Response to protests in China leads to people being crushed into literal chutney, and deaths in the 10s of thousands. That was the nature of deaths in tiananmen square, the photos of which often do not get shown in western media.[1]

[1] https://www.aboluowang.com/2008/0529/89034.html (Warning: NSFL/Gore/Human remains )

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The US has a lot to work on, but comparing it to China is a false equivalency.

edit: if this comment comes off as too emotionally charged/ visual, the mods can feel free to delete it.

The Tianmen Square protests are well known in the west (tank man is a very iconic picture known by basically everyone) contrary to your claim and if the sources on wikipedia are to be believed did not result in 10s of thousands of deaths (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests...).

In general I think it is a constant struggle to keep society free from tyranny, and you should not torpedo that with comparisons with places that have it worse.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_and_controversies_dur...

More recently, they are usually killed by right wing extremists who are unofficially sanctioned by government and often not prosecuted.

Big citation needed here. You'd be hard pressed to find any deaths here that weren't obvious, often video-documented cases of self-defense. Even then, the state has zealously prosecuted them, in Jake Gardner's case overriding the local prosecutor's determination that no crime had been committed and leading Gardner to suicide. Most ridiculous of them all, Kyle Rittenhouse is facing murder charges when every single one of his so-called victims is on video assaulting him.

US constantly meddles in other countries affairs, and has scant regard for international organizations.

Abu Gharib is not so far behind us. Nor is indiscriminate drone attacks which may have caused massive amounts of collateral damage.

Despite the sentiment here, US simply does not have a good image in most of the 3rd world.

Even walking out of Paris Climate Deal does not give much credence to the view that US is willing to coexist and cooperate with other nations.

Obviously comparing in terms of absolute metrics is not going to be very similar since US and China are very different countries, but at the same time, if the hypothetical came to pass, it wouldn't be the first time in history that a "modern", "powerful" country fell into ruin.

Is it possible you also view the US with a certain rosey bias? Check out any of a bunch of major metrics, like murder, infant mortality, homelessness, healthcare, police brutality, and it must be said Covid mortality. Visit the south side of Chicago. If all you can say is "at least it is better than China, a third world country," then you aren't saying much, and in plenty of cases it actually isn't true.

The purpose of these comparisons is to identify the similarity to the behavior of a country known to be worse. "China is worse." Yes, that's the point. We don't want to be like them, so we have to stop being like them.

Except the US is not. That's the point s/he was trying to make. Exaggeration only pushes the discussion to the most radical corners and ignores nuance.

They're trying to prosecute someone for the exact thing we need journalists to do in a free society. That's what China does, it's wrong, and we shouldn't be doing it.

You don't get to say we're not doing it until we're not doing it.

The US is better than China, but that's a low bar, and in a few areas it's only barely clearing that bar.

In other areas it's a lot better of course. Censorship is the big one. Also, the way China has oppressed some minorities (Uyghurs) hasn't happened in the US in decades (black people, native Americans). And the oppression did happen in a different way. But "different" isn't always better.

I've heard people compare the imprisonment, re-education, forced labor, and organ harvesting of Uigher minorities in China today to the US internment of japanese in the 1940s.

Needless to say, both are bad, but if you need to reach back 75+ years in US history to find a comparable example, then the difference between the level of civil rights abuse in the two countries should be crystal clear.

It's obvious on the surface that the US still has many problems, but government sanctioned organ harvesting isn't one of them.

edit: Was curious, now I see the commenter above's account is only 3 months old, and exclusively comments on content regarding China.

Btw it looks like yours is supporting Trump propaganda. Wow pot calls kettle black.

Fight Fight Fight.

One could argue that a cacophony of opinions spanning the entire spectrum of possibilities isn't necessarily much better than having no freedom of press, if the end result is people literally believing deceptive propaganda, as opposed to merely being afraid of voicing informed, dissenting opinions.

IMHO, patriotism should be about defending the values of a country and calling out BS when it's appropriate, instead of merely defending the country's name without concern for the substance of the criticism.

They’re not even remotely the same. The U.S. has serious problems with racism, mass incarceration, police brutality, unaffordable health care, etc.

