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I would compare Tiananmen Square with the Tulsa race massacre. How many Americans don't know about it? The time I spend in the US I had the feeling that you ha

I would compare Tiananmen Square with the Tulsa race massacre. How many Americans don't know about it? The time I spend in the US I had the feeling that you have more of a pseudo freedom than actual freedom. Everyone keeps saying how free they are and how great their country is yet you can't even drink an alcoholic beverage on the street without getting arrested. You go to a town festival and the people who want to drink are enclosed in a small area like cattle.

nsxwolf 5y ago
You can talk about the Tulsa race massacre. You can make TV shows depicting it. Forces may have conspired to keep it from the forefront of the American consciousness, but nobody was going around burning the books or throwing people in jail for bringing it up.
dev_tty01 5y ago
In the US (and most western countries), I can put up a website detailing what happened in the Tulsa race massacre with no fear of government censorship or retaliation. In China, I could not do the same with details of Tiananmen Square.
zepto 5y ago
The Tulsa race massacre which has been featured in pop culture and all over the press in the last few years because a lot of Americans didn’t know about it. Vs The Tiananmen Square massacre which is censored to even mention digitally in China, and state agents intimidate citizens outside China just for mentioning it. Also note that Tulsa was 100 years ago. Around the time of the birth of the CCP, which has killed tens of millions of its own citizens since that time. Tiananmen was in 1989. Any attempt to equivocate these two is utterly intellectually dishonest.
- vmception 5y ago
  Okay so a more apt comparison would be 30 years after the Tulsa race massacre in America to see if was easier to talk about it Or 100 years after the Tianamen Square massacre in China to see if its easier to talk about it then great. very productive.
  - zepto 5y ago
    It’s a delusional if you think that in the 50s, there were American agents intimidating their citizens abroad for talking about the Tulsa race massacre. The idea that it is OK for it to take another 50 years before the Chinese can talk about Tiananmen without fear of state reprisal, seems to be an apology for totalitarian oppression.
    - jeffh 5y ago
      In the 50s there was US agent repression and intimidation of beliefs around communism (see McCarthyism). The KKK was also still rampant and had members that were police or other "state officials". So ... maybe US isn't so different after all?
      - zepto 5y ago
        The KKK wasn’t a part of the state. And yes, there was state sponsored anti-communism in the 50s, but it is not even close to comparable. Nobody was being intimidated for mentioning communism, or even advocating for it. People were targeted for group membership. This is still wrong, but please stop trying to make it seem equivalent to what is happening today in China. The fact that you have to go back 50 years to find an example shows how different the two countries are today.
        lazide 5y ago
        [flagged]
        zepto 5y ago
        The KKK was not a paramilitary arm of the state. To claim it was is a lie. The KKK was a terrorist organization bent on violently oppressing Black Americans. It was never part of the state.
        lazide 5y ago
JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> I would compare Tiananmen Square with the Tulsa race massacre. How many Americans don't know about it? This is a legitimate comparison between the CCP and the government of Oklahoma. It is a bad comparison in terms of responses. China fears and represses discussion of the Tiananmen Square massacre. In America, we discuss and debate and try to incrementally learn from our experience.
- geofft 5y ago
  There are a large number of bills in US state legislatures aimed at suppressing honest and uncensored discussion of the Tulsa race massacre. In America, we should discuss and debate and try to incrementally learn from our experiences. And we do, a lot of the time. But not always.
  - zepto 5y ago
    > There are a large number of bills in US state legislatures aimed at suppressing honest and uncensored discussion of the Tulsa race massacre. Bullshit. There is not one.
    - guipsp 5y ago
      Quick google search: https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/2346/text https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/234...
      - zepto 5y ago
        Ahh, so in other words complete bulkshit, That bill has nothing to do with preventing teaching about Tulsa.
        guipsp 5y ago
        It does, for example, the provision regarding >(B) the United States is a fundamentally racist country; Could be interpreted as preventing proper discussion about what caused the Tulsa massacre
echelon 5y ago
> I would compare Tiananmen Square with the Tulsa race massacre. How many Americans don't know about it? Since HBO's Watchmen, I've heard and read about the Tulsa race massacre quite a bit. It's frequently mentioned in the media now. I was shocked that this was almost totally unknown and unspoken about prior to the show, but I guarantee you that it won't remain that way. That's the difference with Tiananmen.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> Everyone keeps saying how free they are and how great their country is yet you can't even drink an alcoholic beverage on the street without getting arrested. You go to a town festival and the people who want to drink are enclosed in a small area like cattle. Public space alcohol consumption is one of the weirdest metrics I’ve seen to gauge freedom. But for what it’s worth, laws regarding public alcohol consumption are a local thing. There are plenty of places in the United States where public alcohol consumption isn’t a crime. And of course, you’re free to drink privately. But freedom doesn’t mean anarchy. If you want to nit pick individual restrictions on non-speech activities in public spaces then you can find something to complain about every country.
