And China may have changed in some ways but there have been no signals it would not repeat that event if it thought circumstances warranted.
edit: Not trying to say "US bad, China good." Just there is perspective to everything.
I think right now there's a kind of global propaganda competition playing out and the thing that does the most damage is false equivalences that encourage loss of perspective.
Honestly I had to read the wiki page of false equivalence and you’re not asserting the fallacy correctly.
Additionally, they have supported Russia consistently during their occupation of Ukraine, and just install leaders for life.
I’m confused how you think the US is worse. I say this as an Afroindigenous person who is very clear about the harms white supremacy has inflicted upon the cultures I am a part of.
And who are we supporting since roughly 01/2025? :-)
Just a couple of days ago we found out that 4 undercover CIA agents were operating here in Mexico: https://www.infobae.com/mexico/2026/04/22/no-eran-dos-eran-c...
It has been knokwn that US government operatives provide weapons to Mexican cartels ( https://grothman.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?Document... ).
So, yeah, the US is no "blanca palomita" at all. And those of us suffering from their actions have learned that all powerful nations have good and bad things. Here in Mexico, we've got BYD cars, and they are AMAZING. Also being able to use DeepSeek is so cool.
was that a surprise? i'd be more surprised if it were only 4.
If the mexican government would actually make work of dismantling the organized trade, there would be no incentive to deliver them weapons to shoot each other.
Oh honey. Black budgets. Cashflow, flow of power.
The “Mexican government” was headed by CIA assets multiple times in recent history: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34903090
https://jacobin.com/2023/06/mexico-jose-lopez-portillo-decla...
What are you expecting Mexico to do, again?
You prefer to believe in monocausal scapegoat mechanisms? Stick your head in the sand at your own peril.
You claim US would supply the poison with pleasure itself, but then why is it being imported?
I could go on, but Tienanmen does not compare to most of the things the US has done outside of its own borders from 1946 to the present. And no, we (I am American) cannot justify a body count in the millions, just because our victims are communist/authoritarian/theocratic. Note also that we only number 5% of the world's population, and that if we compared body-counts as percentage of populations, instead of as absolute numbers, I doubt we even have enough people to settle that debt.
Even worse, if the world internalizes that it is fine to murder millions of foreigners, just because they are oddballs that their citizens cannot empathize with, the _we_ are going to have a big problem -- we appear much more odd to the world than the world does to us.
I am surprised that our shenanigans have been tolerated for nearly a century.
Why are you changing the subject?
1) conquers places, e.g. Hong Kong, Tibet, Xinjang, ...
2) kills, "disappears", ... the people there https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbSypV2ixjE
3) China's CCP has been pushing out immigrants, and fostering racist sentiment
> Hong Kong
Did India conquer itself when the British returned rule of India to Indians?
> China's CCP has been pushing out immigrants, and fostering racist sentiment
It's a little more complicated than this. I think the level of racism at both the state and individual levels is similar between China and western countries, although it may manifest in different ways.
I hate historical claims. There are disputed territories less than 10km from where I live, and if at all possible, I'd like there not to be a war here. I doubt there's many places where that's not the case. I know there's some, but not many.
Did I miss the uprising?
Also, nice try propagandizing chained deportation as “free plane tickets”
This doesn’t even touch the Guatemalan genocide, US backing of the Rwandan genocide perpetrators, the white terror, Pinochet, the Khmer Rouge, Afghanistan, or Israel.
Who cares if a country installs a panopticon to monitor their citizens and runs them over with tanks, look at this other thing over here.
Suppose country A kills 1000 people and country B kills 1000000 people and people are criticizing country A for murder while calling country B a better alternative. What is relevant here?
Others may say “what about Uighurs?” or “what about Hong Kong?” but I think that the rest of the world is not doing all that much better on terms of civil repression.
In the UK, you can be arrested for voicing disagreement with the rationale for another person’s arrest (not generally, but on a specific hot button issue they’d rather not anyone talk about). French politicians are attempting to make illegal criticism of Israel, carte blanche. Don’t even get me started on Germany, which is so self-shamed from the last century they have overcorrected into legitimating an external state above all else. Across the pond, you hardly even have to convince anyone that it’s on the downtrend, unless they’re 30% of the population who believe the Don is christ alive (but don’t like if he says it).
The world is very unstable at this point and China is a country that strongly values and incentivizes stability, at the expense of individual rights. This is contra a lot of the west which is both unstable and actively undermining individual rights.
Also, reducing Germany’s complex, decade-long process of grappling with the Holocaust as "self-shame" is... a choice.
Of course there is, there's anti riot gear now when there wasn't before.
> China massacre thousands
Is the first one worse to you?
> massacre thousands
Does the second automatically seem worse than the third?
The one not called China has shot and killed multiple of its own citizens on the street recently. Perhaps that triggers your morality.
Which one of them has killed thousands of civilians just in the last month or so including hundreds of school aged girls (confirmed)? And can they even articulate a reason for doing so?
Which one decided, made the choice, to kill hundreds of thousands of children by dismantling USAID? And the reason for that was?
I mean, they both have concentration camps where they detain their own citizens without due process. So, I guess a tie there.
And, they both enabled Russia after Russia stole tens of thousands of children from their parents.
So, ya, maybe no clear winner. Neither are the good guys. But China is losing the death count battle in 2026 at least.
If you are trying to say that China is worse because of an event 37 years ago, I am not sure I agree.
I could go on, but Tienanmen does not compare to most of the things the US has done outside of its own borders from 1946 to the present. And no, we (I am American) cannot justify a body count in the millions, just because our victims are communist/authoritarian/theocratic. Note also that we only number 5% of the world's population, and that if we compared body-counts as percentage of populations, instead of as absolute numbers, I doubt we even have enough people to settle that debt.
Even worse, if the world internalizes that it is fine to murder millions of foreigners, just because they are oddballs that their citizens cannot empathize with, the _we_ are going to have a big problem -- we appear much more odd to the world than the world does to us.
I am surprised that our shenanigans have been tolerated for nearly a century.
On the one hand, anyone who believes this is the sort of person who buys bridges from shady individuals in backstreets. On the other, China will literally sell people quality bridges at good prices. I feel lost for a metaphor.
I like the Chinese military policy a lot more than the US one (China's policy is actually making them more prosperous which makes it stand out). But as a nation they're not trustworthy and they're absolutely going to interfere with other people's politics. The network of spies and influencers they manage is actually pretty sophisticated once you look at things like the Confucius institute and their international web of spies/law enforcement tracking people down.
Ask that question of the American Indians the USA genocided.
I do not see why USAnians killing Iranians is better than being killed by other Iranians. Dead is dead
The bombs that implemented the genocide in Gaza were dropped by the IDF but supplied, paid for and profited from USAnians
Not really so clear
Wasn't the US bombing its own children just 4 years earlier in Philadelphia?
Of course not. When it comes to SOTA LLMs you have the choice between two bad options. For many, choosing the Chinese option is just choosing the lesser of two evils (and it's much cheaper).
Mistral is right here, their models are in-between the cheap to run Chinese models and top of the line performances of US frontier models.
Mistral is good for many tasks where you do not need SOTA or near SOTA performance. They cannot compete if you do.
The safe money is they are going to be an also-ran for the AI revolution. They did manage to force Apple to switch from using lightening connectors to USB though so their wins can't just be laughed off. Maybe they'll surprise us but it'd be a welcome change from their usual routine.
Production of state of the art semiconductors, yes. NXP, STMicro, Infineon are still there and massive in automotive, industrial, card chips, etc.
> The EU fumbled the software revolution, the successes mainly came from the US
Worldwide massive success, mostly yes. Most European countries have their local or regional success stories though.
