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> What makes people uncomfortable is that the US is a democracy, and the leaders are chosen by the population. Well, sort of. They're almost always from very w
by wcarss 6y ago
> What makes people uncomfortable is that the US is a democracy, and the leaders are chosen by the population.
Well, sort of. They're almost always from very wealthy families with very particular educational, social, and occupational histories, on both sides. We get to choose from within the group that makes it to through the candidate vetting processes controlled by the parties.
> China's military and social power is wielded by a very small group of elites in the CCP, which makes it hard to trust.
Again, it's pretty similar. The rich and their children have time and money to build the connections that can get them into positions of institutional power.
> The nature of US policy has been shaped over the centuries in the open, whereas China's policies and doctrines are sometimes changed overnight.
Policy changes in China get voted on too. They might seem like an orchestrated rubber stamp to us -- and they might actually be!
But similarly in the US, executive orders, agency decisions, and supreme court orders can happen swiftly and have similarly profound impacts on the people and the system. See for example Citizen's United, or the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine by the FCC. Did any normal people vote for those things? They kind of just... happened, and their impacts are huge.
I'm not trying to say I would rather live in China or under its system, rather that our perceptions of the differences between the systems are influenced heavily by our context and our naturally western-oriented media diet, and they may in reality be smaller than we feel.
To put it very cynically, our system currently works by allowing average people to feel like we have control over it, while China's doesn't use that tool so much. In truth, average people don't have any real control over either system under normal circumstances.
- throwaway894345 6y ago> Again, it's pretty similar. I don't see how... Yes, the US has a classist bias and certainly some mild corruption. That still seems a world apart from a single party system that routinely flouts its own constitution. Also, executive orders and legislation are bound by the constitution in theory and practice. While they may result in abrupt changes from time-to-time, they are limited in scope. That seems materially different to me than a single party system that can pass, overturn, or utterly ignore whatever legislation it likes overnight.
- AnimalMuppet 6y agoAgreed. Let me know when China's equivalent of the Supreme Court rules that something Xi is doing is unconstitutional, and makes it stick.
- refenestrator 6y agoEverything is politics, including Supreme Court rulings. Gay marriage wasn't a constitutional right until politics demanded it. In China it's the Politburo rather than a Supreme Court but the leader must also engage with politics and get buy-in for changes.
- throwaway894345 6y agoHear, hear! In Anglo-Saxon England, the King too needed support from his lords. Clearly all of these systems are all exactly identical and there has been no progress in the intervening millennium.
- refenestrator 6y agoThe King needed a varying amount of support from lords, one church or another and a developing parliament depending on when in time it was. And at every step along that journey, it was proclaimed as the best possible way of doing things, ordained by god, etc etc. Not just politics, we actually have the ideal system here.
- throwaway894345 6y agoTo be clear, my response was satire. You suggested that the Supreme Court was functionally the same as the CCP politburo on the basis that there is some non-zero amount of politicking in either case. I pointed out that the same was true of Anglo-Saxon England to expose the ridiculousness of the equivalence, but you're ignoring that point and making a new point, utterly unrelated to the previous one (in fairness I would also abandon that position)? Something to the effect of, "Because some Americans and Anglo-Saxons thought their systems were the bees-knees, they must be equally terrible"? Am I getting this right?
- xNeil 6y ago>To put it very cynically, our system currently works by allowing average people to feel like we have control over it, while China's doesn't use that tool so much. In truth, average people don't have any real control over either system under normal circumstances. I think we do. Voting for Donald Trump or Joe Biden was entirely in the average person's control, and the outcome is that Joe Biden won. Simple. Take, for example, the President. Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan - none of them came from wealthy families. If the most powerful man in the country is chosen entirely by the people, I'd say average people do have control over the system.