Au contraire it's just a matter of what definitions you are working with, and to many of us the US is the penultimate expression of the rule of capital over society -- capital-ism. The rule of capital. The rule of the interests of those who own capital.

Classical liberals and libertarians of course run with a different -- IMHO utopian -- definition of capitalism which puts the emphasis on the act of individuals trading goods with each other. From my perspective it's an ideological smoke screen which papers over the reality of the asymmetrical distribution of power that arises naturally out of the particular 'natural rights' of property that classical liberalism embraces. And they were embraced historically precisely because of that distribution of power -- during an era of expanding colonialism, imperialism, and enclosure.

To put it another way -- the US may not look like a textbook laissez-faire capitalist society that a Friedman, Hayek or Randian would advocate -- but the unjust power structure of the US and societies like it are what actual-existing capitalism _creates_. It is capitalists who rule, and capitalists who made it that way.

Spot on! I believe the other term is 'crony capitalism' and this is too often confused with the natural desire of most of us to be able to freely trade goods and services (including our labor) with other people within an evolving independent legal system (national law & international agreements otherwise known as international law) that disallows criminal and unfair practices.