Care to explain why? There's riots in the streets because of police brutality, browser history can now be requested by law enforcement without a warrant, .. i mean OP has a point?
Yes, OP has a point, but his characterisation of the US is not accurate.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
I'm certain some of this sentiment is social media propaganda farms.
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.
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.