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The West aren't good guys and have never been the good guys. We talked a good talk about democracy when we had communism to compare it to, but without that to c

• bayindirh 1y ago
  From what I witnessed over years is, European countries loved to point fingers to other countries to educate them about how their democracies shall look like. Now they are doing the very same things they pointed fingers about and, now there's no structured information flow to hide this. As I sometimes tend to say: "God has an interesting sense of humor".
  • deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
• simmerup 1y ago
  So naive. Talking points from the mouthpieces of the CCP and Russia who would love us to believe we’re all the same
  • closewith 1y ago
    No, it's not naive at all. The UK in particular are not the good guys. Apart from their appalling behaviour during their recent expeditionary wars, their current support of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, their sexual and physical abuse of locals near British Overseas bases, they also have an incredibly poor record with their own citizens. British behaviour in Northern Ireland was itself genocidal, and involved the regular murder of civilians from decades. Even today they are continuing the legal protection of the perpetrators.
    • simmerup 1y ago
      I consider it naive to even start talking about nation states in terms of ‘good guys’
      • closewith 1y ago
        Well, all countries are complex collections of people and ideas, so like people, there are no pure good guys. But we have all been subjected to particularly US propaganda portraying the West as the global good guys, and specproc challenged that worldview in the comment to which you replied. Ironically, you criticised him for being naive as he was challenging the concept of the West as the good guys, something you now call naive yourself. So it seems you aren't internally consistent.
        • SV_BubbleTime 1y ago
          Yes. I don’t know why anyone would point to people with the safest and most economic mobility in history as some sort of success story!
          • closewith 1y ago
            > the safest and most economic mobility in history Do you believe this is the US?
  • specproc 1y ago
    Russians of any gender or minority could vote for their representative in 1917. Women in the States only got full suffrage in 1920, African Americans in 1965. So no real pedigree there.
    • andrepd 1y ago
      And only in 1917... :)
    • AnthonyMouse 1y ago
      African Americans got the right to vote in the US in 1870.
      • specproc 1y ago
        But a whole state-level legislative architecture meant that suffrage wasn't accessible nationwide till the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Modern voter registration laws, which are gathering pace today, are largely targeted at keeping minority voters from exercising their democratic rights. Great timeline here: https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2021/05/politics/black-voting-rights-suppression-timeline/ https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2021/05/politics/black-v...
        • AnthonyMouse 1y ago
          If you want to talk about whether something exists in practice rather than on paper then I have some news for you about Russia.
          • specproc 1y ago
            Yeah, exactly. I'm saying the UK and America have democracies of equal quality to and poorer pedigree than Russia. Edit for clarity.
            • AnthonyMouse 1y ago
              The US has generally had elections in which whether you could run did not depend on your ideology or opposition to the current administration, and the candidate who got the most votes would get into office. Russia, not so much.
  • buyucu 1y ago
    Not everyone you disagree with is a CCP/Russia/<insert_scapegoat> mouthpiece.
    • simmerup 1y ago
      No, but they could very easily be using the same talking points
      • aa-jv 1y ago
        So? Maybe the Russians are right about some things, now and then.
        • simmerup 1y ago
          Doubtful
          • snapcaster 1y ago
            the propaganda has worked wonders on you
          • buyucu 1y ago
            you've been brainwashed
• throwaway2037 1y ago
  > managed democracies you see out East Can you name some? I am confused by this term. Japan, Korea, Taiwan, India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Indonesia all have fairly robust democracies. Yes, some of them probably look and feel different than those of NATO, but they are a great improvement over previous colonial administrations, monarchies, theocracies, and "single party democratic states" (Korea and Taiwan before late 1980s/early 1990s break-throughs).
  • specproc 1y ago
    I was thinking largely of Russia, but when it comes to internet freedoms we're absolutely heading in a China direction. Coming at it here from a broadly UK perspective. We have: - Very little difference between ruling parties on core issues since the seventies, I'm thinking largely on the economic and foreign policy front here. - Prison under terrorism offenses for peaceful protest. - Arrests for (checks notes) complaining about the management of your local school in a WhatsApp group.[1] People who argue we're somehow better than the people we happen to be fighting need to take a long hard look around. And maybe also remember that when we're not fighting folks (e.g., Saudi, Israel) abhorrent behaviour is tolerated and supported. [^1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9dj1zlvxglo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9dj1zlvxglo
  • kissaprofeetta 1y ago
    Japan has had a ruling party in power almost continously for 70 years. If the ruling party was not friendly to the West, then I bet you it would be called something else than democracy.
