John Adams and George Washington believed a two-party system was also an enemy of democracy. It's not really so black and white. Free vs. non-free.

Both sides really do have mass surveillance, China's being a bit further along and a bit more omniscient.

I don't think TikTok, a collection of six-second clips of teens messing around represents a real, material, meaningful threat to freedom and democracy. Even if they collected all the footage and ran it all through their national security apparatus. The signal to noise ratio on this content is incomprehensibly low.

This is grandstanding and showmanship on the part of two strongmen leaders, one totalitarian overlord and one wannabe, and really, I don't think there's a clear right side and wrong side here.