> The safe money is they are going to be an also-ran for the AI revolution
Not really. Past performances, or lack thereof, are not indicative of future ones.
Mistral are pretty good and selling well in the enterprise space. Some of the best voice models are coming from France (Kyutai).
If you fall out of the state of the art then the claim of EU fumbling semiconductors is correct. The richest block in the world should settle for no less than being state of the art. Anything less is fumbling it.
>NXP, STMicro, Infineon are still there and massive in automotive, industrial, card chips, etc.
The EU semi companies you listed are absent from the state of the art and only make low margin commodity parts that don't have moats. ASML exists but is not enough for claiming EU superiority since the EUV light source is still US IP designed and manufactured. And one top company is too little.
>Worldwide massive success, mostly yes.
Worldwide success is where the big money is, and you need a lot of money for cutting edge research and experimentation to build the future successes. Hence the claim of EU fumbling software is correct.
>Most European countries have their local or regional success stories though.
EU mom and pop shops aren't gonna make enough money to be able to afford risky ambitious ventures the likes of FAANGs have. Which is probably why you work for Hashicorp, a large global US company, and not some local EU company.
Who said anything about mom and pop shops? You're arguing in extremely bad faith, as usual with this topic.
Doctolib, Revolut, Adyen, Nokia, Ericsson, Siemens, and tons of others I can't be bothered to list.
> The EU semi companies you listed are absent from the state of the art and only make low margin commodity parts that don't have moats
You think industrial controllers don't have a moat?
> If you fall out of the state of the art then the claim of EU fumbling semiconductors is correct.
Absolutely not. There is more to the world that state of the art.
Care to explain your wild accusations. I never attacked you directly, just the points you made.
>Doctolib, Revolut, Adyen, Nokia, Ericsson, Siemens, and tons of others I can't be bothered to list.
Do those make anything the US or China can't? A doctor appointment scheduling app? Seriously?
>You think industrial controllers don't have a moat?
I never mentioned industrial controllers. Just the chips and microcontrollers those companies make.
>There is more to the world that state of the art.
If you like competing in low margin race to the bottom jobs, sure. Just don't be surprised your tech wages are low then.
You twisted "national successess" to "mon and pop shop". It's a typically American argument "unless it's the global behemoth that has a global monopoly in the domain, it's a failure", which is, frankly, absurd. Would you say Venmo is a failure because they're not used outside of the US (because other countries have better banking infrastructure)? Or that GM are a failure because they barely sell outside the US (because their cars are not adapted to other markets)? Or that United Healthcare Group are a failure because they only operate in the US?
Leboncoin are a massive peer to peer marketplace in France and a few neighbouring countries (IIRC Belgium), like Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace. They do a couple of hundred million in annual revenue. They are, undoutedly, a local success story. Are they a failure because they don't rival Ebay or Facebook Marketplace? No, because that would assume that the goal of each and every business is to become a global behemoth monopoly, which is an impossibility.
Similarly, Doctolib run healthcare appointment and everything related (online appointnments, digital prescriptions, secure storage and sharing of medical data like test results, AI voice note taking assistants for doctos, etc.) in France, and are expanding in a few neighbouring countries. In France they are the standard and pretty much what everyone uses. They are undoubtedly a success.
1. I'm not American, I'm European. And cool it with this finger pointing around nationality as I never brought it up. We can't have a civil discussion if you resort to identity politics as an argument.
2. I said no such thing. I never called those companies failures. You're the one saying that by twisting my arguments.
And those online marketplaces and doctor apps you mentioned that are "local success stories" don't have invented any core tech that can be exported and monetized globally the same like Microsoft, Intel, AMD, Nvidia, etc can. export products abroad, they just used existing FOSS technologies to build some local websites in the EU. Any other country on the planet can build their own versions of those apps, and they have, from India to Argentina. It's nothing special the EU made here. So how you can consider them in the ballpark of the tech companies before is beyond me.
And I didn't say you're American, just that you're using the traditionally American bad faith argument.
> I never called those companies failures
You just called them "mom and pop shops".
> And those online marketplaces and doctor apps you mentioned that are "local success stories" don't have invented any core tech that can be exported and monetized globally
And that's a different argument altogether. Not everything has to be core tech exportable all over, and one can be very successful without doing that.
If you're looking for core tech developed by European countries exported all around the world, enjoy Airbus, Siemens, Infineon, Alstom, Spotify, DeepMind (ok they were acquired by Google), VLC, ASML, SAP and plenty of others.
> Microsoft
> they just used existing FOSS technologies
Can you explain to me the difference between using FOSS and proprietary software to build a product, and what Microsoft are doing?
The obvious takeaway here is that a country / blok can't regulate their way to innovation... so I'm not exact sure why you included it in your list of paradigm shifts. If anything, when the next paradigm shift around charging drops, the EU will be once again on the back-foot due to these short-sighted USB-C regulations they enacted.
I do share your sentiment that EU will miss the train once again on AI.
Then they need money.
So most of the talent flee or get bought, typical example in machine learning space is huggingface or fchollet.
Then European government plays catch-up and offer subventions, but at the same time makes rules to make sure companies don't threaten US dominance, or Asian manufacturing.
Mistral is typically playing catch the subsidy game.
Europe is constructed so that it can't win, but can "pick" the winner between scylla and charybdis, pest and cholera.
Because they have no spine and no leverage/muscle on the international stage to throw their weight around and make sure they get what's best for themselves at the expense of everyone else the same way US, China, etc do.
They play the international nice guy that just ends up being the doormat everyone takes advantage of, being at the mercy of Russian and Azeri gas, at the mercy of US tech, energy and defence, and at the mercy of Chinese manufacturing after dismantling their own manufacturing, at the mercy of Turkey for migration enforcement, etc so they can't do anything radical that upsets their "partners", or that makes their virtue signaling policies look bad, or risk massive repercussions they aren't prepared for, so they just turtle, bury their head in the sand and pretend everything is going fine while falling further into obscurity.
EU flaunts its "moral values" as its strength, but their geopolitical adversaries have no such values and are dominating over them in the process exploiting their morals against them as their weakness. There's nothing virtuous in being/acting weak and letting others dominate you.
By design European laws are superior to national laws. Leaving the union is also instant bankruptcy because all countries have very high level of debt which are only guaranteed because they are in the union.
European population is getting old and replaced by a migration coming mainly from previous African colonies.
Future paying for the past.
That seems to violate basic physics and accounting laws. It isn't possible for everyone to be in debt all at once, because when everything nets out then there isn't anyone to make the loans. Someone has to be producing the goods that get consumed.
These interests are currently ~2% for France. Which mean the debt is manageable and the interests can be paid with the citizen's tax and the music can continue to play. But once France get out of the UE, interests rates become 5% then the citizens tax are not enough to pay the debt, and nobody wants to lend money to France anymore because even at 5% interests the risk of default becomes too great and they risk not getting the full amount-owed back so nobody lends, and since their is no money in reserve, and they can't borrow it means they default => bankruptcy. France doesn't have its own currency anymore so it cannot print its own money which compounds the problem. National resources get plundered, citizens get poor.
It is a game of musical chair which is highly non-linear.
Uhm, Europe is not the US. We still have a lot of manufacturing. It varies by country - the UK unfortunately had structural problems, finance supremacy and a Thatcher who hated unions so much that she'd rather destroy unionized industries than have unions. Central Europe still does a pretty large amount of manufacturing.
Then why are we afraid of China and the US and cave in to their demands?
Why is german manufacturing output back to where it was in 2006?[1]
[1] https://x.com/ThorstenPolleit/status/2047436171903394294/pho...
