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Comment by vmception | Hacker News Reader

That’s because people are aiming for single party control right now, in the US.

The difference is that expressing an opinion to another American abroad just means you cant sleep with them. It doesn't cause the federal or municipal police to track down your family for intimidation, or the private sector to galvanize excision of them either. For the individual that voiced there is just a small risk of being disassociated with the person you said something to, and if it was digital there is a small risk of getting fired or disassociated from institutions you were a part of. Very small risk. Maybe greater over the following decade, for something you said now.

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Of course you have a point, but I just think that's a conveniently selective interpretation of the reality. I mean just take blackness for example, you don't even have to say anything for your life to be fundamentally undermined by the federal and municipal police. But what I think is more significant is Western foreign policy, freedom of self-determination exists in the weakest sense of freedom to adhere to Western hegemony. Just take Hong Kong for example, the only reason it exists is because the Chinese refused to continue the opium trade with the British. That's where the Opium Wars come from. And that continues to be the modus operandi; silencing of indigenous voices, funding of anti-communist sentiment in South America and South East Asia, arms sales to the Middle East, fabrication of evidence of WMDs to start wars, funding of anti-capitalist sentiment in Africa.

Of course us western, middle-class white people think we're free, we think what we have is normal. Nothing's prodding us to question the status quo.

I chose examples also available to black Americans. Of the example I chose, the biggest risk is just not being able to sleep with the American that person met abroad. The federal and municipal police are not going to track down their family stateside for harassment.

I think you extrapolated waaaaay more than either of us were talking about beforehand. We're talking about the comparisons to what happened in the article.

Its a tricky discussion since many of us want to make these comparisons between the countries, its very tempting to, but without narrowly tailoring the conversation it just derails everything.

Like I say I think you have a point, which I agree with, I just think it's conveniently selective of its viewpoint