifically because of the health hazard, and they had to do most of the investigating themselves. The government never did anything to help my grandfather for physical and mental illnesses he developed after an incident in WWII, or to decedents who had inherited deformities. This is more akin to 'government failure' than 'oppression' per se, but I can't think of anything more extreme than that. For all I know, my grandpa volunteered to do whatever caused him to become ill or he was ordered to be used as a lab rat. *shrugs* I'll never really know. Institutional failure generally leads to limited freedoms for the citizens suffering from it, so you can extrapolate on that as you see fit.

Enlighten me.

[Shangs]

Prostitution is illegal. There's a war on drugs.

[sayyosin]

War on drugs put friends, family, myself and others in jail/prison for victimless crimes. My governor doesn't "believe" in sciences like Anthropology (my major) and wants to cut all funding for the arts and music. Engineers, soldiers, and corporate entrepreneurs that will stimulate the economy are what's considered the only important and "real" careers.

[Cringeon]

Live in state that has only state ran liquor stores. Definitely has an effect on business, as well as forces consumers to only have one option to purchase booze. State is also very stingy with liquor licenses for restaurants/bars, and they only allow so many to be issued at a time which prevents some companies from even opening shop here.

[FeedYourHead]

This is an issue with local government and not so much federal, but I guess it still applies since it's like this in the majority of the 50 states.
My biggest issue - ASIDE from the "war on drugs" which has already been covered here- is actually with traffic ticketing.

I once got a speeding ticket in Georgia on a main road because the speed limit was 50mph and then randomly and suddenly changed to 30mph, and they had cops sitting at the point where the speed limit changed. There was no warning that there was a decrease in the speed limit except for the normal white and black speed limit sign, but I just assumed it said 50 like every single other speed limit sign on that road. It's also worth noting that you could be going 60mph on that perfectly straight, main road, and be driving an appropriate and safe speed. 30mph was literally ridiculous, the equivalent would be like if the speed limit were 40mph on a highway.
So the only thing I could conclude was that they specifically implemented that decrease in speed limit to catch people "speeding." And even if they actually had some reason for decreasing the speed limit, the fact that they had cops set up there clearly reflected their goal to catch drivers who hadn't adjusted from the 50mph to the 30 just yet.
First of all, that's like setting citizens up to fail. That's absurd.
Second of all, why are you wasting police resources on this???
Third of all, this is all probably to meet the government-imposed financial income quota. Going through the effort to craft this traffic scenario is therefore essentially like stealing money from citizens.
Fourth of all, if the only penalty for speeding was to pay a fine, that would be one thing, but if you get enough speeding tickets the points on your license start to add up and if you have a certain amount of points you temporarily lose your license.

And this happens everywhere, all the time. It's fucking ridiculous.

[AssetReign]

There are a few things that are an inconvenience, but I've never felt "oppressed" by them. Given certain global political conditions and circumstances, bitching about some of those (comparatively minor) inconveniences seems petty and spoiled.

[Shangs]

Most traffic laws are unconstitutional. Requiring a drivers license, insurance, speed traps, DUI checkpoints etc... all violations of the 1st and 4th amendments.

Fuk da police. Fight da power.

[21Faces]

/1st world problems.

Seriously, though, I can't think of any specific context in which I am oppressed by my state or local government- aside from the general impression I get that large corporations are paying my elected representatives to fuck me and all the myriad ways that situation manifests. But I don't think that's a uniquely American situation, really.

I generally do what I please, even with regards to technically illicit activities like piracy, drugs, and sexual entrepreneurialism so I can't really claim to be oppressed as I don't really find myself to be on the wrong side of the law. I will say that this country's unfortunate position on sex work and related laws make it a lot harder for working girls to make their living safely- both in terms of their health and immediate physical safety, so that's bullshit. But if it were put to a vote I don't think the general public would opt to legalize prostitution anyway, so that's really just certain people being at the mercy of the culture we live in rather than the government specifically. This thought also applies to homosexual rights- but even that we're seeing move in the right direction (Democrats).

Because we're fortunate enough to have a Democratic administration right now, even "illegal" Mexican immigrants under, what, 30 or something? Can breathe a little easier- work, go to school, etc. Unless they live in some crazy shithole like Alabama or Arizona. All in all, things are pretty good, I think.

"Opressed" is a strong word.

[Lydia]

I feel oppressed by parking enforcement, the vehicle registration process which includes the asinine DriveClean program, and other such unnecessary local and provincial laws.

[The Empirical Guy]

I once got a speeding ticket in Georgia on a main road because the speed limit was 50mph and then randomly and suddenly changed to 30mph, and they had cops sitting at the point where the speed limit changed. There was no warning that there was a decrease in the speed limit except for the normal white and black speed limit sign, but I just assumed it said 50 like every single other speed limit sign on that road. It's also worth noting that you could be going 60mph on that perfectly straight, main road, and be driving an appropriate and safe speed. 30mph was literally ridiculous, the equivalent would be like if the speed limit were 40mph on a highway.
So the only thing I could conclude was that they specifically implemented that decrease in speed limit to catch people "speeding." And even if they actually had some reason for decreasing the speed limit, the fact that they had cops set up there clearly reflected their goal to catch drivers who hadn't adjusted from the 50mph to the 30 just yet.
First of all, that's like setting citizens up to fail. That's absurd.
Second of all, why are you wasting police resources on this???
Third of all, this is all probably to meet the government-imposed financial income quota. Going through the effort to craft this traffic scenario is therefore essentially like stealing money from citizens.
Fourth of all, if the only penalty for speeding was to pay a fine, that would be one thing, but if you get enough speeding tickets the points on your license start to add up and if you have a certain amount of points you temporarily lose your license.

And this happens everywhere, all the time. It's fucking ridiculous.

I wouldn't call it oppression, but I get where you are coming from. Try living in Australia, home of crazy and nonsensical speed limits. If I drive my house to Dysmorphia's place - a journey of no more than 10 minutes by car, traffic permitting - I go through no less than 8 different speed zones, and not all of them are signposted. I only know about them because I am local, but people from out of the area would have no idea. They seem to like to swing the speed limit about wildly here for no apparent reason - there is a stretch of the freeway nearby where it drops from 110km/h to 90 for no discernible reason other than to inconvenience people and add to the time of their trips. It gets incredibly confusing. I have been saying for a long time it should be done like it is in the UK, where there are nation-wide, standardised speed zones based on population density, so you just have, for example, rural, suburban, city, and freeway. Unfortunately this is not a country where common sense prevails.