China is also a horrifying place to live unless you are content just to participate quietly in society and never put a political sign in your yard or even just talk about the wrong thing with your friend in a private WeChat.
https://reclaimthenet.org/china-man-chair-interrogation-soci...
Just like the US, it can take a whike for thr CCP to get around to every individual. It's a large country. Your mistake is thinking that that's the line it has to get to before we can compare a country to China/Russia.
Where you lose me is: > I don't see much difference these days. Substitute wechat for X and that's the US for anyone non-white.
Again, I agree with you on most of your points. But I think you're doing yourself, and all freedom loving peoples a disservice by dividing the victims of this state action. Hence my sarcastic reply.
If there is to be any resistance to state over reach, telling the racial majority of the country that it doesn't happen to them or it's not a "white/euro american issue" is counterproductive at best.
There have been at least 2 explicit murders by state actors on the streets, hundreds of wrongfully deported people who aren't back to this day, and thousands stuck in concentration camps.
No, it's not at '6 million jews' level (yet). But I'm fairly comfortable admitting that these actions are at a scale where we aren't too different from Russia nor China. Downplaying it now is how we get to those massive, unignorable numbers later on.
>If there is to be any resistance to state over reach, telling the racial majority of the country that it doesn't happen to them or it's not a "white/euro american issue" is counterproductive at best.
It disproportionately is not happening to them, though. That's what made the 2 murders mentioned earlier so high profile. Undeniably white suburban citizens gunned down.
I'm not telling them to not take action. It's more like their inaction or outright support is why we got this far to begin with. No snowflake feels at fault in an avalanche.
It is also a totalitarian regime where criticising the state can get you, and possibly your family, ‘disappeared’
> For Indigenous Americans it’s unthinkable, but true. ICE is arresting, detaining Native Americans.
https://idahocapitalsun.com/2026/02/10/for-indigenous-americ...
Detain first , ask pesky questions about citizenship and civil rights later.
I don’t think the USA is necessarily changing at all, this is what it has always been the whole time
The current administration is only convincing the world that America is a threat. We live in an age where two oceans offer far less protection than they did when America rose to superpower status. The fact Russian intelligence operatives can so easily infiltrate American political discourse is just one example. Watch any congressional hearing about cyber and you might be forgiven for thinking we have already been invaded. Beating up on third world pariah states impresses no one but the current administration. The United States bombs Iran but blinks at Russia. The administration started a trade war with China then backed off, not one meaningful concession was achieved.
Unless America reverses course fast the decline will only continue. The world will move on. No country is inevitable.
So is Europe, and we are talking about the west in general, not just the US.
> Americans view of themselves is highly inflated by the sheer luck of being two oceans away from everyone during both world wars.
Again, most of Europe suffered during the world wars.
> The fact Russian intelligence operatives can so easily infiltrate American political discourse is just one example
They also infiltrate European politics, as do the Chinese.
Most of the "Western" civilizations old enough to attempt comparison with China were not European in the modern sense at all. The classic example is usually Rome, which treated most of Europe as barbarians to colonize and enslave. The engine and wealth of the empire was along the Mediterranean. Ancient Rome was thus really a Mediterranean power not a "European" one. I think you could successfully argue Romans had more in common with other ancient Mediterranean powers or even ancient Mesopotamians than modern Europeans.
As to the rest of your points true enough. It is well known that today's Europeans find themselves in between a rock and a hard place given the current split between American and Chinese hegemony.
The Roman Empire covered much of Europe about 2000 years ago, and those places have had a great deal of cultural continuity since then.
It does not map to modern Europe. It encircles the Mediterranean with much of Europe either not included or on the periphery. Most of Europe was to the Romans barbarian hinterland 2000 years ago. Even at its greatest extent you will see Rome was always centered on the Mediterranean. The "West" would have been entirely alienated from said culture had the flame not been kept alive by the East when the West fell.
September 11, 2001 is why Iran is being attacked a quarter century later.
Iran had nothing to do with 9/11. If that was the point you were attempting it is incorrect. Not even the current administration is attempting that line of reasoning.
Everyone in China is constantly violating laws, the difference is that black letter law is essentially meaningless and the country is run by an administrative state that is controlled by the party.
You can't really get things done without breaking the law. China doesn't properly tabulate, and therefore cannot release, anything like accurate crime data. But the crime rate is certainly higher since it's pretty much impossible to even go online and do just about anything without breaking some law. What is written is so vague and nearly any conduct can fall under it.
The ambiguity doesn't make the country safer, they just have a media hegemony and active censorship. Healthcare is woeful and "cheap" comes with "quotas on patients seen" meaning that doctors frequently have 1-2 minutes to see patients and one can become an MD much earlier than one can in the US. And since the perception is that no food is really 100% safe, it's more acquiescence, and not confidence, that people show.
Hell, you having the option of choosing to opt into vaccines is even an improvement. In China you are stuck with the state prescribed schedule and that's it. Unless you're extremely wealthy, but then again, where is that not an exception?