Christ, have you heard a single word I’ve said this conversation? Yes, China does hacking, Russia does hacking, the US does hacking, everybody does that kind of stuff. The difference is that China is generally limited to the kinds of bad things that every government is guilty of, whereas the US literally dominates the world by force, assassinating if not full-scale invading anybody they don’t like. You keep coming up with this tiny trivial stuff to compare to things like the occupation of Afghanistan, which makes me think that you simply don’t comprehend the scale of suffering that that entailed.
Sources like CNN and Wikipedia refer to China as a one-party state. I guess I’ll accept that this description is probably accurate, until I see news of China having national elections involving at least two competitive parties.
It’s kinda funny to say that in comparison to New York City, because you brought up Mamdani as if he had already been elected. In fact, he only won the Democratic primary. It’s just that the Democratic party is popular enough in NYC that it’s been more or less assumed that he would win. Of course, the incumbent Cuomo was also from the Democratic party, and yet there’s significant ideological differences between them.
You might say that NYC is, functionally, a one-party city. Of course, meaningful ideological differences can exist within that party, with competitive races between them. But I suppose the fact that the Republican party technically also exists there is the thing that determines whether NYC has democratic elections or not. Is that how that works? Should I be thanking the Republicans for making the US a democracy instead of “one party state?”
It’s very clear that you haven’t actually investigated or thought about how the Chinese system works and are just repeating lines you’ve heard. A one-party system doesn’t mean that the leaders of the party pick out who they want in each position and they run unopposed.
the US literally dominates the world by force, assassinating if not full-scale invading anybody they don’t like
China seems to aspire to this same modus operandi. They seem to want to invade Taiwan in the near future.
You might say that NYC is, functionally, a one-party city. Of course, meaningful ideological differences can exist within that party, with competitive races between them. But I suppose the fact that the Republican party technically also exists there is the thing that determines whether NYC has democratic elections or not.
It’s not that long ago that Michael Bloomberg and Rudy Giuliani were Republican mayors of NYC, but I think the last non-communist leader of China was decades ago. Before the PRC was established I would guess.
It’s very clear that you haven’t actually investigated or thought about how the Chinese system works and are just repeating lines you’ve heard.
To be honest I do trust sources like BBC News and other western sources. I know some people might say they’re pro-western biased sources. From my experience though, the BBC has been truthful and accurate. If they report on a multi-party election in China then I’ll read about it. Instead though I found this on their website:
China seems to aspire to this same modus operandi. They seem to want to invade Taiwan in the near future.
“Seems to aspire to” “seem to want to” those are just other ways of saying that they aren’t doing it, that there’s nothing that you can point to that’s in any way comparable to what the US has been doing for decades, if not since it’s conception. You’re just speculating about what you think might happen and saying that that hypothetical possibility makes them as bad as a country that’s actually done that and worse.
It’s not that long ago that Michael Bloomberg and Rudy Giuliani were Republican mayors of NYC, but I think the last non-communist leader of China was decades ago. Before the PRC was established I would guess.
Sure. But those communists have often had vastly different approaches. China saw extensive changes both economically and politically in the 80’s and different leaders have differed on their approaches since then.
So the leadership of a single party is in their constitution. I don’t think that’s true in the US, or other western democracies.
You’re right, it isn’t. In fact, the US constitution doesn’t say anything about political parties at all. That doesn’t stop our political system from being dominated by two parties, because of the way things are set up.
The Chinese system operates off a different set of assumptions than the US system does. But the assumptions that the US system makes are fundamentally incorrect. So I don’t see a reason to just broadly dismiss the entire Chinese system based off of it being described as a “one-party state.” I for one, would prefer to live in a system where only the Democratic party existed and the Republican party did not. But moreover, I don’t think you could accurately answer basic question about how the Chinese system works. Like, walk me through your picture of how someone becomes a mayor in China. Do you even have a picture?
