• Delphia@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Yes, and?

    Does anyone think that China is just full of the warm fuzzies and wants us all to hold hands, make smores and sing kumbaya? They are every bit after power as the US is to hold onto it.

    • davel [he/him]@lemmy.mlOP
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      9 months ago

      Not all states are equivalent.

      The US is the hegemonic imperial core country (like the UK before it) and has been since the end of WWII, and even moreso since the end of Cold War I. The imperial core’s imperialism is driven by the monopoly stage of capitalism. The imperial core has been pillaging the Global South for the last 200+ years, including putting China through a century of humiliation. It caused WWI & WWII & Cold War I, and has now started Cold War II.

      The U.S. Did Not Defeat Fascism in WWII, It Discretely Internationalized It

      The US has over 750 overseas military bases around the world, and is building more to further encircle China. It constantly has multiple regime change operations in play around the world.

      But China is not a capitalist state and is not driven by the forces of monopoly capitalism. I think it has one anti-piracy base in Djibouti.

      • i_am_not_a_robot@discuss.tchncs.de
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        9 months ago

        Freedom of speech? Yes and no. The government has freedom of speech, but American TikTok clones do not. If TikTok users are successfully forced to use YouTube Shorts instead, they’ll get stuck with YouTube’s censorship and content control for corporate friendliness and user engagement. People like Elon give “free speech” a bad name, but it is actually a problem if for most people “the internet” is controlled by a small number of big technology companies and those companies use their positions, intentionally or not, to suppress ideas and control public discourse. TikTok users will still need to use words like “unalive” on platforms owned by American corporations.

        Constitutional protections for your home and property? Not really. Many people are renting and protections for renters vary by state. Property can be stolen by police through civil asset forfeiture.

        The opportunity to improve your socioeconomic standings, ie The American Dream, is largely a myth. Recently, the poor get poorer. Real estate values and cost of living are climbing much faster than wages for those at the bottom. If you’re at the bottom, it’s even more difficult than usual to get the four year degree and years of prior job experience required for many entry level positions with better pay.

        America has legal slavery enshrined in the constitution. If somebody is convicted of a crime, they can be sent to private prisons to do slave labor for somebody else’s profit. This disproportionately affects poor people and minorities.

      • SkyNTP@lemmy.ml
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        9 months ago

        These freedoms are a strength indeed, but they are also a vulnerability that can be exploited by foreign powers. Freedoms remain free so long as the people exercising those freedoms do so responsibly. I think a lot of people in the US do not exercise this freedom responsibly. I think a lot of Americans are being manipulated into voting in autocracy. Ironically.

        Complete and total freedom is just anarchy, and anarchy collapses on itself and turns into autocracy.

    • OldWoodFrame@lemm.ee
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      8 months ago

      Yeah it’s sort of like accusing a presidential campaign of being “all about gaining political power”. Of course that’s the goal. That’s not the metric by which you should judge its actions.