[_qswe]

I think there's an important material difference between the two. China's single party is authoritarian and uncontested. America's two major parties are mildly authoritarian on different axes, but average out to a mostly liberal status quo in practice. The relative chaos and transparency of America's system are what they are, but it isn't an autocracy at this point.

There's also a significant growing political push to transition away from FPTP voting in the US, which would dismantle the current duopoly.

[mullingitover]

> The relative chaos and transparency of America's system are what they are, but it isn't an autocracy at this point.

You can get locked up with a 2 million dollar bond for posting a facebook meme in the US, as demonstrated by a recent case[1]. I don't know what value the transparency holds here? It's certainly already crossed the Rubicon into overt authoritarianism in the past year.

[1] https://reason.com/2025/10/10/tennessee-man-arrested-gets-2-...

[_qswe]

Thanks for sharing, that is really bad. I did say "mostly", though. A bizarre anomaly that will most likely get thrown out in court is still pretty different from comparable practices in e.g. the UK that are standard procedure.

The transparency I referred to was primarily to the American political system's airing of its dirty laundry out in the open, which is inherently going to look more chaotic than disputes between internal factions of a single party because so much of it is performative.