Starting around 1980 with the rise of the Regan administration, the ideals of justice and equality in the political and legal systems of America have been systemically and intentionally chipped away at to the benefit of the bourgeoisie. The justice system offers little protection to any but the wealthy, either out of incompetence or more likely outright negligence. Proper legal action and representation have been made financially inaccessible to most of the lower class, and because of this law enforcement disproportionately and often unjustly targets them while enjoying near total immunity from prosecution themselves. An officer caught falsifying a crime will generally only get a slap on the wrist while had they not been caught the individual they were falsely accusing could have faced many years in prison.
Prison sentences for many offenses are excessively long, and often wrongly administered, which is made even worse by the deplorably traumatizing and unsafe conditions in US prisons. Largely due to privatization, prison facilities are largely designed to keep people in there as long as possible. Sentences can be lengthened for things as simple as not making ones bed when a guard is in a bad mood, or even things that are completely fabricated. The prison staff more often than not neglect to make any effort to prevent or stop inmate on inmate violence, making the threat of things like rape, assault, murder, extortion, etc. very real and even somewhat likely. Say someone kills their cell mate in self defense when the cellie tries to rape them for the seventh night in a row while the guards ignore it, or they get caught holding drugs for someone who threatened to make them drink boiling oil if they didn't hold it for them. It is a very real possibility that a one to two year sentence could turn into a lifelong incarceration. Not to mention that the guards can (and have) done everything from freezing inmates to death to boiling them alive to starving them to raping them, and faced minimal to no consequence for any of it. United States prisons are one of the few places in the world where slave labor and state-approved torture still occur, and the bourgeoisie are all but exempt from it while the proletariat are funneled into it like lambs to the slaughter.
Workers rights are but a shadow of what they used to be; the systemic destruction of unions, workers bargaining rights, benefits packages/pension, employee protection/anti-discrimination laws, and recently the right to strike have all but erased to power of the employee. There is even recent talk of allowing companies to sue employees who strike for lost revenue. Higher education has become all but a requirement, yet the cost has raised so astronomically that most must go into lifelong debt (which, unlike businesses debt, cannot be defaulted on) just to have an ever-decreasing chance at eventually making a livable wage.
Essential industries; medicine, the press, food/agriculture, construction/property management, computing, big data, have all been steadily moving towards monopolization and gained the power to either buy or destroy any potential new competitors. Companies that have become “too big to fail” are now essentially guaranteed government bailouts when they make stupid decisions, using the threat of bringing down their entire massive customer base with them should they not get their way. The system of taxation has been corrupted, allowing the ultra wealthy to pay a disproportionately small amount in taxes compared to the portion of the nations total wealth they hold. The tax revenue reaped primarily from the sweat and toil of the proletariate then proceeds to be funneled right into the pockets of the bourgeoisie in the form of bailouts, ludicrous government contracts, and subsidies.
The classification of financial donations to political campaigns by the Citizens United Act has given the wealthy vastly disproportionate influence over the outcomes of elections and the policies put forward. Gerrymandering has taken away voter representation, as has the electoral college and voting restriction laws. The candidate with the most votes no longer wins. Political campaigns, advertisements, and discussion is largely controlled by a small handful of media conglomerates who use it to spread propaganda, some of which is directly being produced by enemy nations.
Social safety nets like medicare, SNAP, social security, and homeless shelters are being dismantled piece by piece, while the number of individuals requiring them is only increasing. Meanwhile, while homelessness and poverty skyrockets, the government focuses on reducing workers bargaining power and slowing their wage growth rather than tackling price gouging. Hanging on to the title of “democratic republic” by the thinnest of threads, the United States will soon turn into a true oligarchy unless drastic change is made soon.