this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2025
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I think the US is a democracy, just a flawed one. The electoral college is a big flaw because it gives rural states a disproportionate amount of power. But there is still a democratic process in the US. Look at how Zohran Mamdani has become the Democrat candidate to become NYC's mayor, despite the fact that many leading Democrats didn't want him to be the candidate. The primary voters made their voices heard.
That's one person in a mayoral position. The overall direction of the country is something that we don't have a choice in. Mamdani can make buses free or whatever because that doesn't really threaten the elites, at best, it inconveniences them.
We also haven't seen what he'll actually do in office. Obama promised to reign in the overreaches of mass surveillance and did no such thing, for example. AOC recently voted in favor of sending military aid to Israel.
Do you pay attention to mayoral races in China? Or do you just assume that they must be undemocratic and that all the candidates are bad without a second thought? I'll admit, I don't, because I have little reason to. But if there were a Mamdani-like figure in China's politics, do you really think you'd hear about them?
It seems to me like you keep trying to make a rule from the exception. Zohran is notable precisely because he's an exception. Taiwan, likewise, is an exception to China's general approach to foreign relations. The general trend is that the rich exert a ton of influence over the US government, which pushes it in the direction of trying to dominate every corner of the globe, usually through force. Of course, I've mentioned some of the most recent and blatant examples, but spin a globe, put your finger on a random country you've never heard of, and look into that country's history. You'll almost always find the US doing something nefarious. You simply can't say that about China.
I googled "chinese hacking" because I've seen articles about this before, and I came across some examples. So I think China is doing nefarious things.
Sources like CNN and Wikipedia refer to China as a one-party state. I guess I'll accept that this description is probably accurate, until I see news of China having national elections involving at least two competitive parties.
Christ, have you heard a single word I've said this conversation? Yes, China does hacking, Russia does hacking, the US does hacking, everybody does that kind of stuff. The difference is that China is generally limited to the kinds of bad things that every government is guilty of, whereas the US literally dominates the world by force, assassinating if not full-scale invading anybody they don't like. You keep coming up with this tiny trivial stuff to compare to things like the occupation of Afghanistan, which makes me think that you simply don't comprehend the scale of suffering that that entailed.
Actually, China has nine political parties.
It's kinda funny to say that in comparison to New York City, because you brought up Mamdani as if he had already been elected. In fact, he only won the Democratic primary. It's just that the Democratic party is popular enough in NYC that it's been more or less assumed that he would win. Of course, the incumbent Cuomo was also from the Democratic party, and yet there's significant ideological differences between them.
You might say that NYC is, functionally, a one-party city. Of course, meaningful ideological differences can exist within that party, with competitive races between them. But I suppose the fact that the Republican party technically also exists there is the thing that determines whether NYC has democratic elections or not. Is that how that works? Should I be thanking the Republicans for making the US a democracy instead of "one party state?"
It's very clear that you haven't actually investigated or thought about how the Chinese system works and are just repeating lines you've heard. A one-party system doesn't mean that the leaders of the party pick out who they want in each position and they run unopposed.
China seems to aspire to this same modus operandi. They seem to want to invade Taiwan in the near future.
It's not that long ago that Michael Bloomberg and Rudy Giuliani were Republican mayors of NYC, but I think the last non-communist leader of China was decades ago. Before the PRC was established I would guess.
To be honest I do trust sources like BBC News and other western sources. I know some people might say they're pro-western biased sources. From my experience though, the BBC has been truthful and accurate. If they report on a multi-party election in China then I'll read about it. Instead though I found this on their website:
So the leadership of a single party is in their constitution. I don't think that's true in the US, or other western democracies.
Anyway, I'm not trying to say any particular country is bad. Countries just have differences I suppose.
"Seems to aspire to" "seem to want to" those are just other ways of saying that they aren't doing it, that there's nothing that you can point to that's in any way comparable to what the US has been doing for decades, if not since it's conception. You're just speculating about what you think might happen and saying that that hypothetical possibility makes them as bad as a country that's actually done that and worse.
Sure. But those communists have often had vastly different approaches. China saw extensive changes both economically and politically in the 80's and different leaders have differed on their approaches since then.
You're right, it isn't. In fact, the US constitution doesn't say anything about political parties at all. That doesn't stop our political system from being dominated by two parties, because of the way things are set up.
