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This is also how the USA keeps down communities of color. A white suburban kid with drugs is "boys will be boys." A black urban kid with drugs is "throw the boo

This is also how the USA keeps down communities of color. A white suburban kid with drugs is "boys will be boys." A black urban kid with drugs is "throw the book at this thug." A white terrorist must be "understood" and sympathized. A minority terrorist is a monster that must be exterminated. A white applicant is a "good culture fit." A black applicant is "urban" and "challenging for our corporate culture." A white missing girl is an urgent emergency. A black missing girl is a "streetsmart" young-lady probably off with friends. etc,etc. All corrupt states do this and the USA's corruption is easily at Soviet levels.

elevaet 5y ago
I was with you until >the USA's corruption is easily at Soviet levels. This statement is hard to quantify, but as an observer who never lived in USSR and only briefly in the USA, there's no way. The USSR was rotten to the core. USA has it's own rot for sure and needs to fix so much, but it's no where close to Soviet levels of corruption. There's a reason so many Russians fled for the USA and not vice-versa.
- drzaiusapelord 5y ago
  The USA just had the losing president incite a riot at the capital to stop the rightful winner of the election from taking power. On top of asking multiple foreign governments for election help and pardoning his cronies who helped him with this. In response his party has put in hardcore laws limiting the right to vote for many liberal and disenfranchised communities. The USA lied to start a war in Iraq that killed at least 200,000 people. The US started and led and funded War of Terror has killed 900,000 people (Brown University). Nearly all these deaths were Muslims. The USA has intense income inequality and the police regularly murder its citizens with impunity. The current president is at best a mislead old man or an active oppressor, responsible for much of the law that keeps communities of color in debt and unfairly jailed by draconian crime bills that targeted the PoC community. The US media is almost exclusively corporate and owned by a handful of corporate entities most own by billionaires who use such media to push views that benefit them politically and economical. The USA is rife with conspiracy theories and has a very low vaccination rate compared to its western peers for reasons above. The USA is best seen as an oligarchy where the wealthy get what they want from a legislative agenda perspective and are almost always above the law. Trump's only signature piece of legislation and the GOP's top priority was a significant tax cut for the wealthy that was permanent and a lesser one for the middle class that expires. The USA has nearly 30m uninsured people compared to their western peers who all have some type of universal health insurance system. The USA is destroying women's right, especially the right to choose and access to birth control and the morning after pill. The USA has an incarceration rate of 639 inmates per 100,000 people, which is the worst in the world. This almost twice the USSR's rate. 40% of these inmates are black in a country where 13% of the population is black. I think a lot of Americans are in denial of the everyday corruption here. >There's a reason so many Russians fled for the USA I'm not sure how true this is. We didn't see significant migration from the Eastern Bloc until their economies got much much worse. Communist nations that did well economically had low levels of migration. The same way largely Democratic, yet poor, Crimean Ukrainians welcomed corrupt Russian annexation because it meant being part of the powerful Russian economy ($3k gdp per capita vs $10k). In other words, people welcome an oppressive state if it means more money. Flights for freedom are often propaganda. Flights for money are often the truth. My parents fled their country to go to the USA solely for economic reasons. "Freedom", mom, apple pie, and baseball are laughable bullshit to the immigrant community. >and not vice-versa. The USA had 2x the GDP capita than the USSR during 1980s migrations. Again, this was purely an economic flight for nearly all immigrants.
  - weareonepeople 5y ago
    All of these things may be true And Soviet Russia was still 10x worse.
  - fennecfoxen 5y ago
    Your critique highlights how the US had a President lose an election, and how he tried to undo it. However close he came to success (which we might dispute), he lost it in the first place, then be failed to hold on, and then he was removed. This leaves the US easily 1000x more free and more democratic than the USSR, which never ran an election without tampering with the vote in the first place, and which never saw its leaders democratically deposed. They succeeded in suppressing democracy much earlier in the process. The rest of your comments suffer a parallel problem.
    - drzaiusapelord 5y ago
      But the coup was unsuccessful solely by dumb luck! Is not the ringing endorsement of American stability and greatness you think it is. Especially when none of the coup planners have been charged, let alone imprisoned.
      - mythrwy 5y ago
        Dumb luck. And the fact it was led by a mentally ill guy in a buffalo costume and no one thought to bring weapons or make a plan to take over the government. It wasn't a coup. Nor a coup attempt. It was a protest against an election that many people considered fraudulent that got out of hand. Exactly why it got out of hand and who encouraged that is another topic.
        CamperBob2 5y ago
        It became a coup attempt the moment someone shouted "Hang Mike Pence." But yes, fortunately, it was precisely the sort of laughably-botched coup attempt you'd expect from Trump and his supporters. We won't be so lucky next time. History suggests we have about ten years until the consequences of leaving the plotters unpunished come back to us. The people in charge now will mostly be retired or dead of old age.
- bsedlm 5y ago
  if one were to consider lobbying as a form of corruption then it's a much closer comparisson. but of course, "lobbying" is not corruption because it's lobbying. (then again lobbying does end up undermining the will of the public individual in favor of the will of the public corporation... so much for "the people" unless the people are businesses and companies)

elevaet 5y ago

I was with you until >the USA's corruption is easily at Soviet levels. This statement is hard to quantify, but as an observer who never lived in USSR and only briefly in the USA, there's no way. The USSR was rotten to the core. USA has it's own rot for sure and needs to fix so much, but it's no where close to Soviet levels of corruption. There's a reason so many Russians fled for the USA and not vice-versa.