Look, my politics are pretty simple. I see my government doing all this fucked up shit and I hate the people doing it, I want to get rid of them, ideally have them face justice, and then bring in new people who hopefully we won’t have to do the same thing to. But apparently I’m not allowed to want that? Apparently I suddenly have to answer for every alleged bad thing anyone around the world has ever done. And I’ve been entertaining that crazy idea quite a bit more than it really deserves. Without getting into details, I can tell you that my own family was very negatively impacted by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nobody I know has been negatively impacted (certainly not to the same extent) by China not having sufficiently democratic mayoral elections, or anything else China has done.
And again, I have absolutely no idea what purpose condemning the Chinese government is supposed to serve. I’m trying to solve problems that affect my own community. And if you think I have a moral responsibility to help liberate the Chinese people from their government, I mean, that’s insane. Again, there’s nothing I can do to bring down the Chinese government from the outside and even if I could I can not imagine any scenario where that would help the Chinese people.
I mean, if anything, shouldn’t I prioritize, say, Saudi Arabia over China? How about before we go around taking aggressive actions against a government that the people overwhelmingly approve of, we just stop giving weapons to a literal monarchy? Like, I’m not even saying we overthrow them, just stop aiding them. If you want me to ignore my own people for the sake of people all around the world, I’m down, it’s just that even if “Liberate Chinese people from the government they support” would be way, way down my list even if I put it on it. Why shouldn’t it be?
Genuinely, why shouldn’t it be? At a certain point, shouldn’t I be questioning your motivations for constantly trying to redirect my justified anger and my own government towards my government’s enemies?
You can be angry about your own government and that’s completely fine. I am not a Trump fan myself. Regarding Saudi Arabia, yes there are reasons to be wary of their leadership, especially after Jamal Khashoggi’s death.
Anyway, in my original question in this thread, I just asked if a person would condemn imperialism if it was done by Russia or China, in addition to condemning similar behaviour from the US or other western countries. If the US invades a country and kills civilians there then I definitely think that’s wrong - civilians should be able to live in peace. Likewise I think it’s wrong if Russia invades Ukraine and kills civilians there. With China, they may take over Taiwan by force in the near future. Likewise if the US were to take over a territory by force (perhaps the Philippines again), I would think that’s wrong.
The situation in Ukraine is complex, while the situation in Taiwan is purely hypothetical and can be dismissed without further comment.
In Ukraine, revolutionaries overthrew the government and banned opposition parties. Then, other revolutionaries decided they didn’t like that so they overthrew their regional governments and tried to break away. The pro-Western side pretends that the revolutionaries they backed were completely organic and represented the popular will, while the pro-Russia revolutionaries were purely Russian proxies - and the pro-Russia side pretends the exact same thing but in reverse. The reality is that both sides have some degree of genuine popular support.
In any case, a civil war broke out between them, and after numerous ceasefire attempts fell apart, with cities in eastern Ukraine being shelled by artillery, the pro-Russia side requested Russian assistance.
Now, I don’t think either side is fighting for anything meaningful, it’s just about who gets to put their flag where. The Ukrainian people will suffer more or less equally under either government, but they are suffering much more in this pointless destructive war.
The only reason it’s any of my business is because my government supported the overthrow of the previous government and helped bring in a new government that was unwilling to have free and fair elections, and is now providing military aid to said government. If we had simply stayed out of there from the start, I don’t believe any of this would be happening.
As for Russia, while I’m not fond of their response to the situation by any means, to really condemn them I would need to suggest an alternative course of action. If they had stayed out of the war, then the people of eastern Ukraine would, at the very least, be shut out of any democratic process. Perhaps the best approach would have been to simply spend the money they’ve spent on war on a mass relocation effort allowing ethnic Russians in Ukraine to relocate within Russia, although I don’t know that that’s realistic or that anyone would agree to that. Or perhaps Russia should have simply rolled over and accepted this expansionism. I don’t really know, it’s not really my business.
Of course this whole mess goes back to Lenin giving Russian territory to Ukraine in the hopes that the ethnic Russians would be a stabilizing force on Ukrainian politics and would help build a bridge between Russians and Ukrainians. We are now living in the miserable future where that failed and backfired tremendously. Ideally, the USSR wouldn’t have collapsed and we wouldn’t be here in the first place. But no use crying over spilt milk.
