For the record, I very much disagree with Chomsky, but he was writing when the events you are writing about were contemporary, and he knew about them. I do think you may have an overly rosy view of Cold War USA. Lots of people didn't have a choice of where to work, there was and still is some hunger and malnutrition, there was a lot of jingoistic ideological propaganda, involuntary commitment and even lobotomy was used against dissidents (especially feminists and gay men), and for example the Comics Code explicitly required the jingoistic propaganda, as did the DoD for films made with their cooperation (which included almost anything touching on military topics).

There was a lot more freedom than in the USSR, but the same shitty phenomena occurred, just less so.