The difference is that there was (at least an illusion of) choice. Nobody said that it is a perfect system. And Trump will be gone in 3 years, while Putin and Xi will stay in power until their death.
I don't understand why Americans continue believing that democracy is the only way for every population in the world
Why would Russians want democracy? Or the Chinese, for that matter? There have been zero democratic impulses in their societies across hundreds, even thousands of years.
The west needs to rest its democratizing mission and accept that every society is fundamentally different
My country (India) got a "thriving" democracy, but because there is no real democratic impulse in the society, everything on the ground has devolved into what the society was always like - quasi-feudal bureaucracy
> I don't understand why Americans continue believing that democracy is the only way for every population in the world
They don't! The majority voted for the guy who wants to, admittedly (multiple times), be a dictator and is huge fan of other dictators. If he finds a way to stay for a 3rd term his most loyal followers along with all the republicans in Congress will be just fine with it.
>I don't understand why Americans continue believing that democracy is the only way for every population in the world
Well, ideology. I believe my way is the only way for every population in the world too, and I fight for it to happen. Of course, each place adapts to their own condition, but I believe my core ideology is the way for humanity as a whole, and I believe it is the same for people who defend western american-style democracy.
> I don't understand why Americans continue believing that democracy is the only way for every population in the world
It's not Americans, it's educated people who believe in personal liberties.
> Why would Russians want democracy
Because they would have a choice if they want to be robbed blind by a bunch of oligarchs, and if they want to be sanctioned off from the world because the supreme leader decided he wants to kill and maim a million Russians to achieve nothing more than killing Ukrainian civillians.
> There have been zero democratic impulses in their societies across hundreds, even thousands of years
Absurdly bad historic revisionism. Russia had democratic impulses in 1917 and 1990, both hijacked and went nowhere. China's 1911 revolution was also overtly democratic in nature, but was also hijacked.
> It's not Americans, it's educated people who believe in personal liberties.
I find this attitude deeply parochial and colonial. Who are these so-called "educated people" (most of whom would be in western developed nations) to decide what sort of governance system a country should have?
The democratic revolution in America and France came from its own people. If the Russians or the Chinese want democracy, they'll get it on their own
Western hand-wringing about the "lack of democracy" in foreign (usually poorer) countries is just concern-colonialism. I think most of these educated people should focus on their own countries and let the rest of the world be
> I find this attitude deeply parochial and colonial. Who are these so-called "educated people" (most of whom would be in western developed nations) to decide what sort of governance system a country should have?
Do you think only people in western countries want a democratic system of governenance for their country?
> If the Russians or the Chinese want democracy, they'll get it on their own
An ideologically driven subset of urban educated youths that was proportionally a tiny subset of the entire Chinese population marched for it in 1989. FTFY.
They are ruling themselves in the sense that their governing systems are emergent consequences of their own cultures. All peoples ultimately deserve the governments they have.
At some point I saw an analysis that looked at the policy/political differences between the different fractions of the Chinese communist party and compared them to the spread in a western parliament (I don't remember which one I think US or UK). They found that the spread was very similar. With that I'm not saying that the Chinese system is better, just that these statements are not as straight-forward as one things.
I think a much better metric is suppression of dissent, human rights records etc., not (the illusion of) choice at the poll booth once every 4 years.
The marketing pitch of Western "democracy" has always been that you can criticise your government freely and the government won't jail you or murder you.
Also, consumer goods.
The voting and multiple-branches-checks-and-balances elements are sidelines.
Currently none of those promises are true in the US. The government is murdering and jailing people for whimsical and self-indulgent reasons, the consumer economy is about to crash, and the only checks-and-balances are the checks going straight to the Emperor's private accounts.
To be fair, there's some judicial pushback, and some political friction.
But Senate and Congress are wholly captured, the opposition is flaccid and foreign-funded, media independence is a myth, and the last time The People had any real influence on policy was the 70s. Possibly.
I have no idea if China is "better". From a distance China seems to be doing much better at building useful things and making long term plans.
But ruling cliques always seem to end up being run by psychopaths, so my expectations for humanity from China's rulers aren't any higher than those for the US.
Despite being formally less democratic, the Chinese government is in practice more responsive to its constituency than the US government. I have to think that class character of the parties is the determining factor. The CPC is, despite everything, still a proletarian party. In the US, the two parties are both directed by the interests of the haute bourgeoisie, with the Republicans pulling votes from the petit bourgeoisie, and the Democrats pulling votes from the professional-managerial class.