Meanwhile Germany's and the EU's short sighted energy policies have caused a lot of manufacturing to move outside the EU to places like the US or China.
The EU is in a very bad position right now manufacturing wise compared to how it was and how it could be. It basically never failed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory for the last ~20 years.
Europe is constructed so you can take 60 days vacation, work 32 hours a week, get tons of social benefits, can't really lose your job, and retire when you are 65 with a full pension.
Which is excellent. Unless you need to be economically competitive.
Not a thing.
>work 32 hours a week
Not a common thing.
>get tons of social benefits
That you pay for in high taxes.
>can't really lose your job
Layoffs happen at the same rate as elsewhere.
>retire when you are 65 with a full pension
Unless the government decides to push back your retirement because it's insolvent.[0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_French_pension_reform_str...
Yes, they just can't talk about some of those values publically.
Equivalent, here look, us state-funded news agency posting discussions about how trump needs to be replaced:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/democrats-grow-bolder-...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7W20hdgWXY
I think I'll take the open AI models, innovative high quality EVs and cheap solar panels, please.
It's a small difference, but important. Especially because that person is far more likely to be responsible (voting) for and profiting from USAs bad stuff.
The issue is propagandists are typically brainwashed already.
I'm an American and I don't believe that.
The U.S politics are easier to understand from the outside. For one it's a democracy, a more transparent process despite a lot is happening behind curtains. I have no idea what North Koreans are able to make of the U.S scene, I know for sure people in U.S and Europe are hardly able to comment on N.K.
tldr: I'm with you non Americans (and Americans) are perfectly able to critique the U.S with some valuable accuracy.
It seems to me that there is a fair amount of misinformation which gets spread about the US. For example, many non-Americans seem to believe that school shootings are a significant cause of death here.
Furthermore, your proposed scheme creates an incentive to be non-transparent and thus not vulnerable to critique. By closing off information about your country, you can say to any critic: "Your critique is incorrect, because you lack information." Thus creating a reputational advantage for countries which successfully clamp down on the flow of information.
Is that your desired outcome? You want a world where criticizing the US can no longer be done as soon as Trump kicks out all of the foreign journalists and stops the information flow?
My argument is that with less transparent public affairs, it is much harder from the outside to understand what may be going on.
One can note the effects of certain measures without cherishing the schemes.
For that matter I'm personally convinced more transparency is overall a net benefit. It helps the public at large appreciate situations. But my preference, and the detrimental vs beneficial aspects of a system are irrelevant to the argument I made.
With China, you can say 'yeah, this is good, but they eat babies for fun' and it would mostly pass with people nodding along.
Hard to think of any critique of the US I've seen on HN recently which acknowledges the possibility that we might mean well.
Even during the Biden administration, right after we allocated billions of dollars to Ukraine, huge numbers of Europeans expressed an unfavorable view of the US: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2024/06/11/views-of-the-u...
They call us warmongers and then wonder why we don't want to help them fight their war. Now they say they want to be buddies with China which has been actively helping Russia with arms. I don't think there is any point in the US trying to please Europe.
And then you've got the Australians who express their burning hatred of the US for not giving more aid to Ukraine, while Australia's aid as a fraction of GDP is still sitting around 10-15% of that provided by the US.
Europeans helped when you called after 9/11. Are you seriously arguing about being called warmongers considering what your government started in Iran? (and btw screwed the global energy market)
This lack of self awareness is what turns people away.
So how would you feel if you got labeled as warmongers for that help?
You're welcome to call us warmongers. Just don't expect us to help you fight wars if you do.
Libya was Europe's idea -- we helped when you called -- yet the US still gets blamed for it. If the US had surged more weapons to Ukraine (as some Europeans were requesting), thus provoking Russia to launch a nuke, we surely would've been blamed for that too.
The pattern I've noticed is that anywhere the US has foreign policy involvement (including Europe), there are locals in that region who are both for and against said involvement. People who aren't knowledgeable about the region will generally not know many details, and simply say "oh, the US is involved in a war again". If that's how we're going to be judged, then yes, I want to be involved in fewer wars. And withdrawing from NATO will help with that objective. So I favor NATO withdrawal.
Hardly 'Europe's', it was the idea of some 'humanitarian interventionists' in the Obama admin and the then current president of France who wanted to cover up his corrupt dealings.
For what it's worth, I am not a fan of NATO either, so we can agree on that. All US troops should imo immediately leave Europe and loose all access to military facilities on the continent.
As for the whole warmongers thing, answer me two simple questions:
1. Was the 2003 Iraq war started based on false claims about WMDs? Yes/No?
2. Did you just attack Iran for no good reason? (Yes/No?)
You can see French and UK leadership were making moves before the US:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_military_intervention_in_...
Obama's approach was referred to as "leading from behind".
>For what it's worth, I am not a fan of NATO either, so we can agree on that. All US troops should imo immediately leave Europe and loose all access to military facilities on the continent.
I'm glad we can agree on something. I find that a lot of Europeans are not willing to accept the logical implication of their stated beliefs.
>As for the whole warmongers thing, answer me two simple questions: [...]
I'm not sure why you're pushing this "warmongers" point. As I said, I'm an isolationist. I've left many comments here on HN about how I want the US to be more like Switzerland. The Swiss never do anything and thus they never get blamed for anything.
The families of the thousands of Iranians slaughtered by the regime doubtless think that we are attacking Iran for a good reason. Same way the thousands of Ukrainians slaughtered by Russia probably thought our weapons deliveries were being given for a good reason.
In any case we may be called "complicit" if we do not act -- the same arguments were used in the case of Libya. But we can't keep playing world police. We aren't very good at it, and it is not clear whether it is helpful. Not to mention the dubious ethics of getting involved in the affairs of other countries.
You're either "complicit" in "propping up" bad regimes, or a "warmongering" "imperialist" who "destabilizes" them. There's no way to win. Given the choice, I prefer to be complicit.
Regardless of the 'thousands of Iranians slaughtered by the regime' which is supposed to just be accepted as fact despite everyone citing some random number everytime, no they don't.
Because the logic of 'we'll liberate you from oppression by bombing you' does nothing but unites Iranians more than they ever were united before.
Or do you think the killing of schoolgirls by the US is welcomed by Iranians somehow?
Honestly, I am speechless.
It's because a lot of the people hate the regime and want it gone. You can see that in activist spaces like the /r/NewIran subreddit or on X from accounts like https://x.com/__Injaneb96 that yes, they do very much welcome US intervention.
Here's a video from a townhall in my parent's congressional district where some Iranian-Americans speak up on the war: https://old.reddit.com/r/NewIran/comments/1rbdxzb/democrat_c...
It's quite similar to Ukrainians complaining about Putin. "My country sucks, come save me" is always a trap, because if you attempt to come "save" them you just get called a warmonger.
Your grievances with how you perceive other people opinion of the US are irrelevant when confronted with the warmorgering reality of american foreign policy, no matter how offended you feel on behalf of your favorite military industrial complex.
https://www.economist.com/europe/2024/06/24/death-and-destru...
This is the warmongering reality of the EU. First Libya, now this. Don't get offended, I'm just speaking facts.
Yes, I think European foreign policy has in many cases resulted in the deaths of innocent people and our leaders are "warmongers" for following them.
See, it's not that hard. I am not upset, because I can objectively look at the facts and say, yeah, you have a point. I even upvoted you.
The fact remains that the US has done this on a much larger scale.
It's wrong in both cases.
I'm advocating that the US pull support.
Why can't you advocate that EU pull support?
In the middle of an unprovoked aggression, is it really that surprising that you might try to restrict channels your enemy might use? I don't think so.
>In the middle of an unprovoked aggression, is it really that surprising that you might try to restrict channels your enemy might use? I don't think so.
