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If they do it, I never want to hear any criticism of the great firewall of China from them ever again.
by Apreche 1y ago
If they do it, I never want to hear any criticism of the great firewall of China from them ever again.
- basilgohar 1y agoNo one likes hearing hypocrisy from politicians, but it's one of their most dominant traits. That is, if you ascribe normal ethics and morals to them. But politicians' are a different breed, and the sooner we understand that, the better. They will say, and do, whatever they perceive as being the most politically expedient thing to do. The ones that took moral stances in the actual best interest of the populace usually suffered politically for that. The ones that side with power tend to keep their power. This is the folly of political systems in general short of tyrannies, dictatorships, and kingdoms. And now we are seeing how democracies can be stretched into the same quality of life as so-called "lesser" systems but people don't like hearing that argument because the alternative is made out to be so scary. It's not so much that democracy is the problem, but that it's too easy to sway people when it's so easy for money and power to be leveraged to manufacture consent. So now it's the people electing their own tyrants who will enrich and entrench themselves and being grateful for the privilege to be used for that purpose. steps down off of soap box and stops yelling at clouds
- hinkley 1y ago> No one likes hearing hypocrisy from politicians You’re clearly not paying attention to American politics.
- HeWhoLurksLate 1y agoLet me correct that for you: No one likes hearing hypocrisy from the other side's politicians
- afavour 1y agoI’m quite sure they don’t see it as hypocrisy. China censors the internet because they want to control everything about their citizens lives. But us? Oh, we’re censoring the internet to protect the children.
- themafia 1y ago> but it's one of their most dominant traits Always has been. What has changed is they now have the power to force their constituency to live with their hypocrisy and lies. Any effort to challenge the "leader" results in claims that you are now a "terrorist." The internet was supposed to empower the citizenry. It's been captured and is now a tool used to suppress them. So now we see leaders completely unchallenged when their darker habits are exposed.
- grues-dinner 1y ago> No one likes hearing hypocrisy from politicians Cambridge Analytica showed politicians in real time that on a population scale, hypocrisy doesn't make any difference. In fact people will bend themselves around to square the circle. Politicians finally knowing for a demonstrable, data-backed, evidence-based fact that they can do basically whatever they want and keep their support as long as they just say they right things is what has brought us from 2016 to now.
- mystraline 1y agoRemember, half the population are under 100 IQ points. And most general people I meet here in the USA are either heavily propagandized, extraordinarily dumb, or both. We could be for "better and better, which is what the Chinese have been doing the last 50 years. Instead we've been at" fuck you I got mine haha", and "don't let THEM have anything". Well, the out groups have sacrificed so they have no more. Now making the lower and middle and even upper middle class suffer is the name of the game.
- hn_throw_250822 1y agoRemember, as long as you can convince people that IQ is a valid metric, they’ll believe anything you say.
- kykat 1y agoThat's like saying half the population is dumber than the average
- hn_throw_250822 1y ago[flagged]
- girvo 1y agoThey have done it, and the west (over half the US states, the UK and Australia at a bare minimum) have entirely ceded any moral high ground regarding it.
- buybm 1y ago[dead]
- xbmcuser 1y agoWestern countries had no morality before just a facade of one. Now that they are loosing economic power they are also loosing the ability to control the narrative.
- idiotsecant 1y ago'The West also does bad stuff' is not the same thing as 'China and the west are the same' or 'Russia and the west are the same'. That's a false equivalency. The west has a long tradition of respecting individual rights. You aren't going to get disappeared like you absolutely will in those places. Say what you will about the failings of the west, but there's a clear moral high ground there, even if that height is an inch tall.
- buybm 1y ago[dead]
- idiotsecant 1y agoApply your same standard to ethnic minorities in Russia or China and tell me how tall that moral high ground is. It's easy to sit in a hole 20 feet deep and criticize the west for only being an inch above ground.
- Yeul 1y agoWhite man goes nuts when yellow man challenges their power.
- cultofmetatron 1y ago[flagged]
- djs070 1y agoWhat you must understand is that they do it because of a moral failing, whereas we do it because the situation requires it.
- Guthur 1y agoYou're being sarcastic, right? The UK is morally hollow by design.
- est 1y agoI read on twitter, can't find the exact link, a chinese content site operating in .sg for many years, survived multiple "internet purges" by China, got banned by UK authorities last month.
- msgodel 1y agoI remember reading posts a decade or two ago on either Linode's forums or some other place like LinuxQuestions in broken English about tunneling through firewalls with ssh from I assume Chinese people. I've started seeing posts like that from British people now. Absolutely wild. So much for the birthplace of common law.
- monero-xmr 1y agoAnd yet so many look for the government to solve society’s ills, as if the “wrong government” will never ever take control. Perhaps we should all do more things for ourselves, and advocate for more laws that restrict what the government is allowed to do
- theossuary 1y agoThis is a silly take. As soon as an authoritarian government takes power they just strip away the protections put in place to prevent abuse. The answer to preventing the "wrong" government from taking power is to have a strong "right" government.
- monero-xmr 1y agoYou have come to the central tension at the heart of democracy!
- robertlagrant 1y agoThese things can happen over time. They don't have to suddenly jump into place out of nowhere.
- cmrdporcupine 1y ago
- forrestthewoods 1y agoI’m gonna blow your mind. If it happens I’m going to loudly criticize both!
- xenotux 1y agoThe main difference between democracies and secular autocracies isn't that they have a vastly different approach to run-of-the-mill moral vices, such as prostitution or porn. It's that democracies tolerate a much wider spectrum of political opinions in public discourse and don't kill or imprison people who try to start an opposition party. I think we can agree that the UK is moving in the wrong direction without drawing parallels to a place where dissidents are disappeared, both off the internet and in real life.
- tacticus 1y agoAnti olympic posters got police raids. Plasticine action on your tshirt got arrests.
- Guthur 1y agoWhat so especially ironic is the posters views comes from the narrative control the UK is so disparate to get control of. Any notion that the UK is actually run by the people is nonsensical, the so called democracy is pure and utter theatre.
- Nursie 1y ago> Plasticine action on your tshirt got arrests. And then released when the mistake came to light. Not 'disappeared'. The whole mess around the proscribed group is awful and seems like a massive overreaction - sure, you do not mess with a country's defence infrastructure. But the appropriate thing to do is arrest those involved and charge them with specific crimes, not misuse anti-terror legislation. But lets not pretend people are being taken off the streets and made to disappear as they do in autocratic nations.
- KoolKat23 1y agoA lot of UK institutions are run on "norms" with no actual law placing legal check and balance in place. This is also why it's so crucial for the UK not to let bad laws pass.
- MangoToupe 1y ago> It's that democracies tolerate a much wider spectrum of political opinions in public discourse and don't kill or imprison people who try to start an opposition party. I'm not entirely sure this is true. At least in the west, this perspective seemed to rely on most "public discourse" not being visible to most of the public. Social media has destroyed this illusion.
- wkat4242 1y agoWhich apparently might be opening up significantly. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44994403 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44994403 I really wonder if true
- smolder 1y agoIt's just a different version of the same thing. In chinas case, they aggressively locked down internet influence. In the wests case, they held off a bit and made up bullshit reasons like saving the children with age verification. I cant stand this version of the 'free' west where they promote totalitarian information control and demand real IDs. This is nazi shit.
- chii 1y ago"oh we're doing it to protect the children! China's firewall is meant to repress political information and democracy! See, very different!"
- tim333 1y agoIt is actually different.