I mean the American people who will cry about humans rights records in China will also watch masked government agents shoot down their own citizens just because they're suspected to be illegal immigrants
It's not true that people just sat by and watched.
There was massive public backlash and real organized resistance, especially in the streets of Minneapolis. People literally put their lives on the line, communities banded together to help migrants who were afraid to go to work or leave their homes, and they ultimately forced the government to retreat and change tactics. And it resulted in the firing of a cabinet secretary and the border patrol commander that was the face of the whole thing. And plummeting public approval that has only declined further since
A somewhat similar campaign occurred in Hong Kong, but the resistance sadly was not able to fare as well against China tyranny
I'm going off democracy, at least how it is currently implemented. It is proving far too easy to pervert.
It turns out that the people will vote for some terrible things in order to get that one petty little thing a given candidate promises and they want, or because they don't like something specific about the other candidate(s). And of course many may later say “well, I didn't vote for that” when they quite demonstrably did.
Well, the politicians learned how to game the system well. Now people need to learn how to game the politicians. A formal verification process of pre-election promises would be a good start.
Nobody cares that politicians don't keep pre-election promises. And in most cases they shouldn't, circumstances change. You can have no intention of doing something, then something else happens, and you change your mind.
The problem is that people put stock in pre-election promises, rather than voting for the character of the person they want to represent them.
> When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure
The measure is the number of votes. "What shall we have for dinner" measures things, there's no target in a "curry vs pizza vs thai" poll, and it doesn't really matter, the target is a nice night in with a film.
However with politics, getting power is the goal, thus the number of votes is thus the target, and thus its not good at measuring what the country actually wants, just who can best get the most votes.
This isn't new, but modern brainwashing allows manipulation at a scale hitherto unseen.
China characterizes itself as a democracy too, just not as a liberal democracy. There are democratic processes, although these are not free in the sense of liberalist ideology. The CCP justifies its control of the elections as a counterbalance to being corrupted by money, which starts to look like not an entirely unreasonable justification.
The CCP narrative also emphasizes "outcome orientation", i.e. that (democratic) legitimacy comes from people being happy about what the governance delivers, not about how it gets chosen. Which again starts to look not totally crazy, given western governments nowadays tend to have dismal approval ratings. And even after taking into account the likely biases in the polling, I do believe the majority of the Chinese truly approve of the CCP.
I'm not a fan of the Chinese system, but I think there are lessons we could take, and a binary "democratic or not" is not a very meaningful categorization.
Democracy is the idea that people should control their government. The CCP's (and Putin's) notion of "democracy" is something along the lines of "as long as the government controls the people, the people can decide".
Democracy may be a spectrum but China isn't on it, neither in practice nor in spirit. If you have to control the media and prevent free discussion, you aren't practicing democracy.
How can there be democracy in an environment where freedom of thought is all but nullified due to social manipulation through mainstream media. Calling something ‘free’ doesn’t make it so.
The reality is that the term democracy in western society has essentially become meaningless due to the swathes of algorithmic manipulation which occurs every second of everyday through every possible digital medium.
The moral weight of democracy is heavily overrated. Of course democracy is better than autocracy, all other things being equal. But I don't think a democracy that starts wars and bombs a new country every other year is morally superior to any relatively peaceful autocracy. Rather the opposite.
Try holding up a sign in the street anywhere in China that says anything remotely critical of the Chinese government. Or live in China and post something online remotely critical of China. You will be arrested, thrown in jail for years.
Democracy isn't just having an election every four years. We have rights that we shouldn't take for granted.
To be fair, Deng Xiaoping's reforms were based on the older New Economic Policy or NEP from the 1920s USSR, so it had been tried at that point. It was scrapped in the USSR for other reasons, not because it failed.
A lot of people voted for someone who was known to be an evil crook. It was very clear that he got into politics for praising his own ego. They voted against 'the good' in the hope for their own benefit and against that of the world. If they did not 'expect' the current state of affairs then they just refused to listen to their own heart.
China has one proletarian party. The US has two bourgeois parties. One might think the ideal would be to have one bourgeois party, and one proletarian party, but that hasn't seemed to work out anywhere.
