I visited the US dozens of times for work and conferences. But it has heen decreasing steadily with only 3 visits since 9/11. There might be no future one at all, particularly not under the current administration.
Yes, OP has a point, but his characterisation of the US is not accurate.
Freedom of speech and privacy have been eroding in the US. I don't know if police brutality is constant at this level though I think the large amount of military grade equipment the police have has increased.
From my perspective it seems like a good idea for the US to reflect on where it is going compared to its past.
My daughter had a phase where she was excited about China. She was not happy with my clear refusal to travel there. I was in Russia once for 12 hours, because there was the possibility to go there without a visa. These decisions don't follow scientific criteria.
What's your short list of particularly good/best places in SE Asia/Oceania (that you'd be comfortable travelling to, but even work with, invest in? (Coming from the north Atlantic)
I'm down to:
- Australia + NZ
- Taiwan (sadly HK seems 'compromised')
- Singapore
Pretty much in that order. That's the shortest this list has even been in my lifetime. What am I not seeing?
If "browser history" is even on your radar when responding to a claim like this, things may not be as bad as you think they are.
What is it with this absurd need to defend how poorly your country is doing by essentially saying "hey at least we're not North Korea!"?
Get your head out of the clouds here: Your country elected an atrocious president, who, with both some poor timing and some atrociously bad decision-making got handed a platter of crises that are completely beyond the capabilities of his administration.
Now, as a direct result, your country is more divided than it has ever been in recent history. People are rioting while a pandemic is happening. Civilians are being shot, journalists are being arrested, and you're here, pretending everything is fine because you're not literally starving in a prison right now.
Like, what? You want to wait&see even longer until this fully develops or you want to start fixing?
Let that sink in: The people who say "it could be worse" are part of the problem.
Police brutality nationwide is not as bad as is being represented (despite the most recent case being a tragedy), and the reason people are comfortable protesting is because COVID-19 failed to meet apocalyptic expectations.
Not to mention we have an election coming up, and there's a lot of people who have a vested interest in making things appear worse than they are.
I don't support warrantless browser history requests, but it won't be too long until a generation who grew up with computers is actually in the legislature. It's a very solvable problem, and not in the same ballpark as protests in big cities or COVID-19.
Risk is a trade-off. People are out there protesting because the problem is bad enough that it warrants risking lives over. And not just in an "I might catch COVID" way: People are being teargassed and shot.
> there's a lot of people who have a vested interest in making things appear worse than they are.
This cuts both ways: there's a lot of people who have a vested interest in making things appear better than they are. Consider this: I'm an outsider, and have no horse in that demented race. I follow what's happening over there because what does happen may impact my country. What I see does not look good, and there isn't really a debate about this on this side of the atlantic.
The fact that whether your country is doing as bad as it appears to be is even in question just shows how divisive your media is.
> I don't support warrantless browser history requests
Well I'm glad to read that, but in this thread, warrantless browser history requests aren't the only thing you've been downplaying. Personally, I think you're trying to convince yourself that things aren't "that bad". The longer you do so, the harder it's going to hit when you realize not only it is that bad, but it's only gotten worse since.
I think the vast, vast majority are truly risking nothing and know it. What you see in the media are the tiny minority who know what they're getting into.
> This cuts both ways: there's a lot of people who have a vested interest in making things appear better than they are. Consider this: I'm an outsider, and have no horse in that demented race. I follow what's happening over there because what does happen may impact my country. What I see does not look good, and there isn't really a debate about this on this side of the atlantic.
I understand what you see doesn't look good, but what you're seeing is entirely filtered through what traditional and social media want you to see. You (presumably) don't have family all over the country you stay in contact with who know what it's really like here.
And what is it like? There were some protests in certain areas of big cities. For everyone else (the vast, vast majority), it was just another weekend.
> The fact that whether your country is doing as bad as it appears to be is even in question just shows how divisive your media is.
Media is supposed to be divisive. If you're getting only one perspective from your media, you should already be concerned.
> Well I'm glad to read that, but in this thread, warrantless browser history requests aren't the only thing you've been downplaying. Personally, I think you're trying to convince yourself that things aren't "that bad". The longer you do so, the harder it's going to hit when you realize not only it is that bad, but it's only gotten worse since.
We're not at war. COVID-19 is on the way out. The fact that people are protesting over-emphasized police brutality is evidence things aren't as bad as they are. They're not protesting a lack of food, or access to drinkable water. Let's try and keep things in perspective here.