- Sharlin 5y ago
  > Public space alcohol consumption is one of the weirdest metrics I’ve seen to gauge freedom. I would say it's a much more relevant metric than the ability to own a shitload of guns, or to drive a black smoke diesel truck, the latter of which is honestly bafflingly antisocial behavior. The definition of "freedom" should begin with the freedom from others pushing their negative externalities onto you.
  - Semaphor 5y ago
    > The definition of "freedom" should begin with the freedom from others pushing their negative externalities onto you. While I (European) generally agree with you, this could also be a point against public consumption of alcohol ;)
    - ysavir 5y ago
      I think the attitude might be that we should prohibit and punish the behaviors, not the source. If someone is being belligerent or otherwise disruptive in a public space, whether or not they're drinking alcohol should not be a factor. And if someone is drinking alcohol without being disruptive, is there cause to punish or prohibit their behavior?
      - 5y ago
JabavuAdams 5y ago
This struck me as I was visiting Munich, momentarily agog at the guy in front of me walking down the street drinking beer like it was no thing. Meanwhile Americans were protesting that mask mandates were an infringement on their freedom (Germans too). Many, many things are an infringement on our individual freedom, but it's revealing what people actually choose to rally around, and when. It points to how certain issues have become politicized and have organized, well-funded opposition. To all the people up in arms about masks -- why now? Why this easy thing? Why weren't you protesting restrictions on voting age, driving age, drinking age, restrictions on gay marriage rights? Those are all very consequential restrictions, as opposed to wearing a bit of fabric on your face. Something that snow-sports enthusiasts routinely do without complaint or consequence.
- montblanc 5y ago
  I got comments from neighbors for going into the street with a cup of coffee in the Netherlands. My Dutch wasn't that great but I picked up they were busting my balls in a friendly way - guess it looked funny to some. I also sometimes would get uncomfortable stares whenever I came down to throw something in the garbage room - the old guy looking was making sure I'm not gonna put garbage A in a B dumpster. Now every society has some kind of norms police citizens, but I feel it's quite worse in places like Germany/NL/Switzerland etc. Not really much substance to my argument, just sharing. Also I'm not criticizing these countries, their culture is just different than what I was brought up with. Where I live if you start correcting everyone around you you will be the one corrected eventually. That's why where I live looks much worse than Germany I guess.
_-david-_ 5y ago
>I would compare Tiananmen Square with the Tulsa race massacre. The issue with that comparison is Americans can easily search about Tulsa and find a bunch of information about it. People in China are restricted from getting information about Tienanmen Square. While a lot of people in China know bad stuff happened in Tienanmen Square, they can't so easily confirm their suspicions. They can't hear people's take on it and fully understand what happened. >How many Americans don't know about it? Just because Americans don't know about a topic doesn't really matter. Americans don't know about a lot of historical events, especially ones that happened 100 years ago. I would guess a lot of Americans don't know Harding was President during Tulsa. Does that mean Harding is like Tienanmen Square? I would go as far as saying people don't even know about Tulsa shows people aren't really moving on, but just forgot about it. On the other hand, everybody knows slavery occurred.
jalanco 5y ago
There are number of places in the US where it is legal to walk around outside with a drink. New Orleans is the place I'm most familiar with but there are others. Some people forget that the US is not a monoculture.
BurningFrog 5y ago
Let's compare them: The Tiananmen Square massacre killed off the Chinese democracy movement which challenged the CCP for national power. It set a new course for Chinese government, that it is still more or less on. The Tulsa massacre was a local race riot, with little impact outside Oklahoma.
- killjoywashere 5y ago
  The area involved was also fairly affluent. There’s a possibility that Black Americans could seen that become a larger enclave, not unlike Atlanta’s Black community. It’s impossible to know which butterfly’s wings might have changed the course of history.
desireco42 5y ago
Maybe alcohol is not the best metric, but Assange is, or endless wars.
dnautics 5y ago
not comparable. I know of it (and have for 20 years; hey, I went to a public school run by hippies so we talked about this kind of stuff) AND ALSO I can post about it right here, right now, without worrying about the state coming after me (as, obviously I have, just now, and has everyone else in this thread) AND ALSO I can go to a FOREIGN COUNTRY and post about it without worrying that the us will go after my mom living in the US.
syki 5y ago
I like your terminology: pseudo freedom. You brought walking around with a beer being illegal in almost every location in the U.S. That’s a good example but here is an even more fundamental example of pseudo freedom in the U.S. The following is about the criminalization of walking. The link is to a small sized PDF written by a law professor. https://www.illinoislawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Lewyn.pdf https://www.illinoislawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05...
ridaj 5y ago