No, but believing our so-called "democracy" (quotes intended, read: "21st century western systems") is how you give people "a choice" is the moral high ground. That is your axiom, but it's often touted as a tautology.
The name says "demos" and "kratos" but names are names, not facts.
There are many ways to give people a choice and this one has proven to be quite ineffective at that, as it slowly devolved into a plutocracy/oligarchy. Iron law of oligarchy, yadda yadda.
What they are very effective at though: crushing dissent, calming the masses with a reassuring illusion of choice, and touting itself as the "one true way".
When I look at the outcomes I don't see any semblance of democracy, only a ritual dance/theatre show every 4 years. A farce as big as the "democratic" instruments on the PRC.
There's a reason this "democracy" is very diligent at discouraging association and unionizing. Those give actual power to the people (and with power comes choice). That's dangerous. People might start believing they can actually influence the outcomes.
> our so-called "democracy" (quotes intended, read: "21st century western systems")
Do not conflate the broken American political system, the semi-broken British one, and the whole rest of the "west". Each country has its own political system, and they are wildly different.
> crushing dissent
Democracies are good at crushing dissent? Compared to other political systems? That's just not true. All other political systems rely on universal truth and unwavering trust in a person / religion / clique of people, who can do no wrong and can never be criticised.
> There's a reason this "democracy" is very diligent at discouraging association and unionizing
What? You are probably talking about a specific democracy, and the most broken one at that.
As someone from the "whole rest of the west", no, they're not different at all. Very minor details change, but the net outcome is the exact same and suffer from the exact same problems.
You can't escape the iron law of oligarchy.
> Democracies are good at crushing dissent?
They're not only good: they are the best. You don't need to curb dissent by violence if you discourage dissent by social manipulation. It's the cheapest and most effective tactic: keeping the populace docile.
If you manage to equate "democracy" (again, quotes intended) with democracy (lack of quotes intended), most of the work is already done.
"What are you, antidemocratic!?"
"Don't blame me - I voted for Kodos"
There's a reason my country's system trembled when the bipartisan system was challenged as new parties emerged... but it was curbed within two legislatures without a single shot fired and now we're back to an even stronger bipartisan representation. Quite the fine job, actually.
We even have a name for this: "the state's sewers". They're very effective. There's a reason the state's armed forces routinely infiltrate unions and other citizens participation platforms.
> As someone from the "whole rest of the west", no, they're not different at all. Very minor details change, but the net outcome is the exact same and suffer from the exact same problems.
Such as? There are countries such as Poland with a political duopoly, but in most European countries, there are multiple parties that work with or against each other. There are different coalitions with varying compromises between them.
> They're not only good: they are the best. You don't need to curb dissent by violence if you discourage dissent by social manipulation. It's the cheapest and most effective tactic: keeping the populace docile.
Nonsense, because autocracies do both, and the threat by violence is very real and makes sure that social manipulation is more effective.
> There are different coalitions with varying compromises between them.
They all failed and were subsumed by the two (read: one) big groups in Europe. Far left and libertarians were crushed in the past two legislatures.
Now it's PfE's turn but the antibodies are already in the bloodstream (the two big groups are already signing their covenants to protect the oligarchy) and Trump did them dirty (they're now scrambling to distance themselvesb from USA's and Israel's ties) so they're DoA and will fail too.
This said: I understand your points, and thanks for the civil discussion.
Chinese propaganda seems to hit very hard these days. If you really don't know, you seriously need to check what media you are consuming. Yes, the US has huge problems, many old and some new, but on a serious technical level the answer is (at least for now) 100% clear.
Assuming that China is not officially a 100% authoritarian dictatorship takes some serious mental gymnastics or hardcore brainwashing by propaganda channels. In fact forget media manipulation. A simple look at what they did to their constitution would already tell you everything you need to know. The US might be moving in this same direction under Trump, but it sure as hell isn't there yet. And if they do try to do the same, there is a good chance for another civil war. So while China is already lost, there is still some level of hope for the US.
As far as I'm aware most autocratic forms of government have to clamp down on dissent with some level of force, be it violence or imprisonment or seizing assets. It means people are afraid to criticise power.
Western democracies don't have that problem. Yes, they have other problems. Many problems which are hard to solve. But if you live in a western democracy you can freely criticise those in power without fear of retribution.
