Naomi Klein on America becoming more like China

[F33bs]

Horrible analysis by Naomi Klein, as usual. "A tolerance for torture"? Give me a fucking break.

[lamborger]

@F33bs I don't get what you mean. The Chinese government is regularly cited for torture, the United States government recently passed laws allowing for torture. What part about that is not true? I'm not attacking you, I just don't get what you mean.

[FantomShadowz]

I would say China has more of a free market than America, based on these last 2.5 years. The American government is facist, even wearing rose colored glasses.

[tfbbm]

Traitors are in PUBLIC OFFICE and SERVICES. On 09.11.2001 they were busy making Alibi's.

[postprandialzen]

This is not cultural essentialism of course, as Taiwan, HK, Xinjiang and other areas within "greater china" certainly have a number of other, at times diametrically opposite, situations of influence. It's just interesting to see a lack of multicultural concession on Klein's part

[postprandialzen]

Lastly - The surveillance comparison was certainly true, but the interesting part about that is how it is culturally rooted within a society that has by and large championed self-censorship as an honorable practice for the sake of society at large. The merits and demerits of surveillance are thus bound to be rather different in the cases of say the US and the PRC.

[postprandialzen]

If you spend just a single night on a train with mainlanders you'd quickly find that "China"'s CCP, regardless of which policy it uses, is grossly unpopular for a party rooted in populism. And those feelings are based only on the information currently available to them. Accusing more than a billion people with thumb-in-ass complicity is ridiculous in this case.

[postprandialzen]

Crazy consumerism, surely - Hooters bar in Shanghai's Pudong, two KFCs across the street from each other in Fuyang, and the surveillance bit is rather true. But Naomi... "tolerance for torture"? That is actually the sickening difference that makes the US situation that much worse, how could you miss that? THE INFORMATION IS AVAILABLE to people in the US, they just choose to ignore it. Here in the PRC after you've managed to actually find information, talking to the wrong person will ruin you.