Miscellaneous News

Thursday at 7:23 AM
there's pretty interesting Xinjiang Chinese PR campaign ongoing, includes

The US cannot win the Xinjiang “fight” for China holds all the leverage
Source:Global Times Published: 2019/12/4 21:28:57
(video of kinda talk show inside)

Commentary: Xinjiang's righteous measure against terrorism
Xinhua| 2019-12-04 18:23:33
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China urges U.S. to learn lessons from 9/11 attacks, stop double standards on anti-terrorism
Xinhua| 2019-12-05 01:23:52
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and so on
now
China releases English documentary on ETIM terror group’s dark hand in Xinjiang
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link to that show anyone


I won't edit the above, but oops it's
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Pinned Tweet
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·
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The black hand — ETIM and terrorism in
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Gatekeeper

Brigadier
Registered Member
Trump tweet like a child....... to another child! Why o why??

The president wrote on Twitter: “So ridiculous. Greta must work on her Anger Management problem, then go to a good old fashioned movie with a friend! Chill Greta, Chill".
 

ougoah

Brigadier
Registered Member
The petty levels of game the US is using against China are just as childlike. Did we expect anything else? It's a democracy. Demagogues rule and the intelligent are often ignored. It's a nation thoroughly controlled by politics serving corporate interests. The public is noticing the erosion of their living standards but the politicians are pointing the fingers at everyone BUT the real guilty parties.
 

bd popeye

The Last Jedi
VIP Professional
The petty levels of game the US is using against China are just as childlike. Did we expect anything else? It's a democracy.

The United States is not a true democracy. The United States is a free standing Republic or a Representative democracy in which elected officials govern the country.
 

solarz

Brigadier
The United States is not a true democracy. The United States is a free standing Republic or a Representative democracy in which elected officials govern the country.

Very true. Democracy means rule of the people, it is not tied to any one form of political system. The true measure of democracy is not how many elections you have, it's how well the government responds to the needs of the people.
 

ougoah

Brigadier
Registered Member
The United States is not a true democracy. The United States is a free standing Republic or a Representative democracy in which elected officials govern the country.

Very true. Democracy means rule of the people, it is not tied to any one form of political system. The true measure of democracy is not how many elections you have, it's how well the government responds to the needs of the people.

So in the absence of a perfect mechanism for this idealistic system of governance, no "democracies" can be considered pure? If that's the measure, then an authoritarian government can be more "democratic" if it responds to the needs of the people. I mean there is no natural force regulating this dynamic. Therefore even on principle, democracy may not be more democratic than any other system. Why not just go full anarchist and slim down the red tape further. After all that is directly getting to the individual needs of the people.

I would toss out all this political science BS and just get real. US is a democracy. Like Greece, or Japan. We should consider them democracies for the sake of semantic sanity.

Democracies are hugely flawed, just like any authoritarian system, capitalism is hugely flawed just like socialism. It's the people affecting the culture, affecting the people that is the important ingredient which set democracies like India apart from democracies like Sweden and separates PRC with Cuba. Obviously finer differences are abundant but everyone always carry on this conversation as if it's 100% the system and not what it really is, a complex and nuanced mix of near infinite factors. What can be said is Trump does behave like a child. Strategically or not, it doesn't win much respect from anyone on any side.
 

solarz

Brigadier
So in the absence of a perfect mechanism for this idealistic system of governance, no "democracies" can be considered pure? If that's the measure, then an authoritarian government can be more "democratic" if it responds to the needs of the people. I mean there is no natural force regulating this dynamic. Therefore even on principle, democracy may not be more democratic than any other system. Why not just go full anarchist and slim down the red tape further. After all that is directly getting to the individual needs of the people.

I would toss out all this political science BS and just get real. US is a democracy. Like Greece, or Japan. We should consider them democracies for the sake of semantic sanity.

Democracies are hugely flawed, just like any authoritarian system, capitalism is hugely flawed just like socialism. It's the people affecting the culture, affecting the people that is the important ingredient which set democracies like India apart from democracies like Sweden and separates PRC with Cuba. Obviously finer differences are abundant but everyone always carry on this conversation as if it's 100% the system and not what it really is, a complex and nuanced mix of near infinite factors. What can be said is Trump does behave like a child. Strategically or not, it doesn't win much respect from anyone on any side.

Your premise is flawed. A system of governance does not need to be idealistic or perfect to be democratic. In fact, the more idealistic a political system is, the less democratic it tends to be, as you cannot eat idealism. The needs of the people are wholly pragmatic, and there does exist measures by which we can measure how well those needs are being met. They are not, however, simple or easy to understand.

That therein lies the whole problem of labels. You want to have a convenient label like "democracy" vs "authoritarian" so you can make generalizations about countries that fall into your preconceived definitions. That itself is a fallacy.

China is no more "authoritarian" than it is "democratic", in that the two are meaningless terms in the absence of context. Compared to a Western country, such as Canada, the Chinese government has more control in certain aspects of society and has less control in other aspects. In Canada, you need a lot of red tape to start a small business. In China you just need to print out a QR code. In Canada, marijuana is legal. In China, it is illegal. How is one more "authoritarian" than the other?
 

ougoah

Brigadier
Registered Member
Your premise is flawed. A system of governance does not need to be idealistic or perfect to be democratic. In fact, the more idealistic a political system is, the less democratic it tends to be, as you cannot eat idealism. The needs of the people are wholly pragmatic, and there does exist measures by which we can measure how well those needs are being met. They are not, however, simple or easy to understand.

That therein lies the whole problem of labels. You want to have a convenient label like "democracy" vs "authoritarian" so you can make generalizations about countries that fall into your preconceived definitions. That itself is a fallacy.

China is no more "authoritarian" than it is "democratic", in that the two are meaningless terms in the absence of context. Compared to a Western country, such as Canada, the Chinese government has more control in certain aspects of society and has less control in other aspects. In Canada, you need a lot of red tape to start a small business. In China you just need to print out a QR code. In Canada, marijuana is legal. In China, it is illegal. How is one more "authoritarian" than the other?

No those labels and preconceptions are exactly what I was against in my post. I pointed out the chasm of real world difference between supposedly similar systems of governance. I'm totally against conflating and simplifying these things but it's the go to method for the dull mind because it's convenient and easy. Government is more complex and nuanced than saying democracy is more about meeting the needs of the people as opposed to voting numbers etc. First off, the needs of some people are often at odds with the needs of others. Democracy to me would be something that resembles bipartisanship, universal suffrage process (whatever the details) to appoint representatives. The power of these individuals are kept in check by the theoretical attributes of the system. But the system can be and IS always gamed. To defeat these flaws, citizens need to constantly play a meta counter game to truly keep things in check.

I'm not saying anything is better or worse. Just defending my post about the US being a democracy where a demagogue has managed to take advantage of the system and so we have a president of the US doing twitter battle with a child and provoking reactions. Humanity on this social level has sunk to new lows.
 
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