> Media is supposed to be divisive.
Oof. This is on the same level as hearing "my SO is supposed to hit me when I'm wrong". Media is supposed to be neutral and bring you the facts. Your media clearly doesn't do that, but it's certainly not supposed to be that way.
You're trying to "keep things in perspective" because you think you're arguing with people who believe you're North Korea. If I believed that, I wouldn't be wasting my time arguing, because by that point it would be too late. Things are really bad for the US right now, and they're headed for worse. You can keep arguing about exactly how bad it is, or you can start to think about how you can help prevent them from getting worse.
I don't know what to tell you then. Consider getting more friends in the US if you want a realistic view of the country.
> Oof. This is on the same level as hearing "my SO is supposed to hit me when I'm wrong". Media is supposed to be neutral and bring you the facts. Your media clearly doesn't do that, but it's certainly not supposed to be that way.
No, news is supposed to be neutral. And again: if you're only getting one perspective, you're not getting others. It sounds like you've already heard all you want to.
> You're trying to "keep things in perspective" because you think you're arguing with people who believe you're North Korea. If I believed that, I wouldn't be wasting my time arguing, because by that point it would be too late. Things are really bad for the US right now, and they're headed for worse. You can keep arguing about exactly how bad it is, or you can start to think about how you can help prevent them from getting worse.
I think a key sign of a successful society is when people are free to (and do) protest issues that are not nearly as serious as they think they are. It's not a sign of failure, it's a sign of success.
If you step out of the media bubble, you might realize COVID-19, police brutality, and racism aren't nearly as bad as portrayed--at least in the vast majority of areas. But don't let that compromise your view.
I certainly lost contact with some people who started getting increasingly angry at everyone and everything. Lashing out on others like the world is out to get them. I'm sure if I kept in touch they'd give me their ever-so-rosy point of view on how well America is doing right now but it doesn't take a genius to figure out their point of view is an illusion they barely believe themselves.
I'm going to stop arguing now because you're starting to say things that are blatantly wrong and it feels like you're baiting me into a bigger argument than this is worth.
I'm just offering you a perspective from another corner of the globe, that isn't biased by your media you so proudly declare is supposed to be divisive. You're free to ignore it. You're free to think you're better-informed by consuming twice as much clickbaity media rather than half as much neutral media.
I don't gain anything by correcting you, after all.
The fact is that all the problems highlighted (C19, police etc) got magnified by a bloodthirsty media looking for clicks.
Outside of big cities covid has been a nonfactor and the numbers are convincing especially when you take nursing homes out if the equation. There is plenty of research conclusively stating that police racism is behind us (see ex. research paper by black harvard PHD, widely cited). Even the riots in NYC were mild considering what is happening in cities like PHI.
So yes, there are indeed parts where things are not great PHI, NYC covid etc, but those are outliers. Yet the media ia using those examples and projecting it over an entire countey. Thats wrong and also a lie
Do you mean "media is supposed to be diverse"? Because that's a goal which is commonly held to be good.
I've literally never heard anyone say "Media is supposed to be divisive", nor heard the case for it. I'm going to assume that was a typo?
For the record:
Diverse: showing a great deal of variety; very different.
Diversive: tending to cause disagreement or hostility between people.
What I mean is that if you are consuming news media and seeing only one point of view, something is wrong. I feel like I frequently see commenters who implicitly believe there's only one valid side to an issue, and the other side is just racism / bigotry / corruption.
True, that's a call for diversity. But if you're seeing multiple perspectives butting heads consistently across the news media consumed by an entire country, that's divisive, as a result of having diverse perspectives and coverage. To your point, though, that's likely more the result of a lack of diversity at individual sources and people picking and choosing to consume less diverse news. "Divisive" isn't the right word.
How old is your legislature in average? Many people who grew up with the computers are in their 30s/40s now. Even 50s. I being 60 yo fart was using computers since I was 20 granted there might not be too many like myself.
I'm 31 and was one of the first few years where computers were in every classroom in my school district. We didn't have Internet in them until five or so years later, though.
Do you think this is the case across the board or is it worse for some segments of the population than others (I.e. by socioeconomic status, which neighborhood you live in, whether you are visible minority, ey )
That's not to say it justifies police brutality, of course, but again: it's statistics at a macro level.
