4 ms·

Not about moral high ground. Ones a democracy one isn’t.

• lmz 6mo ago
  So that means the people are complicit in whatever wars the US started. Not sure if better or worse.
  • nuancebydefault 6mo ago
    A lot of people voted for someone who was known to be an evil crook. It was very clear that he got into politics for praising his own ego. They voted against 'the good' in the hope for their own benefit and against that of the world. If they did not 'expect' the current state of affairs then they just refused to listen to their own heart.
• drcongo 6mo ago
  Can you clarify which is which?
  • sigmoid10 6mo ago
    Chinese propaganda seems to hit very hard these days. If you really don't know, you seriously need to check what media you are consuming. Yes, the US has huge problems, many old and some new, but on a serious technical level the answer is (at least for now) 100% clear.
    • mysecretaccount 6mo ago
      > Chinese propaganda seems to hit very hard these days. Assuming that everyone who disagrees with you is a propagandized bot is a terrible way to live. You will not learn.
      • sigmoid10 6mo ago
        Assuming that China is not officially a 100% authoritarian dictatorship takes some serious mental gymnastics or hardcore brainwashing by propaganda channels. In fact forget media manipulation. A simple look at what they did to their constitution would already tell you everything you need to know. The US might be moving in this same direction under Trump, but it sure as hell isn't there yet. And if they do try to do the same, there is a good chance for another civil war. So while China is already lost, there is still some level of hope for the US.
• monadgonad 6mo ago
  "Not about moral high ground. One's an ideology my morals agree with, one isn't."
  • wiseowise 6mo ago
    Is believing people should have a choice a moral high ground now?
    • kaoD 6mo ago
      No, but believing our so-called "democracy" (quotes intended, read: "21st century western systems") is how you give people "a choice" is the moral high ground. That is your axiom, but it's often touted as a tautology. The name says "demos" and "kratos" but names are names, not facts. There are many ways to give people a choice and this one has proven to be quite ineffective at that, as it slowly devolved into a plutocracy/oligarchy. Iron law of oligarchy, yadda yadda. What they are very effective at though: crushing dissent, calming the masses with a reassuring illusion of choice, and touting itself as the "one true way". When I look at the outcomes I don't see any semblance of democracy, only a ritual dance/theatre show every 4 years. A farce as big as the "democratic" instruments on the PRC. There's a reason this "democracy" is very diligent at discouraging association and unionizing. Those give actual power to the people (and with power comes choice). That's dangerous. People might start believing they can actually influence the outcomes. "Don't blame me - I voted for Kodos"
      • sofixa 6mo ago
        > our so-called "democracy" (quotes intended, read: "21st century western systems") Do not conflate the broken American political system, the semi-broken British one, and the whole rest of the "west". Each country has its own political system, and they are wildly different. > crushing dissent Democracies are good at crushing dissent? Compared to other political systems? That's just not true. All other political systems rely on universal truth and unwavering trust in a person / religion / clique of people, who can do no wrong and can never be criticised. > There's a reason this "democracy" is very diligent at discouraging association and unionizing What? You are probably talking about a specific democracy, and the most broken one at that.
• sscaryterry 6mo ago
  "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried". Winston Churchill
  • jampekka 6mo ago
    Socialism with Chinese Characteristics had not been tried at that point :)
    • sscaryterry 6mo ago
      Exactly, maybe we've got it all wrong :)
    • crimsoneer 6mo ago
      The word you're looking for is dictatorship, and it is not new.
    • usrnm 6mo ago
      To be fair, Deng Xiaoping's reforms were based on the older New Economic Policy or NEP from the 1920s USSR, so it had been tried at that point. It was scrapped in the USSR for other reasons, not because it failed.
    • deleted 6mo ago
      [deleted]
    • WarmWash 6mo ago
      Ironically you can map China's progress over the last 30 years directly with their adoption of capitalistic policies. The more capitalistic they become, the more growth they have seen.
  • parthdesai 6mo ago
    Quoting a guy who is (in)directly responsible for murder of about 4 million people. Nice
• Jackpillar 6mo ago
  Democracy is a stretch
• chvid 6mo ago
  Germany was (formally) a democracy when it fought the Soviets.
• spaceman_2020 6mo ago
  Your democracy has consistently voted senile 75 year olds for 3-elections now The current president - who Americans voted for twice - is heavily accused of being a pedophile and has reneged on every one of his poll promise Really not the best advertisement for democracy
  • wiseowise 6mo ago
    The difference is that there was (at least an illusion of) choice. Nobody said that it is a perfect system. And Trump will be gone in 3 years, while Putin and Xi will stay in power until their death.
    • spaceman_2020 6mo ago
      I don't understand why Americans continue believing that democracy is the only way for every population in the world Why would Russians want democracy? Or the Chinese, for that matter? There have been zero democratic impulses in their societies across hundreds, even thousands of years. The west needs to rest its democratizing mission and accept that every society is fundamentally different My country (India) got a "thriving" democracy, but because there is no real democratic impulse in the society, everything on the ground has devolved into what the society was always like - quasi-feudal bureaucracy
      • nailer 6mo ago
        > Or the Chinese, for that matter? The marched for it en masse in 1989? Russians and Chinese are also people. They deserve to rule themselves.
        • jyscao 6mo ago
          An ideologically driven subset of urban educated youths that was proportionally a tiny subset of the entire Chinese population marched for it in 1989. FTFY. They are ruling themselves in the sense that their governing systems are emergent consequences of their own cultures. All peoples ultimately deserve the governments they have.