The Chinese system operates off a different set of assumptions than the US system does. But the assumptions that the US system makes are fundamentally incorrect. So I don't see a reason to just broadly dismiss the entire Chinese system based off of it being described as a "one-party state." I for one, would prefer to live in a system where only the Democratic party existed and the Republican party did not. But moreover, I don't think you could accurately answer basic question about how the Chinese system works. Like, walk me through your picture of how someone becomes a mayor in China. Do you even have a picture?
Look, my politics are pretty simple. I see my government doing all this fucked up shit and I hate the people doing it, I want to get rid of them, ideally have them face justice, and then bring in new people who hopefully we won't have to do the same thing to. But apparently I'm not allowed to want that? Apparently I suddenly have to answer for every alleged bad thing anyone around the world has ever done. And I've been entertaining that crazy idea quite a bit more than it really deserves. Without getting into details, I can tell you that my own family was very negatively impacted by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nobody I know has been negatively impacted (certainly not to the same extent) by China not having sufficiently democratic mayoral elections, or anything else China has done.
And again, I have absolutely no idea what purpose condemning the Chinese government is supposed to serve. I'm trying to solve problems that affect my own community. And if you think I have a moral responsibility to help liberate the Chinese people from their government, I mean, that's insane. Again, there's nothing I can do to bring down the Chinese government from the outside and even if I could I can not imagine any scenario where that would help the Chinese people.
I mean, if anything, shouldn't I prioritize, say, Saudi Arabia over China? How about before we go around taking aggressive actions against a government that the people overwhelmingly approve of, we just stop giving weapons to a literal monarchy? Like, I'm not even saying we overthrow them, just stop aiding them. If you want me to ignore my own people for the sake of people all around the world, I'm down, it's just that even if "Liberate Chinese people from the government they support" would be way, way down my list even if I put it on it. Why shouldn't it be?
Genuinely, why shouldn't it be? At a certain point, shouldn't I be questioning your motivations for constantly trying to redirect my justified anger and my own government towards my government's enemies?
You can be angry about your own government and that's completely fine. I am not a Trump fan myself. Regarding Saudi Arabia, yes there are reasons to be wary of their leadership, especially after Jamal Khashoggi's death.
Anyway, in my original question in this thread, I just asked if a person would condemn imperialism if it was done by Russia or China, in addition to condemning similar behaviour from the US or other western countries. If the US invades a country and kills civilians there then I definitely think that's wrong - civilians should be able to live in peace. Likewise I think it's wrong if Russia invades Ukraine and kills civilians there. With China, they may take over Taiwan by force in the near future. Likewise if the US were to take over a territory by force (perhaps the Philippines again), I would think that's wrong.
The situation in Ukraine is complex, while the situation in Taiwan is purely hypothetical and can be dismissed without further comment.
In Ukraine, revolutionaries overthrew the government and banned opposition parties. Then, other revolutionaries decided they didn't like that so they overthrew their regional governments and tried to break away. The pro-Western side pretends that the revolutionaries they backed were completely organic and represented the popular will, while the pro-Russia revolutionaries were purely Russian proxies - and the pro-Russia side pretends the exact same thing but in reverse. The reality is that both sides have some degree of genuine popular support.
In any case, a civil war broke out between them, and after numerous ceasefire attempts fell apart, with cities in eastern Ukraine being shelled by artillery, the pro-Russia side requested Russian assistance.
Now, I don't think either side is fighting for anything meaningful, it's just about who gets to put their flag where. The Ukrainian people will suffer more or less equally under either government, but they are suffering much more in this pointless destructive war.
The only reason it's any of my business is because my government supported the overthrow of the previous government and helped bring in a new government that was unwilling to have free and fair elections, and is now providing military aid to said government. If we had simply stayed out of there from the start, I don't believe any of this would be happening.
As for Russia, while I'm not fond of their response to the situation by any means, to really condemn them I would need to suggest an alternative course of action. If they had stayed out of the war, then the people of eastern Ukraine would, at the very least, be shut out of any democratic process. Perhaps the best approach would have been to simply spend the money they've spent on war on a mass relocation effort allowing ethnic Russians in Ukraine to relocate within Russia, although I don't know that that's realistic or that anyone would agree to that. Or perhaps Russia should have simply rolled over and accepted this expansionism. I don't really know, it's not really my business.