In a western democracy, you can, at least in theory, freely criticize those in power without fear of retribution, but also without any hope of your criticism changing anything. It's just a pressure release valve. When criticism starts taking a form that might force change, the mask and the gloves come off, as you can see in the violence against protesters once protests reach a critical mass.
You can't force change, sure, but that doesn't mean you can't be part of it. Individuals can and do join political parties and become influential within them. Political parties win elections and ultimately set policy which can start to change things.
None of those things happen quickly, and most people don't succeed in their attempt to do it. That doesn't mean it's not possible. I'd argue that it's a feature of the system that the system makes it hard to change course - it averages out the extremes.
He didn't even say anything outrageous, he's just participating in the discussion. People can create accounts to be able to reply to a discussion, even throwaways.
Your democracy has consistently voted senile 75 year olds for 3-elections now
The current president - who Americans voted for twice - is heavily accused of being a pedophile and has reneged on every one of his poll promise
Really not the best advertisement for democracy
The difference is that there was (at least an illusion of) choice. Nobody said that it is a perfect system. And Trump will be gone in 3 years, while Putin and Xi will stay in power until their death.
I don't understand why Americans continue believing that democracy is the only way for every population in the world
Why would Russians want democracy? Or the Chinese, for that matter? There have been zero democratic impulses in their societies across hundreds, even thousands of years.
The west needs to rest its democratizing mission and accept that every society is fundamentally different
My country (India) got a "thriving" democracy, but because there is no real democratic impulse in the society, everything on the ground has devolved into what the society was always like - quasi-feudal bureaucracy
> I don't understand why Americans continue believing that democracy is the only way for every population in the world
They don't! The majority voted for the guy who wants to, admittedly (multiple times), be a dictator and is huge fan of other dictators. If he finds a way to stay for a 3rd term his most loyal followers along with all the republicans in Congress will be just fine with it.
>I don't understand why Americans continue believing that democracy is the only way for every population in the world
Well, ideology. I believe my way is the only way for every population in the world too, and I fight for it to happen. Of course, each place adapts to their own condition, but I believe my core ideology is the way for humanity as a whole, and I believe it is the same for people who defend western american-style democracy.
What part of "defending western american-style democracy" involves imposing it on other countries and being mad when they don't adopt it?
> I don't understand why Americans continue believing that democracy is the only way for every population in the world
It's not Americans, it's educated people who believe in personal liberties.
> Why would Russians want democracy
Because they would have a choice if they want to be robbed blind by a bunch of oligarchs, and if they want to be sanctioned off from the world because the supreme leader decided he wants to kill and maim a million Russians to achieve nothing more than killing Ukrainian civillians.
> There have been zero democratic impulses in their societies across hundreds, even thousands of years
Absurdly bad historic revisionism. Russia had democratic impulses in 1917 and 1990, both hijacked and went nowhere. China's 1911 revolution was also overtly democratic in nature, but was also hijacked.
> It's not Americans, it's educated people who believe in personal liberties.
I find this attitude deeply parochial and colonial. Who are these so-called "educated people" (most of whom would be in western developed nations) to decide what sort of governance system a country should have?
The democratic revolution in America and France came from its own people. If the Russians or the Chinese want democracy, they'll get it on their own
Western hand-wringing about the "lack of democracy" in foreign (usually poorer) countries is just concern-colonialism. I think most of these educated people should focus on their own countries and let the rest of the world be
> I find this attitude deeply parochial and colonial. Who are these so-called "educated people" (most of whom would be in western developed nations) to decide what sort of governance system a country should have?
Do you think only people in western countries want a democratic system of governenance for their country?
> If the Russians or the Chinese want democracy, they'll get it on their own
Both of them tried it, but were denied.
> Or the Chinese, for that matter?
The marched for it en masse in 1989?
Russians and Chinese are also people. They deserve to rule themselves.
An ideologically driven subset of urban educated youths that was proportionally a tiny subset of the entire Chinese population marched for it in 1989. FTFY.
They are ruling themselves in the sense that their governing systems are emergent consequences of their own cultures. All peoples ultimately deserve the governments they have.
You could say the exact same thing about the cultural revolution.
The Americans marched en masse to get rid of ICE, right?
