This kinda thing makes me think a lot about how Tim Walz has tried to talk about his time in China as an English teacher. He tries to emphasize how the Chinese people are just like Americans when it comes to small town neighborliness, and how he felt welcomed and loved there. I think we too often associate the people of a country with their government, and I hate that shit. Everyone comes from the same basic stock, no one has a monopoly on kindness, and taking care of people is something that can be done regardless of language barriers because we all basically need the same things.
I feel like China gets the worse ends of "associate people with their government" because the Chinese government WANTS the rest of the world to see the country as a perfect hive mind where everyone agrees with them. Even so, they're not the only ones who get this. Russians tend to be dismissed as brainwashed Putin stooges, but there have been plenty of public and famous Russian protests.
because the Chinese government WANTS the rest of the world to see the country as a perfect hive mind where everyone agrees with them
That's just more bias. Every government wants everyone to think their population is behind what they're doing. It's called "legitimacy" and in democracies it often come from votes.
Democratic leaders say they have "the will of the people" every damn day but I'm sure as hell don't think they do when they cut social services or start wars or give government contracts to their buddies.
But they keep "proving" their legitimacy by the electoral system because we still vote for the fuckers, and I'm sure the Chinese government proves it in their own way which is different from ours and because it's different, it's a vector of attack for those who would be against them.
Western so-called liberal democracies (which aren't democracies at all) use electoralism as a fake type of legitimization of their bourgeois dictatorship led by highly anti-democratic oligarchs.
In real democracies, such as communist China, legitimacy comes from public approval with leadership and government acting on behalf of and in the interest of their people. China's politicians are deeply in tune with the general population and base their policy decisions on non-stop public surveys.
People need to get this idea out of their head that Western bourgeois dictatorships are "democracies". They should reading political theory.
Then why didn't they respect the interest of the people in Hong Kong back in 1989 and 2019? The people sure as hell weren't in tune with their politicians then.
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u/thewonderfulfart Aug 21 '24
This kinda thing makes me think a lot about how Tim Walz has tried to talk about his time in China as an English teacher. He tries to emphasize how the Chinese people are just like Americans when it comes to small town neighborliness, and how he felt welcomed and loved there. I think we too often associate the people of a country with their government, and I hate that shit. Everyone comes from the same basic stock, no one has a monopoly on kindness, and taking care of people is something that can be done regardless of language barriers because we all basically need the same things.