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Yeah, there’s lots of bad on both sides. Here in the US we have crimes like Driving While Black. There was just a high profile execution the other day that mad

by nxc18 6y ago

Yeah, there’s lots of bad on both sides. Here in the US we have crimes like Driving While Black. There was just a high profile execution the other day that made headlines, but most fly under the radar. We also just killed 100,000 people, minimum, through deliberate incompetence, so there’s that. Technically it’s the past, but in practical terms it’s the present. I’ll remind you that Tiananmen Square was quite a while ago. Rights are relative, people in China don’t have them, people in the US kind of have them sometimes, assuming they’re the right color or have enough money. In broad strokes it’s better in the US, for now. I personally like to count the foreign deaths and foreign intervention when evaluating countries-the US really likes interfering with our neighbors, and kills lots of people in the Middle East - 200,000+ innocent civilians. But they’re foreign, so they’re not really people, right? https://theintercept.com/2018/11/19/civilian-casualties-us-war-on-terror/ https://theintercept.com/2018/11/19/civilian-casualties-us-w... I won’t even begin with the non-lethal interventions, or more subtle interventions like giving arms to authoritarian regimes and/or terrorists. But I guess China spies, so that’s really bad. It would be terrible if they stole the NSA’s idea and interfered with network equipment. They do like stealing IP. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa-upgrade-factory-show-cisco-router-getting-implant/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa... The US does a disservice to the world by not being better in the present. We can’t hold China accountable when we don’t hold ourselves accountable.

jimmaswell 6y ago
> people in the US kind of have them sometimes, assuming they’re the right color or have enough money Complete hyperbole. Squint as hard as you can but the poorest minority in America is still better off than almost anyone in China. Yes we have a racial profiling problem but on the whole we have our rights much more than "kind of sometimes." Yeah, we have an incompetent administration this time around. At least we have real elections with more than one real candidate. Last part is a total non sequitur and would make as much sense flipped around.
- bildung 6y ago
  > At least we have real elections with more than one real candidate. For some definition of "real elections" - the voting suppression techniques employed in the US are study material in politics courses in other democracies. * gerrymandering * not allowing for remote votes by letter * having votes on days that are not free for working people - this is interesting because many other democracies used that to discourage working class people to vote, e.g. Germany in the late 19th century. But most countries now mandate that votes have to fall on either sundays or national holidays. * (Edit:) Felony disenfranchisement - this in combination with the war on drugs is a very effective way to strip voting rights from minorities, e.g. this isn't even visible in voting turnout comparisons between countries. And the techniques work: The US has one of the lowest voting participation rates of all OECD countries.

by nxc18 6y ago

jimmaswell 6y ago

> people in the US kind of have them sometimes, assuming they’re the right color or have enough money Complete hyperbole. Squint as hard as you can but the poorest minority in America is still better off than almost anyone in China. Yes we have a racial profiling problem but on the whole we have our rights much more than "kind of sometimes." Yeah, we have an incompetent administration this time around. At least we have real elections with more than one real candidate. Last part is a total non sequitur and would make as much sense flipped around.

bildung 6y ago
> At least we have real elections with more than one real candidate. For some definition of "real elections" - the voting suppression techniques employed in the US are study material in politics courses in other democracies. * gerrymandering * not allowing for remote votes by letter * having votes on days that are not free for working people - this is interesting because many other democracies used that to discourage working class people to vote, e.g. Germany in the late 19th century. But most countries now mandate that votes have to fall on either sundays or national holidays. * (Edit:) Felony disenfranchisement - this in combination with the war on drugs is a very effective way to strip voting rights from minorities, e.g. this isn't even visible in voting turnout comparisons between countries. And the techniques work: The US has one of the lowest voting participation rates of all OECD countries.