21st Century Citizens Living in a 16th Century World

As most of the world progressed with freedom of speech and adopted a more literalistic approach to journalism, there are still yet some countries that are stuck in the antiquated authoritarian approach to journalism. Growing up in Jamaica, where we have somewhat of freedom in journalism, that freedom only stops there. As in other 3rd world country nations where freedom of speech and press is not given a second thought, here it is not so. Many of the political figureheads such as police, and government officials are very corrupted. I recall numerous incidents where the police abused their rights in evening traffic where if they did not feel like waiting in rush hour traffic they would turn on their siren lights just to escape the wait in traffic. Not only would they do this, but they would stop civilians for supposedly committing an infraction when the majority of the time, this would not be the case. The officials would bargain with the drivers for instant cash as opposed to sticking them with outrageous citations, possible jail time or even being beat. Here in America I know that sounds outrageous as could be but I realized that this is how many people still try to control the people.
Democracies are to be upheld where the people have true freedom to help run a nation without the government interfering with and imposing their unnecessary demands on people. The more that I live and actually travel outside of my American bubble, I realize that there really few nations that operate in a true democracy and in some ways America isn’t that democracy that we so claim to be. There are subtle ways that governments even our great beloved American government operates that makes the citizen’s believe that it is freedom wherein the government is still controlling the outcome. It may be more difficult to discern in such a prominent nation this, but in smaller less distinguished it sticks out like a sore thumb. Can we as a nation ever get back to the freedom of speech? Yes we can. As we progress and many people around the world gain their freedom and learn the great advantages of using the internet as a mechanism to join the world as one unified nation, then many governments will be forced to loosen it noose and free the citizens of not only their country but citizens of the world.