    • throwaway2037 1y ago
      > Japan has had a ruling party in power almost continously for 70 years. On the surface, this is true. When you look deeper, you will realise that LDP (Liberal Democratic Party) is so large, that it acts as a platform, instead of as a single, monolithic political party. Within the LDP are various factions that win or lose elections and premierships. It is also interesting to compare the Singaporean "democratic" system versus the Japanese one. Very quickly, you will realise that "single ruling party" looks different once you understand the details.
• baud147258 1y ago
  While the West aren't really the good guy, I think there is an argument that could be made that the West is the better guy. Because while government outreach like those discussed are a scary possibility in the West nowadays, in the 'East' (more like Russia & China), it is a given and there are no recourse.
  • closewith 1y ago
    The West is the least bad if you live in an area where Western forces aren't currently bombing you or directly supporting the people starving you to death. Then China probably seems a lot better.
    • throwaway65042 1y ago
      So if Germany supports Israel bombing Gazans they are bad, but if China supports the Russian bombing of Ukrainians, suddenly it's a lot better?
      • closewith 1y ago
        Maybe re-read my comment. From the perspective of the Gazan parents watching their children starve to death, yes, China probably seems a lot better than the UK, which is directly responsible for their situation. The Ukrainian parent suffering Russian bombing is likely has a much better opinion of the UK for their support, but that doesn't make the UK the good guys. Just less bad in that particular situation.
        • AlexandrB 1y ago
          From the perspective of the Gazan parents, the worst of all should be Hamas (who is actually directly responsible for their situation) since they insist on poking the bear and getting Gaza into military conflicts they can't win.
          • shazbotter 1y ago
• lyu07282 1y ago
  > We talked a good talk about democracy when we had communism to compare it to You can't think yourself a free thinker to realize the west is a force for evil in the world and simultaneously believe the western's propagandist depiction of what communism is it makes for a very incoherent world view. "It says here in this history book that luckily, the good guys have won every single time."
  • Ray20 1y ago
    > believe the western's propagandist depiction of what communism The main problem with communism was that it was much worse than Western propaganda portrayed it to be. Because if Western propaganda had tried to depict it truthfully, no one would have believed it. Communism is so much worse that it is literally unbelievable, so anti-communist propaganda has to make communism look good in order for anyone to believe it.
    • lyu07282 1y ago
      Propaganda tends to make the victims of that propaganda sound incoherent, but that's ok, the only purpose it really serves today, is to explain to you why you can't have health care.
• torginus 1y ago
  What people don't get is the defining feature of the West (or more correctly advanced societies) isn't democracy, it's rule of law. - It's why you don't have to fear getting put on a show trial if you piss off the wrong people or they just want your stuff - It's why the rich (and not so rich) are safe storing their wealth there, knowing the bank won't collapse tomorrow, or they won't confiscate their wealth on a whim. - It's why you know the water's safe to drink and the food's safe to eat - It's why you can produce steel good enough so that your buildings don't collapse, and others will buy your cars know they won't fall apart, due to being relying on a shady subcontractor. - It's why people are willing to pay taxes, knowing they get functioning public services. Places like China are finding out why you need these things, and are building these systems so their society can succeed. Democracy's just an (Western) artifact of enforcing and maintaining rule of law.
  • inglor_cz 1y ago
    This is a bit complicated. Law can absolutely be used to persecute people. For example, there once was so-called Bill of Attainder, which basically meant that a certain person was labeled as an outlaw, traitor, and handled as such. It was an actual law, voted on by the Parliament, but even though usage of Bills of Attainder was perfectly consistent with rule of law, it was not that different from a classical Stalinist show trial in effect. This is also why Bills of Attainder are banned by the US Constitution.
    • stevekemp 1y ago
      And by contrast it is America which which has the civil forfeiture practices.
  • AnthonyMouse 1y ago
    > What people don't get is the defining feature of the West (or more correctly advanced societies) isn't democracy, it's rule of law. The trouble with this is that it isn't compatible with prosecutorial discretion. It requires that if someone is breaking the law, they get prosecuted for it. Otherwise unenforced laws accumulate until everyone is breaking a hundred laws at any given time and then only the disfavored get prosecuted. But if you want laws to be consistently enforced then they need to be few and simple enough for people to understand and comply with them, and that was historically the magic formula, which we've increasingly abandoned, much to our detriment.