[volkadav]

If people exercising their freedom of speech is an insult to your "national dignity", your nation sucks. What about sowing distrust of the media, further, is "rational" as you so carefully allude to twice? If the truth is the enemy, you are on the wrong side.

Your whataboutism about the US and 9/11 isn't even on target. No one here is particularly upset if you talk about it, except maybe the more jingoistic sort when you start pointing out that the damage we did to ourselves in response with respect to civil liberties was perhaps greater than the damage OBL & co ever dreamed of doing with a few airplanes.

[Knove]

Maybe my meaning is not clear enough. Let me give you an example.

Imagine a well-known person, just days after 911, publicly declaring that 911 was a great recovery operation.

[ookblah]

That person would get blasted and suffer the PR and economic consequences (like pulled sponsorships), but none of these "punishments" are state sanctioned. For the most part people are free to express what they believe.

Contrast this to China what do you think would happen? The irony of you bringing all this up as some kind of counterpoint is strange.

[seemack]

They would likely be roundly disagreed with people and that would be a perfectly normal interaction. It sounds like you're attempting to imply that the US would have responded in the same way as China but that's simply not true.