Prime whataboutism. But anyways, just as one example, the Tulsa race massacre was the subject of a major recent TV series (The Watchmen). Mere mentions of Tiananmen square massacre, observing quiet vigils, etc. could get you jailed in China. On freedom of speech, there is no possible comparison. Even the existence of this very conversation would be immediately censored on the Chinese domestic internet.
323 5y ago
> you can't even drink an alcoholic beverage on the street without getting arrested Just switch to injecting heroin in public spaces. The police will leave you alone and you might even become a celebrated person.
allendoerfer 5y ago
I want to help the parent poster out here: I think he was refering to how easy it is to get thrown in jail in America. Jail as a concept does not really exist in many European countries. You can swap drinking in public with speeding or some other minor offense.
spaetzleesser 5y ago
"The time I spend in the US I had the feeling that you have more of a pseudo freedom than actual freedom. " Having grown up in Germany and now living in the US I think in the US you can have more freedom if you are willing to live outside the boundaries of the life the average citizen has. If you are willing to live off the grid you can be pretty free. Some people think freedom also means the right to not have health insurance. But if you live the life of the average citizen with a regular job I feel the US citizen is less free. You constantly have to worry about the cost of health care and education. I also feel people are less willing to voice their opinion in order to not offend others. You have way less rights as an employee. Police is less predictable and may do weird stuff. I also feel less free when I get into a confrontation with somebody and have to worry about getting shot.
- mrkstu 5y ago
  Interesting perspective, though I'd like some detail around the 'worry about getting shot' comment. I'm in my 50s and have lived in the US all but 2 of my years, and have never been concerned about getting shot (in the US or abroad.) In what kind of situations have you found yourself that you've actively had this worry?
  - spaetzleesser 5y ago
    I had a situation where almost every morning a guy with big work truck would pass us extremely closely at full speed while we were walking our dog. The road didn’t have sidewalks so usually cars would slow down or change sides but this guy didn’t. We tried to wave to him to slow down which only resulted in him swerving towards us so we had to jump off the road. One day I stood in the middle of the road and made him stop. I explained the situation to him and he was extremely aggressive and threatened to beat me up. I told him he can try but should think about the consequences first. After a while he backed off. I called his employer and never saw him again. When i told this story to some people they told me that I would have had a real problem if he had had a gun. That’s probably true. In Germany you usually can assume that even bad guys don’t have a gun but in the US you have to assume that every idiot has a gun. This brings confrontations quickly to a dangerous level.
r3trohack3r 5y ago
I think what I mean by “freedom” is that “citizens” are a branch of government. Freedom is that we’ve decided the citizens are the ruling class. To oversimplify quite a bite: As a citizen of the United States, and Arizona, I’m allowed to get together with a group of citizens, draft law, and bring it to vote during the next election. As long as it’s constitutionally valid, and we get a majority vote, it becomes law. Several cities have changed their ballot box from First Past The Post to Ranked Choice Voting through citizen lead initiatives. Ending the full prohibition on Marijuana in my state was a citizen initiative. I’m sure they exist - but I don’t know of other countries that have this kind of freedom. We’ve gotten it wrong in places (gerrymandering is a big one) - but we’ve been one piece of citizen lead legislation away from improving it for a long time. And that gives me hope.
georgeecollins 5y ago
This is what-about-ism. I am surprised you didn't mention that we are less free to smoke in public places! Here's the thing: Laws about where you can smoke and drink vary from place to place in the US but in every part of them you are free to complain about them. The laws were passed by elected officials. You can start a petition to change them. You can run for mayor on the platform of changing the rules about where you can smoke or drink. I agree that it is a sad commentary that many Americans don't know about the Tulsa race riot. Yet here we are discussing it. A popular TV show in the US (The Watchmen) depicted it quite graphically. Could those things happen with Tiananmen Square in China?
- sschueller 5y ago
  I personally feel that the term "what-about-ism" is excessively used to down play the wrongs of a other party. Especially when that other party is pretending to be at a higher moral ground than the one they are critical about. One should not make things OK because someone else does it but one should point out the wrongs another party is engaged in especially if it is hypocritical. In this case however I didn't say what about, I did suggest an alternative to Ops comment which in itself may have been what about ism.
chmod600 5y ago
In the U.S. there's a hierarchy of freedoms. Fundamental rights, like speech and the right to a fair trial, are necessary to secure other "lower" freedoms if you want. You can drink outside in some places, like Las Vegas. The fact that you can't drink outside most places just illustrates that the overwhelming majority don't even want to do that. Drugs and booze are cheap freedoms that don't do anything to avoid repression.
inopinatus 5y ago
