[snicker7]

> I just think the USA has done far more to encourage this stupid “love your country or we will treat you as a terrorist” attitude that China seems to have adopted,

In the US, I am free to say "I don't love my country" or "I don't love my government" without going to prison.

[thephyber]

While I won’t argue that your statement is wrong, I think it oversimplies the issue to the point of misdirection.

I find this similar to the expression “generals always fight the last war”. Freer societies have similar controls on outlier citizens, they just do it through different means. Piss off a mayor and you might see more rigorous building inspectors on your property. Piss off the president and you might find yourself defending against an IRS audit. America doesn’t fight it’s citizens with a gun or a sword, it does it with paper cuts.

The USA has 200k+ crimes defined in law just at the national level (according to the author of 3 Felonies a Day). Prosecutors and LEOs are given wide discretion to prosecute, so someone who violates a traffic law may get much more lenient treatment if they express solidarity with Blue Lives Matter (a political stance) than if they express sentiments like Black Lives Matter (generally; obviously lots of variables). I have police in my family; they complain more about people who threat them with a lack of respect than they do the worst criminals they encounter.

And the famous Free Speech case that gave us the “you can’t falsely yell fire in a crowded theater” opinion was about a man handing out flyers trying to convince young American men to avoid the WW1 draft. He was arrested and SCOTUS upheld his conviction about speech that did not directly incite any violence. The USA is not as virtuous on the subject of speech as the myth suggests.

I’m not arguing that China’s laws are good. I don’t want to live there and I suspect I’ve said enough to get arrested there, but I’ve also said enough to likely be arrested in the USA if USA prosecutors were not so overworked.