You go against the government (for real) in ANY country you get a bullet, simple as that...
That is everywhere...
In USA, China, Russia, Paraguay, Laos, or wherever you go look...
For instance, you can mock Trump and question the US all day.
You can’t do that in China. Even this website is banned in China.
As bad as Trump is (and he's bad) he's still nowhere near as bad as Xi is.
Let's look at the Six Defining Characteristics of Totalitarianism (Friedrich and Brzezinski, 1956):
* An elaborate guiding ideology [typcially focused around patriotism and loyalty to the state above all else]
* A single political party, typically led by a dictator
* Use of instruments of terror such as violence and secret police to control the population
* A government monopoly on weapons
* A government monopoly on means of communication (such as state-controlled media and heavy censorship)
* A state-controlled economy
In none of those categories is the United States as far along as the PRC under Xi. At least one of those categories would require a large amount of bloodshed for the US to reach the level that China is.
So if people stopped complaining on the second day, he would've been in office on the third day?
Yeah, thanks for confirming my point.
Only if you are US citizen (so already locked into the system) or never plan to visit the US.
But it's very likely you won't be let in and in worst case be interrogated for several days if you try to. Or even worse if you aren't white.
So nah, it's not that easy and definitely not that "free speech" for anyone.
It's less dangerous to do this in the US, but it's still much worse there than it was even a decade ago.
"It's all the same", just isn't true. If it were, you wouldn't see any conflict.