[999900000999]

China has much lower crime, cheaper healthcare and is making progress in other aspects.

We’re rapidly regressing into prideful ignorance. People are being encouraged to drink raw milk and fear vaccines.

19 century illnesses are making a resurgence.

Citizens are being indefinitely detained for “looking” like immigrants.

[petcat]

> China has much lower crime, cheaper healthcare and is making progress in other aspects.

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...

[vablings]

I mean such is life for anyone who is not a full-blown citizen of the United States. If you speak bad of the current administration or its allies expect to be punished extrajudicially

[petcat]

> If you speak bad of the current administration or its allies expect to be punished extrajudicially

I have no fear of calling the current US president a pedo, or saying "Fuck the Police" on my Twitter.

Let's not equate the USA to places like China or Russia.

[vablings]

My first part of the statement presupposed you are not a US Citizen but a US persons

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_and_deportation_controver...

The constitution applies to all people in the United States, one of the reasons I found it infuriating that in Trumps state of the union explicitly stated, "American government is to protect American citizens". If you are in the US illegally or not you are a US person and you have legal rights afforded to you by the founding fathers

[johnnyanmac]

I don't see much difference these days. Substitute wechat for X and that's the US for anyone non-white.

[armenarmen]

I'm hallucinating whenever I see an election sign in non-white's yard I guess

[johnnyanmac]

If you think China is some mass surveillance state where every single yard of dissent is carpet bombed: yes, I can see why you think that way.

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.

[armenarmen]

I don't disagree. It can (thankfully) take quite a while to get around to every dissenter. I also don't disagree that we have to wait for a particular milestone to compare ourselves 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.

[johnnyanmac]

> I think you're doing yourself, and all freedom loving peoples a disservice by dividing the victims of this state action.

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.

[dwroberts]

> China has much lower crime, cheaper healthcare and is making progress in other aspects.

It is also a totalitarian regime where criticising the state can get you, and possibly your family, ‘disappeared’

[999900000999]

Sure it is, luckily we’re catching up!

> 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.

[dwroberts]

I’m not in the US but yeah the country has always had a strange relationship with law and order, at least from an outside PoV. The Kent State massacre is always one that sticks with me as particularly messed up.

I don’t think the USA is necessarily changing at all, this is what it has always been the whole time

[jimz]

It used to want to keep up appearances, it no longer does.

[pear01]

China is also an ancient civilization. Americans view of themselves is highly inflated by the sheer luck of being two oceans away from everyone during both world wars. Save for Pearl Harbor there were no notable attacks on the American homeland. It's a lot easier to be a superpower when the world destroys itself and you step into the breach. Millions of Soviet civilians died on their own homeland. In their own cities. Millions. Most Americans have no idea and can't really comprehend it. Even today a shocking number of Americans don't have a passport and really know nothing about the world beyond their shores. These people are overrepresented in an American Congress that is anti-democratic. People on the coasts, like in New York City are underrepresented in American government. The entire state of New York gets the same amount of senators as flyover states, many of which are welfare states (take more funds than they contribute). This is because in a modern economy what NYC produces is more valuable than what a state with barely any people in the middle of nowhere produces. Yet the middle of nowhere is represented more. It makes no sense.

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.

[graemep]

> China is also an ancient civilization.

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.

[pear01]

Europe is not an ancient civilization. It is a continent and politically, an amalgamation.

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.

[graemep]

The power of Rome and the influence of Greece means that modern Europe's culture was shaped by Greece and Rome, and by Christianity.

The Roman Empire covered much of Europe about 2000 years ago, and those places have had a great deal of cultural continuity since then.

[pear01]

Simply incorrect. Get a map of modern Europe and Rome at that time. Then plot not only the Roman territory, but also population and flows of commerce. Compare.

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.

[jimz]

Except Chinese hegemony is illusory beyond what it considers its immediate sphere of influence which also means it really cannot project force in any way but economically. It can barely take care of business at home. It's puzzling to many as to why America sees China as somehow equal in threat and in capability since in reality neither is remotely true. China doesn't even have a policy that is truly expansionary since Taiwan is an irredentist claim. Its armed forces have not seen combat since 1979 and that was largely a ground war. Without connections or having acquired one previously it's becoming difficult to obtain a passport to leave, although, it's also not all that easy to find a place for you to settle as a Chinese citizen without some sort of skills that allow you to pretend like society under you is unstable.

[pear01]

Why would you say "but economically" in your first sentence?

Is hegemony merely a competition about who can blow up the most people? If you think the Chinese economy doesn't count for anything re force projection because they haven't bombed anyone lately idk what to tell you.

Why doesn't the USA stomp out Russian aggression in Ukraine? Does American force projection only come into play when bombing third world poverty states? Should I thus conclude American hegemony is illusory? Do you think the wars America has prosecuted in the past two decades have made the country stronger?

[jdkee]

"Save for Pearl Harbor there were no notable attacks on the American homeland."

September 11, 2001 is why Iran is being attacked a quarter century later.

[pear01]

I meant during the two world wars, which should have been obvious. The idea you think I know what NYC is but forgot about 9/11 says more about you than I.

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.

[jimz]

HAHAHAHAHA my goodness. You actually believe that?

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?