[sajithdilshan]

> you neglect the fact that US corporations have some autonomy from the government

I'm not sure if this is correct. It seems like every big US corporation is changing their policy based on the views of the administration in place. As an example during Biden's time the DEI was in full motion in every corporation and in current administration it's the other way around. Also I remember as soon as Biden won the election twitter and meta suspended the profile of Trump. So I hardly think that there is much room for autonomy. Also the latest export bans on Antropic and OpenAI models kind of make your argument weak, of course the company can sue the givernment, but the national security comes above all.

> BTW What you mean by "weaponizing human rights", exactly?

US has been using the violations of human rights to impose sanctions or to especially get countries in line which are not supporting the US agenda when it comes to global politics. However, they were more than happy turn a blind eye if the respective country that violates human rights (most middle eastern countries) if they are allies of US doctrine.

[inigyou]

A Russian and an American are sitting next to each other on a plane.

The American says "I'm impressed by the propaganda you have in Russia."

"Oh it's very good, but it's nothing compared to the propaganda you have in America." replies the Russian.

"Huh? We don't have propaganda in America." says the American.

"Exactly." says the Russian.

[abalashov]

As a Russian, I deeply appreciate this. In Russia, it seemed obvious to even the most parochial peasant that there was propaganda, while in America, the vast majority of the society not only fails to consider the possibility, but is cholerically allergic to the very idea.

Edit: recognising that there is propaganda != knowing what is and isn't propaganda. That's all I meant.

[WarmWash]

The American government has propaganda but it really sucks at it. All the people skilled in manipulating behavior work at our ad agencies, and hence our actual propaganda is mostly "Use this detergent! Take this drug! Drive this car!"

[kelipso]

Lol, someone completely missed the point… American propaganda is such a part of the culture, it gets barely noticed. Even movies that has military equipment, the military gets to have heavy input towards positive depictions of american military. US military has paid millions in marketing to all the sports organizations for promoting the military. Etc etc. This is just one aspect of the propaganda.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military%E2%80%93entertainment...

[WarmWash]

>etc etc

please, keep going...

[inigyou]

Americans literally recite a brainwashing mantra every day in school and are punished if they don't (despite the constitution).

[butlike]

Propaganda is just advertisements for the government, right?

[abalashov]

Hard to say. Advertisements have at least a pretense of persuasive intent. Propaganda mostly operates in the absence of contrary information.

[inglor_cz]

If every parochial peasant could recognize Russian official propaganda, why are so many people on board with whatever the propaganda says?

I mean, it took longer than the Great Patriotic War before Putin's popularity started visibly falling and people started questioning what the entire "SVO" is for.

[inigyou]

Surely [a] they don't really give a shit anyway and [b] they don't want to fall out a window

I think Russians are used to knowing it's dangerous to disagree with dear leader and there's no advantage to disagreeing so they just go along with whatever he says

[nixon_why69]

I mean, if the American propaganda is "you are evil" and the Russian propaganda is "fuck those guys", you don't have to agree on every particular. People have nationalism everywhere.

[inglor_cz]

The Russian propaganda is more along the lines of "Ukraine is an illegitimate state led by Nazis and drug junkies, they steal children's organs and sell them to the West, cook up dangerous viruses in their labs and prepared to attack innocent Russia, hence they have to be crushed, which our glorious Russian power will soon accomplish with mighty Oreshniks that have no parallel anywhere".

There is way too many mixed marriages etc. for any reasonable Russian to believe that their formerly-closest East Slavic neighbour has turned into a Fourth Reich.

The glorification of Russian military power after almost five years of static attritional war and dozens of burning refineries and ships is in a category of its own...

[abalashov]

> There is way too many mixed marriages etc. for any reasonable Russian to believe that their formerly-closest East Slavic neighbour has turned into a Fourth Reich.

Exactly. The distortions in American public life are quite a bit more intricate and artful.

[inigyou]

hey what a coincidence that's basically the exact same thing our own government tells us about Palestine

[abalashov]

Recognising that there is propaganda != being deeply savvy about what the propaganda is. However, I've found it to be an article of faith in America that the US just doesn't engage in that kind of thing--less so in recent years, as the crisis of belief and confidence in institutions has ricocheted, egged on by the disinformation and demagoguery of the Trump years.

[hnfong]

Well, these days there's little need for propaganda when people just blatantly do sh!t in the open and get away with it.

[inglor_cz]

I remember peak wokeness quite well and it was pretty obvious that it was driven by the Twitter activist mob and not the Biden administration, which was quite visibly behind the times and followed the trends.

Already during the Biden administration, defections from the orthodoxy started and then multiplied - some businesses like Coinbase or IIRC Cloudflare refused the demands outright. Musk bought Twitter with an explicit task to make it less progressive.

And the White House did precisely nothing against this defection trend.

"US has been using the violations of human rights to impose sanctions or to especially get countries in line which are not supporting the US agenda when it comes to global politics. However, they were more than happy turn a blind eye if the respective country that violates human rights (most middle eastern countries) if they are allies of US doctrine."

I do agree that the US is hypocritical about human rights, but actual violations of human rights should be a reason for sanctions, and the fact that this is done only partly/imperfectly, IMHO, beats the potential alternative when it isn't done at all. This would be a much worse world in my opinion.

[sajithdilshan]

> I do agree that the US is hypocritical about human rights, but actual violations of human rights should be a reason for sanctions, and the fact that this is done only partly/imperfectly, IMHO, beats the potential alternative when it isn't done at all. This would be a much worse world in my opinion.

That's why I said that it was weaponized. In reality US doesn't care if there is a real human rights violation or not, they just use it as an excuse to get what they want.

[linkregister]

Everybody is amoral and cynically only doing good things for personal gain, except for you, the one good person

[littlecorner]

It's much easier to blame everyone else instead of trying to change myself