But that isn’t even close to the problems China has with organ harvesting, concentration camps in Xinjiang, mass corruption, food fraud, political prisoners etc.

The outcomes are radically different.

I would much rather be called a pragmatist than a patriot.

Both there and here, there's political work being done, each with their own ideas of what is best for their people. We can argue that their great firewall effort is oppressive for example, but on the other hand, they are probably more than happy the US has outsourced manufacturing to China to such an extensive degree. Both countries ostensibly "work as intended". I guess the end result of all that work still remains to be seen.

Another point that I think is worth pondering about is whether majority opinion is necessarily correct. The US response to covid, for example, has been all over the place, with places like San Francisco, CA being more strict and successful, to places like Minot, ND being hit really hard.

Like you, I'm also all for pragmatism, but I think things like the early perception of the epidemic in the west shows that sometimes the right course of action might sometimes fly in the face of public opinion.

So while I think you are quite wrong about the current risk, we are in complete agreement that freedom of speech should be vigilantly protected.

I suggest checking the US history, both somewhat recent and not recent at all. Cancel culture is just the continuation of the old tradition of "naming and shaming", it isn't something new.

First there was "tarring and feathering", then there were the witch hunts in MA, then, more recently, there was the red scare. Current "cancel culture" is pretty much just a much lighter version of that, and we are definitely not moving any closer to "full blown censorship". In fact, I think that the modern "cancel culture" (despite me being very much not a fan of it) cannot even hold a handle to the red scare investigations of just 60-70 years ago

I agree the prior penalty could be more severe but now everything is logged and the barrier to offend is low, IMO.

BLM: People at the bottom of our society are pooling their political power and changing the conversation about policing, police budgets, racism and racial divide.

Me too: Everyday women are being heard and taking down men of wealth and power.

Gay rights: a small minority has won equality in the eyes of the law and public opinion.

Occupy: Raised class consciousness and set the stage for political movements such as Trump, Bernie, and the Tea Party.

Based on your post, you must be very isolated from society if you think the improvements minorities have won are just fake news, telling you what what you want to hear.

The same thing, really? Like picking organs on political opponents in prisons? I didn't know the US was doing that.

The US is attempting to extradite someone for trial, not trying to harvest his organs.

The question is therefore not legality in itself, but whether the (US) laws themselves are sensible and/or egalitarian. It's implied by the OP that they aren't (and I personally agree).

Here's the wording of the HK-specific law: "The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region shall enact laws on its own to prohibit any act of treason, secession, sedition, subversion against the Central People's Government, or theft of state secrets, to prohibit foreign political organisations or bodies from conducting political activities in the Region, and to prohibit political organisations or bodies of the Region from establishing ties with foreign political organisations or bodies."

Governments hold a monopoly on Force, not a monopoly on Truth.

It's different for people who do have a security clearance, because they signed away their First Amendment rights for classified information.

So then this appears to be the difference between the Manning/Assange and Snowden/Greenwald cases: both Manning and Snowden held security clearances and violated them by sharing with Assange and Greenwald. But while Assange may have solicited and/or assisted Manning's crime, Greenwald just passively received the materials from Snowden's crime. So Greenwald is innocent and Assange is prosecuted.

Also normal (non-government) NDAs let you sign away your right not to be punished for speaking about certain matters. I don't like it, but it's pretty well established.

Point is that—legally speaking—rights aren't actually inalienable.

Do you know the prominent cases of the examples you mentioned?

You can contract with another private entity to resolve disputes via arbitration, yes, but not with the state. The closest thing might be a plea agreement, but that happens after an indictment. You still have the right to a trial, but you may forego it if you choose.

I suppose if you're saying that a security clearance is like an NDA with the state, it's a reasonable comparison in function, but the means of prosecution is entirely different. It's like saying that everyone could be subject to UCMJ because of conscription.

Not sure if this would play the same in America.

There’s a huge difference between A) someone gets classified information through nefarious means and shares that with a journalist, and B) “journalist” actively works to steal said classified documents. This case is about “B” not “A” but yet we keep seeing people trying to make the argument that this is some sort of attack on journalism. That’s a gross misrepresentation of the basic facts in this case.