> The presidency of Ronald Reagan in the United States was marked by multiple scandals, resulting in the investigation, indictment, or conviction of over 138 administration officials
Which was (still is?) The most for any president.
He also walked away from what would have been the most monumental nuclear reductions agreement, including the elimination of all ICBMs and possibly all strategic nuclear weapons in both countries, because he refused to give up the pipe dream of the Star Wars program. [1]
> the freeing of half of Europe from tyranny.
While Reagan’s foreign policy did play a part, the fall of the USSR was more a culmination of decades of economic stagnation, decades of costly arms race military spending, and an incredibly costly and unpopular war in Afghanistan (that sounds familiar). Also Mikhail Gorbachev and his radical policy shifts with Glasnost and Perestroika played a massive part in setting the stage for the collapse. It could also be argued that Bush Sr’s policy shift to a lighter touch in Europe to allow for the revolutions to proceed organically, as opposed to Reagan pushing them with American support, allowed Gorbachev to avoid coups and stay in power to oversee a peaceful collapse, rather than a violent last spasm that many hardliners wanted. Reagan absolutely had a part to play, but he was by no means the architect of the end of the USSR.
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/01/ronald-...
The entire debacle during the cold war was less strong and smart political leaders and more pure luck. We now know that there were people that, if they had followed protocol, would have taken that extra step to nuclear deployment. The only reason they didn't is sheer, dumb luck.
If the lessons we learn from history are to deify the actions of men like Reagan, then I truly hope that we have more of that luck in our future.
But what do you suggest as an alternative? Standing by and doing nothing is certainly not my preferred option. If the premise is that the export of tyranny must be stopped, what should be done?
Reducing the problem to its absurd conclusion: ceding liberties because the risk of war is too great, is not an acceptable choice. Hopefully today's reality will not be that extreme, but that's ultimately where we'll end up.
Remember that normal everyday life is never reported. Only unusual and non-typical things are reported.
So what you're saying is your knowledge of the United States is exactly opposite of what normal life is actually like there.
I know United States is large and varied country and for some people in some places it's wonderful, but I'm sure same can be said about China or most other countries.
However, to Reagan's credit he did tone things down a bit when it was explained to him that the Soviets really did think the US would attack them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_intervention_in_the_Rus...
(learned when I was wondering why the US had had war propaganda offices devoted to Arkhangelsk and Vladivostok)
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlBIa8z_Mts
Genesis - Land of Confusion (Official Music Video), 1986, 5min28sec
In addition to freedom of speech, we also have freedom of assembly. Combined both freedoms allow our citizens to both bring awareness to the problem(s) and to try to stop it. Is this perfect? No, but it's still better than China (at least on that front)
Shanghai is modern. Huge parts of the country are developing.
Whether a country is developed or not is defined based on their standard of living per capita, not their absolute size. A country with a billion poor people has completely different social, demographic, industrial and political drivers than a country of 300m high I come people.
The last thing on my mind when I think of China is "its a developing nation." China seems to own quite an empire.
Coastal China has per capita GDP comparable to Taiwan. Interior provinces is much poorer, with 600M living on 1000RMB/month or 2000USD/year, on the level of Haiti. In aggregate China is a middle income country with per capita GDP of Iraq.
The Chinese system harnesses this income disparity + 1.4 Billion people to concentrate talent, wealth and development systematically rival developed nations. That's just a factor of scale. Quantity has a quality of its own if properly coordinated, which is basically broad TLDR of Chinese history up to industrialization. I suppose people didn't think China could catch up this fast.
You'd be surprised. Plus, it's not like something they'll admit openly.
Second, there's also internalized violence/indoctrination, from a young age.
There is of course voluntary choice too -- even western women who have converted and adopted wearing it (in which case there's no youthful indoctrination). But for tons of muslim women in Europe, which see their non-muslim friends not having to wear any, it's imposed by their families and communities.
The ongoing demoralization of the US like this is outright sister.
[1] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=china+highway+built+around+house&t...
and many more cases like
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holdout_(real_estate)#Nail_hou...
How is that possible at all with no liberty, no justice, no recourse ?
Disagree if you mean in general sense. You need to define it in far more details. I guess you mean “when their interest conflicts with the government”. Ask common Chinese citizens who live a non-activist life if they agreed that they are slaves and don’t have any of those rights
Yeah. Accurate.
The crackdown in Xinjiang is a response to terrorist attacks. Both America and China are pretty reliable for grossly disproportionate responses to terrorist attacks that ruin the lives of millions.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_....
While not concentration camps, the US still does have residential schools where they put Native American children into Christian foster homes and educate them to follow our political system in public schools. Plus the church makes millions doing it. Certainly better, but still pretty terrible.
> Where journalists repeteadly disappear? Where a treaty with the UK is ripped up and a city is invaded?
The "Collateral Murder" is video evidence of the US killing journalists during their illegal invasion of a nation. You can disagree with my evaluation of those events, but it's hard to see how we have the moral high ground here.
Of course there’s no winner here, only losers...
Does that make it okay then?
What do you think the school-to-prison pipeline and legal prison labour amount to? Black, brown and native people being forced into slavery and imprisonment. Not to mention ICE detention camps.