Of course this whole mess goes back to Lenin giving Russian territory to Ukraine in the hopes that the ethnic Russians would be a stabilizing force on Ukrainian politics and would help build a bridge between Russians and Ukrainians. We are now living in the miserable future where that failed and backfired tremendously. Ideally, the USSR wouldn't have collapsed and we wouldn't be here in the first place. But no use crying over spilt milk.
All I know is that I don't want to be involved in it. If the Ukrainians want to fight Russia they can knock themselves out, more power to 'em. But if nothing else I can't see how it's possibly worth the cost when we have people here losing their food stamps.
I agree with you that Ukrainians are suffering. Russians are too, under Putin's regime. But some other points you mentioned, I'm not sure how true they are:
It's my understanding that Ukraine's parliament voted to remove President Yanukovych in 2014. Does this count as an "overthrow"? If the US Congress were to vote to remove Trump from power, which I believe is legally possible in the US, would that be an "overthrow"?
TLDR of the following paragraph is that Ukraine has had two presidential elections since Yanukovych was removed from power, and both of those elections seem to have been more democratic than Russian "elections". Here goes: A new presidential election was held in 2014, which Poroshenko won, and then another was held in 2019, which Zelenskyy won. The OSCE, an organisation of the US, Canada, and European countries (including Russia) stated that the 2019 Ukrainian presidential election "was competitive, voters had a broad choice and turned out in high numbers. In the pre-electoral period the law was often not implemented in good faith by many stakeholders, which negatively impacted the trust in the election administration, enforcement of campaign finance rules, and the effectiveness of election dispute resolution. Fundamental freedoms were generally respected", etc. Maybe not a perfect election, but probably better than in Russia. In a Russian "election" in recent years, "Mr Putin's biggest critics were barred from running, and there were reports of ballot stuffing and forced voting". Here is an article from Reuters talking about ballot stuffing in Russia.
I think pro-Russia people could participate in Ukraine's democracy though. Before 2014 there was the popular pro-Russia party the Party of Regions, and after 2014 there was the pro-Russia Opposition Bloc.
TLDR: I hope the war in Ukraine ends so that no more people die. I think Ukraine should be left alone to make their own democratic decisions though, without Russia invading them. The evidence that I've seen (news I've read) suggests that Ukraine, while not a perfect democracy, was relatively democratic up until Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Right now they're not having elections because of the war. Perhaps Ukrainians should be able to decide in the near future whether they want to continue the war or not.
Lol after a bunch of armed men stormed the capital? Yes, it does, actually. A better comparison would be if Jan 6'ers succeeded, prevented Biden from coming in and forced Congress to authorize their actions.
Your sources curiously omit the fact that Ukraine banned numerous opposition parties. I don't see either side as being genuinely democratic, but I also consider that somewhat beside the point. The real point is that neither government operates in the people's interest.
Every year, another Ukraine slips away from the US's sphere of influence because there's only ever money available for war. And the reason for that is because the military-industrial complex is a mechanism for funnelling public funds into private hands, where it can eventually end up in the hands of the people making the decision. What I want is to put a stop to that and spend money on schools and hospitals and infrastructure and that sort of thing. I'm not particularly picky on where or how or why, if they want to develop in foreign countries to uphold geopolitical influence, fine, if they want to develop domestically to win support, cool.
There are countless ongoing crises that are far more important than whatever's happening in Ukraine, but everything gets ignored unless they can be addressed by dropping bombs on people. And I've had enough of it, I have zero patience for it, and above all, I don't trust my government enough to follow their lead anywhere.
There's clearly enough evidence to say that Ukraine is at best a "flawed" democracy, and that's by the standards of bourgeois systems. But even if it wasn't, even if they were fully in the right and it was as black-and-white as the media pretends it is - it still wouldn't really matter to me. I have bigger fish to fry at home, get these rulers out, get them out for good, and maybe then I can think of following whoever got them out over to dealing with Ukraine. Until then, the specifics don't really matter.
Sure, I think Ukraine is a flawed democracy. More democratic than Russia in my estimation, but that isn't a high bar to clear. I hope Ukrainians can vote in the near future on whether to continue the war. Or alternatively the Ukrainian government should hopefully respect the results of reliable polling.