drzaiusapelord 5y ago
The USA just had the losing president incite a riot at the capital to stop the rightful winner of the election from taking power. On top of asking multiple foreign governments for election help and pardoning his cronies who helped him with this. In response his party has put in hardcore laws limiting the right to vote for many liberal and disenfranchised communities. The USA lied to start a war in Iraq that killed at least 200,000 people. The US started and led and funded War of Terror has killed 900,000 people (Brown University). Nearly all these deaths were Muslims. The USA has intense income inequality and the police regularly murder its citizens with impunity. The current president is at best a mislead old man or an active oppressor, responsible for much of the law that keeps communities of color in debt and unfairly jailed by draconian crime bills that targeted the PoC community. The US media is almost exclusively corporate and owned by a handful of corporate entities most own by billionaires who use such media to push views that benefit them politically and economical. The USA is rife with conspiracy theories and has a very low vaccination rate compared to its western peers for reasons above. The USA is best seen as an oligarchy where the wealthy get what they want from a legislative agenda perspective and are almost always above the law. Trump's only signature piece of legislation and the GOP's top priority was a significant tax cut for the wealthy that was permanent and a lesser one for the middle class that expires. The USA has nearly 30m uninsured people compared to their western peers who all have some type of universal health insurance system. The USA is destroying women's right, especially the right to choose and access to birth control and the morning after pill. The USA has an incarceration rate of 639 inmates per 100,000 people, which is the worst in the world. This almost twice the USSR's rate. 40% of these inmates are black in a country where 13% of the population is black. I think a lot of Americans are in denial of the everyday corruption here. >There's a reason so many Russians fled for the USA I'm not sure how true this is. We didn't see significant migration from the Eastern Bloc until their economies got much much worse. Communist nations that did well economically had low levels of migration. The same way largely Democratic, yet poor, Crimean Ukrainians welcomed corrupt Russian annexation because it meant being part of the powerful Russian economy ($3k gdp per capita vs $10k). In other words, people welcome an oppressive state if it means more money. Flights for freedom are often propaganda. Flights for money are often the truth. My parents fled their country to go to the USA solely for economic reasons. "Freedom", mom, apple pie, and baseball are laughable bullshit to the immigrant community. >and not vice-versa. The USA had 2x the GDP capita than the USSR during 1980s migrations. Again, this was purely an economic flight for nearly all immigrants.
- weareonepeople 5y ago
  All of these things may be true And Soviet Russia was still 10x worse.
- fennecfoxen 5y ago
  Your critique highlights how the US had a President lose an election, and how he tried to undo it. However close he came to success (which we might dispute), he lost it in the first place, then be failed to hold on, and then he was removed. This leaves the US easily 1000x more free and more democratic than the USSR, which never ran an election without tampering with the vote in the first place, and which never saw its leaders democratically deposed. They succeeded in suppressing democracy much earlier in the process. The rest of your comments suffer a parallel problem.
  - drzaiusapelord 5y ago
    But the coup was unsuccessful solely by dumb luck! Is not the ringing endorsement of American stability and greatness you think it is. Especially when none of the coup planners have been charged, let alone imprisoned.
    - mythrwy 5y ago
      Dumb luck. And the fact it was led by a mentally ill guy in a buffalo costume and no one thought to bring weapons or make a plan to take over the government. It wasn't a coup. Nor a coup attempt. It was a protest against an election that many people considered fraudulent that got out of hand. Exactly why it got out of hand and who encouraged that is another topic.
      - CamperBob2 5y ago
        It became a coup attempt the moment someone shouted "Hang Mike Pence." But yes, fortunately, it was precisely the sort of laughably-botched coup attempt you'd expect from Trump and his supporters. We won't be so lucky next time. History suggests we have about ten years until the consequences of leaving the plotters unpunished come back to us. The people in charge now will mostly be retired or dead of old age.
bsedlm 5y ago
if one were to consider lobbying as a form of corruption then it's a much closer comparisson. but of course, "lobbying" is not corruption because it's lobbying. (then again lobbying does end up undermining the will of the public individual in favor of the will of the public corporation... so much for "the people" unless the people are businesses and companies)