Princeton also did a study on America not being actually a democracy. I shared it here:
I think most of us can agree living in an abundance of resources (waste!) with some mild political freedom where you're allowed to say anything as long as you don't try to change anything (see: COINTELPRO, Julian Assange, etc) like in the Global North, is more pleasant to live on a daily basis than a hunger-ridden autocracy like North Korea. But even that is debatable and i'm sure many north koreans would disagree.
What can we do about it? Attack the system, day by day and bits by bits. Steal what you can from the rich to redistribute to the poor. Make cooperatives, whether as employees or volunteers, so that more and more people can quit wage exploitation and start to live again, "from each according to their capabilities, to each according to their needs" (old anarchist saying). Form collectives for all kinds of struggles affecting you and your loved ones: anti-patriarchy, anti-racism, accessibility...
Don't accept anyone claiming they're above you. We're all in this together, and those who claim to seek authority to find solutions will create more problems than they will solve, no matter their good intentions. We need to build "power to the people", not "power over the people", as anyone who has studied some history of political repression in the early Soviet Union (and other "dictatorships of the proletariat") can learn. See also Emma Goldman's "Trotsky protests too much" or "There is no communism in Russia" on this topic.
Organize. Organize. Organize.
By silent I mean they don't arrest you or put you on any public lists. Instead they just gather information, lots of information, and they use it in future Cambridge Analytica style propaganda campaigns.
I don't mean to imply that only Republicans would do this. After Trump's successful use of this kind of political propaganda every single political party and PR agency on the planet is working on duplicating it.
Arresting people is old fashioned. Modern totalitarianism is built on disinformation, microtargeted propaganda, surveillance, and nudge theory.