If you think your domestic priorities are more important than foreign issues, that's fair enough. When you claim Yanukovych's removal from power counts as an "overthrow", I'm not sure I agree with that, because Ukraine's parliament voted to remove Yanukovych from power. But anyway, maybe there is not much point in talking about where you and I disagree, because that could go on forever. I think we agree on some points, like the fact that Ukrainians are unfortunately suffering, and the fact that corporations (including defence companies) are too greedy, at the expense of hospitals and such like.
Well then, when you claim that Russia's involvement counts as an "invasion," I'm not sure I agree because the disputed territories held votes to break away, invite Russia to defend their sovereignty, and to become part of Russia. Of course, those votes were held after a bunch of armed men took control of their local governments, but then, the Ukrainian parliament only voted to oust Yanukovych after a bunch of armed men took control of the parliament building. In my mind, neither is particularly reliable, but if you ask me to treat one as reliable, then it's only fair that I treat the other the same way. In that view, either Ukraine's current government is the result of a Western-backed coup, or Russia's involvement is a response to a request for aid from the break away regions, and it's primarily a civil war. If either of those things are true, then it's enough for me to wash my hands of the situation.
Fair enough.
Okay I said maybe we shouldn't talk about where we disagree but I think I disagree with those points about Ukraine. I think it was the elected parliament of Ukraine who voted to remove Yanukovych, rather than a "bunch of armed men" who voted. As for the Russian-backed referendums in the Donbas, I don't trust them myself, given Russia's history of ballot stuffing and the state deliberately harming political opponents.
I think the best outcome would be if the war immediately ends and then every oblast (in Ukraine and in Russia) could have a free and fair election regarding their future. If some Ukrainian oblasts vote in a free and fair election to join Russia then fair enough. In any case, unfortunately the war will very likely grind on.
Yes, parliament voted, after a bunch of armed men seized control of the parliament building. I never claimed that it was the armed men who voted.
As for the government of Ukraine, I would say that I don't trust them because of the US's long history of color revolutions and the fact that there was a leaked call in which western intelligence was discussing who should end up in charge and all the people they picked mysteriously ended up in power.
However, it's not really about who I trust or don't trust, or what I think might have happened behind closed doors. Even if the overthrow was entirely driven by domestic forces with no outside meddling, the fact is that they proceeded to ban opposition parties and thereby effectively shut out the people in eastern regions from having a voice in government. That's just factual. You say the votes in eastern Ukraine were probably rigged, and maybe they were. But in that case there's no real way to know what the people actually want, because they were shut out of the political process by having their parties banned.
So, I return to my position of not thinking either side is really worth dying over. Or forcing other people to die over. And let's remember, that's what we're talking about here. It's not just a question of preferring one side over the other, we're talking about grabbing people off the streets, giving them a rifle, and forcing them to the front, whether they want to or not. I would need a very good reason to deviate from my null hypothesis of opposing involvement in any conflict. And between a flawed democracy that may be a Western puppet, and a rebellion that may be a Russian puppet, I just don't see it. You can argue that I ought to prefer one side or the other, but I mean, I think that if anyone really thinks there's such compelling reason to support Ukraine, they ought to go out there and fight themselves. In reality, I think that pro-Ukraine people are just defaulting to, rather than a null hypothesis of opposing war, to a null hypothesis of trusting the government and media. And that is something that I fundamentally disagree with, in my view, that is simply national chauvinism.
The banning of pro-Russia parties apparently happened after Russia launched its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, so the banning can't be a justification for the invasion.
I hope that doesn't happen and I hope Ukrainian people can choose whether they want to fight or not. I also think though that Russia shouldn't be taking land and lives by force, and they also shouldn't be trying to install their own puppet regime in Kyiv.
That's incorrect. Almost immediately after coming to power in 2014, the Ukrainian government started banning opposition parties. It appears they banned more parties after 2022 as well (my previous source may have been referencing that, which I apologize for mixing up).
It does happen and they don't. Both sides of the war are using conscription, and the Ukrainian government has even tried to get other governments to force Ukrainian refugees back to Ukraine so they can be conscripted, because they are facing manpower shortages.
The whole situation is a tragedy and a mess. I think it's somewhat insane that either side saw this conflict as a viable option, there were diplomatic off-ramps that were ignored. Generally I just don't trust the same politicians and media that led us into Iraq and Afghanistan for 20 years to get involved in any conflict, pretty much regardless of the circumstances. Because, after all, I'm a leftist.
There were still big pro-Russia parties so Ukrainians who liked the idea of stronger ties with Russia had parties they could vote for.
That's very true.