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Comment by wunderland | Hacker News Reader

The Americans will always do the right thing? That has not been true in my lifetime.

Maybe you missed "having explored every other option". It's my tongue-in-cheek way of saying, as bad as the US can be, the difference against a Russian or Chinese lead world is so great, it's not even funny.

We sure wouldn't be having conversations like this. I'd be silent, in re-education or dead and maybe you'd be happy with that. But you'd talk about different things on different forums, for sure.

This relies on the assumption (possibly correct but I don't think definitively established) that a multi-polar world where e.g. China enjoys a similar status to the US would result in them imposing their own values on the world in a similar manner to how the US has done or deposing distant governments. So far China's interactions with the world outside its immediate vicinity (Taiwan, India, SCS countries) have largely been of an economic nature rather than the more bomb-dropping and CIA-flavoured approach the US has taken. So I don't think that the United States' relative loss of power necessarily means a worse world for those outside the US (again, excluding China's immediate neighbours).

Yes, it relies on that assumption.

Any other assumption goes completely against the evidence.

Right, if we use your standard for China then America has only done diplomatic actions.

You are glossing over China threatening everyone of their neighbors with conflicts, border disputes and ofc exploiting other far reaching countries of their resources.

> economic nature

plus coercion of Chinese people living abroad, plus a shitload of institutions that promote "Chinese culture" that happen to tow the party line, and so on

I am in my mid thirties in an east european country. I barely had any exposure to Chinese culture, without seeking it myself, even though their written history is some 3000 years old. What I grew up on is pure American propaganda and interventionism.

It would be ironic if you are from one of Eastern European country, where China financed a project, built by its own company and now the said country is facing a debt it can’t handle.

Right so the difference is logistics? The Chinese don’t have the logistics aircraft carriers / foreign bases yet to effectively bully people beyond their immediate neighbors?

Are you sure China wants to lead the world by force USA style? Wouldn't it need to first form a political bloc? Where's China's bloc?

We need to look at hard evidence of how many counties China invaded vs NATO. It’s fascinating.

I'm saying China wants to rule its sphere of influence.

This forum for conversation would not exist and talking like this would get both of us jailed or worse.

The US and China are not that different in terms of censorship. They just censor different things. I'm sure you can think of half a dozen comments that would get you thrown off this forum, and a couple of others that would earn you a visit from the FBI before the end of the week.

"just" is doing some Superman level heavy lifting there.

FBI won't imprison a million people in re-education camps.

Doesn’t the United States have to most people in prison?

Largely for violent crime, not thought crimes.

there are tens of thousands of people in prison in the United States for possession of weed alone.

Are you aware of the concentration camps in which the Japanese were 'interned' during WWII? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_America...

I'll leave slavery, the Red Scare, Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and all other atrocities out of it for now.

This exceptionalism thing is jarring.

What does the USA censor?

Start with Assange and Snowden.

Biden sucks and the FBI are clowns. Yeah go post the equivalent of that on a Chinese ISP to Chinese social media

That's token opposition - it doesn't contain anything remotely threatening. Now start talking about Burisma, the son's laptop, the daughter's diaries. That would get you shut down, around the time of the last election.

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