> more of a pseudo freedom than actual freedom My experience of the US is similar to yours. Note that the USA is rather special in how it encodes freedom. There is, after all, literally a big list of guaranteed freedoms. In practice, if something's not on there, then every government and quasi-governmental entity assumes you are not free to do it, or at least, they believe they can decide to stop you. This is the inverse of almost every construction of freedom that went before it, and your experience arises from that difference. The notoriously vast & byzantine scale of the US Code is another emergent property, it being essentially a salami attack on its own fundamentals.
tristor 5y ago
I don't think you made the comparison between these two events with any ulterior motives, but the subthreads below your comment are interesting and telling in part because a significant number of the comments are parroting each other from users with little history on HN. It feels like this thread may have attracted the attention of the Fifty Cent Army[1]. There are a remarkable number of comments that fall into the same vein, and at least one is a username I recognize from previous threads about China shilling very hard in a pro-CCP way. I wonder if @dang or HN have any processes by which to identify bot / shill accounts and limit them, because it's obvious there's a far larger contingent of these accounts on the site than I originally expected. I guess HN is no longer an unnoticed corner of the Internet where folks can just have normal conversations like it used to be. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party
handrous 5y ago
> I would compare Tiananmen Square with the Tulsa race massacre. How many Americans don't know about it? I'd never heard of it until I watched Watchmen. So, I'd lived nearly half my life before hearing of it. I spent my entire childhood in states bordering Oklahoma, and, for a while, in Oklahoma itself (though not in/near Tulsa).
mrtranscendence 5y ago
I'll take not being able to drink on the street in some parts of the US if it means I can criticize the government without being harassed (or worse) by government officials.
djrogers 5y ago
> Everyone keeps saying how free they are and how great their country is yet you can't even drink an alcoholic beverage on the street without getting arrested. This shows a common misunderstanding of the US legal system - the federal gov't couldn't make public consumption legal or illegal even if it wanted to. I go to local festivals in my town multiple time s a year with thousands of people milling about drinking freely - because my city and county don't prohibit it. You come to the US with the assumption that the federal government has authority over these things, but they don't - constitutionally they are largely forbidden from creating laws like that - it's up to the state, county, and city to do so.
bsza 5y ago
> I would compare Tiananmen Square with the Tulsa race massacre If that were a valid comparison, your comment wouldn't still be on this site.
gaoshan 5y ago
If you compare how China treats discussion and remembrance of Tiananmen to the how the US treats the Tulsa Race Massacre you will find there is no comparison. It's true that many in the US don't know about it but many in the US cannot find China on a map so ignorance of the thing might be explainable by something rather more benign than the oppressive and punitive way China handles things. In recent years information and documentaries on the Tulsa race massacre have been popping up with regularity. The information is easy to find, there are multiple documentaries you have easy access to, the government (in the form of the Tulsa Historical Society) has a very through website exploring what happened, etc. More importantly no one is punished for exploring and discussing this topic. Quite the opposite lately, it is of growing interest to many in the US. Now compare that to China and the Tiananmen Square massacre. As I said at the top, no comparison at all. I'm not a rah rah "Murican", either. I am very critical of my own country (as I think we all should be.. you can't improve if you don't learn from the bad) and the US has many problems that should be addressed but to compare China and the US on these points is not even a little reasonable, in my opinion. It shows a lack of knowledge of both China (someplace I have lived for years) and the US (where I grew up and currently live). Also, your example of drinking in public is just a generalization and of all the things you could have picked that would be valid arguments, is not a good one. In my community in Ohio you can drink anywhere in the downtown public area, for example and it is several square miles in area.
peatmoss 5y ago
Not talking about the Tulsa race massacre, is an example of society at large choosing, through inattention or other social forces, to not care about something they should probably choose to care more about. Not being allowed to talk about Tiananmen Square massacre is society being told what to find worthy of attention. While the ends may on occasion align, I think it’s an important distinction. But it is also worth considering “practical” freedoms.
throwaway0a5e 5y ago
It varies a lot by where you live and how much premium you personally care about following the letter of the law. I think HN tends to assume nobody has any freedom because most of HN lives in "nice" suburbs or "nice" parts of cities where law enforcement is being used in a backhand manner to enforce conformity and also comes from a life where obeying basically all the laws basically all the time is considered default behavior. The lower classes are far, far free-er on a day to day basis than HN is. Nobody cares if you smoke weed on your porch in any neighborhood where a Ford E350 is a more common driveway adornment than a Mercedes E350. I walk my dog beer in hand two days a week. Kids ride dirt bikes on the street. The section 8 people play loud music in languages I don't speak. Nobody gets hassled by the powers that be, as far as I can tell. And this isn't some rural area in a small government red state, it's working class neighborhood in a blue state.

