Sure, by voting for one of two parties that have existed for centuries and been sponsored by the same 1% for as long.
You have the potential to watch your fellow americans brainwashed a bit more everyday into accepting their function as modern slaves with less and less benefits and more and more stress.
Americans get to choose. If they choose to be brainwashed as you call it, then that's their volition. If America collapses, it will be the responsibility of the people that they didn't use their voice while they had it.
The Chinese do not get to choose anything. Every time they try - and they have tried - they get violently put down by their own government. In China, nothing like the Occupy movement would ever be tolerated at all, those people would not be allowed to squat on park property and protest, they would not be allowed to march, they would not be allowed to do even a fraction of what they got away with here in the states, and it sure as hell wouldn't all be filmed and put on YouTube for everybody to see.
The various movements of the 1960s and 1970s would have been completely impossible in China. Try holding a rally for free unionization rights in China some time, see how that goes.
Try openly and expressively declaring your religious beliefs. See how much they love that.
The various movements of the 60s and 70s are completely impossible in the western world now, the brainwashing is far too advanced for that.
Unionization doesn't make sense in communism. It amounts to revolution. Try a revolution in the US and call me back when you've completed your twentieth mandatory cavity search for security purposes.
I don't think you saw much of Gitmo on Youtube, even less today - luckily with the patriot act, anyone who pisses off the govt will get his own personal gitmo experience.
At least China doesn't pretend they respect the human rights - I think that's what the article was about, and fundamentally right.
Argue based on issues. Clearly address each issue your 'opponent' raised. Substantiate it with facts. Link to reliable sources if possible. Point out weak points in your own argument and why you think your general point still stands. Don't commit logical fallacies (see http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ ).
Both of you raise valid points. Engaging in a discussion would probably make us all better off in the end. Currently I can only read "your country is stupider than mine!".
Interpret the possessive 'your' as you will.
I'm willing to be objective about America and China's faults. The problem with the person I'm arguing with, is that that person is not willing to be objective about China's faults, and is more than willing to be biased about America's faults.
In my observation, most first world countries have the same societal problems that America does (or some modest variation), the big difference is whether they're publicized heavily or not. For example, America gets accused of being a highly racist nation: well, how racist is Japan? How about African racism? How about antisemitism in France? How about the Muslim ghettos in France? How about the extreme xenophobia in many nice European nations? Nobody likes to talk about that, and Americans are mostly ignorant of it, but it's all over the BBC's news reports regularly.
I believe we totally agree him and me on the main point: neither China nor the US have a clean record and they're more or less each as dirty as the other.