So wouldn't Ukraine also logically want to restrict internet access to its citizens in that case?
Back at you. I'm glad Europe, Asia, and Australia all said no to helping liberate oil from Iran.
Also, it's so weird seeing Americans wanting to leave NATO because NATO didn't help invade Iran, whilst forgetting that NATO is a defensive pact. Han shot first :headdesk:
I didn't expect any help from them.
>Also, it's so weird seeing Americans wanting to leave NATO because NATO didn't help invade Iran
That's not why I want to leave NATO.
>whilst forgetting that NATO is a defensive pact.
It didn't look very defensive when the Europeans dragged NATO into Libya.
NATO insisted on helping
There is a huge difference between attacking foreign nations because of oil... Oh, pardon me, because of... Geopolitical interests... Oh, pardon me... In the name of democracy and self-defense when you're being attacked (such as Ukraine).
We came to help you after 9/11, when for some reason you invaded Iraq although Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda had taken responsibility...
But sure, think that you're white guardians of the flame of freedom and democracy all you want!
You're in exactly the same ballpark as China and Russia, they're just without the Hollywood propaganda.
Think about this for just three seconds, I'm begging you.
As soon as you use the phrase "unprovoked" then you start getting into messy details. Are we so sure that the war in Ukraine was not provoked by NATO expansion? Are we so sure that the war in Iran was not provoked by Iran's actions against Israel or against its own people?
The ideologue doesn't like details. They prefer to see the world in black and white.
And to preempt the inevitable "the dictionary isn't always how people use it" response, this is in fact how everyone uses the word.
So yes, it's very much tied to the nature of the war and the reason it was started. Attacking Iran for no particular reason is warmongering. Defending Ukraine from invasion is not.
"Unprovoked" can be difficult but I don't think it actually is here. Yes, you can list reasons. But even if you believe the wars' proponents, the justification isn't there. It's like if I tap someone on the nose and they blow my head off. Was there some provocation? Technically, yes. Does the killing count as "provoked"? Not really. That word carries an implication of sufficient, justified provocation, not just "something happened."
Did NATO expansion provoke the invasion of Ukraine? Maybe. Is that sufficient to say the invasion was "provoked"? No, not even close. Similar for the justifications given for Iraq and Iran.
Which Australians are we talking about here? Australia, if pushed to the absolute limit might formally send a strongly worded letter to the US expressing concerns. They aren't particularly fussed about Ukraine, we've all spent decades politely accepting the US invading random countries for no obvious reason and in defiance of everyone's strategic interests. Australians clearly do not care if distant countries get invaded.
Similarly, I saw a person from Italy who declared the US an "enemy of Europe" for not giving more to Ukraine, when the US has given far more than Italy. There's a professor with the last name O'Brien who constantly castigates the US for not giving more, when we gave far more than Ireland.
We just have to stop the warmongering. It never achieves anything.
Technically he didn't even say anything related to US activity in Ukraine either. He was pointing out that US policy related to international trade and oil was bad. Which is basically a non-controversial opinion as far as I know.
youve seen 4ish people and you are extending that to tens or hundreds of millions?
seems a bit silly to me
Day every day the same unoriginal whining because it is hard to call it something as sophisticated as critique, can be heard all over the reddit.
While at the same time no one bothers to critique CCP to the same extent because we simply are not paid for doing this. No one is interested in non profit repeating the same facts about china every single day.
We are just content knowing that china is not some sort of “saviour” or alternative. It is an enemy of the free world. I try to not use things produced by my adversary to not fund my own doom.
The existence better critique out there is irrelevant if you don't take the argumentt in front of you on its strenghts.
> Day every day the same unoriginal whining because it is hard to call it something as sophisticated as critique, can be heard all over the reddit.
Criticism of a country with military bases across the whole world doesn't have to be hip to be correct. No one cares what you think about reddit or how hipster you like your political takes to be and this doesn't exempt you from having to argue about the concrete facts in a discussion forum.
> While at the same time no one bothers to critique CCP to the same extent because we simply are not paid for doing this. No one is interested in non profit repeating the same facts about china every single day.
You are so wrong about no one criticizing the CCP that's it's difficult to believe that this statement is sincere. Maybe I could attribute it to selection bias as you're on an american forum? There's also a cottage industry around anti-Chinese propaganda besides the western funded government propaganda machine that is in place for the last decades.
> We are just content knowing that china is not some sort of “saviour” or alternative.
Oh but they are! China is a concrete alternative for an economic partner for most parts of the world, but only if the US doesn't sponsor a military coup or invade your country in response. If they you can get away from Americans threats, China is also a more reliable partner with much more stable policies and much less likely to sabotage your elections, secretly pay your politics and judges and manipulate your markets.
> It is an enemy of the free world. I try to not use things produced by my adversary to not fund my own doom.
This has no basis in reality. The US is the actual enemy of the free world and has been since ww2: occupying countries, sabotaging their domestic politic disputes, staging military coups, bombings, etc. Whatever justifications for those actions after the fact do not make any other country more free.
Another reason I'm eager to leave NATO is leaving will help cut down on our military base count.
I expect some Europeans will protest, the same way Kurds protested when Trump pulled us out of Syria:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hz-WKu881Yc
We'll have to stay strong and ignore their protests. It's the only way to reduce our military footprint and warmongering tendencies.
NATO exists because the US won't allow any other global hegemon to exist. US backing of Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are for that same reason. I meant that as a neutral statement; large regional powers also do not like each other when situated too close, that's why India and Russia are friendly, and why Russia and China have a complicated relationship despite both being opposed to the US.
Has quite a lot of good also come out of that? To the Europeans, yes. But it's not like the US is doing it from the bottom of their hearts.
And it's not like the US ever intervened in the Middle East for anything other than oil, historically. You go there and piss off the hardcore islamists / dictators, and make use of the Kurds as local fighting forces, and then you abandon them to the revenge of said islamists? Ofc they're pissed.
The obvious non-US potential hegemon was China, yet we normalized trade with them, which greatly helped their economy grow.
The new one is India. We've been buddying up to them a fair amount as well.
The US also played a role in the creation of the EU, arguably a more potent rival hegemon than any individual European state: https://archive.is/VC2zV
>Has quite a lot of good also come out of that? To the Europeans, yes. But it's not like the US is doing it from the bottom of their hearts.
I don't believe that is true. As I stated elsewhere in this thread, even during the Biden administration, right after Biden sent billions to Ukraine, the US was barely net-positive in approval rating for many European countries:
https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2024/06/11/views-of-the-u...
If a lot of good came out of the relationship from Europe's perspective, you would expect them to approve of the US. And yet they don't.
So we can conclude that US presence is a negative for Europe, and it would be best for Europe if US troops and security guarantees were withdrawn. Unsurprisingly, many Europeans have requested this course of action.
>And it's not like the US ever intervened in the Middle East for anything other than oil, historically.
The Gulf War was rather similar to the Ukraine invasion in the sense of a powerful country (Iraq) invading a weaker neighbor (Kuwait). But you probably think we only aided Ukraine for minerals-related reasons anyways, eh? That's why Europe is aiding Ukraine right now, correct?
>make use of the Kurds as local fighting forces
So the Kurds and Islamic State are fighting. The US steps in to help the Kurds. At that point we become "warmongers" who are "making use of" the Kurds. It would've been better to stay complicit. After all, the only reason anyone would ever oppose IS is due to oil, right? So that must've been our motivation.
Time to stop the warmongering.
Of course you present it as a one way street. Nah, you normalized with China to counter balance the Soviets and after that fell your companies benefited, since it is much cheaper to produce in China.
