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I always find it an illuminating experience about the power of mass propaganda every time I see an American believe they somewhat have the moral high ground ove
by Ladioss 5mo ago
I always find it an illuminating experience about the power of mass propaganda every time I see an American believe they somewhat have the moral high ground over China, despite starting a new war somewhere around the globe either for petrol or on behalf of Israel every six months.
- wiseowise 5mo agoWhat makes you think they’re American?
- rhubarbtree 5mo ago[flagged]
- JumpCrisscross 5mo ago> they said democratic They didn't even say that. They only said China playing is "better than leaving everything to the US alone."
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- cumshitpiss 5mo ago[dead]
- Cthulhu_ 5mo agoFor now indeed, the people that want to get rid of it are currently in power. The US was one of the first democracies in the world, and many countries followed suit. But the US hasn't kept up, and now the powers that be have exploited the weaknesses in the system. With arguably the biggest one being giving the president too much power (appointing supreme court justices, executive orders, etc).
- rhubarbtree 5mo agoI dunno, think it’s doing quite well. Just the people voted for someone who wants to end democracy. Now we see if the system is robust enough to prevent that, but it’s difficult when half the country votes for Trump.
- jack_pp 5mo agoDemocracy in most of the countries is just theater. Trump promised no more wars iirc. Don't get me wrong, I'd rather live in a country without a million cameras that automatically fine me for crossing the street illegally but I don't actually deceive myself in thinking my vote counts for much.
- palata 5mo ago> I'd rather live in a country without a million cameras that automatically fine me for crossing the street illegally Agreed, but there again, the democracies have surveillance capitalism, it's not exactly like we're not being tracked.
- phatfish 5mo agoYou let Trump and all the tech-bro shitheads win with that attitude unfortunately. Democracy is an ongoing battle.
- culi 5mo ago> I'd rather live in a country without a million cameras Are you talking about the US or China? https://deflock.org/ https://deflock.org/ China at least banned the use of facial recognition in public spaces by their supreme court in 2021 (and then further strengthened the ban in 2024 and also got the PIPL). If you're thinking of the "social credit" system please know that that's just an online meme. China's credit score system is not even nationalized and not nearly as invasive as the US's credit score system, which can sometimes determine whether or not someone is allowed to buy a house. Besides their own credit score system, the other thing that sometimes gets labelled the "social credit system" was an attempt they had to track the behavior of business leaders and elected politicians. Basically anyone who holds social power but not the common person. This also never really took off and was not ever nationalized/centralized.
- fastasucan 5mo agoNot very democratic to invade other countries on the whim of a president.
- rhubarbtree 5mo agoActually, it is.
- kiba 5mo agoJust because America is doing bad things doesn't mean China is good, or vice versa.
- Lapel2742 5mo ago> Just because America is doing bad things doesn't mean China is good, or vice versa. Of course not. When it comes to SOTA LLMs you have the choice between two bad options. For many, choosing the Chinese option is just choosing the lesser of two evils (and it's much cheaper).
- eloisant 5mo agoWhy people always dismiss the European option? Mistral is right here, their models are in-between the cheap to run Chinese models and top of the line performances of US frontier models.
- 3s 5mo agoIt’s not top of the line and mostly not open source
- john_minsk 5mo agoFor a lot of people in the world Europe = USA
- benterix 5mo agoBut this makes zero sense. Two different continents, values systems, law systems. Not to mention the current USA administration is openly hostile to Europe. So why would anyone confuse the two.
- quantum_state 5mo agoEurope will not be independent as long as there are US military bases there. Saying otherwise would be kidding oneself.
- willsmith72 5mo ago[flagged]
- birdsongs 5mo ago> That doesn't mean it's positive in human rights Isn't the US building mass detention camps right now for all the brown people there? And arresting / detaining / demanding papers from any and everyone? With federal agents killing civilians? Don't get me wrong, China is also horrible here, they have their own camps. But pretending the US is positive wrt human rights is a wild take in 2026.