All I know is that I don’t want to be involved in it. If the Ukrainians want to fight Russia they can knock themselves out, more power to 'em. But if nothing else I can’t see how it’s possibly worth the cost when we have people here losing their food stamps.
Christ, have you heard a single word I’ve said this conversation? Yes, China does hacking, Russia does hacking, the US does hacking, everybody does that kind of stuff. The difference is that China is generally limited to the kinds of bad things that every government is guilty of, whereas the US literally dominates the world by force, assassinating if not full-scale invading anybody they don’t like. You keep coming up with this tiny trivial stuff to compare to things like the occupation of Afghanistan, which makes me think that you simply don’t comprehend the scale of suffering that that entailed.
Actually, China has nine political parties.
It’s kinda funny to say that in comparison to New York City, because you brought up Mamdani as if he had already been elected. In fact, he only won the Democratic primary. It’s just that the Democratic party is popular enough in NYC that it’s been more or less assumed that he would win. Of course, the incumbent Cuomo was also from the Democratic party, and yet there’s significant ideological differences between them.
You might say that NYC is, functionally, a one-party city. Of course, meaningful ideological differences can exist within that party, with competitive races between them. But I suppose the fact that the Republican party technically also exists there is the thing that determines whether NYC has democratic elections or not. Is that how that works? Should I be thanking the Republicans for making the US a democracy instead of “one party state?”
It’s very clear that you haven’t actually investigated or thought about how the Chinese system works and are just repeating lines you’ve heard. A one-party system doesn’t mean that the leaders of the party pick out who they want in each position and they run unopposed.
China seems to aspire to this same modus operandi. They seem to want to invade Taiwan in the near future.
It’s not that long ago that Michael Bloomberg and Rudy Giuliani were Republican mayors of NYC, but I think the last non-communist leader of China was decades ago. Before the PRC was established I would guess.
To be honest I do trust sources like BBC News and other western sources. I know some people might say they’re pro-western biased sources. From my experience though, the BBC has been truthful and accurate. If they report on a multi-party election in China then I’ll read about it. Instead though I found this on their website:
So the leadership of a single party is in their constitution. I don’t think that’s true in the US, or other western democracies.
Anyway, I’m not trying to say any particular country is bad. Countries just have differences I suppose.
“Seems to aspire to” “seem to want to” those are just other ways of saying that they aren’t doing it, that there’s nothing that you can point to that’s in any way comparable to what the US has been doing for decades, if not since it’s conception. You’re just speculating about what you think might happen and saying that that hypothetical possibility makes them as bad as a country that’s actually done that and worse.
Sure. But those communists have often had vastly different approaches. China saw extensive changes both economically and politically in the 80’s and different leaders have differed on their approaches since then.
You’re right, it isn’t. In fact, the US constitution doesn’t say anything about political parties at all. That doesn’t stop our political system from being dominated by two parties, because of the way things are set up.
The Chinese system operates off a different set of assumptions than the US system does. But the assumptions that the US system makes are fundamentally incorrect. So I don’t see a reason to just broadly dismiss the entire Chinese system based off of it being described as a “one-party state.” I for one, would prefer to live in a system where only the Democratic party existed and the Republican party did not. But moreover, I don’t think you could accurately answer basic question about how the Chinese system works. Like, walk me through your picture of how someone becomes a mayor in China. Do you even have a picture?
Look, my politics are pretty simple. I see my government doing all this fucked up shit and I hate the people doing it, I want to get rid of them, ideally have them face justice, and then bring in new people who hopefully we won’t have to do the same thing to. But apparently I’m not allowed to want that? Apparently I suddenly have to answer for every alleged bad thing anyone around the world has ever done. And I’ve been entertaining that crazy idea quite a bit more than it really deserves. Without getting into details, I can tell you that my own family was very negatively impacted by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nobody I know has been negatively impacted (certainly not to the same extent) by China not having sufficiently democratic mayoral elections, or anything else China has done.