I don't subscribe to your religion, so that's ok with me. I happen to think searching (and registering) social media is a progressively enlightened activity, similar to having any other record of action (criminal history) as an enduring element of identity.
> The people who say "it could be worse" are part of the problem.
Having a different standard of acceptability is not "part of a problem", from my perspective of what constitutes problems. Setting up an us vs them isn't a compelling call to action.
Since you're in favour of said policy, I'm going to put aside whether or not it's a good idea to do this.
More simply, my point is that claiming "things could be worse" is a problem and only serves as a path for things to get worse.
Politics is like a plane crash. You can choose to correct course when the sensors start pointing in the wrong direction. If you keep going, you can still try to alleviate the issues even when it's too late to prevent some kind of disaster. You can crash and maybe still salvage something. But at no point in that whole chain of events is it productive to say "things could be worse".
Ok, things could be worse. Then what do you do when they do get worse?
.. says someone from an anonymous account.
If you want to claim an identity online, I'm all for it. You should be able to own it and be accountable for it.
I'm certain some of this sentiment is social media propaganda farms.
A police force with no accountability, the ability to pry into the details of your private life without a warrant, and the ability to incarcerate or even murder you without cause is basically what we used to call "secret police". I don't think it's alarmist to avoid countries with institutions like that.
Not quite North Korea yet.
I'm sure that it doesn't seem to be that way from insiders perspective - it's very much possible to live safely and not to suffer from above mentioned problems on a daily basis, but same is true for those living in US.
Personally I wouldn't relocate willingly to either of the countries.
The big tensions are all anti-"immigrant" and of course Brexit and now the poor pandemic response. You can't tell people to ignore the deaths and hospitalisations of people they actually know. While most of the consequences of Brexit haven't hit yet, there is going to be a huge mess when the interim arrangements expire at the end of this year and the government has still done almost nothing to prepare.
C'mon. Of course they shouldn't have been arrested, but it's not some systemic suppression.
I'd just like to point out that the opposing view on that incident would characterize it as exactly the kind of sensationalized coverage which the above poster could be referring to. One narrative suggests that it was staged. Worth looking at it from both sides. As we discuss this, let's not steam roll past those concerns.
My personal view is that there's more than a little BS flying from all angles. CNN wouldn't be what I consider hard hitting or informative journalism. I don't know what really happened and I can't jump to any conclusions. Thanks.
https://twitter.com/GravelInstitute/status/12669299271164682...
My personal views are secondary to the point of my comment, which was: Perhaps we should consider both sides?
What exactly are you skeptical about?
For me I'm comfortable just leaving it as an unknown instead of attempting to take sides or claiming an authoritative understanding of the event. Moral grandstanding for either claim would be a further leap too far for me personally. However you are welcome to argue your opinion with someone else. I just can't do that in good faith. Thanks for understanding.
It made quite an impact here - and while you seem to think it's journalist trying to get ahead in their careers in this case that doesn't make sense. Being arrested makes it more difficult for foreign journalists to re-enter the US which has a huge negative impact on their job.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.news.com.au/world/north-ame...
Similarly, arresting reporters isn't a plus for a policeman's career.
I do take a position on outrage culture and rampant moralizing which is not serving us well. The blame game isn't the way out of this mess. One-sided, partisan takes are just more fuel on the fire.
Except that you do.
> CNN (a highly partisan outlet) has every incentive to have their reporter arrested.
> Therefore I have little room to pass judgement upon police officers who are clearly under more than a little bit of stress. Similarly, I can't condemn the reporter even if he is indeed (which I can't know with certainty) advancing his career in a very cynical way.
Police -> Under stress
Journalist -> advancing his career in a very cynical way
You seem to be using a rhetorical technique where you claim the moral high ground ("However I will refrain from making the judgement of which side is in the position of power."[1]) and then make third-person claims that you can deny are actually making an argument ("If the police department (or perhaps a social strata) were more powerful than CNN's (highly privileged) reporter then why was he released?").
No one else is calling you out on this, so I will. State your argument and stand behind it.
[1] Upthread, here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23378751
You put the cart before the horse when you accuse me of using a rhetorical technique to take the 'moral high ground'. Wouldn't it be more reasonable to assume that my reluctance to pass judgement on either party informs my statements?
You selectively quote me and ignore that I've also said that the police could have 'let it ride'. If it helps you any, I'll say here that arresting journalists is generally a bad move. Sorry if that wasn't clear from the outset.