- mapcars 5mo ago>Isn't the US building mass detention camps right now for all the brown people there? No? Its for illegal people, regardless of color. Just so happened that most illegals come from specific places
- sam_goody 5mo ago> sn't the US building mass detention camps right now for all the brown people there? Why would you think that? > And arresting / detaining / demanding papers from any and everyone? I have lots of friends from outside the U.S. that come regularly and don't find it onerous. Maybe it depends where you are coming from? > With federal agents killing civilians? OK, I agree that there are issues, and even very serious ones. Obviously, not on the level of China, but still serious issues. Nonetheless, what you see on left leaning media is not representative of what is happening on the ground throughout the U.S. Not even close. IMO, the US is definitely positive wrt human rights. There are issues, but you can go to a No Kings protest, and live your life happily without issues, and it is hard to find another country that is nearly as forgiving. And it at least has people trying to spread concepts of individual liberty, vs most countries in Europe, almost all countries in Asia, and ALL Muslim countries, that are leaning to removing individual rights.
- OCASMv2 5mo agoThe Uyghur say hi.
- melagonster 5mo ago[dead]
- vsgherzi 5mo agoNot about moral high ground. Ones a democracy one isn’t.
- chvid 5mo agoGermany was (formally) a democracy when it fought the Soviets.
- lmz 5mo agoSo that means the people are complicit in whatever wars the US started. Not sure if better or worse.
- nuancebydefault 5mo agoA 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.
- drcongo 5mo agoCan you clarify which is which?
- sigmoid10 5mo agoChinese 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.
- mysecretaccount 5mo ago> 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.
- FrojoS 5mo ago[flagged]
- mrkramer 5mo agoAll empires are to some degree evil because their agenda is to dominate weaker peoples and nations. They almost all committed crimes against humanity and genocides if you look retrospectively from the todays point of view. Even our beloved Roman Empire that the Western civilization is built upon was genocidal empire.
- benterix 5mo agoNot sure if we can call it "beloved". For sure respected for what it did to build the base of modern civilization, but we are aware of its dark sides. And probably Nero would be an excellent example of what can happen to the empire and its people when a crazy person becomes its ruler.
- nailer 5mo ago> I see an American believe they somewhat have the moral high ground over China The elected government of the US has the moral highground of over the regime that killed the KMT in it's weakened state after the KMT defeated Japan, went on a rampage against the educated classes, mowed down its own people with machineguns and tanks when they demanded a say in their own governments, and kidnaps people advocating for democracy to this day, including Jack Ma. > despite starting a new war... on behalf of Israel every six months. The war started when Hamas, funded by Iran, went on a murder and rape rampage against Israeli civilians.
- Der_Einzige 5mo agoOne province of China has enough hellish nightmarish bullshit going on caused by the CCP that we maintain total moral superiority over them. It’s not even a question to anyone except “fellow travelers”.
- rib3ye 5mo agoThe U.S. is not the country conducting amoral behavior with terrorist regimes for oil, that’s China. We conduct amoral behavior with terrorist regimes for dollars.
- rfrey 5mo agoMany of us (worldwide, I'm not American) watched China massacre thousands of its own children at Tiananmen Square. The US is descending into totalitarianism, but it hasn't reached that level yet. And China may have changed in some ways but there have been no signals it would not repeat that event if it thought circumstances warranted.
- kolinko 5mo agoAlso, many of us have lived in countries actually freed thanks to the west’s (mustly us) intervention, and we felt the support during the Russian occupation pre 1989
- yaakushi 5mo agoMany of us have lived or live in countries that are constantly affected and destabilized by past and even modern interventions from the U.S. (the only blame the rest of the "West" bears here is just watching without ever acknowledging the harm done). Just look at Latin America. edit: Not trying to say "US bad, China good." Just there is perspective to everything.
- 1234letshaveatw 5mo agoUs? wow, tell us your story
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- glenstein 5mo agoAnd some of us have a sore lower back after playing tennis, while some of us have terminal stage four cancer. Who is to say which is worse? I think right now there's a kind of global propaganda competition playing out and the thing that does the most damage is false equivalences that encourage loss of perspective.
- philipallstar 5mo agoChina having killed up to 50m of its own population in the 20th century through socialism, while America led the world in funding NATO, global scientific research, and global aid for decades buys America a lot of good grace.
- catlover76 5mo ago[dead]
- hersko 5mo agoTalks about "mass propaganda." Thinks America is starting wars on behalf of Israel. LMAO
- stickfigure 5mo agoThe difference is that - at least in the last 50 years - the US starts wars with brutal dictatorships. Whereas China is threatening war against a thriving democracy. These are not equivalent.
