Are you aware that other countries than the US exist that aren't Canada or in Europe? Let's pick the obvious one: North Korea. There's less brutality, oppression, and exploitation in NK than in the US?
If only we were able to look at relative things to find out if that's true.
I don't believe that was the intended message of the comment I replied to, but even if it was because strange ideas: China easily tops the US, and so does Russia.
Keep in mind that there's ~150 million people in China who subsist on less than ~$3/day or whatever. Even accounting for cheaper standard of living (4x ppp in China) it's cripplingly poor by even US poverty rates. It's the equivalent of living on like $4k USD.
Idk if you've been to rural China at all, but shit is way different there still.
When we define the US federal poverty line it's at minimum like $12k for an individual, even in the cheapest areas. That's 3x higher than the poverty line for data you see coming out of China.
You mean after they've let a few millions starve here and there?
Holy fuck, the insanity.
This makes no sense.
> I don't believe that was the intended message of the comment I replied to, but even if it was because strange ideas: China easily tops the US, and so does Russia.
As for Russia, just in terms of military (if that’s what you are referring to): One illegal invasion right now. An incursion into Georgia. The wars in Chechnya. America on the other hand has Iraq and Afghanistan as the most recent wars, and in general it seems that it is easier to count the number of years that the US has not been at war than to count the years where they have. So I think the world’s largest military which is also used in an offensive capacity wins here.
As for China I will probably have to concede the win in case you are referring to the Uyghurs, because the number of Uyghurs in concentration camps worse than Auschwitz must surely number in the hundreds of millions now, if the rhetoric of the anti-China crowd is any indication.
If you don't take population into the comparison of absolute numbers, you're not learning anything. The same applies to monetary losses. If you don't take the total amount of dollars invested into account, "dollar amount lost" is useless. Two people could lose $1000 each, one has a billion dollar, the other one has 1001. Are they equally affected?
> As for China I will probably have to concede the win in case you are referring to the Uyghurs, because the number of Uyghurs in concentration camps worse than Auschwitz must surely number in the hundreds of millions now, if the rhetoric of the anti-China crowd is any indication.
You don't need to. China's prison population is equal to that of the US, excluding the Uigurs. Include those and it doubles it. And from what is known, China is a lot harder on their prisoners than the US.
I've never understood tankies that go to insane lengths to justify and defend ex-communist countries, while they'll equally claim that "it wasn't real communism". Why defend it then?
So less prisoners per capita.
> I've never understood tankies that go to insane lengths to justify and defend ex-communist countries, while they'll equally claim that "it wasn't real communism". Why defend it then?
Am I supposed to answer this?
Aha, suddenly you want to go all "per capita" instead of "total amount"? Yeah, I think we've reached the end here. If I bring up North Korea again, you'll say "yeah, but it's less in total amount" and we'll just spin in circles.
Again, I don't get it. I'd love to understand what can be done to get people to not hold on to some ideology for dear life, but I guess you can't ask a fish why he has gills.
My mistake. I forgot the thread for a moment.
> Again, I don't get it. I'd love to understand what can be done to get people to not hold on to some ideology for dear life, but I guess you can't ask a fish why he has gills.
You don’t know what my ideology is.
[1]
> The 38th parallel, meant as a line of convenience for two armies' temporary operations, immediately took on characteristics of a political boundary, infuriating the divided people. Just two weeks after his troops landed in Korea on September 8, the US commander, Lt. Gen. John R. Hodge, sent a message to General MacArthur in Tokyo: "Dissatisfaction with the division of the country grows." [...]
> Even before reaching Korea, he had instructed his officers to view the Koreans as an enemy. When his 78,000 troops began landing, he ordered Japanese police to keep local welcoming crowds away. The police shot and killed two Koreans in the process. [..]
> In the fall of 1946, the US military authorized elections to an interim legislature for southern Korea, but the results were clearly fraudulent. Even General Hodge privately wrote that right-wing "strong-arm" methods had been used to control the vote. The winners were almost all rightists, including [Syngman] Rhee supporters, even though a survey by the American military government that summer had found that 70 percent of 8,453 southern Koreans polled said they supported socialism, 7 percent communism, and only 14 percent capitalism. [...]
> Chung Koo-Hun, the observant young student of the late 1940s, said of the villagers' attitude: "The Americans simply re-employed the pro-Japanese Koreans whom the people hated." [...]
> Seventy of the 115 top Korean officials in the Seoul administration in 1947 had held office during the Japanese occupation.
Of course the Soviets were offering support in the north, but:
[2]
> [They] never established a full-fledged military government, moving quickly to local control.
The US even horrifically fumbled what minor concessions it was willing to offer to leftist sentiment:
[3]
> The US military government had pleased the farmers by decreeing a limit on the "rice rent" of 30 percent of the crop. That was on paper. In reality, enforcement was lax, landlords still gouged tenant farmers and the military government did actual harm with a related ordinance lifting price controls and imposing a "free market" on rice. That set off a binge of speculation, corruption and smuggling of Korean rice abroad, which left subsistence rice farmers and other poor southerners with little to eat. They exploded with resentment.
> In the southern city of Taegu, people verged on starvation. When 10,000 demonstrators rallied on October 1, 1946, police opened fire, killing many. Vengeful crowds then seized and killed policeman, and the US military declared martial law. The violence spread across the provinces, peasants murdering government officials, landlords, and especially police, detested as holdovers from Japanese days. American troops joined the police in suppressing the uprisings. Together they killed uncounted hundreds of Koreans.
And this is all before the war. In which the US killed millions of people in the north with mass bombing, attacks with biological weapons, and annihilation of the north's industrial capacity. US troops even indiscriminately slaughtered thousands of refugees fleeing to the south, the same people they were supposedly protecting!
It's the same old colonial playbook, rehashed again and again. It's not like the US learned anything from this experience either.
[1][2][3] - The Bridge at No Gun Ri, pp. 47-53
In a world containing North Korea, Iran, China, and Egypt, I can't imagine how incredibly out if touch and radicalized a person needs to be to truly believe something this absurd.
Chomsky: Today's Republican Party is a Candidate for Most Dangerous Organization in Human History (2016) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FC7PsvUjo8