You're right that on the specific topic of government censorship they are not nearly the same. Very different legal structures and all that.
But from talking to people who were living in the USSR as adults through the 70s and 80s (and my own memories of the USSR in the 80s, though I was not an adult, and reading I have done, but I put more weight on the in-person conversations with people I know and who can give me direct first-hand comparisons), the US is certainly same-universe close at this point, and rapidly getting closer, in terms of things like public confessions, limiting acceptable points of view (in _parts_ of the US, segregated by culture) etc. In some aspect, "further along", heading for Cultural Revolution era China. The practical implications are unfortunately not as different as one might like.
Maybe a clearer way to describe it is that the "lived experience" (again, limited to certain professions or locations in the US) is unfortunately far too similar, even while the legal and social structures that produce it are quite different in their details.
And just make sure we're on the same page: the US now is nothing like _1930s_ USSR. We should make sure we mean the same thing when we say "life in the USSR", because it varied quite a bit over 70 years.
But from talking to people who were living in the USSR as adults through the 70s and 80s (and my own memories of the USSR in the 80s, though I was not an adult, and reading I have done, but I put more weight on the in-person conversations with people I know and who can give me direct first-hand comparisons), the US is certainly same-universe close at this point, and rapidly getting closer, in terms of things like public confessions, limiting acceptable points of view (in _parts_ of the US, segregated by culture) etc. In some aspect, "further along", heading for Cultural Revolution era China. The practical implications are unfortunately not as different as one might like.
Maybe a clearer way to describe it is that the "lived experience" (again, limited to certain professions or locations in the US) is unfortunately far too similar, even while the legal and social structures that produce it are quite different in their details.
And just make sure we're on the same page: the US now is nothing like _1930s_ USSR. We should make sure we mean the same thing when we say "life in the USSR", because it varied quite a bit over 70 years.