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Comment by pm90 | Hacker News Reader

The US is neither a stable democracy (incredible levels of partisanship and voter suppression) nor does it have an independent judiciary (justices even in SCOTUS mostly vote around party lines on issues of voting ie power). The most popular media network is Fox News which is openly subservient to the President.

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.

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One can be critical of China and the US at the same time. Difference being is only in one of those two countries can you open to do both.

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.

Those responses aren't rebuttals, but rather disbelief in the intellectual honesty or humanity of whatever is being debated. In short, people don't actually give a shit about other countries or how their people live, but they use the inferiority of others to make themselves feel superior. That's all exceptionalism really is.

Tell that to hundreds of thousands of Indian, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Philippino, Taiwanese, etc immigrants that work here in the tech industry.

I am a little bit speechless at all this vile of anti-US propaganda. It is insane.

As a Canadian living in the US: it really isn't. The US wants to believe it isn't a dumpster fire but beyond its natural beauty (literally the Chinese name for America means "beautiful country", of which I'm jealous because the Chinese name for Canada is Jianada) and high salary there are so, so many reasons why it is not a very desirable place to live. Institutional racism and a comically horrible healthcare system are some examples. Many Americans are quite delusional about this.

One big benefit of living there is you won't be bombed by the US military, I guess.

> 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?

Come on now. You're being deliberately obtuse.

Exactly, throwing around "US Military bombing everyone" is a hyperbole seeded with deep prejudice and anti-US sentiments with no objective backing. The question raised was to show the absurdity of this argument.

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.

ikr? what about the half of the world they -dont- bomb...

Source please.

It is only hyperbole to the exceptionally privileged, exactly mirroring the belief that internal police violence is hyperbole. It is or is not depending on who you are/where you live.

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.

Pretty easy to imagine this happening to control access to fresh water & arable land as climate change progresses. The corn belt is shifting north.

Fresh water doesn’t come from Canada for most of the US. Additionally, it’s not nearly to the point of being a war-worthy resource. There would be plenty of water in California if farmers just paid for it the same way everyone else does.

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).

Why live in the US if you dislike it so much? Why are you willing to live in a “dumpster fire”?

Currently: high salary and partner is in medical residency for the next number of years. After the only candidate who actually wanted to fix your ridiculous healthcare system dropped out of the presidential primary, my desire to continue living here has dropped precipitously. I'll probably end up moving back to Canada before long, or some other country that doesn't literally drive you slowly insane.

Curious, as a high salary earner, you must have good health coverage. Do you still feel that the Canadian healthcare system with it’s infamous delays, etc is better?

Basically: yes, absolutely. Canadians in general love their healthcare and my personal experience with it has been nothing but positive. My frustration with American healthcare is augmented by how much better I know it can be. I pay $500/month for shit-tier health insurance here and actually using the healthcare costs even more money!

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.

Ah, so you’re not with a company that has a good healthcare plan. This is part of what leaves the US healthcare system so broken. The experience is drastically different if you have an employer with a “Cadillac” healthcare plan.

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.

Third world countries have rich people who live with a substantially higher standard of living than the rest of their society, and yet we don’t consider that fact as evidence that the country is doing well.

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.

Not rich or wealthy, this is middle class. 60% of Americans are happy with their healthcare.

If it was just the rich that did well, it would be trivial to get consensus to vote for change.

The argument is the US health care system is worse. People like to bring up wait times, but your wait time is infinite if you can't afford a specialist / non-acute care.

Oh, I definitely would. The only things keeping me here is my job, and my wife’s job, and my family, and my wife’s family, and my friends, and my wife’s friends, and my daughter’s friends...

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.

I agree with you in regards to the delusion. People in the EU are so much happier and have better quality of life in comparison with your average American. Working in tech is one of the most valid reasons to remain in the United States. We still have the best salaries, job opportunities, and employers. That might change someday, but it's still the case.

It's really not. It's not propoganda, either. It's the truth.

Thankfully facts are facts. It doesn't excuse anything China does though.

>"It doesn't excuse anything China does though"

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.

You don't know what you are talking about until you live in a communist country. Just making a joke at the wrong time about the "emperor" could put you in jail for a long time. U.S has its flaws but you can't compare it with China. See how the minorities are treated there(i.e the muslims) and the talk about racism in the US

Don't make a bomb joke in a US airport either!

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...

[2] https://rsf.org/en/ranking_table

[3] https://youtu.be/VMqcLUqYqrs

Offending a politician and making bomb jokes in airport are different things in US but not in China. This is pretty much my point.

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).

> So please don’t give me crap about China when our country is at the precipice of losing its status as a Democracy.

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”?

By the objective criteria that the current POTUS retains his office despite ample, credible evidence of committing impeachable offenses. By the objective fact that he continue to commit more such offenses routinely and Americans seem almost numb to how unusual it is anymore. The precipice is the upcoming election, which if the current POTUS wins, will signal the de facto end of Democracy in the US, as he and his cronies will consolidate their power and forever remake the institutions that are supposed to keep democracy functioning (Federal Agencies, Judiciary, Education, EPA etc).

Nope, only one of the parties thinks that the president should be impeached and removed. This isn’t an entire party (House and Senate) going rogue either. The polls are similar across the entire population.

> 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.

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