Same deal as with that Bundy/Overpass standoff between militia types and the Feds a few years ago. The Feds showed up, saw the number of men with rifles, turned around and went home. Mission accomplished right? The militia guys all pat each other on the back and congratulate themselves on scaring off the feds. Except they then get quietly arrested one by one over the next few months. Those arrests never become big headline stories like the initial standoff, so you still have fools today who think those standoff tactics are viable.
This one. When the local odds aren't in their favor, they go home and arrest people later at their leisure.
The tool is good. Ensuring it's used for good reasons it's a separate problem.
And those arrests didn’t really amount to anything, did they?
So yes, I’d say mission accomplished.
The government had embeds in social media orgs. Just imagine if during the Johnson or Nixon admins the gov/FBI/etc had actual "embeds" in the WashPo/NYT, etc. It's one thing for say Bezos to sympathize with Biden, or Elon sympathize with Rand, but it's another for the gov to had employees embedded and offering their take on things in the guise of "protecting the public from misinformation"
But I hope that in the coming years, western societies will investigate government actions during the Covid craze. That’s the advantage of Democratic societies, there is at least a chance that sh*t gets cleaned up.
That’s pretty much what journalist Carl Bernstein claimed in 1977, followed much later by historian Hugh Wilford in 2008.
Nixon had his famous Enemies List which was filled with journalists, and Nancy Reagan was in frequent communication with Los Angeles Times publisher Otis Chandler about the criticism of her husband (then California governor) in the paper, as only two examples.
Is not compared to being arrested and possibly jailed
[1] and given the volatility of this comment it seems people take issue with the bill of rights.
“Our Constitution is not good. It is a document designed to create a society of enduring white male dominance, hastily edited in the margins to allow for what basic political rights white men could be convinced to share. The Constitution is an imperfect work that urgently and consistently needs to be modified and reimagined to make good on its unrealized promises of justice and equality for all.
And yet you rarely see liberals make the point that the Constitution is actually trash. Conservatives are out here acting like the Constitution was etched by divine flame upon stone tablets, when in reality it was scrawled out over a sweaty summer by people making deals with actual monsters who were trying to protect their rights to rape the humans they held in bondage.”
Elie Mystal
https://books.apple.com/us/book/allow-me-to-retort/id1549926...
Moreover, you can have a perfectly nice constitution guaranteeing all kinds of rights and freedoms like the USSR did (and I suspect the CCP does) and not enjoy the important aspects enshrined in such document)
But that's a misdirection in any case. It's utterly authoritarian to have a government decide what is truth and what isn't. That's one of the first things authoritarians go after. We should be very weary of anyone espousing the view government should have that right.
So, imo, and apologies for the controversial political example, but when people ask "where is the right to abortion in the constitution?" they completely miss the point that the actual question must be "where is the right for the government to regulate abortions in the constitution?"
Please stop buying from China.
In fact, in recent times Lithuania has been a force for good against China, I’d suggest seeking out their goods if applicable to your needs.
For instance, I was shocked to find out that a lot of "Brazilian" honey was actually rebranded corn syrup imported from China and cut with low-grade Chinese honey, this all to get around U.S. import restrictions due to the lack of quality/safety regulation in China.
It's expensive, it's tiring, it's hard. But, in the end I feel it's worth it for the safety of my family and others. Whether it's honey, a sketchily-soldered power supply, or some completely fake lithium ion battery for your vacuum that only has 25% of rated capacity and might burn your house down, it's best to stay away from the Chinese option if you can.
1) I need to befriend a local beekeeper 2) I need to pick up beekeeping
You may think, that's too much work but really the honey you're buying at the store stands a really good chance of simply being sugar with only a trace of honey. Not good for you.
But I haven't really had honey since then so the point is moot.
No need to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
I might have purchased less than 10 made in china products in the past 3 years
Something is better than nothing
It's practically impossible to avoid it.
For someone with such a strong anti-china stance (enough to create a throwaway), I'd expect full devotion to the cause.
Agree we can't avoid completely but still doing something is better than nothing.
It's not 0 support, but it's a lot less than buying new.
> (2021) "Here we use previously non-publicly available data to describe levels and trends in the manufacturing locations of the most commonly used prescription pharmaceuticals, off-patent generic drugs, intended to be consumed by Americans. We find that the base ingredients required for the manufacturing of these prescription drugs are overwhelmingly and increasingly manufactured in non-domestic locations, specifically India and China."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8109232/
In turn, the raw materials going into the India pharmaceutical pipeline tend to come from China more than anywhere else:
> "Even as the nation clamoured for banning products and cancelling contracts emanating from China, it’s apparent that, at least in pharma, it may not quite work out as imports from China account for 80% of total raw materials for making medicines, also called APIs (active pharmaceutical ingredients)."
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/...
However, this doesn't get a lot of corporate media coverage, given that pharma is among the top advertisers.
Mutual interests tend to keep things civilised
You could make that argument, but that is dependent strongly on everybody being rational actors and there is plenty of evidence that dictatorships are not rational actors.
The reality is that it will take multiple generations for us to get rid politicians who when zoomed out act like teenage boys, and we can argue all we want.
Everybody - "Welcome, US of A."
USA - "Today I haven't orchestrated a coup in (checks paper)[0] ... six years?"
*applause*
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Guinean_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...
That would probably require a different point of view than labelling China as the enemy, or keeping them pre-industrial and poor in order to control them, as the US has done repeatedly in many south American countries.
It’s the same with Russia. It has been overflowed with money from EU before and during the war, and stop buying Russian goods will only affect individuals not buying it (and perhaps local sellers, too).
This is plain lie. At the very best you could stop buying end consumer products made and shipped from China. Assuming that things mad in the West are free from Chinese components / materials is a delusion
I saw so many cool, affordable products that didn't have any alternatives (or the alternatives were too expensive) I ended up buying even more things!