The U.S. is indeed by most metrics one of the freest societies on the planet in terms of the state repression imposed on the average citizen, certainly far better than China in this regard. At the same time, in foreign policy it behaves exactly the same way any other nation state does - pursuing its perceived interests without consideration for anything else other than objective constraints to its power. Since the U.S. is by far the most powerful nation state in the world, its list of foreign atrocities far exceeds that of anyone else since WW2. However, that's not any different from any other major power in world history and there's absolutely no reason to think China (or anyone else) would behave any better or worse given similar ability to pursue its interests unchecked.
The US has the biggest prison population in the world by a big margin, 655 per 100k people (El Salvador is in second place with 604/100k and China is at 118/100k). I'd call that state repression.
In other measures it does better, like the so-called democracy index, where it ranks #21 (flawed democracy), which is better than China at #139 (authoritarian). In the reporters without borders press freedom index it's at #45, with China at #176 (almost dead last, out of 180).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index
I would argue that state repression is not only about direct interaction with police and other agents of the government, and that economic inequality and poverty is less direct, but just as real, relevant and serious form of oppression. If you buy into that premise, then the recent UN report is pretty damning.
http://undocs.org/A/HRC/38/33/ADD.1
Some quotes:
"About 40 million live in poverty, 18.5 million in extreme poverty, and 5.3 million live in Third World conditions of absolute poverty."
" Its citizens live shorter and sicker lives compared to those living in all other rich democracies, eradicable tropical diseases are increasingly prevalent, and it has the world’s highest incarceration rate, one of the lowest levels of voter registrations in among OECD countries and the highest obesity levels in the developed world."
"For almost five decades the overall policy response has been neglectful at best, but the policies pursued over the past year seem deliberately designed to remove basic protections from the poorest, punish those who are not in employment and make even basic health care into a privilege to be earned rather than a right of citizenship."
I'd say that compared to China it really is better, in most regards, but "by most metrics one of the freest societies on the planet" is a stretch, to say the least.
I would also note that even including all of the damning things you list, the U.S. on average falls behind most rich democracies in the world, but is still far ahead of most other states, except in the incarceration rate [1]. Rich democracies are an outlier.
[1] I'm not sure that's quite true any more if you count in all the Chinese internment camps and other non-disclosed facilities - the U.S. never had secret prisons at scale, other states do.
I think you're wrong about the incarceration rate though, by a lot. China has an official prison pop. of about 1.5 million, to have a rate close to what the US does it'd need to have 7.5 million [1] people in the internment camps, which AFAICT is way higher than anyone estimates (I couldn't really find any good estimates, but for scale the total population of Uyghurs in China is 11 - 15 million)
[1]
(def us-pop 325719178)
(def us-prison 2121600)
(def china-pop 1403500365)
(def china-prison 1649804)
(defn rate [prison population] (float (* 100000 (/ prison population))))
(rate us-prison us-pop) ;=> ~651
(rate china-prison china-pop) ;=> ~117
(rate (+ china-prison 7.5e6) china-pop) ;=> ~651
Note, however, that none of those speculations is in any way meant to excuse the incarceration rate of the U.S., which is an exceptionally outrageous state of affairs. It also goes to show that using incarceration as a tool of social engineering is by no means the sole province of totalitarian systems of governance.
Your speculations about China sound about right to me, but as a European looking in from the outside, any time someone talks about how much freer Americans are it scares the shit out of me. The US might be the domestically freest of the global superpowers, but that doesn't mean it's any good, it just means the bar is set _really_ low.
Individual Americans may respect human rights. Just like individual Chinese do as well. But when you challenge them as a nation, well, then the needs of the stong outweigh the needs of the weak.
And how many Kurds were killed by Saddam Hussein? How many Shias? I think the Iraq war was a terrible mistake but that doesn't mean that supporting it means you don't care about Iraqis.
We elected a government and enabled a system that led to this. How can we judge China as worse? More importantly why do these judgements fundamentally even matter?
The real question Americans should ask themselves is : what is our vision for the future? How can we regain our glory?
Anything else assumes authority without investment. A strategy that is destined for failure.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in...
Please go justify that and then say USA cares about sovereignty of nations!
So you took a poll, "do you give a rats @ss that 1 Million Iraqis were killed by USA" and most people didn't care? Let's tone it down, USA did not go there to kill a million people, it happened because of the war, and Saddam might have killed 2 mil if he was alive for Arab Spring. Not saying that Iraq war was justified but there's a huge difference.
Yes, even with the strawman wording you put forth, I suspect that > 50% would come down on the "don't care" side.
If you worded it in a way that was designed to tease out revealed preferences, like: "Have you considered the plight of Iraqis in the last year?" you would get even more dramatic results.
The war had bipartisan support and the leader that started it was re-elected in the ultimate poll, so I'd say the majority are fine with it.
If they had issues bigger than killing hundreds of thousands of people then...
And I'm saying this as an Australian, we weren't much better.
The United States has serious and growing problems around its global support for human rights. The domestic policies it exhibits mirror that; there are clearly long-term problems that are deeply worrying.
But support for human rights is not a binary state. The United States has the rule of law, freedom of speech and religion, a functioning judicial system, and an army of human rights specialists who operate freely. It supports many of these initiatives in other countries, both as a society and a government. The fact that the country does many awful things does not mean that other countries should have a free pass to implement arbitrary policies free of criticism.
No country in the world has a perfect record of protecting human rights, but that should not prevent them calling for change elsewhere. I hope deeply that the US fixes its problems soon, but that does not stop me from being aware that organ harvesting and political assassinations are also bad.
The US has some sordid history, but not organ harvesting last week sordid.
The immigration separations are timely, but have some due process with an intention reuniting families (ie, the design is not to separate families more than necessary) and also better than being murdered.
I'll bite, although I have a feeling I'm about to be screamed at for being an ignorant bigot for lacking this specific piece of knowledge: what on earth this comment referring to? The claim is that the present-day US is selling children in auctions who were taken from their parents by force? What?
USA has one of the highest incarceration rates due to the stupid war on drugs. It has enabled drug gangs - no less scary than ISIS yet ignored by our media and populace - to take over large swaths of central America. And so on.
All we care about is blocking refugees from getting in.
HOWEVER!!!! That is external.
Internally, the USA has some of the most respect for human rights and freedoms of any country.
This would never happen on any significant scale in the USA:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_harvesting_from_Falun_...
I'm sorry but this statement is just absolutely and completely ridiculous. I don't know if you've either never been to The United States, or you've never left The United States, but the difference between the respect that we have for human rights, and the respect that much of the rest of the world has, is stark.