Comment by reliabilityguy

How do you know that conclusion is not the product of brainwashing? MKULTRA is just what we know about with certainty.

Censorship is just a form of brainwashing.

America: does the usual American thing Americanly

Commentators: What are we, some kind of Asians?

I lived in China as an American a while back and had a similar take. Their ability to grow successfully and manage their populace definitely presented a new model to a lot of countries.

Oceania gets tech tips from Eastasia.

Oceania has always gotten tech tips from Eastasia.

I guess rest of the world should take notes and adjust the approach to China and those segments of Westerd society where totalitarianism got normalized.

Why blame China? This dire situation is not on foreign nations seeking to destroy US democracy, it's entirely on domestic robber barons capturing the State for their own gains. China has very little soft power among the general population, while Musk, Ellison and the other propagandists run the show.

> Case-in-point of why we shouldn't have approached China like we did over the last few decades. It normalized totalitarianism in some segments of Western society.

An interesting thought I read a couple days ago: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/24/opinion/trump-carney-chin...:

> Finally, and most controversially, I suspect the same “if not America, then China” logic applies to political ordering as well. The United States under Trumpian conditions has allowed populism to come to power, bringing chaos and authoritarian behavior in its train. Recoil from that by all means — but recognize that it happened through democratic mechanisms, under freewheeling political conditions.

> Meanwhile, the modes through which Europe and Canada have sought to suppress populism involve harsh restrictions on speech, elite collusion and other expression of managerial illiberalism. And what is China’s dictatorship if not managerial illiberalism in full flower? When European elites talk about China as a potentially more stable partner than the whipsawing United States, when they talk admiringly about its environmental goals and technocratic capacity, they aren’t defending a liberal alternative to Trumpian populism. They are letting the magnet of Chinese power draw them away from their own democratic traditions.

If a large outside power is intent on screwing with your populace I think the only way to really stop it is with diplomacy or a crackdown on free speech.

Authoritarianism has been starting to become normalized because China and Russia are increasingly able to mess with our society in the same way our leaders always messed with theirs.

"The result, the child of the Oracle guy owns half the media"

I guess in 90ies version of polymarket nobody would have had that result on their bingo sheet. But, well, they probably also didn't have "something like polymarket could exist in the free world" on those bingo cards, either...

> This is completely bipartisan, both US parties take turns shitting on their two greatest enemies: the Bill of Rights

Ignoring the magnitude to draw a false equivalence is a great way to discredit your position. Neither party is perfect but only one of them is denying the full personhood of over half the population, having armed men threaten the public with lethal violence over constitutionally-protected activities, or saying that the executive should be able to direct private industries for profit. Debates about things like how much the government should ask private companies to enforce their terms of service are valid but it’s like arguing over a hangnail while you’re having a heart attack.

Most of the country is genuinely committed to the bill of rights. The Trump administration is determined to ignore every single amendment, but even a lot of the Republican party I don't really think wants this. People are genuinely worried about Chinese media control. But Trump obviously wants to control the media and censor things. I hope the right turns around. Assuming that everyone in politics is working in bad faith is how we become an authoritarian country like China. It is hard when the leadership is obviously working in bad faith and the entire Republican party deliberately chooses bad faith and lies over any reasonable alternatives.

> All social media does this. Even HN (through its users flagging articles).

I don't consider user-directed upvotes/downvotes/flags to be in the same category as company or state decided censorship.

You're saying Chinese people are less informed than Americans about China?

western arrogance is truly astounding. somehow people who consume 0 chinese media and cant speak a lick of the language somehow are intricately aware of not only chinese media, but chinese society.

but of course. the benchmark is minor influencer and HN darling naomi wu.

[dead]

You could even say that many foreigners are better informed about the US than US citizens are about the US, but that's not a high bar... I mean, 38% still approve of the current administration so that's already over one in three who don't understand the basic functioning of government or the economy.

To be fair, they're not really allowed to show any evidence that they think otherwise...

Don't forget that the regular operation of Chinese policing is already much less free than what Americans are used to, plus the restrictions on internal freedom of migration (Hukou, less onerous than it used to be, plus the two SAR of Macao and HK). Mandatory state-issued ID, linked to your phone and bank account and so on.

As well as racial profiling. There's not that much immigration to China in the first place, legal or otherwise.

Then the GP statement is still correct.

"The forced US hosted tik-tok sale is all about hiding information from the US public that most people in the rest of the world have easy access to."