What a laughable notion. Utter the words "national security" and all your checks and balances go right out the window. There are also no checks and balances for non-US citizens: it is free to violate my non-existent rights as much as it wants.
The notion that it’s no different from China is absurdist propaganda. In China there is no such thing as abuse of power if it is sanctioned by the party.
I was responding to the notion that it is completely different from China. It is not. The western nations are more totalitarian than they would like to admit.
Western governments are not controlled by a single party with an lifetime ruler and no democratic mechanisms at all for expressing dissent, let alone moderating power.
It’s not a matter of degree. Doing bad stuff is not the same as totalitarianism.
What kind of false equivalency bullshit is this? In China, you utter the words "national security" and newspapers get shut down by the police: https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/why-beijing-shu.... Publish the wrong kind of books and they'll kidnap you and put you in prison (even if you have a foreign citizenship, which you'll conveniently "voluntarily renounce" in custody): https://www.npr.org/2020/02/25/809163417/hong-kong-bookselle....
I'm tired of this whatboutism used to excuse completely appalling behavior with -zero- checks and balances at all. Country A doing bad thing doesn't excuse Country B from doing a much worse thing.
And probably soon "public health"