China just wasn't standing by and it also got something out of that relationship (know how) - the US only wanted it as a cheap sweatshop factory, so as soon as they became a real competitor to the US, the US started with sanctions, tariffs etc.
Having failed in China, the US now wants Latin America to stay behind in development terms, just useful enough to outsource to, but not enough to compete.
China's population was about 6x that of Russia in 1970. So 6x the hegemon potential, in the long run.
I'd say that the US alliance with China has been highly vindicated btw. China has proven to be a considerably less oppressive great power than the USSR. I'd say both China and the US are quite herbivorous by the standards of historical great powers like, say, Imperial Japan.
>Having failed in China, the US now wants Latin America to stay behind in development terms, just useful enough to outsource to, but not enough to compete.
Aside from Mexico, the US does not trade a notable amount with Latin America:
"In February 2026, United States exported mostly to Mexico ($28.9B), Canada ($28.4B), United Kingdom ($10.7B), Switzerland ($10.7B), and Netherlands ($8.48B), and imported mostly from Mexico ($44.3B), Canada ($29.2B), Chinese Taipei ($21.1B), China ($19B), and Vietnam ($15.7B)."
https://oec.world/en/profile/country/usa
The US wants to see Latin America develop in order to reduce illegal immigrant flows. During the Biden presidency, Harris was sent to address the "root causes" of illegal immigration:
https://www.nbcnews.com/investigations/kamala-harris-border-...
You're just making up random conspiracy theories to see what sticks. Note that you don't provide evidence for your claims. The fact that they fit your conspiratorial intuitions appears to be evidence enough for you.
You left the part where the US sponsored extremist groups in Syria, but of course you did.
You know, your anger makes sense if you selectively leave out large part of the involvement of your own government in various conflicts.
this sounds like you are american. NATO is Europe driven, with a goal of keeping the americans involved. the alternative is going back to european powers fighting against each other.
the US the whole time has been basically absent. trump didnt start the "will they wont they" rom com setup. its always been there. NATO didnt go to Afghanistan because the US wanted it. europe demanded that the US invoke article 5, ans insisted on sending help
"That same ice cream shop owner thanked me repeatedly for my help in invading and ultimately overthrowing Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003. I told him that Canada didn’t take part in the invasion, but he didn’t care. Kurdish people were brutally persecuted by Saddam for over 30 years, and look back on the Saddam years with pure terror. The shop owner refused to take payment for the ice cream and offered that I stay with his family in their apartment upstairs."
https://goodperson.substack.com/p/notes-on-my-travels-in-ira...
In Afghanistan, you saw their desperate attempts to flee the country as the US withdrew. Nonetheless, it was necessary to reduce our warmongering and military footprint. Afghani women being forced into burqas is ultimately not our business.
In Venezuela, apparently, the main complaint is that Trump didn't go even further: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas...
In Cuba, on the subreddit, there is a discussion of Trump saying that "Cuba is next" (after Iran). A mod of the subreddit writes (translated): "I am in Cuba, and I would say that 95% of the people here—those I know or have spoken with—are reacting to this with hope. That is something that many people on the outside do not see." See link below:
https://www.reddit.com/r/cuba/comments/1s5s1ip/trump_cuba_is...
And I'm sure you could find a few Greenlandic Inuit who are tired of Danish colonialism as well.
My point is that simply "asking people" is not a particularly reliable or effective method. It's much better to stay complicit, reduce military spending, and avoid being a warmonger.
It's also a delusion to think that the world is free under US hegemony. It's mostly better for those who cooperate, and the incentives are good. But it's not "free". The only entity free to do whatever it wants under US hegemony, is the US.
The unoriginal whining is mostly about China or any country that isn't the US, really. Asia is unimaginative and can only copy. Europe is lazy, blah blah blah. Because Americans who can't take being told that their country isn't #1 in the morality olympics seem to also not know much about other countries at all.
Like look at all the whining about China being communist. It's fcking hilarious. They've been an authoritarian, state-run capitalist country for decades by now. Just google their social spending vs other countries, will you.
Are you aware that this is how America is increasingly perceived around the world?
It's not a 'free world' when America dictates and the others are supposed to just take orders.
May be you're fine with that, feeling on top of the food chain, but everyone needs friends at some point.
What does the 'free' in 'free world' even mean any more? You're not allowed to express your opinion on college campuses anymore, (lack of domestic freedom), and if you're a country, you're increasingly facing trade barriers from the US, (lack of freedom in commerce).
I'm not saying that as a sovereign country you don't have a right to impose these restrictions. I simply wish the US would treat other countries as sovereign.
I cannot condemn whole nation on the basis of two elections.
That’s the beauty of it all. In a democracy there are no irredeemable nations. There are just phases better or worse. China was always evil and cracked down on anyone who questioned power of highest leader.
If you think you are going to convince people that somehow an authoritarian state is preferable to a western liberal democracy in any way then you are foolish. Or paid by the state.
I love democracy and I love freedom. I will tirelessly work to oppose people like you until my last breath. That I swear.
All the disinformation, all the propaganda will be dispersed at the iron flank of NATO. You will never have this land. Europe is my home and it is free and free will remain till I breathe.
So I dare you commies, come here to Poland and try anything. We will crush you and you will see what red really looks like.
I disagree that it is a democracy. It's a corporatocracy and it's been for decades. But the elections are a nice PR.
The Trump thing of not having a PR filter over policies that were there long before him is just making people question whether system a.) is indeed better than system b.);
a.) Pseudo democracy where the will of corporations, but not people is implemented and that the people up for elections are so compromised by special interests by the time we get a choice that it doesn't matter anymore i.e. the US and most of the West.
b.) A system that does away with the spectacle of national elections, with the social contract being that the leadership better be competent and peruse national interests and development, but is not directly elected i.e. China. That competency is supposed to be ensured by only allowing people who have proven competence at lower levels, (some of which they are directly elected to).
There's a question about how sustainable either is. I would prefer a third option c.) where you can elect relatively competent leaders, but that doesn't seem to be an option these days.
What Trump is unquestionably doing however, is making a lot of fans of the idealized system of democracy c.) think that perhaps option b.) > a.) even if less than ideal.
Just because you call yourself a democracy doesn't mean you're one. Just ask citizens of the DRC.
I don’t get you people. You whine about authoritarian tendencies of Trump and then you say that maybe an authoritarian system is better and you want authoritarian system? This is just insanity
That makes me think all these comments are just propaganda double speak
The point is that if you want to have the privileges of a global hegemon and go around the world and accuse others of being authoritarian governments i.e. China, then your shit better be close to exemplary counter to that. Otherwise people around the world might run out of patience with your shit.
Looking at both countries and what system the majority of the world would increasingly rather live under, IMO it would be option b.) not because they love authoritarianism, but because they want to live well and be as free as possible while doing so.
The US is increasingly authoritarian, (in China you may not be able to criticize Xi, in the US you cannot criticize Israel without consequences).
There's multiple ways one can be 'free'. The US seems to define freedom only in the narrow sense of being free from overt oppression for political opinions, but for many being free from economic insecurity is at least as, if not more, of an important freedom. The US does not offer that second freedom, but increasingly not even the first one.
In light of that, why should the people of the world tolerate US hegemony and not increasingly turn towards China?
Make it make sense
“ In China, criticizing the central government or Xi Jinping can result in forced disappearances, total digital erasure, arbitrary detention, and severe legal prosecution by a judicial system controlled entirely by the ruling party.”
I don’t like this, I don’t like that option B at all. I got an allergy to detention camps
> Make it make sense
If Option A is a country that pretends is a democracy, but in reality is an oligarchy where you don't get taken care of if you're sick, has crappy infrastructure, most people can't afford a family or a vacation AND you increasingly can't express your opinion and Option B is a country where you can't openly express your opinion, but most of the other things I mentioned you CAN afford, then many people would go for option B, because with option A they likely can't express themselves anyway and CANNOT do things they can with option B.