The statements you quote were in response to the suggestion that one side was in a position of power. Symptomatically, you divorce this from context as you seek to find meat for your partisan cleaver.
As humans our views are subjective and fallible. The problem of induction etc. If I want to find fault I can most probably nit pick each respective side for hours. No, this is not an invitation to level further criticism on either party. I think we have had enough of that and it isn't getting us anywhere.
You establish the options as Pepsi and Coke and demand that I must choose a cola. Yet, I am not interested in these sugary, carbonated beverages. Here's my view: Partisan takes are all a bunch of gas, short term stimulation with no nourishment.
I'll repeat myself again in case you're still not following. Narrow views, divorced of context are not serving us well. They create a divisive atmosphere. Each respective side engages in outrage culture while offloading responsibility for the ugly outcomes onto their adversary.
Choosing not to participate and a reluctance to rush to judgement isn't a rhetorical technique. It is an acknowledgement that the choices laid before us represent a false dichotomy. It is a rejection of the toxicity of outrage culture. Thank you.
(edits for bad spellcheck)
But at the end of the day, your stance is already siding with someone by default, the side in power. You can claim neutrality ideologically, but that's useless in practicality. I'm sorry that you are disconnected enough from the world to not take sides or draw conclusions (even with caveats) unless you have a level of information that is practically impossible to gain.
This is highly presumptuous mischaracterization of my statement and intentions. We're discussing something online, unless you have a crystal ball I'd say you've made a bit of a leap here.
> I don't take sides
Not taking sides is de facto siding with the more powerful side in a situation for practical/effect purposes, this is pretty well established across many disciplines. I 100% am not saying you are ideologically siding with them, only that it is the effect of your lack of siding at all.
Thinking in realpolitik may be a viable way to inform oneself of a strategy to achieve ends, but I don't accept it personally as a method of observation or diving a moral truth of an event. I.E. the means justify the ends etc. This is where I diverge on your assumptions. Usually this method is characterized as resulting in immoral outcomes.
Furthermore, it hasn't been established that CNN, with an army of lawyers on retainer and a a massive budget isn't in the position of power. For CNN the arrest played well if not better than the normal coverage. Would you dispute that the arrest buttressed CNN's narrative? These are the ends which were achieved by this event. It is evidenced by the fact that we are having this discussion.
Who has more power in media, CNN or whichever local police department?
The relevant expression would be, "The pen is mightier than the sword". However I will refrain from making the judgement of which side is in the position of power.
Let us also observe that the reporter was released. If the police department (or perhaps a social strata) were more powerful than CNN's (highly privileged) reporter then why was he released?
No, I am afraid that I am left with more doubts after examining it at depth.
The last 6-9 months has made me change my mind.
The systematic firing of 5 inspector generals and the US Justice Department's reversal on the charges against Flynn and Stone have made me change my mind.
The US has always had inequal access to law, but now it appears the rule of law is in doubt. It doesn't matter if you are left or right leaning - if the law is that corrupted there is something to be concerned about.
We felt that way when Hillary Clinton avoided charges after using her private e-mail server for sending and receiving classified information, after Fast and Furious, and the IRS targeting of conservative organizations. But those weren't framed as "the rule of law is in doubt" because a different guy was in the White House.
And if you're seeing the Flynn case as an example of a solid and reasonable case being dropped due to political interference, I don't think you've read enough about it.
Literally Whataboutism
Now another guy is in charge. This isn't new.
Did you know that what happened in the Clinton case is not an uncommon occurrence? Did you know that Bush did the same thing[1]? And Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump did the same?[2]
In all these cases it's not the right thing to do, but nor is it criminal.
And what is this "people like you" attack? The Marc Rich case is something I'll condemn Bill Clinton for any day of the week - it's a complete miscarriage of justice and I wish there was a way it could be reversed. I'm not aware of anything like that from the Obama era but it's possible I've missed it.
Justice matters much more than politics.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_White_House_email_controv...
[2] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/cummings-jared-kushner...
I think I'll stick to those parts of the world where opposing Fascism is legal.
Also, opposing fascism is still legal here. We do actually have legally enshrined freedom of speech.
Of course there are downsides as well, but you learn how to work it.
Then there is also the cost of living.
In more corrupt countries, a large fraction of the population gets to use petty graft. In less corrupt countries, a small fraction of the population gets to use grand graft.