Oof

Haha my dude you are comparing gulags to prison in the USA?

LMAO 🤣 i don't want to say Lemmy is disconnected from reality but this kind of posts and the ones blaming Latin Americans and minorities for the election lost just makes everyone here look unhinged

Would you like more information on the guy who died from bedbug bites without being charged or the forced labor or the heat strokes or the murders? What's specifically not comparable?
- Would you like more information of the Soviet gulag system? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag
  
  An estimated 1.6 MILLION people died in detention. And that's not even considering that most of the people imprisoned were just enemies of the Soviet/Russian state.
  
  How much God damn Russian propaganda are you consuming to consider these things even remotely close? The US prison system is a disgrace, but these are not even remotely comparable.
- The old USSR gulags are more like Guantanamo if anything. Today's Russian prisons correspond to today's US prisons pretty much.

Gulag's name means force labor camp, but there is a lot more context to it than that. A gulag is less about labor and conditions and more about it being a hole in the ground at an undisclosed location where people go in and never come out. People that the soviets put in Gulags were sometimes criminals, but they were prosecuted by secret courts after being arrested by secret police during the World War Era and until about 1961.

Of course the USA absolutely has its fair share of dirty laundry, around the same timeframe they were prosecuting crimes for "Black Laws" and sending them to mines.

I think that in this regard both countries have made a lot of progress but still have a long ways to go. Also Russia is worse.

Really just outright playing 'bothsides' games with Putin's Russia already. Great.

Active Measures at work

Move to Russia then tell us how equal it is 🙄

Tankies 🤦‍♂️

Except anybody who shits sideways on the toilet can call themselves an "Entrepreneur", can't say the same thing about being an Oligarch.

ok, but is it really that easy to shit sideways though? Like are you shitting on a toilet that's sideways (probably easier), or are you trying to like half-plank laying down on the toilet and shitting?

Yet, one is clearly still a lot worse than the other. It's Russia and by a lot. Still glad not living in either country tho.

So, I believe the same thing, of course. But I think it's worth taking a moment to think about what we base those beliefs on. For me personally, it's based almost exclusively on what I read / see in the news, and maybe a stray meme here or there. Posts like OP make me wonder to what extent my beliefs are justified. Because the post is entirely correct, right? For the same exact thing, the news media will use one term when it's the bad guys doing it, and another term when the good guys are doing it. The war crimes that the US was committing in Iraq were called collateral damage at the time (and they were grievous, we're talking the act of disappearing people, torture of thousands, murdering hundreds of thousands with cluster bombs and napalm, bombing hospitals, cutting off water to entire cities, truly heinous and extensive). Collateral damage. There were headlines in mainstream media calling the invasion "Operation Iraqi freedom". In contrast, the Russian invasion of Ukraine was immediately (and rightly) called out as such, as well as their war crimes. I wonder to what extent my opinion of Russia is actually influenced by these differences in terminology and reporting. I don't think I'm immune to propaganda.
- That is a lot of word salad to say the US portrays itself as the good guys and Russia is portrayed as the bad guys. Guess what, they are both bad. You know who isn't bad? The people of Iraq and Ukraine who get caught up in this bullshit.
- Reminds me of the two spies.
  
  An old CIA agent and an old KGB agent, both retired, are having a drink together, talking about old times. The CIA agent says, "The Russian propaganda is fantastic, you can convince most of your people that whatever you do is the right thing using tv, radio and everything!" The KGB agent responds, "Thank you, but the American propaganda machine is the greatest ever, most of your people don't even know they're being brainwashed!"
  
  The CIA man says, "But we don't use propaganda..."

Propaganda ---> government approved news

Dont forget, it all starts with:

Greed/avarice = rational self-interest

Greed is a character deficit, a personal failing, and a destructive force. We've made it our primary practiced cultural value. We deify the greedy instead of condemning them for their greed. We've made greed a virtue, having largely abandoned the term in favor of self-masturbatory, complimentary terms for it.

You don't get to a place where empathy is a foreign concept, where your capital score is more important than the social contract, without demanding far more resources than most would need for a hundred lifetimes being tolerated by society.

The Gordon Geckos, Ebenezer Scrooges, and Mr. Potters were cautionary tales about bad people with bad values, villains. Yet Oliver Stone supposedly gets letters from fans who thank him for creating their fictional role model.

Can I play?

Propaganda ———> National Media

Woah now. I mean yes, but opposing opinions are allowed to exist.
- How did my comment prevent others from sharing their opinions?

Agreed except for the secret police part.

I feel like secret police are undercover cops who specifically enforce the laws or policy of secret courts.

A cop posing as a kid online to bait a sexual predator isn't "secret police" like the Stasi to me.

The Chicago blacksites seem like they would fit that description, they gave zero fucks about due process or civil rights, following their own law
Agreed. Undercover DEA agent busting up a drug ring (regardless of debate about what drugs should be legalized) is a bit different from a task force suppressing political opposition through imprisonment and "accidents ". Though I'm wondering if the gap with decrease over the next four years...
- Well...
  
  Portland protesters bering dragged into unindentified vans... under trump
  
  remember that
  
  I disagree with the meme but like with project 2025, it could very well be a thing.
- Count on it. I recall seeing videos of protestors around Trump's last year in office getting yanked into unmarked vans. I think it was around the same time he was using customs and border protection to do peacekeeping operations.
- How about agent provocateurs infiltrating protests and instigating crime as a pretense for police to crack down?
  
  Would that qualify?
- I'm wondering if the gap will decrease over the next four years
  
  So, good news and bad news.
  
  It wont
- Therein lies the issue with Crying Wolf.
  