Guess the Tiananmen square tank man is a victim, but Alex Pretti and Renee Good are just statistics
(The tank man wasn't even run down by the tank - Good was shot for merely turning the wheels in the wrong direction)
Americans really need to shut up about any democratic values or humans rights and clean up their own mess before preaching to the world
> The Americans marched en masse to get rid of ICE, right?
No.
> Guess the Tiananmen square tank man is a victim, but Alex Pretti and Renee Good are just statistics
Pretti started a fight with a cop in the middle of arresting someone while carrying a gun, Renee Good drove over a cop.
The Tiananmen square tank man didn't attack anyone.
At some point I saw an analysis that looked at the policy/political differences between the different fractions of the Chinese communist party and compared them to the spread in a western parliament (I don't remember which one I think US or UK). They found that the spread was very similar. With that I'm not saying that the Chinese system is better, just that these statements are not as straight-forward as one things.
I think a much better metric is suppression of dissent, human rights records etc., not (the illusion of) choice at the poll booth once every 4 years.
The marketing pitch of Western "democracy" has always been that you can criticise your government freely and the government won't jail you or murder you.
Also, consumer goods.
The voting and multiple-branches-checks-and-balances elements are sidelines.
Currently none of those promises are true in the US. The government is murdering and jailing people for whimsical and self-indulgent reasons, the consumer economy is about to crash, and the only checks-and-balances are the checks going straight to the Emperor's private accounts.
To be fair, there's some judicial pushback, and some political friction.
But Senate and Congress are wholly captured, the opposition is flaccid and foreign-funded, media independence is a myth, and the last time The People had any real influence on policy was the 70s. Possibly.
I have no idea if China is "better". From a distance China seems to be doing much better at building useful things and making long term plans.
But ruling cliques always seem to end up being run by psychopaths, so my expectations for humanity from China's rulers aren't any higher than those for the US.
Despite being formally less democratic, the Chinese government is in practice more responsive to its constituency than the US government. I have to think that class character of the parties is the determining factor. The CPC is, despite everything, still a proletarian party. In the US, the two parties are both directed by the interests of the haute bourgeoisie, with the Republicans pulling votes from the petit bourgeoisie, and the Democrats pulling votes from the professional-managerial class.
I mean the American people who will cry about humans rights records in China will also watch masked government agents shoot down their own citizens just because they're suspected to be illegal immigrants
It would be hilarious if it wasn't so sad
It's not true that people just sat by and watched.
There was massive public backlash and real organized resistance, especially in the streets of Minneapolis. People literally put their lives on the line, communities banded together to help migrants who were afraid to go to work or leave their homes, and they ultimately forced the government to retreat and change tactics. And it resulted in the firing of a cabinet secretary and the border patrol commander that was the face of the whole thing. And plummeting public approval that has only declined further since
A somewhat similar campaign occurred in Hong Kong, but the resistance sadly was not able to fare as well against China tyranny
I'm going off democracy, at least how it is currently implemented. It is proving far too easy to pervert.
It turns out that the people will vote for some terrible things in order to get that one petty little thing a given candidate promises and they want, or because they don't like something specific about the other candidate(s). And of course many may later say “well, I didn't vote for that” when they quite demonstrably did.
Well, the politicians learned how to game the system well. Now people need to learn how to game the politicians. A formal verification process of pre-election promises would be a good start.
Nobody cares that politicians don't keep pre-election promises. And in most cases they shouldn't, circumstances change. You can have no intention of doing something, then something else happens, and you change your mind.
The problem is that people put stock in pre-election promises, rather than voting for the character of the person they want to represent them.
> When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure
The measure is the number of votes. "What shall we have for dinner" measures things, there's no target in a "curry vs pizza vs thai" poll, and it doesn't really matter, the target is a nice night in with a film.
However with politics, getting power is the goal, thus the number of votes is thus the target, and thus its not good at measuring what the country actually wants, just who can best get the most votes.
This isn't new, but modern brainwashing allows manipulation at a scale hitherto unseen.
> Ones a democracy one isn’t.
China characterizes itself as a democracy too, just not as a liberal democracy. There are democratic processes, although these are not free in the sense of liberalist ideology. The CCP justifies its control of the elections as a counterbalance to being corrupted by money, which starts to look like not an entirely unreasonable justification.
