Even if everything you're saying is true, the important point is that you and I and Dan Carlin are free to go around saying it. It's my strong impression that this is not true in China; that it's a de facto if not de jure crime for media personalities to say things like "the Communist Party has rigged the system to a fairly large degree" or "Xi Jinping Thought seems kinda dumb and I'd like to read the alternatives".
> Even if everything you're saying is true, the important point is that you and I and Dan Carlin are free to go around saying it.
I'm not so sure about that either. I'd be surprised if the average Chinese person wasn't fairly well aware that they live in a censored world, and that a government that does that might also bend the truth a bit on the evening news. The average American on the other hand, and even the above average judging by most forums I frequent, seem to be under the impression that the US is truly the land of the free, the home of the brave, with a completely free press (not unlike the completely free electoral system), and that what they see and hear in the news is generally trustworthy and comprehensive.
Chinese people may not know the truth, but I'm pretty sure they know it's being hidden from them. People in the West, defenders of the free world, who not only seem unable to see the various pink elephants that are right in front of their eyes, but will attack and condemn anyone who points them out, worry me a lot more than the indoctrinated in plain sight Chinese.
American newspapers regularly publish state secrets, write about how the people in power are fools, and generally go out of their way to make life more difficult for politicians. That doesn't mean the press says everything true and nothing false, but it's very hard for me to understand how you could look at the situation and suspect the government has some secret censorship power.
It's far from uncommon for a reporter to explicitly say "by the way, the government told me not to disclose this information but I'm gonna do it anyway".
You seem to think in terms of censorship being a binary. Now that I point it out you won't of course, but what about when you (and my downvoters) wake up tomorrow?
No, I’m very willing to bite that bullet. Censorship is indeed a binary. There’s a fundamental and important difference between a system where the government has soft power to encourage stories it likes, and a system where newspapers must not print anything the government doesn’t want them to.
It is certainly true that they're not identical, but my point is that the state in America just maybe might exert some effort in the pursuit of generating an average mindset of ~"all is well with our governance, no need for concern, go about your day". Despite no shortage of fundamental issues in the US (and the west in general), any suggestion that there might be some issues with the current form of the political system itself is typically met with strong resistance. Surely basic human nature plays a part in this, but from reading the way in which the news is presented (the way events are described, which parts are included and repeated, which parts are downplayed or not even shown), I suspect there is some level of persuasion going on. How one couldn't notice this is beyond me, but I seem to be the outlier so perhaps the problem is on my end.
The problem is that you're equating things that aren't the same. There's no way to deny that the American government thinks it's great, and puts in effort to convince people that it's great. That's the explicit goal of e.g. civics education.
What the American government doesn't do is require citizens to believe it's great, or forbid them from saying it's not. If you get on a soapbox and talk about how the system was rigged against Bernie Sanders, a lot of Americans will think you're being silly, but none of them will think that you should be arrested for subversion.
> The problem is that you're equating things that aren't the same.
Actually, I'm not.
If two countries both engage in indoctrination, in different forms and to different degrees, pointing out that one is different, or does it to a lesser degree, is not a proof that they do not do it in the first place.
> There's no way to deny that the American government thinks it's great, and puts in effort to convince people that it's great. That's the explicit goal of e.g. civics education.
I feel like you're implicitly suggesting that's all they do.
> What the American government doesn't do is require citizens to believe it's great, or forbid them from saying it's not.
That isn't a prerequisite for indoctrination, and only a prerequisite for certain kinds of censorship.
> If you get on a soapbox and talk about how the system was rigged against Bernie Sanders, a lot of Americans will think you're being silly, but none of them will think that you should be arrested for subversion.
Of course. But indoctrination and censorship can take many forms, and can be very hard to spot when done well. It also helps if the private sector engages in it so the government doesn't have to.
