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[–] 105 points 1 day ago (96 children)

They did beat America in the race towards oppressive authoritarianism, but under Trump, the U.S. has caught up a great deal. So much winning!

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  • [–] 12 points 16 hours ago (14 children)
  • [–] 7 points 8 hours ago (3 children)

    So the latter two are fairly easily explainable by racism and homophobia and are actually easier to avoid if you don't have a democracy. China's done well, they not had a real refugee crisis lately and don't have too many black people to hate (they DO still be hella racist over there, somehow Africans were even at fault for COVID according to some Chinese officials).

    There was a huge social media outcry about refugees in much of Europe about a decade ago that the conservatives kept milking for a long, long time. Then they'll claim black men are rapists and take the one example that keeps doing it again every time he gets out of jail as if that's representative of every African. Then the outcry about LGBT people trying to groom your kids and whtaever. This is all for conservatives to get votes. They get almost half a country thinking that the damn librul communist (yes, they consider those to be the same thing, I'm not even going to get into that) government is out to erase straight white people... In a country with 10 black people and 5 muslims (okay, I'm exaggerating, but there REALLY aren't a lot of them here, whereas the conservatives will tell you that they're completely taking over and they're all getting billions from the government in aid and whatnot)

    If the people don't actually have a choice (like in China, where there's literally only one party allowed), there's no need for manufactured outrage about foreigners. Which is great because then there's less hate, but it also means you literally don't get to choose the political ideals of the people who govern you. If you have a bad faith opposition party to worry about, they will make up shit to get into power.

    TL;DR: Completely subdue your people politically so there's no competition, then there's no manufactured outrage, then people won't think literally all their tax money is going to a single refugee center that in reality holds 10 families.

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  • [–] 5 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

    Or you just provide increases in the standard of living and people will like the government, lol.

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  • [–] 3 points 8 hours ago (1 child)

    Liking the government doesn't imply having a democracy, though. And also thinking that you have a democratic country doesn't mean that you do live in one

    It's not that China bad, it's more that China is good at creating great conditions for a majority of their citizens, but this doesn't imply that it's heaven on earth, still

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