> Would you rather live under the American, Russian, or Chinese government?
alt: Would you rather be mistreated by a relative or a stranger?
As an American I'd rather my gov be held accountable for it's unethical IC behavior - especially by it's allies.
The reason is that other nations are proving grounds; the methods developed there will eventually be leveraged by US government(s) against US citizens.
> Have you been so brainwashed that you think the US government is more of an enemy than China?
The US government has detained or killed many more people like me than China has. I don't think that's brainwashing, that's just the reality.
> Why did China hack OPM (every personal data on every fed employee),equifax (credit on all americans) and every major company being hit by their hackers?
Probably the same reason the NSA grabs all that data.
> China is less of a threat to anyone outside the US than the government inside the US.
Why do you believe this, and based on what evidence? By “anyone outside the US”, are you referring to the population of China? What US threats are you referring to, and why do you believe they’re worse in the US? While the US has ample room for improvement, as do all countries, there’s a fairly wide range of serious humanitarian issues that are documented and indexed by a large number of people globally, and there seems to be very little disagreement about how China compares to the US on various censorship and freedom rankings. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_freedom_indices
>The Chinese government is an adversary of the West whether we like it or not.
Is it? I feel like it is an adversary of the Western governments. I don't feel like they are my adversaries. We could be friends if our governments wanted to.
> If I was forced to pick one government to share my secrets with, it would be the Chinese, because there’s nothing they can do about it.
What makes you so sure about that?
I worry about China because there’s no internal checks to prevent them from doing anything.
Western governments and allies have a long culture of court systems and thinking about balancing constituent needs. That is eroding and becoming more dangerous to the extent western leaders are envious of dictatorial powers and trying to emulate Chinese totalitarianism, but there is a lot of institutional and cultural bulwark against it.
Any powerful totalitarian country should worry people. People underestimate the level of covert aggression in all facets of foreign involvement in regimes with no internal accountability.
> If you live in a western country, the US has way more power to fuck over your life than China does.
I got news for you, they're able to get to you too. Likely with less preparation then the USA would need if you're only living in a US aligned country.
How many people have been killed in US wars vs. the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution?
Remind me where the US has implemented a concentration camp of about a million individuals based on ethnicity alone and then continually denied its existence against overwhelming evidence from the international community.
Which foreign companies did the US use spies to steal foreign IP from during peacetime and also categorically deny?
Oh, and what's the name of the US system that censors wrongthink in real-time from all US-based social media, or the name of the system that controls US resident access to the internet?
What were the names of a few US citizens whose families were threatened if those citizens didn't stop badmouthing the US and returned to their homeland?
How many companies and people abroad did the US threaten with economic repercussions if they didn't stop claiming that an island nation wasn't just that?
And where's the paid army of anonymous internet commentators that the US uses to astroturf foreign websites?
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The US, while having done a great many bad things, at least has a democratic process - there is the potential for the citizens to positively affect their government's actions, weak as it might be. China doesn't even have that - it's a tyrannical dictatorship, full stop.
> - I don't think China is any more evil than the US.
In my opinion, citizens of China have it far worse, due to things like the Great Firewall. I'd much rather live in the US than China, at least it's vaguely democratic.
> I prefer democracy over dictatorship what about you?
Where exactly would you like to have that? I guess not in South America, or any other country where the US world order was better off with a dictatorship rather than a democracy.
Snap out of the stupor, my friend. The US has only one interest in mind and it’s not the interest of democracy, but rather that of the military industrial complex.
You can keep on drinking the cool aid, or actually support democracy, which would make you less keen on the theatrics that the US is struggling to keep up.
I’m not pro China, I believe in the European social democratic post-capitalism, possibly with less capitalism and more social democracy and wealth redistribution.
From this perspective, the US is doing worse than China.
>So we shouldn't try to help people in other countries until we are literally perfect?
You shouldn't try to help people in other countries, period. Who appointed you world cop? Besides, it always ends up in tears (besides it being hypocritical help with strategic ambitions attached from the establishment side, even if ordinary people mean it sincerely).
>Or are you making the argument that the US government is in fact more oppressive than the Chinese government?
> If Canada WANTED to become a vassal state of China what do you think the Americans would do?
Not much, probably sanction them, cut off ties and generally cease trade.
But I don’t think they’d invade, nor do I think if they did invade they would commit the horrible crimes (genocide, rape and torture of children, etc) that the Russians seem to love to do.
>The defining characteristic of a nation state is that it has a monopoly on violence within its borders.
That seem like a good reasons for people within US borders to prefer to be spied on by the Chinese government rather than the US government and for people within Chinese borders to prefer to be spied on by the US government rather than the Chinese government.
If I have to be spied on, I will choose whoever is less likely to subject me to violence.
alt: Would you rather be mistreated by a relative or a stranger?
As an American I'd rather my gov be held accountable for it's unethical IC behavior - especially by it's allies.
The reason is that other nations are proving grounds; the methods developed there will eventually be leveraged by US government(s) against US citizens.
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