"And most people think this is "freedom". What a joke."
The Bill of Rights is where Americans derive most of their freedom, and because like you say—people have little control over the government at this stage in the experiment, so these liberties are steadily getting eroded. What started as “a Republic if you can keep it” was later perceived as a Democracy by some, but Franklin, the guy who helped create that Republic compared Democracy to two wolves and a sheep voting on what’s for dinner. Do we have something more akin to an Oligarchy today? Possibly. However, people won’t feel it the most until they lose their Bill of Rights, and that’ll be when the freedom fails. All nation-states are fiat fueled nowadays, so there’s really not a chance in hell you’ll have “absolute freedom.” The best you’ll get is something that lands on the spectrum of somewhere between more liberty or more tyranny. I.e., until we can get rid of the fiat monetary system which is a covert system of slavery.