nsxwolf 5y ago

You can talk about the Tulsa race massacre. You can make TV shows depicting it. Forces may have conspired to keep it from the forefront of the American consciousness, but nobody was going around burning the books or throwing people in jail for bringing it up.

dev_tty01 5y ago

In the US (and most western countries), I can put up a website detailing what happened in the Tulsa race massacre with no fear of government censorship or retaliation. In China, I could not do the same with details of Tiananmen Square.

zepto 5y ago

The Tulsa race massacre which has been featured in pop culture and all over the press in the last few years because a lot of Americans didn’t know about it. Vs The Tiananmen Square massacre which is censored to even mention digitally in China, and state agents intimidate citizens outside China just for mentioning it. Also note that Tulsa was 100 years ago. Around the time of the birth of the CCP, which has killed tens of millions of its own citizens since that time. Tiananmen was in 1989. Any attempt to equivocate these two is utterly intellectually dishonest.

vmception 5y ago
Okay so a more apt comparison would be 30 years after the Tulsa race massacre in America to see if was easier to talk about it Or 100 years after the Tianamen Square massacre in China to see if its easier to talk about it then great. very productive.
- zepto 5y ago
  It’s a delusional if you think that in the 50s, there were American agents intimidating their citizens abroad for talking about the Tulsa race massacre. The idea that it is OK for it to take another 50 years before the Chinese can talk about Tiananmen without fear of state reprisal, seems to be an apology for totalitarian oppression.
  - jeffh 5y ago
    In the 50s there was US agent repression and intimidation of beliefs around communism (see McCarthyism). The KKK was also still rampant and had members that were police or other "state officials". So ... maybe US isn't so different after all?
    - zepto 5y ago
      The KKK wasn’t a part of the state. And yes, there was state sponsored anti-communism in the 50s, but it is not even close to comparable. Nobody was being intimidated for mentioning communism, or even advocating for it. People were targeted for group membership. This is still wrong, but please stop trying to make it seem equivalent to what is happening today in China. The fact that you have to go back 50 years to find an example shows how different the two countries are today.
      - lazide 5y ago
        [flagged]
        zepto 5y ago
        The KKK was not a paramilitary arm of the state. To claim it was is a lie. The KKK was a terrorist organization bent on violently oppressing Black Americans. It was never part of the state.
        lazide 5y ago

JumpCrisscross 5y ago

> I would compare Tiananmen Square with the Tulsa race massacre. How many Americans don't know about it? This is a legitimate comparison between the CCP and the government of Oklahoma. It is a bad comparison in terms of responses. China fears and represses discussion of the Tiananmen Square massacre. In America, we discuss and debate and try to incrementally learn from our experience.

geofft 5y ago
There are a large number of bills in US state legislatures aimed at suppressing honest and uncensored discussion of the Tulsa race massacre. In America, we should discuss and debate and try to incrementally learn from our experiences. And we do, a lot of the time. But not always.
- zepto 5y ago
  > There are a large number of bills in US state legislatures aimed at suppressing honest and uncensored discussion of the Tulsa race massacre. Bullshit. There is not one.
  - guipsp 5y ago
    Quick google search: https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/2346/text https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/234...
    - zepto 5y ago
      Ahh, so in other words complete bulkshit, That bill has nothing to do with preventing teaching about Tulsa.
      - guipsp 5y ago
        It does, for example, the provision regarding >(B) the United States is a fundamentally racist country; Could be interpreted as preventing proper discussion about what caused the Tulsa massacre

echelon 5y ago

> I would compare Tiananmen Square with the Tulsa race massacre. How many Americans don't know about it? Since HBO's Watchmen, I've heard and read about the Tulsa race massacre quite a bit. It's frequently mentioned in the media now. I was shocked that this was almost totally unknown and unspoken about prior to the show, but I guarantee you that it won't remain that way. That's the difference with Tiananmen.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

> Everyone keeps saying how free they are and how great their country is yet you can't even drink an alcoholic beverage on the street without getting arrested. You go to a town festival and the people who want to drink are enclosed in a small area like cattle. Public space alcohol consumption is one of the weirdest metrics I’ve seen to gauge freedom. But for what it’s worth, laws regarding public alcohol consumption are a local thing. There are plenty of places in the United States where public alcohol consumption isn’t a crime. And of course, you’re free to drink privately. But freedom doesn’t mean anarchy. If you want to nit pick individual restrictions on non-speech activities in public spaces then you can find something to complain about every country.

