Comment by impulser_
1 day ago
Are you Chinese? If not, I think you should prefer the people defending you to have the best tools to do so.
1 day ago
Are you Chinese? If not, I think you should prefer the people defending you to have the best tools to do so.
This of course raises the question on whether as an American I have more to fear from the Chinese government or the US one.. given everything happening in the Executive Branch here, that’s a disappointingly hard question to answer.
I think that's an easy question to answer, but obviously you don't fear the Chinese government you're not a Chinese citizen. You can actively talk about your disagreements with the US government, that not a right the Chinese have.
Can you? By ICE agents' own admission on video, they have been adding people to "domestic terrorist" watchlists (just for verbally dissenting, making recordings with a phone, etc) which are then used by Palantir to disappear people directly from their homes - even US citizens. Palantir, the CEO of which gleefully admits to knowing many Nazis and seems to get off on the fact that his software "kills people" (direct quote).
>that’s a disappointingly hard question to answer
It shouldn't be. The US government is already sending armed and masked thugs to shoot political dissidents dead or sending them to concentration camps, threatening state governments and private companies to comply with suppressing free speech and oppressing undesirables, and openly discussing using emergency powers to suspend the next election.
What exactly is the commensurate threat from China? The real tacit threat, not abstract fears like "TikTok is Chinese mind control." What can China actually do to you, an American, that the US isn't already more capable of doing, and more likely to do?
To me it isn't even a question. Even comparing worst case scenarios - open war with China versus civil war within the US - the latter is more of a threat to citizens of the US than the former unless the nukes drop. And even then, the only nation to ever use nuclear weapons in warfare is the US.
This is the correct take. It may be a different question for people living within China, but for Americans, the US Gov is a direct threat to their lives.
> Are you Chinese? If not, I think you should prefer the people defending you to have the best tools to do so.
They already have the best and most expensive toys in the world, and they mostly seem to be waging aggressive wars with them. Perhaps if the toys weren't so shiny and didn't make it all so one-sided, they wouldn't?
If the American military was focused on defending the United States, it would be a very different beast. The 21st Century American military is a tool for transferring wealth from the public to influential parties, and for inflicting destruction on non-peer nations who pose obstacles to influential parties interests. Defending the United States against various often-invoked hobgoblins is at best a very distant concern, closer to pure lip service than reality.
but the "people defending you" have been commiting clear and obvious war crimes?
The Department of War under Trump has proven itself to not be interested in defending you, the American people. All they’ve done so far is aggression against foreign supposed adversaries.
I'm a natural-born American (many generations back) and firmly believe that if we ever get into a hot war with China, it will be because of American provocation, not Chinese.
I am American born and raised and I consider our current government mass murderers who I trust as much as I would have the Nazis. It was a good thing that the Nazis did not get the a-bomb before us, and the same principle applies here. The fewer magnifiers of their power the better. They are a scourge on human rights, and the world.