There's no simpler way to dumb this down for you.
The point is not 'we love authoritarianism', but that America ONLY has the democracy claim going for it and NOT MUCH ELSE, therefore the democracy it has better be near perfect for that to be a compelling argument.
And it is far from that.
What I find frustrating with discussions like these is that many Americans seem content with the claim that America is a democracy without examining the reality, meaning the chance for improvement there is slim.
Well it's not just the Americans claiming that America is a democracy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index
Your idea of what the US is like seems to be a mosaic of viral clickbait loosely tethered to reality
Yet even they admit the US is far from a full democracy. It's kind of like the Roman Republic. Was that more of a democracy than the Roman Empire? Yes. Was it a truly participatory democracy? No.
They are consistently anti-Trump.
If they're so horrifically biased towards capitalism, why do they rank Sweden over the US?
Again, you're basically just a conspiracy theorist throwing darts at a board blindfolded. You don't have anything to say about the methodology of this index, or an alternative index you prefer and why. You're just making bold assertions based on clickbait you read.
Option B is just some fantasy. It doesn’t really exist as you claim it does. You do not trade one thing for another, that’s just not how any of this works.
So get a grip and fix America and no you don’t need to make it authoritarian omg.
I don’t understand you people. Instead of focusing on fixing things you tend to idealise China quite fantastically. Hence I think it’s all on a payroll and I am talking to Claude.
If you wanted to make an example of countries America could learn from there are much much better countries than hecking China of all. Nordics, Canada, hell even Singapore if you like authoritarian capitalism so much
No. Certainly not 'far worse'. Purchasing power is actually greater now according to many stats. So is things like access to healthcare. There's certainly a great disparity between major cities and villages but that's true in the US too.
The US still has things going for it, it's certainly easier to start a business there for example, but even these are slowly evaporating.
I can't help but notice that you keep ignoring my central point. It doesn't matter what I personally believe. As I said before, I'd like option c.) which is a direct democracy with competent leaders.
I am based in Europe and there's little about Canada worth emulating. Is it better than the US? Yes. Better than Europe? Nah.
Nordics? Absolutely. I'd take the economic system of Norway and the direct democracy of Switzerland, thank you very much. However these are small countries that unfortunately don't have their own sovereign foreign policy for example and thus little worldwide influence overall compared to how much influence the US or China has.
My point is, if you want to be a good counter to authoritarianism then you better be nearly as great a democracy as possible, (which the US is not).
Instead the US is sliding more towards authoritarianism, more and more towards bullying and brute force, while offering nothing in return. No great infrastructure investment (as China is doing), no 'cradle to grave' social systems as some other non democratic systems are offering.
Therefore it should be no surprise that worldwide opinion of China is rising and the US is sliding.
To put it differently; China has experienced many slides, conflicts, colonialism etc. in the time the US of A was already free. Therefore China shouldn't have been able to catch up. If the US invested more in its people, kept manufacturing instead of basing everything on financial speculation, then the standard of living should have been much greater than any other country in the world.
Instead China is quickly catching up and in some cases surprising the US. With the head start the US had, that should never have been possible.
Instead of getting offended at me pointing facts, maybe you should work on reversing the trend. Just a suggestion.
For whom?? Maybe for the filthy rich, but certainly not the average citizen. You earn way more money in the US, but for life quality (unless dollars is all that matters to you) between them even I'd pick China. Come visit it once, don't get fooled by online echo chambers.
Meanwhile in China, you can't change the ruling party but you can change policies. They restrict media and speech freedom, but they also work tirelessly to improve the livelihoods of the people.
If the west chooses the value empty talk over outcomes, fine, you have the right to choose that. But no need to force that value on other societies. China and Chinese society at large has the right value unity and livelihood over speech. They have the right to prefer what westerners call an "authoritarian" government that delivers on those values, without getting demonized. They're not forcing their way on you, no need for you to force your way on them.
They work to improve the livelihood of people with the same background and ideology, you mean.
You really think the people who are left on the streets feel free to speak their minds if it would conflict with what the Politburo is enforcing?
Also, China has got nearly nothing in common with Russia. Don't lazily lump them together just because western popular thought likes to put the same label on them.
While you're at it, go look for elderlies in their 80s or older, who were born before the People's Republic's founding. Maybe they even witnessed the democratic era of the early Republic (not People's Republic). Go tell them your maximalist thoughts about democracy and see how they respond.
This happened a few weeks ago, actually.
I.e. he doesn't see the US as "the good guys" either.
Pointing out the war threat from China isn't hypocritical just because you don't list all the war threats from the US at the same time.
That's literally what the comment said:
> Still not sure how I feel about China of all places to control the only alternative AI stack, but I guess it's better than leaving everything to the US alone.
I.e. it would be preferable if, for example, Europe was in control of the alternative, but having China and the US is better than just the US.
What? They explicitly called out China in comparative terms with the US while also criticizing the US. Also, they're the other obvious major global power so it's not a question of singling out.
This is just false. I know many Americans and have never observed any of them acting like this, so categorical statements like this are false.
Your claims would be more credible if you didn't lead with something so obviously untrue.
When someone points out hypocrisy, this is "the answer", it seems. But it is just a statement, not a rebuttal of the hypocrisy that was pointed out.
Hypocrisy is still hypocrisy.
And bad things are bad things. Yet no amount of propaganda (red scare, "eew dictatorship", Uyger-genocide, Taiwan threat) can convince me that the China is as evil (or more evil) than the US-Israel alliance of the the last 50 years.
Not mentioning US problems every time they criticize CCP problems is not automatically hypocrisy, and this idea basically means you cannot criticize anything without criticizing everything someone considers just as bad or worse at the same time.
Calling a discussion on China hypocritical because it doesn't say "but US worse" is essentially trying to build in whataboutism into every discussion.
It's a symptom of increasing polarization and part of the problem.
That's the hypocrisy: not seeing the block of wood in the eye of one while complaining about the speck of wood in the eye of the other.
By trying to be less hypocritical we create a more level playing field based on facts, instead of gut-feeling based hatred.
Whatabboutism is, IMHO, used a lot as a way to circumvent having to address the glaring hypocrisy: i see it's used to shut up those to point out hypocrisy.
You may think only those two are relevant, and so every discussion of one party requires discussion of the other. I disagree with that fundamentally.
I'll be honest, I also disagree that one side is "clearly less evil than the other". For me, living in Taiwan and caring about democracy, the risk of Chinese authoritarian expansion and invasion is not a "speck of wood in the eye", frankly I find that framing disrespectful.
But that discussion is entirely beyond the question of hypocrisy. Again, the guy people accuse of hypocrisy said nothing of the sort that indicates that he doesn't see the problems of the US government. He merely didn't talk about them.
This isn't "shutting down talk about hypocrisy".
I'm gonna go out on a crazy limb here and say that this is on par with the genocide in Gaza? Mass sterilization, forced labor, sex, and torture on a larger scale than Gaza. Certainly we can argue about which is worse, but they're both incredible atrocities. The only thing that makes China less scary IMO is that they currently aren't the empire ruling the world and at the center of the global economy. If that changes, as seems likely, I don't see any reason to believe China would be a better or more compassionate world ruler than the US.
When China does good, it's always that they do mostly bad.
With China it's always pointed out how much power the state has over corporations there, but in the US out of control lobying is supposed to be 'concerned citizens expressing their opinions' or some shit. We're still supposed to take for granted that it is a representative democracy, if a flawed one.
These are not equivalent.