Sharlin 5y ago
> Public space alcohol consumption is one of the weirdest metrics I’ve seen to gauge freedom. I would say it's a much more relevant metric than the ability to own a shitload of guns, or to drive a black smoke diesel truck, the latter of which is honestly bafflingly antisocial behavior. The definition of "freedom" should begin with the freedom from others pushing their negative externalities onto you.
- Semaphor 5y ago
  > The definition of "freedom" should begin with the freedom from others pushing their negative externalities onto you. While I (European) generally agree with you, this could also be a point against public consumption of alcohol ;)
  - ysavir 5y ago
    I think the attitude might be that we should prohibit and punish the behaviors, not the source. If someone is being belligerent or otherwise disruptive in a public space, whether or not they're drinking alcohol should not be a factor. And if someone is drinking alcohol without being disruptive, is there cause to punish or prohibit their behavior?
    - 5y ago

JabavuAdams 5y ago

This struck me as I was visiting Munich, momentarily agog at the guy in front of me walking down the street drinking beer like it was no thing. Meanwhile Americans were protesting that mask mandates were an infringement on their freedom (Germans too). Many, many things are an infringement on our individual freedom, but it's revealing what people actually choose to rally around, and when. It points to how certain issues have become politicized and have organized, well-funded opposition. To all the people up in arms about masks -- why now? Why this easy thing? Why weren't you protesting restrictions on voting age, driving age, drinking age, restrictions on gay marriage rights? Those are all very consequential restrictions, as opposed to wearing a bit of fabric on your face. Something that snow-sports enthusiasts routinely do without complaint or consequence.

montblanc 5y ago
I got comments from neighbors for going into the street with a cup of coffee in the Netherlands. My Dutch wasn't that great but I picked up they were busting my balls in a friendly way - guess it looked funny to some. I also sometimes would get uncomfortable stares whenever I came down to throw something in the garbage room - the old guy looking was making sure I'm not gonna put garbage A in a B dumpster. Now every society has some kind of norms police citizens, but I feel it's quite worse in places like Germany/NL/Switzerland etc. Not really much substance to my argument, just sharing. Also I'm not criticizing these countries, their culture is just different than what I was brought up with. Where I live if you start correcting everyone around you you will be the one corrected eventually. That's why where I live looks much worse than Germany I guess.

_-david-_ 5y ago

>I would compare Tiananmen Square with the Tulsa race massacre. The issue with that comparison is Americans can easily search about Tulsa and find a bunch of information about it. People in China are restricted from getting information about Tienanmen Square. While a lot of people in China know bad stuff happened in Tienanmen Square, they can't so easily confirm their suspicions. They can't hear people's take on it and fully understand what happened. >How many Americans don't know about it? Just because Americans don't know about a topic doesn't really matter. Americans don't know about a lot of historical events, especially ones that happened 100 years ago. I would guess a lot of Americans don't know Harding was President during Tulsa. Does that mean Harding is like Tienanmen Square? I would go as far as saying people don't even know about Tulsa shows people aren't really moving on, but just forgot about it. On the other hand, everybody knows slavery occurred.

jalanco 5y ago

There are number of places in the US where it is legal to walk around outside with a drink. New Orleans is the place I'm most familiar with but there are others. Some people forget that the US is not a monoculture.

BurningFrog 5y ago

Let's compare them: The Tiananmen Square massacre killed off the Chinese democracy movement which challenged the CCP for national power. It set a new course for Chinese government, that it is still more or less on. The Tulsa massacre was a local race riot, with little impact outside Oklahoma.

killjoywashere 5y ago
The area involved was also fairly affluent. There’s a possibility that Black Americans could seen that become a larger enclave, not unlike Atlanta’s Black community. It’s impossible to know which butterfly’s wings might have changed the course of history.

desireco42 5y ago

Maybe alcohol is not the best metric, but Assange is, or endless wars.

dnautics 5y ago

not comparable. I know of it (and have for 20 years; hey, I went to a public school run by hippies so we talked about this kind of stuff) AND ALSO I can post about it right here, right now, without worrying about the state coming after me (as, obviously I have, just now, and has everyone else in this thread) AND ALSO I can go to a FOREIGN COUNTRY and post about it without worrying that the us will go after my mom living in the US.

syki 5y ago

I like your terminology: pseudo freedom. You brought walking around with a beer being illegal in almost every location in the U.S. That’s a good example but here is an even more fundamental example of pseudo freedom in the U.S. The following is about the criminalization of walking. The link is to a small sized PDF written by a law professor. https://www.illinoislawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Lewyn.pdf https://www.illinoislawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05...

ridaj 5y ago

Prime whataboutism. But anyways, just as one example, the Tulsa race massacre was the subject of a major recent TV series (The Watchmen). Mere mentions of Tiananmen square massacre, observing quiet vigils, etc. could get you jailed in China. On freedom of speech, there is no possible comparison. Even the existence of this very conversation would be immediately censored on the Chinese domestic internet.