The CCP narrative also emphasizes "outcome orientation", i.e. that (democratic) legitimacy comes from people being happy about what the governance delivers, not about how it gets chosen. Which again starts to look not totally crazy, given western governments nowadays tend to have dismal approval ratings. And even after taking into account the likely biases in the polling, I do believe the majority of the Chinese truly approve of the CCP.
I'm not a fan of the Chinese system, but I think there are lessons we could take, and a binary "democratic or not" is not a very meaningful categorization.
Just a reminder that the DPRK is "Democratic People's Republic of Korea".
North Korea is a democratic republic!
This is utter nonsense.
Democracy is the idea that people should control their government. The CCP's (and Putin's) notion of "democracy" is something along the lines of "as long as the government controls the people, the people can decide".
Democracy may be a spectrum but China isn't on it, neither in practice nor in spirit. If you have to control the media and prevent free discussion, you aren't practicing democracy.
How can there be democracy in an environment where freedom of thought is all but nullified due to social manipulation through mainstream media. Calling something ‘free’ doesn’t make it so.
The reality is that the term democracy in western society has essentially become meaningless due to the swathes of algorithmic manipulation which occurs every second of everyday through every possible digital medium.
The moral weight of democracy is heavily overrated. Of course democracy is better than autocracy, all other things being equal. But I don't think a democracy that starts wars and bombs a new country every other year is morally superior to any relatively peaceful autocracy. Rather the opposite.
Try holding up a sign in the street anywhere in China that says anything remotely critical of the Chinese government. Or live in China and post something online remotely critical of China. You will be arrested, thrown in jail for years.
Democracy isn't just having an election every four years. We have rights that we shouldn't take for granted.
"Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried". Winston Churchill
Socialism with Chinese Characteristics had not been tried at that point :)
Ironically you can map China's progress over the last 30 years directly with their adoption of capitalistic policies.
The more capitalistic they become, the more growth they have seen.
To be fair, Deng Xiaoping's reforms were based on the older New Economic Policy or NEP from the 1920s USSR, so it had been tried at that point. It was scrapped in the USSR for other reasons, not because it failed.
Exactly, maybe we've got it all wrong :)
The word you're looking for is dictatorship, and it is not new.
Quoting a guy who is (in)directly responsible for murder of about 4 million people. Nice
So that means the people are complicit in whatever wars the US started. Not sure if better or worse.
A lot of people voted for someone who was known to be an evil crook. It was very clear that he got into politics for praising his own ego. They voted against 'the good' in the hope for their own benefit and against that of the world. If they did not 'expect' the current state of affairs then they just refused to listen to their own heart.
Germany was (formally) a democracy when it fought the Soviets.
"Not about moral high ground. One's an ideology my morals agree with, one isn't."
Is believing people should have a choice a moral high ground now?
You have a 2 party system where on many fronts both parties tow (almost) the same line and roughly behave like a oneparty system.
China has one proletarian party. The US has two bourgeois parties. One might think the ideal would be to have one bourgeois party, and one proletarian party, but that hasn't seemed to work out anywhere.
Well done! You're on your way to your Lounge Suite!
https://youtu.be/vZ9myHhpS9s?si=UkviDqG2NBQVd_IK&t=131
Except I don't know who won the 1972 English Football Cup.
No, but believing our so-called "democracy" (quotes intended, read: "21st century western systems") is how you give people "a choice" is the moral high ground. That is your axiom, but it's often touted as a tautology.
The name says "demos" and "kratos" but names are names, not facts.
There are many ways to give people a choice and this one has proven to be quite ineffective at that, as it slowly devolved into a plutocracy/oligarchy. Iron law of oligarchy, yadda yadda.
What they are very effective at though: crushing dissent, calming the masses with a reassuring illusion of choice, and touting itself as the "one true way".
When I look at the outcomes I don't see any semblance of democracy, only a ritual dance/theatre show every 4 years. A farce as big as the "democratic" instruments on the PRC.
There's a reason this "democracy" is very diligent at discouraging association and unionizing. Those give actual power to the people (and with power comes choice). That's dangerous. People might start believing they can actually influence the outcomes.
"Don't blame me - I voted for Kodos"
> our so-called "democracy" (quotes intended, read: "21st century western systems")
Do not conflate the broken American political system, the semi-broken British one, and the whole rest of the "west". Each country has its own political system, and they are wildly different.