You can argue all day about whether A is slightly more rotten than B, but if they are both rotten then in the grand scheme they will both end up being the same thing if something doesn’t get fixed.
You had to reach back 50 years to find US support for dictators.
> they just often happen to be with dictatorships
No, they always happen to be with dictatorships. The motives of US politicians are not relevant to this fact (I personally think Trump is corrupt and incompetent); the US system is democratic enough, and Americans are moralistic enough, that even corrupt and incompetent politicians can't get away with military adventurism except with dictatorships. Thus the end of that Greenland nonsense.
US allies in the entire middle east are literally all dictators or worse than dictators. For example, Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy, you just need 6 years education in school to understand that is worse than dictators when religion is also heavily involved at the same time.
if you want a good path to true improvement in civil rights (not a useless piece of paper or declaration) just track the wealth of a country. Wealthy countries that didn't rely on natural resources to get wealthy tend to treat their citizens better because, well, they make up the fcking economy.
most western countries had a shortcut to that via colonialism and slavery. It's very rich to then point at countries that don't have that cushion and talk about being morally superior.
Democracy is a morally superior system of government, because it's fundamentally premised on a moral idea; that governments "derive their just powers from the consent of the governed". Dictatorships and aristocracies can make no such claim.
But in principle I agree, democracy on its own doesn't guarantee morality. There's such thing as the tyranny of the majority.
More recently, Sadam and Noriega until America turned on them.
Or currently, the Kingdom of Saudia Arabia, Egypt, and many others.
I don't think you realise that much of the world was under de facto dictatorships (eg. absolute monarchies) and it wasn't like people in the years before were living in democracies that then got taken away.
The US doesn't have a higher moral ground to stand on vis a vis many other countries in the world.
I think I've typed up and then deleted my response to this comment about 10 times, but now I don't think I'm even going to give you reasoned response.
If you really think that the US has the moral authority to invade whoever it likes because they're "saving the local people from repressive regimes", I've got a bridge to sell you. Even Trump has dropped this pretext facade unlike all his predecessors, and now straight out says "we're going in to take their oil".
Assuming that everyone who disagrees with you is a propagandized bot is a terrible way to live. You will not learn.
The name says "demos" and "kratos" but names are names, not facts.
There are many ways to give people a choice and this one has proven to be quite ineffective at that, as it slowly devolved into a plutocracy/oligarchy. Iron law of oligarchy, yadda yadda.
What they are very effective at though: crushing dissent, calming the masses with a reassuring illusion of choice, and touting itself as the "one true way".
When I look at the outcomes I don't see any semblance of democracy, only a ritual dance/theatre show every 4 years. A farce as big as the "democratic" instruments on the PRC.
There's a reason this "democracy" is very diligent at discouraging association and unionizing. Those give actual power to the people (and with power comes choice). That's dangerous. People might start believing they can actually influence the outcomes.
"Don't blame me - I voted for Kodos"
Do not conflate the broken American political system, the semi-broken British one, and the whole rest of the "west". Each country has its own political system, and they are wildly different.
> crushing dissent
Democracies are good at crushing dissent? Compared to other political systems? That's just not true. All other political systems rely on universal truth and unwavering trust in a person / religion / clique of people, who can do no wrong and can never be criticised.
> There's a reason this "democracy" is very diligent at discouraging association and unionizing
What? You are probably talking about a specific democracy, and the most broken one at that.
As someone from the "whole rest of the west", no, they're not different at all. Very minor details change, but the net outcome is the exact same and suffer from the exact same problems.
You can't escape the iron law of oligarchy.
> Democracies are good at crushing dissent?
They're not only good: they are the best. You don't need to curb dissent by violence if you discourage dissent by social manipulation. It's the cheapest and most effective tactic: keeping the populace docile.
If you manage to equate "democracy" (again, quotes intended) with democracy (lack of quotes intended), most of the work is already done.
"What are you, antidemocratic!?"
"Don't blame me - I voted for Kodos"
There's a reason my country's system trembled when the bipartisan system was challenged as new parties emerged... but it was curbed within two legislatures without a single shot fired and now we're back to an even stronger bipartisan representation. Quite the fine job, actually.
We even have a name for this: "the state's sewers". They're very effective. There's a reason the state's armed forces routinely infiltrate unions and other citizens participation platforms.
Such as? There are countries such as Poland with a political duopoly, but in most European countries, there are multiple parties that work with or against each other. There are different coalitions with varying compromises between them.
> They're not only good: they are the best. You don't need to curb dissent by violence if you discourage dissent by social manipulation. It's the cheapest and most effective tactic: keeping the populace docile.
Nonsense, because autocracies do both, and the threat by violence is very real and makes sure that social manipulation is more effective.
They all failed and were subsumed by the two (read: one) big groups in Europe. Far left and libertarians were crushed in the past two legislatures.
Now it's PfE's turn but the antibodies are already in the bloodstream (the two big groups are already signing their covenants to protect the oligarchy) and Trump did them dirty (they're now scrambling to distance themselvesb from USA's and Israel's ties) so they're DoA and will fail too.
This said: I understand your points, and thanks for the civil discussion.
That being said, democracies are about generating consensus between factions with otherwise irreconcilable differences.
There should be overlap on many fronts - that's kind of a feature, not a bug - at least in many cases.
The more capitalistic they become, the more growth they have seen.
The current president - who Americans voted for twice - is heavily accused of being a pedophile and has reneged on every one of his poll promise
Really not the best advertisement for democracy
Why would Russians want democracy? Or the Chinese, for that matter? There have been zero democratic impulses in their societies across hundreds, even thousands of years.
The west needs to rest its democratizing mission and accept that every society is fundamentally different
My country (India) got a "thriving" democracy, but because there is no real democratic impulse in the society, everything on the ground has devolved into what the society was always like - quasi-feudal bureaucracy
The marched for it en masse in 1989?
Russians and Chinese are also people. They deserve to rule themselves.
They are ruling themselves in the sense that their governing systems are emergent consequences of their own cultures. All peoples ultimately deserve the governments they have.
More of the point though they support for Chinese democracy was broad enough to the Beijing army could not be used to suppress the protests. The tanks and the people that killed the students had to come in from outside the city.
Could things eventually go south with the CCP in charge? Of course, and given long enough time, that's almost a certainty. But even when that day comes, it still does not directly imply a liberal democracy was the better governing system for the Chinese people, as your original comment strongly implied.
That’s a very big claim to make without a reference.
Incorrect - my point about Chinese democracy does not apply to the current governing body of China (whether you choose to view and harp on them as communist or not is irrelevant).
The Cultural Revolution, which the previous commenter presented as a gotcha, is widely regarded as a dark period and unequivocally a mistake by the majority of Chinese today. But Chinese communism today is both much more and much different than Chinese communism under Mao.
OTOH Tiananmen is much more emblematic of "Chinese democracy" than the Cultural Revolution was of Chinese communism. And as already stated, the way Tiananmen was handled is deemed to be correct by the majority of the Chinese populace today.
And so once again, this goes back to my original point: peoples of different nations choose their own government, including the form of that government, and not just in the narrow sense of who their next public-facing leader should be during the next several years. The Chinese already does exactly that.
Which is your right. Just know that that's what you're doing.
Guess the Tiananmen square tank man is a victim, but Alex Pretti and Renee Good are just statistics
(The tank man wasn't even run down by the tank - Good was shot for merely turning the wheels in the wrong direction)
Americans really need to shut up about any democratic values or humans rights and clean up their own mess before preaching to the world
Well, ideology. I believe my way is the only way for every population in the world too, and I fight for it to happen. Of course, each place adapts to their own condition, but I believe my core ideology is the way for humanity as a whole, and I believe it is the same for people who defend western american-style democracy.
