Freedoms to think freely, protest, have free media, these things are deeply and profoundly important. But so is real economic democracy. China has neither, the U.S. has the former freedoms but a very crappy practically-absent economic democracy. By economic democracy, I don't mean dogmatic libertarian laissez-faire free markets (though that would be better than corrupt markets with regulatory capture dictated by monopolists). I mean where regular citizens have the whole combo of informed power to set economic policy rather than have it dictated to them by the elite. Stuff like participatory-budgeting.
Anyway, I'm just saying that my critique and concerns about Russia have NO connection to any defense of the West, though I will readily give credit wherever it is due for the things that are good and fair, which the West has some of.
And yes, I agree completely that just giving blunt labels is not a helpful way to discuss things with anyone. The tact we need is to be interested in people's views enough that we can describe them and have people say "that's right, that's my view" and only from there can we start discussing where and why our views differ.
But following this line we might find ourselves in a precarious position where we must admit that any democracy liable to being peacefully, insidiously manipulated by a minority through various means may fit this description.
We open ourselves to an argument by an anti-west person who would say that capitalism is a pseudo-totalitarianism by that measure because the Bezoses and the top .001% lobby lawmakers and manipulate mass media (that they own) to make people believe whatever furthers .001%'s personal agenda.
I disagree with that position, thus I apply a different criteria. Whether people can think freely, whether people can protest, access free media (yes, there is no longer Twitter, but many others left), disagree with the government, etc.
Have I not been in China somewhat recently, I might not have objected. But I saw how on Beijing airport transit rail there is a social advert basically showing a caricature of the rotten, corrupt West against the goodness of communism. A screen in every car playing it on a loop. This type of blatant conditioning is simply unimaginable in Russia.
So in my eyes there is a gradient, and observing the gradient is important to the cause. Not observing it is giving in to such black-and-white unthinking that is precisely the bread and butter of totalitarianism.
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I accept that there may be a communication objective where you want to hit a person with a strong statement to make them think. "You are living in a totalitarian country." Maybe they would be taken aback and reevaluate their life through this new lens. But I don't have the intuition that this is an effective approach. Hopefully they don't have China or North Korea to compare to.