- chrischen 5mo agoThe US starts wars… they just often happen to be with dictatorships. The US definitely also supported dictatorships (like Taiwan and South Korea).
- chrischen 5mo agoThe US starts wars… they just often happen to be with dictatorships. The US definitely also supported dictatorships (like Taiwan and South Korea). You can argue all day about whether A is slightly more rotten than B, but if they are both rotten then in the grand scheme they will both end up being the same thing if something doesn’t get fixed.
- stickfigure 5mo ago> like Taiwan and South Korea. You had to reach back 50 years to find US support for dictators. > they just often happen to be with dictatorships No, they always happen to be with dictatorships. The motives of US politicians are not relevant to this fact (I personally think Trump is corrupt and incompetent); the US system is democratic enough, and Americans are moralistic enough, that even corrupt and incompetent politicians can't get away with military adventurism except with dictatorships. Thus the end of that Greenland nonsense.
- glenstein 5mo agoRight, and if distance from the present matters, probably the biggest risk to global peace (such as it is) comes from China's increasingly serious preparations for a military attack on Taiwan.
- tw1984 5mo ago> You had to reach back 50 years to find US support for dictators. US allies in the entire middle east are literally all dictators or worse than dictators. For example, Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy, you just need 6 years education in school to understand that is worse than dictators when religion is also heavily involved at the same time.
- SmirkingRevenge 5mo agoThe moral high ground claims here can be generalized: Liberal democracies have moral high ground over authoritarian dictatorships (at least along that one dimension) The US is backsliding tragically (and stupidly) and may lose that moral high ground, but the rest of the western democracies will still have it
- glenstein 5mo agoAnd by contrast what I find stunning is the inability to engage in meaningful comparative analysis of relative harms. There's a lot of spectacularly insightful attention to detail in so far as it mobilizes what aboutism arguments and then that attention mysteriously falls away when we ask questions like the extent to which these sides allow free press or democratic elections with multiple parties or permit fair trials. You used to not have to explain these things.
- srj 5mo agoOn the contrary, I find reading your own confused spin on morality here an interesting window into the effectiveness of propaganda. You're taking two oppressive authoritarian governments and elevating them above the US.
- scyclow 5mo agoAs an American, I can conclusively say that we absolutely have no moral high ground whatsoever. But bringing the topic back to LLMs, I don't feel great about using an LLM that has a panic attack any time I ask about Tiananmen Square or Taiwanese sovereignty.
- tw1984 5mo ago> I don't feel great about using an LLM that has a panic attack any time I ask about Tiananmen Square or Taiwanese sovereignty. well American censored LLMs that usually willing to take extreme efforts to convince me that there is no genocide in Gaza. the same American LLMs also insist that there are many human genders.
- scyclow 5mo agoI don't know what American LLMs you're using. Just asked Claude, which gives nuanced answers on both, but amounts to "It's contested, but numerous authoritative bodies say yes" and "it depends on your definition of gender".
- tw1984 5mo agowhen it comes to topics like genders, "it depends on your definition" when it comes to topics like democracy and freedom, western definition is all you must depend on you don't see the problem? lol
- annexrichmond 5mo agoSo you think the US should sit back and watch Iran develop nukes? Is that the “moral” thing to do?
- itsdesmond 5mo agoThe JCPOA was working fine. We discarded it for vanity and to create an opportunity for more war. That is obviously immoral.
- annexrichmond 5mo agoIf it was working “fine” then why was Iran able to reach 60% enriched uranium and enough for 10 nuclear weapons if they were able to enrich further?
- itsdesmond 5mo agoThat enrichment occurred after Trump voluntarily exited the JCPOA. The IAEA reported no enrichment over the 3.67% threshold through 2018, then reported over 400kg at 60% in 2025, all created in the period after Trump pulled out. You are describing a consequence of ending the JCPOA.
- foobiekr 5mo agoThere’s no organ harvesting of a religious subgroup in America.
- Scroll_Swe 5mo agoI always find the China glazing online getting worse and worse. TikTok and Hasan has really turned the West against itself.
- Rover222 5mo agoChinese citizens will go to jail if they are too critical of their own government. How hard is it for you to wrap your head around those implications?