IFYP.
when in human history have the masked, unidentifiable armed men stuffing people into unmarked cars been “the good guys”?
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Things like masked men stuffing people into cars or demanding your papers and arresting people if they weren’t in order were examples I was given when I was in school on why “we” were living better countries than communist countries because we didn’t have those sorts of things.
I can still see why Russia’s not a good place. It’s getting less and less clear these days as to why China is bad or Vietnam is bad or Venezuela is bad relatively speaking.
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Mass reeducation camps anyone? The Chinese state exercises tremendous power virtually unchecked by rights. Countries like that can be fine for the average person. Until they are not. Which is why what the Trump administration is doing in regards to ICE and immigration enforcement is worse than any of the stupid but legal moves they are making in government employment. They can choose to enforce the existing laws and spend ridiculous amounts of congressionally approved money, but they have to respect the laws and due process rights of the people they are arresting, which they are not.
I don’t think the US is at that point with a few caveats.
The US is currently only really safe-ish for Citizens.
The rest (any permanent immigrant, visa holder, student etc) is basically on the Trump menu.
The US is becoming increasingly authoritarian and anti-immigration.
So its really a combination of becoming more like Hungary (authoritarian and anti-immigration) and increasingly more militaristic (more like China).
Not a good trajectory really. Historically, countries who take such a turn end up polarised and economically damaged.
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You mean it’s not going to make America great again? /s
I recently saw an article somewhere - maybe reddit - where someone talked about china today. And the tl;dr was it’s not the china from 10 years ago, it’s not the china of everyone’s preconceptions. China I guess is absolutely killing it.
The surveillance state in China is very very intense, if you can tolerate that, ok.
Trump wants to make the US as authoritarian as China, but he’s got a long way to go.
Reddit post was most likely by someone paid by the Chinese government in one form or another.
China is doing well on exports.
But internally is quite another matter. Their housing sector is still collapsing, the local authorities are massively indebted, and they have high youth unemployment.
There are benefits to a command economy that focuses on high savings being chanelled to investment, but the flipside of this is very weak internal consumer demand.
Now that China has succeded in gaining a stranglehold of the global economy via its exports, it remains to be seen if it can hold on to that niche due to its demographics and internal economic problems.
Ironically, the US is making China stronger now with its behavior.
I would reverse that to say the US has been polarized and economically damaged for decades now which is leading to it becoming authoritarian and anti-immigration. Much of rural America that is not farming looks like a third world country.
We are one terrorist attack away from this happening, IMO. What would Trump do if 9/11 happened today? We would get there almost overnight and the majority would support it.
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The US has more than 4× the number of people in prisons of various types than China does. So seems like your odds of falling afoul of the state is a lot higher in the U.S. than China. China also seems more willing to go after billionaires.
Living in China is very different to the US.
Its not about the prison system, its about having zero protections against the state coming after you simply because someone on the inside decided it.
The US is trending in that direction with Trump but you still have due process for the most part.
In China, there is no due process. The party (local officials) decide what the process is and you simply get steamrolled by it. There is literally no escape unless you flee the country or emigrate.
That just speaks to the overwhelming demographics of a single ethnic group in Chinese population. Consider incarceration (including reeducation camps) by location in China and see if that focuses your answer. Consider whether things that are crimes here are crimes there and vice versa. I’m not saying there isn’t a problem with mass incarceration in the US, but I’d go with the US court system over China’s any day of the week.
I thought it was closer to parity if you include the Uighur camps. (My memory could be flawed, however.)
And Beijing is not shy about seeking to block people from exiting the country.
Please delete this post, it is too good of an idea for them.
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Um, I believe we are already there.
Due process? Less and less of that, especially if one is not white.
We had someone jailed – JAILED – for a month for making a remark about Charlie Kirk misinterpreted as a threat against a school. Because, it is assumed, someone didn’t like the remark about Charlie Kirk and turned it into something it wasn’t.
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Isn’t the US giving everything to Palantir? Government officials/high level politicians are encouraging vigilantes to track down people who’ve made politically incorrect posts to report them to government agencies so they can be fired or criminally charged. Students are being imprisoned and then deported for speaking badly of dear leader or for speaking in defense of Palestinians.
The President is ordering the Justice Department to go after individuals. Even if you win in court, you lose financially.
Sure, you have money. It’s easy enough for you to get out of it. Plenty of poor people spend months, or years in jail before they even see a judge for relatively minor charges.