> Are they tracked through a social credit system where you can't get a train out of your town if it's bad?
Ever had to get a background check for a job? To rent a house?
The only reason this is so visible in China is because it's foreign to us. We grew up with redlining and ghettos and mandatory minimums, so we don't even realize it's a different implementation of the same system
Forced surgeries and sterilizations? For a claim like that, you're going to have to cite a credible source. As imperfect as we are, we're not as bad as China.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/21/unwanted-hys...
Still, unlike in China there are lawmakers publicly trying to stop it, and we are free to speak & write about it and say that it’s wrong
you may have law which makes being muslim illegal and put in jail. and that jail will become "concentration camp", but only if you view it from outside of that country.
"A camp where persons are confined, usually without hearings and typically under harsh conditions, often as a result of their membership in a group which the government has identified as dangerous or undesirable."
> the children at a facility in Clint, Texas, were sleeping on concrete floors and being denied soap and toothpaste. They described “children as young as 7 and 8, many of them wearing clothes caked with snot and tears … caring for infants they’ve just met.” A visiting doctor called the detention centers “torture facilities.” At least seven children have died in U.S. custody in the past year, compared with none in the 10 years prior. More than 11,000* children are now being held by the U.S. government on any given day.
> Chris Rickerd, a policy counsel at the ACLU. “But this all-encompassing skepticism of asylum seekers fleeing violence—justifying cruel treatment, justifying changes in the law, and justifying overcrowding to the point of unsafe and deadly conditions—[is] of a scale and a type that we haven’t seen before.”
> The Trump administration has previously deliberately inflicted suffering on children to deter illegal immigration, with its use of family separation. It has altered immigration policy and the asylum process so as to force the authorities to hold migrants, whether they have properly sought asylum at a port of entry or crossed illegally [1]
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/07/border-fac...
Maybe not to the scale of China, but basically. They are prison, reservations, and immigration detention centers.
> Are they tracked through a social credit system where you can't get a train out of your town if it's bad?
Again, not as bad in the US, probably, but we do have a credit system that can make it much more difficult for certain people to have a place to live, buy a car, or get a job. Add on the felony system, and we also take away their right to vote, and again make it harder for them to get good jobs. Finally, we even have a no-fly list.
> Where journalists repeteadly disappear?
Does that happen in China? A quick Google search didn't bring up much. I do agree that the US has more freedom of speech.
> Where a treaty with the UK is ripped up and a city is invaded?
We have and still regularly do this with treaties we made with Native American tribes.
Yes, they are called ghettos.
> Are they tracked through a social credit system where you can't get a train out of your town if it's bad?
Yes, it's called the prison system.
> Where journalists repeteadly disappear?
not only journalists, but political leaders, rappers, pastors, etc.
> Where a treaty with the UK is ripped up and a city is invaded?
Well, that's the easiest one. The US is waging war against 3 or 4 African countries right now.
It's clearly worse in China, but I do feel fear, even in the US.
Imagine 0.01% of Chinese population have the awareness and willing to fight for it, that’ll be a huge deal already.
I look at Taiwan with great hopes.
And we never used the prisoners as organ banks.
When did China last have a Uighur dictator? (Since it’s a dictatorship I mean I guess they don’t really care about having representation of minority groups in positions of power). Does China have schemes to help minorities in China attend college? Are there advocate groups representing Uighu interests in Beijing? Do they have any history or education in Chinese textbooks about the Uighur or other minorities? In the US we did a lot of bad stuff (we all benefit from it now, so every single American born today is as guilty as any other) but at least we actually acknowledge it!
How many immigrants of any sort does China allow to fully immigrate into China on a yearly basis? Can a Syrian apply for a visa or move to China as a refugee?
Why are some Chinese racist against Africans and why is that overlooked? [1], [2], [3]
Does the US have problems? Yep. Even if the US “was the same”, last I checked we have protests and people campaigning to fix our issues. So even if you wanted to make the outlandish claim that “the U.S. is the same”, you can easily look around and see that at a minimum we highlight problems in our society. Who is running against Xi to stop the genocide of Uighur Muslims?
The only thing that makes sense to me here is social media. You (not you specifically) see that first outrage article and then down the scrolling and clicking hole you go until you’re just addicted to being outraged.
I put what I call America-denialism on a similar level as I do anti-vaxers, flat earth era, 9/11 truthers, or Trump deep-state conspiracy theorists. It’s just another wacky idea that you get from extended periods of time going down social media rabbit holes.
[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronavirus-racism-africans-chi...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/27/china-fails-to...
[3] https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/04/15/chinas-racism-is-wrecki...
Han is the cultural race/ethnicity in mainland China. [0] It's about 92% of the population. So that's a lot of people. Is China trying to sure up its borders? Yes. Is China out for world domination, I really don't think so. Every single one of my Chinese friends is about as sweet as they come. China is the new mystery to the West, and I don't think people in the West really understand them. The amount of growth in China is outrageous. We've outsourced so much there, and then have a go at them for stuff we don't really understand.