> crushing dissent
Democracies are good at crushing dissent? Compared to other political systems? That's just not true. All other political systems rely on universal truth and unwavering trust in a person / religion / clique of people, who can do no wrong and can never be criticised.
> There's a reason this "democracy" is very diligent at discouraging association and unionizing
What? You are probably talking about a specific democracy, and the most broken one at that.
> and they are wildly different
As someone from the "whole rest of the west", no, they're not different at all. Very minor details change, but the net outcome is the exact same and suffer from the exact same problems.
You can't escape the iron law of oligarchy.
> Democracies are good at crushing dissent?
They're not only good: they are the best. You don't need to curb dissent by violence if you discourage dissent by social manipulation. It's the cheapest and most effective tactic: keeping the populace docile.
If you manage to equate "democracy" (again, quotes intended) with democracy (lack of quotes intended), most of the work is already done.
"What are you, antidemocratic!?"
"Don't blame me - I voted for Kodos"
There's a reason my country's system trembled when the bipartisan system was challenged as new parties emerged... but it was curbed within two legislatures without a single shot fired and now we're back to an even stronger bipartisan representation. Quite the fine job, actually.
We even have a name for this: "the state's sewers". They're very effective. There's a reason the state's armed forces routinely infiltrate unions and other citizens participation platforms.
> As someone from the "whole rest of the west", no, they're not different at all. Very minor details change, but the net outcome is the exact same and suffer from the exact same problems.
Such as? There are countries such as Poland with a political duopoly, but in most European countries, there are multiple parties that work with or against each other. There are different coalitions with varying compromises between them.
> They're not only good: they are the best. You don't need to curb dissent by violence if you discourage dissent by social manipulation. It's the cheapest and most effective tactic: keeping the populace docile.
Nonsense, because autocracies do both, and the threat by violence is very real and makes sure that social manipulation is more effective.
> There are different coalitions with varying compromises between them.
They all failed and were subsumed by the two (read: one) big groups in Europe. Far left and libertarians were crushed in the past two legislatures.
Now it's PfE's turn but the antibodies are already in the bloodstream (the two big groups are already signing their covenants to protect the oligarchy) and Trump did them dirty (they're now scrambling to distance themselvesb from USA's and Israel's ties) so they're DoA and will fail too.
This said: I understand your points, and thanks for the civil discussion.
Democracy is a stretch
Can you clarify which is which?
Chinese propaganda seems to hit very hard these days. If you really don't know, you seriously need to check what media you are consuming. Yes, the US has huge problems, many old and some new, but on a serious technical level the answer is (at least for now) 100% clear.
> Chinese propaganda seems to hit very hard these days.
Assuming that everyone who disagrees with you is a propagandized bot is a terrible way to live. You will not learn.
Assuming that China is not officially a 100% authoritarian dictatorship takes some serious mental gymnastics or hardcore brainwashing by propaganda channels. In fact forget media manipulation. A simple look at what they did to their constitution would already tell you everything you need to know. The US might be moving in this same direction under Trump, but it sure as hell isn't there yet. And if they do try to do the same, there is a good chance for another civil war. So while China is already lost, there is still some level of hope for the US.
And why should anyone prefer a democracy over any other form of government? Doesn't it depend on the philosophy of each People?
As far as I'm aware most autocratic forms of government have to clamp down on dissent with some level of force, be it violence or imprisonment or seizing assets. It means people are afraid to criticise power.
Western democracies don't have that problem. Yes, they have other problems. Many problems which are hard to solve. But if you live in a western democracy you can freely criticise those in power without fear of retribution.
In a western democracy, you can, at least in theory, freely criticize those in power without fear of retribution, but also without any hope of your criticism changing anything. It's just a pressure release valve. When criticism starts taking a form that might force change, the mask and the gloves come off, as you can see in the violence against protesters once protests reach a critical mass.
You can't force change, sure, but that doesn't mean you can't be part of it. Individuals can and do join political parties and become influential within them. Political parties win elections and ultimately set policy which can start to change things.
None of those things happen quickly, and most people don't succeed in their attempt to do it. That doesn't mean it's not possible. I'd argue that it's a feature of the system that the system makes it hard to change course - it averages out the extremes.
> created: 18 minutes ago
Right.
He didn't even say anything outrageous, he's just participating in the discussion. People can create accounts to be able to reply to a discussion, even throwaways.