323 5y ago

> you can't even drink an alcoholic beverage on the street without getting arrested Just switch to injecting heroin in public spaces. The police will leave you alone and you might even become a celebrated person.

allendoerfer 5y ago

I want to help the parent poster out here: I think he was refering to how easy it is to get thrown in jail in America. Jail as a concept does not really exist in many European countries. You can swap drinking in public with speeding or some other minor offense.

spaetzleesser 5y ago

"The time I spend in the US I had the feeling that you have more of a pseudo freedom than actual freedom. " Having grown up in Germany and now living in the US I think in the US you can have more freedom if you are willing to live outside the boundaries of the life the average citizen has. If you are willing to live off the grid you can be pretty free. Some people think freedom also means the right to not have health insurance. But if you live the life of the average citizen with a regular job I feel the US citizen is less free. You constantly have to worry about the cost of health care and education. I also feel people are less willing to voice their opinion in order to not offend others. You have way less rights as an employee. Police is less predictable and may do weird stuff. I also feel less free when I get into a confrontation with somebody and have to worry about getting shot.

mrkstu 5y ago
Interesting perspective, though I'd like some detail around the 'worry about getting shot' comment. I'm in my 50s and have lived in the US all but 2 of my years, and have never been concerned about getting shot (in the US or abroad.) In what kind of situations have you found yourself that you've actively had this worry?
- spaetzleesser 5y ago
  I had a situation where almost every morning a guy with big work truck would pass us extremely closely at full speed while we were walking our dog. The road didn’t have sidewalks so usually cars would slow down or change sides but this guy didn’t. We tried to wave to him to slow down which only resulted in him swerving towards us so we had to jump off the road. One day I stood in the middle of the road and made him stop. I explained the situation to him and he was extremely aggressive and threatened to beat me up. I told him he can try but should think about the consequences first. After a while he backed off. I called his employer and never saw him again. When i told this story to some people they told me that I would have had a real problem if he had had a gun. That’s probably true. In Germany you usually can assume that even bad guys don’t have a gun but in the US you have to assume that every idiot has a gun. This brings confrontations quickly to a dangerous level.

r3trohack3r 5y ago

I think what I mean by “freedom” is that “citizens” are a branch of government. Freedom is that we’ve decided the citizens are the ruling class. To oversimplify quite a bite: As a citizen of the United States, and Arizona, I’m allowed to get together with a group of citizens, draft law, and bring it to vote during the next election. As long as it’s constitutionally valid, and we get a majority vote, it becomes law. Several cities have changed their ballot box from First Past The Post to Ranked Choice Voting through citizen lead initiatives. Ending the full prohibition on Marijuana in my state was a citizen initiative. I’m sure they exist - but I don’t know of other countries that have this kind of freedom. We’ve gotten it wrong in places (gerrymandering is a big one) - but we’ve been one piece of citizen lead legislation away from improving it for a long time. And that gives me hope.

georgeecollins 5y ago

This is what-about-ism. I am surprised you didn't mention that we are less free to smoke in public places! Here's the thing: Laws about where you can smoke and drink vary from place to place in the US but in every part of them you are free to complain about them. The laws were passed by elected officials. You can start a petition to change them. You can run for mayor on the platform of changing the rules about where you can smoke or drink. I agree that it is a sad commentary that many Americans don't know about the Tulsa race riot. Yet here we are discussing it. A popular TV show in the US (The Watchmen) depicted it quite graphically. Could those things happen with Tiananmen Square in China?

sschueller 5y ago
I personally feel that the term "what-about-ism" is excessively used to down play the wrongs of a other party. Especially when that other party is pretending to be at a higher moral ground than the one they are critical about. One should not make things OK because someone else does it but one should point out the wrongs another party is engaged in especially if it is hypocritical. In this case however I didn't say what about, I did suggest an alternative to Ops comment which in itself may have been what about ism.

chmod600 5y ago

In the U.S. there's a hierarchy of freedoms. Fundamental rights, like speech and the right to a fair trial, are necessary to secure other "lower" freedoms if you want. You can drink outside in some places, like Las Vegas. The fact that you can't drink outside most places just illustrates that the overwhelming majority don't even want to do that. Drugs and booze are cheap freedoms that don't do anything to avoid repression.