• sucrosesucrose 6mo ago
  And why should anyone prefer a democracy over any other form of government? Doesn't it depend on the philosophy of each People?
  • wiseowise 6mo ago
    > created: 18 minutes ago Right.
    • hootz 6mo ago
      He didn't even say anything outrageous, he's just participating in the discussion. People can create accounts to be able to reply to a discussion, even throwaways.
      • sigmoid10 6mo ago
        Questioning democracy unfortunately is a very common agenda by certain countries that don't want their own people to realize how much they are getting screwed by authoritarianism. But in the end it's like saying people have a "right" to get fucked over as long as it helps me. It's just a distraction. If you watch this sort of stuff closely, you'll find there has been a huge uptick online with pro-China content lately. Probably not a coincidence that Xi has told his army to be ready to invade Taiwan by next year. If Trump keeps chickening out and fumbling Iran so bad, they will probably seize the opportunity before the US or NATO have a chance to reorganize themselves into something that could actually rival China. They already have the largest navy in the world by now and they are not done building up their strength.
      • wiseowise 6mo ago
        Saying stupid things isn't outrageous indeed.
  • leoedin 6mo ago
    As far as I'm aware most autocratic forms of government have to clamp down on dissent with some level of force, be it violence or imprisonment or seizing assets. It means people are afraid to criticise power. Western democracies don't have that problem. Yes, they have other problems. Many problems which are hard to solve. But if you live in a western democracy you can freely criticise those in power without fear of retribution.
• dspillett 6mo ago
  I'm going off democracy, at least how it is currently implemented. It is proving far too easy to pervert. It turns out that the people will vote for some terrible things in order to get that one petty little thing a given candidate promises and they want, or because they don't like something specific about the other candidate(s). And of course many may later say “well, I didn't vote for that” when they quite demonstrably did.
  • benterix 6mo ago
    Well, the politicians learned how to game the system well. Now people need to learn how to game the politicians. A formal verification process of pre-election promises would be a good start.
    • iso1631 6mo ago
      Nobody cares that politicians don't keep pre-election promises. And in most cases they shouldn't, circumstances change. You can have no intention of doing something, then something else happens, and you change your mind. The problem is that people put stock in pre-election promises, rather than voting for the character of the person they want to represent them.
  • iso1631 6mo ago
    > When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure The measure is the number of votes. "What shall we have for dinner" measures things, there's no target in a "curry vs pizza vs thai" poll, and it doesn't really matter, the target is a nice night in with a film. However with politics, getting power is the goal, thus the number of votes is thus the target, and thus its not good at measuring what the country actually wants, just who can best get the most votes. This isn't new, but modern brainwashing allows manipulation at a scale hitherto unseen.
• makingstuffs 6mo ago
  How can there be democracy in an environment where freedom of thought is all but nullified due to social manipulation through mainstream media. Calling something ‘free’ doesn’t make it so. The reality is that the term democracy in western society has essentially become meaningless due to the swathes of algorithmic manipulation which occurs every second of everyday through every possible digital medium.
  • foobiekr 6mo ago
    It’s not the mainstream media that is primarily manipulating people in the US and has not been since the eighties. Extremely biased “conservative” (in reality anything but) propaganda has been dominant for a third of the population since Gordon Liddy and Limbaugh turned lying and fear mongering into a profession on the backs of the authoritarian paranoid personality segment of the population.
• Al-Khwarizmi 6mo ago
  The moral weight of democracy is heavily overrated. Of course democracy is better than autocracy, all other things being equal. But I don't think a democracy that starts wars and bombs a new country every other year is morally superior to any relatively peaceful autocracy. Rather the opposite.
  • steviedotboston 6mo ago
    Try holding up a sign in the street anywhere in China that says anything remotely critical of the Chinese government. Or live in China and post something online remotely critical of China. You will be arrested, thrown in jail for years. Democracy isn't just having an election every four years. We have rights that we shouldn't take for granted.
• jampekka 6mo ago
  > Ones a democracy one isn’t. China characterizes itself as a democracy too, just not as a liberal democracy. There are democratic processes, although these are not free in the sense of liberalist ideology. The CCP justifies its control of the elections as a counterbalance to being corrupted by money, which starts to look like not an entirely unreasonable justification. The CCP narrative also emphasizes "outcome orientation", i.e. that (democratic) legitimacy comes from people being happy about what the governance delivers, not about how it gets chosen. Which again starts to look not totally crazy, given western governments nowadays tend to have dismal approval ratings. And even after taking into account the likely biases in the polling, I do believe the majority of the Chinese truly approve of the CCP. I'm not a fan of the Chinese system, but I think there are lessons we could take, and a binary "democratic or not" is not a very meaningful categorization.
  • stickfigure 6mo ago
    This is utter nonsense. Democracy is the idea that people should control their government. The CCP's (and Putin's) notion of "democracy" is something along the lines of "as long as the government controls the people, the people can decide". Democracy may be a spectrum but China isn't on it, neither in practice nor in spirit. If you have to control the media and prevent free discussion, you aren't practicing democracy.
    • tw1984 6mo ago
      > Democracy is the idea that people should control their government. who started the recent war with Iran and war in Vietnam? did those wars started by American people? did those wars got approved by the people of America or their elected representatives?
      • stickfigure 6mo ago
        > their elected representatives Yes? The US president is elected, and while you or I might the system would be better if presidents didn't have quite so much authority... we know the system works this way when we vote.