I don't think anyone would suggest that slavery was an exclusively american concept, but there are ways that slavery impacted america and is still impacting america that i don't think is true of other first world countries (e.g. how financially dependent early america was on it, how late in history relative to other countries it was abolished, how it was one of the causes of the civil war, which in turn significantly shaped america, etc)

> There are more serious ones, but most are just used as talking points about how the modern people are smarter and that people in the past were somehow bad people when trialled against their new modern ideals.

100% on this.

Sometimes I feel we are like salt water fish talking about how ridiculous and miserable the fresh water fish in the upstream are.

People have experiences that drive perception.

Drugs, particularly marijuana were a default easy way to get people into the justice system. It requires actual police work and attention to detail to get convictions for behavioral crimes. Possession of weed is easy. Those petit arrests were used to recruit informants and compel testimony.

The decriminalization of marijuana has been pretty transformative and disruptive of policing. There’s good and bad to that, but if we care about justice, it has been a major catalyst.