alt Hacker NewsI don’t see all of the US actions as favorably as that description, I think a lot of recent actions are especially egregious and the US has a history of doing pretty terrible things.
But the scale really is completely different. I think the US is still overall good, and we do still have real elections, limits on government power, and genuine turnover in government where power can shift.
And even as the US govt is trying to scare people away from protesting and they’re building a corporate-government surveillance state, personal freedoms are still very high compared to China and Russia.
The US is unfortunately in the fortunate position of being the worlds active super power. This puts them in a bit of an "IT dept dilemma", where when things are going smoothly they are invisible, and when things are falling apart, it's their fault.
Migrate to a new mail server that is 30% faster? Ah, thats nice.
Migrate to a new mail server and things go awry? Fire that entire fucking department they are seriously incompetent and only ever fuck things up.