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Anti-China Rhetoric Is Off the Charts in Western Media
(thediplomat.com)
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this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2023
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In some ways, yes, certain factions within the US government have been untrustworthy. However, I think people do not understand that China is still on a completely different level. There's a reason that the US is broadly trusted by its allies (or was, largely, up until the recent decade of overt campaign of internal sabotage).
To compare the US and China is like comparing Kent State to Tienanmen Square. Were they both violations of fundamental human liberty? Yes. Are they at all comparable as reflections of the viability of each respective state's potential to sustain human liberty? No.
The US is in a conflict with itself, between far-right, corporate factions and those groups that actually defend some semblance of democratic liberty. This fact is the proof of the difference, that some meaningful element of democracy does exist in the US. The US has the ability to course correct. In China rule has been consolidated under a single man, unchallenged now, who has created hundreds of prison camps and a surveillance state unmatched even by the US. He ran literal execution vans in his run up to power.
Convincing people that the crimes committed by China against its own people and those they've colonized are normal is a way of lessening the seriousness with which those crimes are regarded. You have to ask yourself if that's really the goal you want to be serving. You're not required to sing the praises of the US, but acknowledging the meaningful degree of difference is critical to preventing the world sliding further into an authoritarian paradigm.
This just sounds like a whole lot of liberal US apologia. It isn't actually far off from regressive phrases like MAGA or A Few Bad Apples. There was no golden time when the US has been a bastion of freedom and human welfare and it mostly shows signs of getting worse, and you cannot fix the US by removing a few politicians.
I don't see what the point is of picking two specific events when we are discussing nations and governments as a whole. Taken in totality the US does not and has not ever shown signs of sustaining liberty as you put it. The law and order system is a joke, human welfare is a joke, safety is a joke, education is a joke, foreign policy is a joke. A lot of these fundamental issues are completely ignorable for the privileged, and the last one ignorable if you live in the US itself, but I am not looking to have liberty for some and not others.
I disagree. I think what you're doing right now is what strengthens authoritarianism in "Western" countries. Always framing Western countries, especially the US, as the lesser of two evils just justifies nationalism and militarism and downplays the need for radical change. What's the point of this liberty you speak of if we don't use it to criticize our own governments, and why stop at just criticism? The truth is you'll only realize how thin your liberty actually is when you actually pose a threat.
But I'm not sure how we got on this tangent. I was simply responding to the notion of geopolitical trust and how that relates to the US and China. The US reneges on international agreements all the time or simply does not adhere to them. The government also partakes in the manipulation of foreign governments, extrajudicial murders in foreign countries in "times of peace", and sabotages countries with embargos. All of this should make the US untrustworthy, but the unspoken part is that when we talk about trust we are taking about among Western countries. These nations have some shared geopolitical goals and because the US's violations aren't against these nations but against ones where say the common religion is different or the people have a darker average complexion they can be ignored.
You're conflating a comparison with an endorsement.
One can say the US is unquestionably better than China while still acknowledging the US has issues.
I'd challenge you to find any country that's truly "trustworthy." That doesn't mean I think it's impossible, I just think historically humans suck at governorship.
As for what's different between the US and China, your original point, I think a lot of it is just what's available/who has the better deal. The US historically has the better innovations, the better weaponry, and in the case of Europe, bidirectional cultural influences, and there's just a lot more history with the US as a partner and a lot more families with folks in both locations.