And again, I have absolutely no idea what purpose condemning the Chinese government is supposed to serve. I’m trying to solve problems that affect my own community. And if you think I have a moral responsibility to help liberate the Chinese people from their government, I mean, that’s insane. Again, there’s nothing I can do to bring down the Chinese government from the outside and even if I could I can not imagine any scenario where that would help the Chinese people.
I mean, if anything, shouldn’t I prioritize, say, Saudi Arabia over China? How about before we go around taking aggressive actions against a government that the people overwhelmingly approve of, we just stop giving weapons to a literal monarchy? Like, I’m not even saying we overthrow them, just stop aiding them. If you want me to ignore my own people for the sake of people all around the world, I’m down, it’s just that even if “Liberate Chinese people from the government they support” would be way, way down my list even if I put it on it. Why shouldn’t it be?
Genuinely, why shouldn’t it be? At a certain point, shouldn’t I be questioning your motivations for constantly trying to redirect my justified anger and my own government towards my government’s enemies?
You can be angry about your own government and that’s completely fine. I am not a Trump fan myself. Regarding Saudi Arabia, yes there are reasons to be wary of their leadership, especially after Jamal Khashoggi’s death.
Anyway, in my original question in this thread, I just asked if a person would condemn imperialism if it was done by Russia or China, in addition to condemning similar behaviour from the US or other western countries. If the US invades a country and kills civilians there then I definitely think that’s wrong - civilians should be able to live in peace. Likewise I think it’s wrong if Russia invades Ukraine and kills civilians there. With China, they may take over Taiwan by force in the near future. Likewise if the US were to take over a territory by force (perhaps the Philippines again), I would think that’s wrong.
The situation in Ukraine is complex, while the situation in Taiwan is purely hypothetical and can be dismissed without further comment.
In Ukraine, revolutionaries overthrew the government and banned opposition parties. Then, other revolutionaries decided they didn’t like that so they overthrew their regional governments and tried to break away. The pro-Western side pretends that the revolutionaries they backed were completely organic and represented the popular will, while the pro-Russia revolutionaries were purely Russian proxies - and the pro-Russia side pretends the exact same thing but in reverse. The reality is that both sides have some degree of genuine popular support.
In any case, a civil war broke out between them, and after numerous ceasefire attempts fell apart, with cities in eastern Ukraine being shelled by artillery, the pro-Russia side requested Russian assistance.
Now, I don’t think either side is fighting for anything meaningful, it’s just about who gets to put their flag where. The Ukrainian people will suffer more or less equally under either government, but they are suffering much more in this pointless destructive war.
The only reason it’s any of my business is because my government supported the overthrow of the previous government and helped bring in a new government that was unwilling to have free and fair elections, and is now providing military aid to said government. If we had simply stayed out of there from the start, I don’t believe any of this would be happening.
As for Russia, while I’m not fond of their response to the situation by any means, to really condemn them I would need to suggest an alternative course of action. If they had stayed out of the war, then the people of eastern Ukraine would, at the very least, be shut out of any democratic process. Perhaps the best approach would have been to simply spend the money they’ve spent on war on a mass relocation effort allowing ethnic Russians in Ukraine to relocate within Russia, although I don’t know that that’s realistic or that anyone would agree to that. Or perhaps Russia should have simply rolled over and accepted this expansionism. I don’t really know, it’s not really my business.
Of course this whole mess goes back to Lenin giving Russian territory to Ukraine in the hopes that the ethnic Russians would be a stabilizing force on Ukrainian politics and would help build a bridge between Russians and Ukrainians. We are now living in the miserable future where that failed and backfired tremendously. Ideally, the USSR wouldn’t have collapsed and we wouldn’t be here in the first place. But no use crying over spilt milk.
All I know is that I don’t want to be involved in it. If the Ukrainians want to fight Russia they can knock themselves out, more power to 'em. But if nothing else I can’t see how it’s possibly worth the cost when we have people here losing their food stamps.