inopinatus 5y ago

> more of a pseudo freedom than actual freedom My experience of the US is similar to yours. Note that the USA is rather special in how it encodes freedom. There is, after all, literally a big list of guaranteed freedoms. In practice, if something's not on there, then every government and quasi-governmental entity assumes you are not free to do it, or at least, they believe they can decide to stop you. This is the inverse of almost every construction of freedom that went before it, and your experience arises from that difference. The notoriously vast & byzantine scale of the US Code is another emergent property, it being essentially a salami attack on its own fundamentals.

tristor 5y ago

I don't think you made the comparison between these two events with any ulterior motives, but the subthreads below your comment are interesting and telling in part because a significant number of the comments are parroting each other from users with little history on HN. It feels like this thread may have attracted the attention of the Fifty Cent Army[1]. There are a remarkable number of comments that fall into the same vein, and at least one is a username I recognize from previous threads about China shilling very hard in a pro-CCP way. I wonder if @dang or HN have any processes by which to identify bot / shill accounts and limit them, because it's obvious there's a far larger contingent of these accounts on the site than I originally expected. I guess HN is no longer an unnoticed corner of the Internet where folks can just have normal conversations like it used to be. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party

handrous 5y ago

> I would compare Tiananmen Square with the Tulsa race massacre. How many Americans don't know about it? I'd never heard of it until I watched Watchmen. So, I'd lived nearly half my life before hearing of it. I spent my entire childhood in states bordering Oklahoma, and, for a while, in Oklahoma itself (though not in/near Tulsa).

mrtranscendence 5y ago

I'll take not being able to drink on the street in some parts of the US if it means I can criticize the government without being harassed (or worse) by government officials.

djrogers 5y ago

> Everyone keeps saying how free they are and how great their country is yet you can't even drink an alcoholic beverage on the street without getting arrested. This shows a common misunderstanding of the US legal system - the federal gov't couldn't make public consumption legal or illegal even if it wanted to. I go to local festivals in my town multiple time s a year with thousands of people milling about drinking freely - because my city and county don't prohibit it. You come to the US with the assumption that the federal government has authority over these things, but they don't - constitutionally they are largely forbidden from creating laws like that - it's up to the state, county, and city to do so.

bsza 5y ago

> I would compare Tiananmen Square with the Tulsa race massacre If that were a valid comparison, your comment wouldn't still be on this site.

gaoshan 5y ago

If you compare how China treats discussion and remembrance of Tiananmen to the how the US treats the Tulsa Race Massacre you will find there is no comparison. It's true that many in the US don't know about it but many in the US cannot find China on a map so ignorance of the thing might be explainable by something rather more benign than the oppressive and punitive way China handles things. In recent years information and documentaries on the Tulsa race massacre have been popping up with regularity. The information is easy to find, there are multiple documentaries you have easy access to, the government (in the form of the Tulsa Historical Society) has a very through website exploring what happened, etc. More importantly no one is punished for exploring and discussing this topic. Quite the opposite lately, it is of growing interest to many in the US. Now compare that to China and the Tiananmen Square massacre. As I said at the top, no comparison at all. I'm not a rah rah "Murican", either. I am very critical of my own country (as I think we all should be.. you can't improve if you don't learn from the bad) and the US has many problems that should be addressed but to compare China and the US on these points is not even a little reasonable, in my opinion. It shows a lack of knowledge of both China (someplace I have lived for years) and the US (where I grew up and currently live). Also, your example of drinking in public is just a generalization and of all the things you could have picked that would be valid arguments, is not a good one. In my community in Ohio you can drink anywhere in the downtown public area, for example and it is several square miles in area.

peatmoss 5y ago

Not talking about the Tulsa race massacre, is an example of society at large choosing, through inattention or other social forces, to not care about something they should probably choose to care more about. Not being allowed to talk about Tiananmen Square massacre is society being told what to find worthy of attention. While the ends may on occasion align, I think it’s an important distinction. But it is also worth considering “practical” freedoms.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago

It varies a lot by where you live and how much premium you personally care about following the letter of the law. I think HN tends to assume nobody has any freedom because most of HN lives in "nice" suburbs or "nice" parts of cities where law enforcement is being used in a backhand manner to enforce conformity and also comes from a life where obeying basically all the laws basically all the time is considered default behavior. The lower classes are far, far free-er on a day to day basis than HN is. Nobody cares if you smoke weed on your porch in any neighborhood where a Ford E350 is a more common driveway adornment than a Mercedes E350. I walk my dog beer in hand two days a week. Kids ride dirt bikes on the street. The section 8 people play loud music in languages I don't speak. Nobody gets hassled by the powers that be, as far as I can tell. And this isn't some rural area in a small government red state, it's working class neighborhood in a blue state.