So this idea that it is not that secure/free because of a minor uptick in racism is ridiculous. China is routinely kidnapping and torturing anyone who disagrees with them - citizen or not. And we still don’t know where many missing journalists have ended up.
Actually the mainstream TV & newspaper media are overall owned by a very few holding companies and there's plenty of stories of people being subtly or overtly pressured to either change tune or be forced off the air if they ie spoke extensively against the Iraq War pre-invasion.
And you have plenty of organisations like NPR and PBS which are truly independent.
Also anyone can create a news site or blog without worrying about it being blocked.
Not sure through what mechanism you think they are directly controlled.
Personally I think anyone can live in their own fiction as long as they are not hurting anyone else, but to consider a strategic resource like the media as being truly independent in any country is naive. You're literally missing an entire world if you do not look outside your home country.
Why control things directly when you don't have to?
No. They're controlled by multinational corporations with clear profit motives and conflicts of interests and thus tend to be biased in favor of those industries.
In China you have state dominance so you have state controlled media, in the U.S. you have corporate media. That's not independent media, just the other side of the same coin.
And if your argument is "they don't control the army", the military industrial complex means they don't have to do so directly.
The uptick or racism is not minor either. Racism has been embedded in the American way of life and the fight against it has been long and painful. Being a minority in the US is absolutely a huge risk factor.
> China is routinely kidnapping and torturing anyone who disagrees with them
American police kill a lot of citizens, and incarcerate a large number of mostly POC.
And the current POTUS has repeatedly said he won’t leave office even if votes out, and has speculated openly on staying in office beyond term limits. So please don’t give me crap about China when our country is at the precipice of losing its status as a Democracy.
I am a little bit speechless at all this vile of anti-US propaganda. It is insane.
One big benefit of living there is you won't be bombed by the US military, I guess.
US Military bombs Canadians living in Canada? I didn't know, source?
There is a lot of shit wrong with America. But, seems like people are getting more nationalistic and throwing away logic, reasoning, objectivity, rationale and common sense - most importantly self introspection of tribalism that is going on these days.
Folks - the world is getting more inwards looking. Be careful if your psyche falls into the trap of nationalism. It will cloud your judgement and pretty much everything with it.
I am seeing this, frankly, a lot from our friends in EU. Authoritarian governments want the west to fragment and cause infighting amongst themselves. We must use facts, truth and integrity. Our democracies is at stake. It is unfortunately, not going to go well with this type of climate exasperated by Coronavirus travel restrictions.
We are heading to the wrong direction.
Many authoritarian governments in history and today exist because people desire security and fear the incredible violence exhibited by an external, dominant power. If you don't make sure this actually is hyperbole and check the abuse of power at home and abroad, the violence will one day (perhaps soon) come to you, along with authoritarianism. Not recognizing the cause and not seeing the already creeping trend in the face of all evidence is what's clouding people's judgement.
California grows a lot of water-expensive crops (e.g. almonds) because legacy farmers don’t pay anything near what residents, commercial, or new farmers do. That would rebalance quickly and obviate the need for any invasion if we just dumped wasteful “water rights” and instead priced water like any other rivalrous good (e.g. govt auctions).
Most of the drawbacks you've heard about Canadian healthcare have been promulgated by the many many entities whose pockets are lined by this idiotic system continuing to grind forward.
A recent tech company I worked for in the Bay Area charged about $50 pre-tax twice a month and I paid nothing out of pocket. The gulf between good healthcare coverage and bad coverage is what’s obscene in the US.
I haven’t seen an argument for how the good coverage is worse, which is why I always ask.
The existence of premium healthcare plans for the high earners or the wealthy is not a reflection of the healthcare system. It’s how much access most people have that matters, statistically.
If it was just the rich that did well, it would be trivial to get consensus to vote for change.
Moving countries isn’t easy. Sometimes you just gotta find a part of the dumpster that isn’t on fire and do the best you can.
True, it does not. But who is the judge? The idea is that you have your own backyard cleaned before barking about someone else. Otherwise you just do not have that high moral ground to speak from.
They weren't comparing the US to China, they were explaining the flaws with American democracy/judiciary/media. The US is not a shining beacon to be held up in those categories compared to eg New Zealand/Germany (proportional representation), Denmark (judicial independence - the US doesn't crack the top ten[1]), or most of the rest of the West (see how far you have to scroll in press freedom rankings to find the US [2] - they have very weak media ownership rules, and while the media is free from a lot of govt limitations, it's free to be biased and partisan as hell)
Or just watch the opening from the Newsroom. [3]
[1] https://worldjusticeproject.org/sites/default/files/images/2...
Of course they were comparing US with China, implying the US has its own flaws and shouldn't lecture China. That's like saying US had its own racisim in 1930 so it had no right to interefere in Nazi Germany's internal policies.
US may not be a shining beacon of democratic values but it's a country that can do something about China's rise as a world super power(unlike Denmark, NZ or Germany).
I’m not sure you know what the phrase “at the precipice” means, but the US isn’t even close to losing it. The separation of duties between the state and the federal government in conjunction with the branches of government means that even a fully compromised election for one of the positions cannot take the whole country.
By what objective criteria do you classify it as “on the precipice”?
> keep democracy functioning (Federal Agencies, Judiciary, Education, EPA etc)
Democracy existed before the EPA, the department of education, and essentially every other federal agency. Consolidation of ever more power at the federal level is antithetical to democracy anyway - the federal govt is a republic of democratic states.
> which if the current POTUS wins, will signal the de facto end of Democracy
You’re saying that if he wins a democratic election, it will be the end of democracy? That just sounds like sour grapes over an asshole being picked.
I find these 'but the US' responses to be particularly unhelpful as they attempt to frame things very much in the vein of China's own 'do not meddle in our internal affairs ' rhetoric.