  When the real US Secret Police is established next year, the alarm will already have been sounded and will therefore be less effective.
To me secret police are plain clothes officers who drive ordinary looking cars until the hidden lights come on. They're literally keeping it a secret from the public that they're enforcing the law.
- That's not a definition of "secret police" I've ever heard of, but you're obviously more than welcome to think of it that way. Just know that's not what the rest of us are referring to.
- To the rest of us secret police don’t turn on the lights
  
  It’s fbi/cia level
- They enforce order; laws are only ever a pretense.
A cop infiltrating the notorious terrorist group 'food not bombs'.

Or watch the movie 'Judas and the black messiah'. Its a dramatization of a real secret police plot in the 1970s.
- Tembah, his arms wide.
  
  Seriously, what are you trying to express to me in your first "sentence?"

*Invasion --------> liberate

We already have that one. It's true too. They'll liberate you back into the stone ages. They'll liberate you so hard, your great grandchildren will still feel the pain of it.

People's Liberation Army "liberating" Tibet...

"Are we the baddies?" Well, for a lot of people all over the world you're at least not the good ones.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_interventions_by_the_United_States

Regime -> administration

Junta?

Ruled by oligarchs -----> ruled by oligarchs

Kleptocracy ➡️ Kleptocracy

On the surface it seems like these comparisons are valid, but there’s truly a world of difference in how America deals with its people.

The fact still remains that skilled immigrants can come to America and make a life for themselves. It doesn’t matter who they are. Or that non-white or non-Christians can get elected to the U.S. congress.

America started out with an idealism it’s failing to live up to, and it’s the fault of those who indulge realpolitiks over that idealism. This isn’t an America problem, there’s a rot that’s taken over the soul of humanity. We’re casting aside intellectualism and enlightenment for realpolitiks.

Make no mistake though, people cannot be trusted so you always have to protect yourself. But there’s no civilization without ideals for humanity.

For sure. It's absolutely valid to criticize the US on all of these points, but when people equate it with what goes on in Russia, it mostly tells me that people don't fully realize how much worse the situation is in countries like Russia. As someone who was born in an Eastern Bloc country and whose grandparents actually went to jail for their political beliefs, I think it's good to sometimes remind yourself about how different a life we now thankfully get to enjoy.
America was founded by genocidal slavers who were angry about being unfairly taxed.

America has never been a moral nation. It is literally founded on stolen land, paved over the bodies of that land's natives, and built by the labor of the enslaved.

I would agree that America is not the only nation in the world with many of these problems. I'm an anarchist, so I fundamentally don't really believe that a completely moral state is ever possible. But even so America stands out particularly starkly even in comparison to other contemporary states.
- I think your point is valid, but what I am saying is we shouldn’t begrudge the past its lack of perfection. Let’s look at where people are now, and where they can go from here.
  
  Looking for answers in the past is often a fools errand. We need to shed the baggage of our forefathers.
I might argue that the initial idealism of America was kinda bullshit; hollow blatantly dishonest propaganda so some oligarchs could get theirs and pay less taxes to Parliament. They never tried, they never cared. Their pretty words were always a foul wind. They kept their slaves. They made sure there was stratification. They crushed rebellions. They defended slavery as an ideal. They built it all on genocide and theft, including of the peoples who sparked the enlightenment their supposed ideals came from.

Which isn't to say these ideals are always empty, or always lived up to by the people who espouse them hobestly. Just... Bad example.

people can not be trusted

See, I'm not sure. I think our entire social apparatus is deeply antisocial, essential amasdive stochastic conspiracy to make everyone a bastard and trust impossible, and it still fails sometimes. I think if you allow them the opportunity to do good, you can develop them into people worthy of trust. I think if you dont trust the people with their own futures, then you can't really have better. Not for long anyway; that's kind of the lesson of Lenin and Robespierre.
- Perfect is always the enemy of the good, we can’t fault people who’ve been dead and buried for centuries for their lack of understanding when we right now are incapable of it ourselves.
  
  I get what you’re saying about trust, but it takes just one to backstab you even if there are a million chill people. On a nation state level, that can have serious consequences.
Great point. America is a perfect example of human brain rot and ignorance, but it's worldwide.
Hear hear Well spoke
- Not sure what the downvotes are about - i agree with the above comment. ? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

invasion -> intervention

The US has done some bad things foreign policy wise, but none have come close to what Russia is doing in Ukraine right now. Even in Vietnam or was like 1/10th the amount of deaths, and that's after over a decade of war vs Russia in a few years. Not to defend Vietnam cause that was ridiculously stupid and cruel. But Russia is in fact taking it to a new level in both regards.

Where are you getting your numbers from? Vietnamese soldiers and civilians killed range from 970,000 to 3 million. The numbers vary, but so far about 100,000 Ukrainian soldier and civilians died. This is a tragedy indeed. But please fact check next time.
US killed 3 million Vietnamese. Russia hasn't come anywhere near that in Ukraine. Do you pull all your facts out of your arse?

Communists, go live in Russia if you think America is so bad. I will take my good quality of life in capitalist America over any communist shithole all the live long day.

Communism is only good for impractical fantasy ideas and authoritarian shitholes. Prove me wrong if you can.

You know Russia's been capitalist for like 35 years now right?
Russia isn't a communist country lmao
- I don't know about that but I heard there's No True Scotsmen there.
  
  Alternative option: Communists, move to China if America is so bad.
You just don't get it!

People in the Lemmy bubble are smarter and have more self control than anyone in history!!

They can make it work!!

You mean, like Fox News?

Wow this is so fucking delusional.

Which part?
- The one with the black background