It's not Americans, it's educated people who believe in personal liberties.
> Why would Russians want democracy
Because they would have a choice if they want to be robbed blind by a bunch of oligarchs, and if they want to be sanctioned off from the world because the supreme leader decided he wants to kill and maim a million Russians to achieve nothing more than killing Ukrainian civillians.
> There have been zero democratic impulses in their societies across hundreds, even thousands of years
Absurdly bad historic revisionism. Russia had democratic impulses in 1917 and 1990, both hijacked and went nowhere. China's 1911 revolution was also overtly democratic in nature, but was also hijacked.
I find this attitude deeply parochial and colonial. Who are these so-called "educated people" (most of whom would be in western developed nations) to decide what sort of governance system a country should have?
The democratic revolution in America and France came from its own people. If the Russians or the Chinese want democracy, they'll get it on their own
Western hand-wringing about the "lack of democracy" in foreign (usually poorer) countries is just concern-colonialism. I think most of these educated people should focus on their own countries and let the rest of the world be
Do you think only people in western countries want a democratic system of governenance for their country?
> If the Russians or the Chinese want democracy, they'll get it on their own
Both of them tried it, but were denied.
There's literally a saying about USSR (which by proxy now applies to Russia) which roughly translates to: half the population in prison and another half as guards. You can't get it when army, police and whole government apparatus is aimed against it. Times have changed, people are not willing to die en masse for a change when one single cop can kill a crowd.
They literally killed 132 hostages during a saving operation [1], how many do you think will die when they start shooting the crowds?
1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_theater_hostage_crisis
They don't! The majority voted for the guy who wants to, admittedly (multiple times), be a dictator and is huge fan of other dictators. If he finds a way to stay for a 3rd term his most loyal followers along with all the republicans in Congress will be just fine with it.
Could be something to do with almost 400 years under czar heel and then 70 years under commie repressions and mismanagement that yielded one of the worst crises in the history of the country that is still being mentioned with fear (90s, brrrr).
> There have been zero democratic impulses in their societies across hundreds, even thousands of years.
> Russia
What the am I even reading. Educate yourself before making such claims. Decembrist movement, 1905 revolution, 1917 provisional government, constant unrest after the death of mustached cunt, perestroika. Navalny recently died in prison for fighting for democracy, ffs. The only reason why we're having current Russia is because the West royally fucked up by not economically supporting them in 90s and allowing oligarchs to usurp vast soviet empire resources.
people can tell when their rights are being unjustly infringed upon, even without the verbiage.
democracy is just a handy way of working with individual rights
I think a much better metric is suppression of dissent, human rights records etc., not (the illusion of) choice at the poll booth once every 4 years.
Also, consumer goods.
The voting and multiple-branches-checks-and-balances elements are sidelines.
Currently none of those promises are true in the US. The government is murdering and jailing people for whimsical and self-indulgent reasons, the consumer economy is about to crash, and the only checks-and-balances are the checks going straight to the Emperor's private accounts.
To be fair, there's some judicial pushback, and some political friction.
But Senate and Congress are wholly captured, the opposition is flaccid and foreign-funded, media independence is a myth, and the last time The People had any real influence on policy was the 70s. Possibly.
I have no idea if China is "better". From a distance China seems to be doing much better at building useful things and making long term plans.
But ruling cliques always seem to end up being run by psychopaths, so my expectations for humanity from China's rulers aren't any higher than those for the US.
It would be hilarious if it wasn't so sad
There was massive public backlash and real organized resistance, especially in the streets of Minneapolis. People literally put their lives on the line, communities banded together to help migrants who were afraid to go to work or leave their homes, and they ultimately forced the government to retreat and change tactics. And it resulted in the firing of a cabinet secretary and the border patrol commander that was the face of the whole thing. And plummeting public approval that has only declined further since
A somewhat similar campaign occurred in Hong Kong, but the resistance sadly was not able to fare as well against China tyranny
orban even lost with a similar illusion of choice.
The US badly needs to reform these elements, but it's those elements that really make reform nearly impossible at this point.
Electoral college reform, gerrymandering reform, increasing the size of the house or some kind of proportional representation, etc
Right.
Western democracies don't have that problem. Yes, they have other problems. Many problems which are hard to solve. But if you live in a western democracy you can freely criticise those in power without fear of retribution.
None of those things happen quickly, and most people don't succeed in their attempt to do it. That doesn't mean it's not possible. I'd argue that it's a feature of the system that the system makes it hard to change course - it averages out the extremes.
It turns out that the people will vote for some terrible things in order to get that one petty little thing a given candidate promises and they want, or because they don't like something specific about the other candidate(s). And of course many may later say “well, I didn't vote for that” when they quite demonstrably did.
The problem is that people put stock in pre-election promises, rather than voting for the character of the person they want to represent them.
The measure is the number of votes. "What shall we have for dinner" measures things, there's no target in a "curry vs pizza vs thai" poll, and it doesn't really matter, the target is a nice night in with a film.
However with politics, getting power is the goal, thus the number of votes is thus the target, and thus its not good at measuring what the country actually wants, just who can best get the most votes.
This isn't new, but modern brainwashing allows manipulation at a scale hitherto unseen.
The reality is that the term democracy in western society has essentially become meaningless due to the swathes of algorithmic manipulation which occurs every second of everyday through every possible digital medium.
Democracy isn't just having an election every four years. We have rights that we shouldn't take for granted.
China characterizes itself as a democracy too, just not as a liberal democracy. There are democratic processes, although these are not free in the sense of liberalist ideology. The CCP justifies its control of the elections as a counterbalance to being corrupted by money, which starts to look like not an entirely unreasonable justification.
The CCP narrative also emphasizes "outcome orientation", i.e. that (democratic) legitimacy comes from people being happy about what the governance delivers, not about how it gets chosen. Which again starts to look not totally crazy, given western governments nowadays tend to have dismal approval ratings. And even after taking into account the likely biases in the polling, I do believe the majority of the Chinese truly approve of the CCP.
I'm not a fan of the Chinese system, but I think there are lessons we could take, and a binary "democratic or not" is not a very meaningful categorization.
Democracy is the idea that people should control their government. The CCP's (and Putin's) notion of "democracy" is something along the lines of "as long as the government controls the people, the people can decide".
Democracy may be a spectrum but China isn't on it, neither in practice nor in spirit. If you have to control the media and prevent free discussion, you aren't practicing democracy.
who started the recent war with Iran and war in Vietnam? did those wars started by American people? did those wars got approved by the people of America or their elected representatives?
Yes? The US president is elected, and while you or I might the system would be better if presidents didn't have quite so much authority... we know the system works this way when we vote.
https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcri...
North Korea is a democratic republic!
well American censored LLMs that usually willing to take extreme efforts to convince me that there is no genocide in Gaza.
the same American LLMs also insist that there are many human genders.
you don't see the problem? lol
The elected government of the US has the moral highground of over the regime that killed the KMT in it's weakened state after the KMT defeated Japan, went on a rampage against the educated classes, mowed down its own people with machineguns and tanks when they demanded a say in their own governments, and kidnaps people advocating for democracy to this day, including Jack Ma.
> despite starting a new war... on behalf of Israel every six months.
The war started when Hamas, funded by Iran, went on a murder and rape rampage against Israeli civilians.
Liberal democracies have moral high ground over authoritarian dictatorships (at least along that one dimension)
The US is backsliding tragically (and stupidly) and may lose that moral high ground, but the rest of the western democracies will still have it
We conduct amoral behavior with terrorist regimes for dollars.
TikTok and Hasan has really turned the West against itself.
Thinks America is starting wars on behalf of Israel.
LMAO