I think GP is right in ways. I think there are some nefarious actors in China running the same plays from the playbook written by the Anglosphere war powers, but to lump it all in a say 'China bad' is, in my very under-read / under-experienced, opinion, a terrible thing.
他们很好 - Hope I've got my characters right! Tāmen hěn hǎo
Even the language isn't like ours. It's more direct and blunt.
I'm South African. I grew up in Apartheid and I'm white. It ended when I was 10.
Am I a bad person? No. Are my parent's bad people? No. Were my Grandparent's bad people? No.
The Apartheid Government of South Africa was terrible. Especially to black people, but also to white people who didn't toe the line.
Sanctions were very effective.
You got me there :) I guess You can always travel. It is a very different place, noisy, crowded, but you can learn about it first hand.
Yes, I'd agree on all counts. As I said in another comment, we need to be so careful with what we are saying. I just get really upset when the anti-China-goverment narrative spills into an anti-China-people one.
other than sloppy posting I don't think I've ever seen that (that I can remember). Whereas I've seen a fair number of pro china posts that freely talk about 'westerners' instead of western governments. They tend to get killed pretty fast though.
Absolutely. All the comments like yours are downvoted. The West doesn't need autocracy to maintain its propaganda, its own citizens do it for them.
China is not innocent. But on what basis does the West have any moral authority to judge China's emulation of Western colonialism. I would argue very little. The West has made its bed and now it must sleep in it.
Our great-great grandfathers beat their wives, thus no one should be able to judge me for doing the same today. Is this your argument?
This is a counsel of despair and it is pure tribalism. No one in the West can condemn the actions of China the nation because the West has done analogous things in the past. So everyone in the West is guilty for everything anyone in the West has ever done. By this logic there is no basis for moral judgment ever and every group is free to dominate any other group. Might makes right. It's lovely in this scenario to claim membership in a powerful group that can take everyone else's marbles.
No one believes this about their own group. "I can't judge my neighbor for murder because we're both white. His crime is my crime." People frequently believe this about other groups. "My Chinese neighbor is a horrible person because they are Han and the Han-dominated government in China is doing horrible things to Uighurs." This is obvious nonsense. Wrong is wrong whoever the judge. It isn't the West judging China but individual Westerners. Also individual Han Chinese. Maybe even individual Han Chinese responsible for abusing the Uighurs.
Of course that's nonsensical and I agree with it. But I wonder what you think when it's positively framed?
So everyone in the west can _benefit_ from everything anyone in the West has ever done?
That statement seems much closer to being universally accepted. Our rights to benefit from the fruits of Western "progress"; medicine, civil rights, social security, peace, etc. Yet these things are fundamentally dependent on the historical and contemporary colonial and neo-colonial "heist" upon the rest of the world. How can we simultaneously distance ourselves from the crimes of the West and benefit from it? Actions have consequences. Yes, neither I nor my immediate ancestors (and I'm as British as can be) took part in any colonial crimes, but I sure as hell take advantage of my Western privileges. If I don't have any personal responsibility for my culture's crimes then how do I justify personally benefiting from those crimes?
Well yes, that's exactly it! If we can't unscramble our eggs how can we can unscramble China's eggs?
And yes, a very good point. It's imporant to split the govemerment from the people. I need to be more careful :)
"approximately 65,000 Falun Gong practitioners had been killed for their organs between 2000 and 2008" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_harvesting_from_Falun_Go...
I suppouse I want to see more UN involvement with the Organ Harvesting. It's insanely barbaric and shouldn't be happerning. But I think people like Alex Jones have given it more credit. I don't have enough data to make valid conclusion about it. But the Falun Gong practitioners I have met scared the crap out of me. It felt a lot like Scientology vibes. Does that mean we should harvest their organs? No, clearly. That's insane to like the nth-degree.
e: also, as the wiki states, Ethan Gutmann's investigations are pretty striking. Same as the China Tribunal in London. This has moved on a lot since I last read up on it. Christ.
... is this satire?
Edit: or do you believe there’s some kind of correlation between some individual Chinese you know and the CPCs plans?
e: and yes, I honestly belive that in China things work so diffrently to the West, that a sample of the people can actually give you a good read on what the powers are thinking / doing. Maybe cos they are all brain-washed ;) who really knows. All I'm saying is, let's try and be civil!
Edit: It’s not a conspiracy theory when almost every China bad news story can be sourced to organizations sponsored by the CIA.
You're also confusing "China" the CCP governmental apparatus, with "Chinese citizens" as individual people. When people criticise "China", it is the former they are criticising. Confusing the two only serves to further play into the 'us vs them' divide.
Both of these factors are commonly used by the Chinese state to frame anti-China sentiment as anti-Chinese sentiment - a very important difference.
In China controlled Xinjiang or next door in US controlled Afghanistan?
China and the US are both empires. What happens on the periphery is not always pretty. But to pretend one is good and the other is evil is stupid at best and dangerous as worst.
I think it's becoming clearer and clearer that this strategy has to be adopted with China as well. They are out to win, to dominate the world, and they won't back down, and they will use any method to do it. And ask yourself if the world you see inside China is what you want spreading.