• pulaskiwasright@lemmy.ml
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    7 months ago

    It’s still the best way even if it’s bad. Ranked choice voting would make it better.

    • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOP
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      7 months ago

      It’s demonstrably not, but westerners just keep clinging to their failed system lacking the courage and imagination to try anything different.

          • pulaskiwasright@lemmy.ml
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            7 months ago

            That’s not a political system at all. It’s a process that could be implemented in many styles of government. It is not incompatible with representative democracy either. It is a bad idea though. It means that a government has a hard time changing course, even when it needs to. Because it silences people from questioning decisions.

              • pulaskiwasright@lemmy.ml
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                7 months ago

                It’s it though. It’s a principle applied to Chinese communism. It’s not a required part of communism and it isn’t form of government on its own. It’s not even the most major part of a government system.

                • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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                  7 months ago

                  It’s not required for communism per se, but it’s certainly a form of government organization. It’s how the People’s Congress works?

                  • davel [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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                    7 months ago

                    It seems this person is just going to keep repeating that it isn’t a form of government no matter what.

                    At this point the onus is on @pulaskiwasright@lemmy.ml to specify what criteria need be met for something to be considered “a form of government.”

        • sandman@lemmy.ca
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          7 months ago

          Ask the people of El Salvador, and they’ll say having a dictator is better because democracy has demonstrably failed them.

          El Salvador under a dictator actually has less gang violence than Mexico under a democracy.

          Westerners will blind themselves to this reality, though. They always do.

          • pulaskiwasright@lemmy.ml
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            7 months ago

            When dictatorships go badly, they go extremely badly. Far more badly than even a broken representative democracy. The odd of having a sold string of reasonably good dictators are vanishingly small. A good dictator is the best form of government. Good luck maintaining that though.

            • davel [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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              7 months ago

              When a bourgeois democratic state goes badly, it tears off its liberal mask and reveals the fascism beneath. The capitalist class dispenses with democratic theater and rules by naked dictatorship. Western liberals shouldn’t wonder why fascism is on the rise in the West: it’s because Western monopoly capitalism is increasingly going mask-off. Monthly Review, 2014: The Return of Fascism in Contemporary Capitalism

                • davel [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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                  7 months ago

                  Of course we’re told that: it’s a given that the US will call a country it wants to browbeat or regime change “authoritarian,” and corporate media will repeat it.

                  The Western concept of “totalitarianism” was constructed by Hannah Arendt, who came from a wealthy family and so unsurprisingly was anticommunist. Her work was financially supported and promoted by the CIA. It’s a bourgeois liberal, intentionally anticommunist construct that lumps fascism and communism in the same bucket.

                  Monthly Review, The CIA and the Cultural Cold War Revisited

                  U.S. and European anticommunist publications receiving direct or indirect funding included Partisan Review, Kenyon Review, New Leader, Encounter and many others. Among the intellectuals who were funded and promoted by the CIA were Irving Kristol, Melvin Lasky, Isaiah Berlin, Stephen Spender, Sidney Hook, Daniel Bell, Dwight MacDonald, Robert Lowell, Hannah Arendt, Mary McCarthy, and numerous others in the United States and Europe. In Europe, the CIA was particularly interested in and promoted the “Democratic Left” and ex-leftists, including Ignacio Silone, Stephen Spender, Arthur Koestler, Raymond Aron, Anthony Crosland, Michael Josselson, and George Orwell.

          • pulaskiwasright@lemmy.ml
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            7 months ago

            That’s not a political system at all. It’s a process that could be implemented in many styles of government. It is not incompatible with representative democracy either. It is a bad idea though. It means that a government has a hard time changing course, even when it needs to. Because it silences people from questioning decisions.

              • pulaskiwasright@lemmy.ml
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                7 months ago

                You’re talking about an implementation of representative democracy and you’re not offering any concrete alternative. So I refer you to my first comment where I said that representative democracy is bad, but still better than the others.

                • davel [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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                  7 months ago

                  I was talking about bourgeois democracies, which have only ever represented the capitalist class. A concrete alternative has already been suggested, socialist democratic centralism, a form of proletarian democracy, but you dismissed it as not even being a political system, despite it having been practiced in various countries throughout the last century. Capitalist states and corporate media label socialist states as “authoritarian,” because the capitalist class doesn’t want us to consider any alternatives that would usurp them.

                  • pulaskiwasright@lemmy.ml
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                    7 months ago

                    Can you link something describing what that system of government looks like. Because all I’ve heard of is descriptions of the principles and the Italian party from history. And looking how, that’s all I can find also.

            • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOP
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              7 months ago

              This is demonstrably false because in the real world Chinese system has proven itself to be far more flexible and adaptable than any western regime. That’s the reality. In fact, it’s obvious that multiparty parliamentary systems are the ones that have hard time changing course. They’re literally designed to prevent that. It’s not possible to do any sort of long term planning when governments keep changing and people keep pulling in different directions. The horizons for planning become very small. And of course, it’s pretty clear that western systems do a great job silencing opinions that fallout of the Overton window. Entire books have been written on the mechanics of this.

                • davel [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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                  7 months ago

                  China is in the process of ethically cleansing their own population

                  This is not true at all, despite what our governments and corporate media keep feeding us. As part of China’s affirmative action policies, the Uyghurs and other ethic minorities were excepted from the One-Child policy, and in Xinjiang they have grown in numbers relative to Hans as a result, and this happened similarly with other ethnic minorities. The “Uyghur genocide” (“cultural” or otherwise) psyop is BS.

                  We see here for example the evolution of public opinion in regards to China. In 2019, the ‘Uyghur genocide’ was broken by the media (Buzzfeed, of all outlets). In this story, we saw the machine I described up until now move in real time. Suddenly, newspapers, TV, websites were all flooded with stories about the ‘genocide’, all day, every day. People whom we’d never heard of before were brought in as experts — Adrian Zenz, to name just one; a man who does not even speak a word of Chinese.

                  Organizations were suddenly becoming very active and important. The World Uyghur Congress, a very serious-sounding NGO, is actually an NED Front operating out of Germany […]. From their official website, they declare themselves to be the sole legitimate representative of all Uyghurs — presumably not having asked Uyghurs in Xinjiang what they thought about that.

                  The WUC also has ties to the Grey Wolves, a fascist paramilitary group in Turkey, through the father of their founder, Isa Yusuf Alptekin.

                  Documents came out from NGOs to further legitimize the media reporting. This is how a report from the very professional-sounding China Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) came to exist. They claimed ‘up to 1.3 million’ Uyghurs were imprisoned in camps. What they didn’t say was how they got this number: they interviewed a total of 10 people from rural Xinjiang and asked them to estimate how many people might have been taken away. They then extrapolated the guesstimates they got and arrived at the 1.3 million figure.

                  Sanctions were enacted against China — Xinjiang cotton for example had trouble finding buyers after Western companies were pressured into boycotting it. Instead of helping fight against the purported genocide, this act actually made life more difficult for the people of Xinjiang who depend on this trade for their livelihood (as we all do depend on our skills to make a livelihood).

                  Any attempt China made to defend itself was met with more suspicion. They invited a UN delegation which was blocked by the US. The delegation eventually made it there, but three years later. The Arab League also visited Xinjiang and actually commended China on their policies — aimed at reducing terrorism through education and social integration, not through bombing like we tend to do in the West.

                  • pulaskiwasright@lemmy.ml
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                    7 months ago

                    Those are some wild and unreliable sources for why it isn’t a genocide. You’re burying your head in the sand.

          • BrundleFly2077@sh.itjust.works
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            7 months ago

            And we’re the ones clinging to a failed system? You’ll have to dig a little deeper for your credibility if you want to stick to this imperious schtick of yours.

            • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOP
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              7 months ago

              If you can’t see that the west is failing then you need to start engaging with reality. China is running circles around you losers.

              • ninjan@lemmy.mildgrim.com
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                7 months ago

                While the West is certainly struggling I fail to see how China is the preferable alternative from a political perspective. Care to enlighten me as to why it is better for its citizens which must be the goal and purpose of government no?

                • Alsephina@lemmy.ml
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                  7 months ago

                  A socialist state that has

                  does indeed have the superior system yes.

                  The American Dream Is Alive and Well — in China

                  • ninjan@lemmy.mildgrim.com
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                    7 months ago

                    So with that data point you’re saying China is the country to be born in 2024? Because while I’m not at all discrediting their incredible pace in improving the life of their citizens from an economic perspective.

                    But I’m personally far more concerned about questions about freedom of expression and of opportunities and as such would prefer to be born in any Nordic country as an example, or Switzerland as another. Sure you could argue the Nordic model doesn’t scale because a population of 10 mil is not the same as more than 1 billion. But that wasn’t really a part of the question here. To me economic growth is just one dimension, an important one but not the only one to judge a country against. So once again, from a political perspective, which is what we’re talking about here when we’re saying that the West is failing, how is China better? I mainly see the mainstream outlets and they show a bleak state of affairs from that perspective, can you counter that?