Democracy works best when the population is dumb, scared and disengaged.

> Without democracy, revolts just result in more revolts because new rulers have no special claim of legitimacy.

No. It works the same way with or without democracy.

They can't have the same ancestors because one is of aryan lineage and the other is of semitic lineage.

It's more likely these cultures and peoples borrowed from the same story.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilgamesh_flood_myth

I have a hard time believing that there are people who have no inner dialogue. Especially in modern societies. I think it's something we all do, it's just that we didn't know there was a word for it.

Ever ask yourself, why did I waste so much time on HN or other social media? Then you probably have an inner dialogue.

Sentiment of top comments : 'If you work at Google and you have participated in this protest: Thank you.'

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17776276

Google workers protest Israel contract.

'If the company continues cleaning house and gets back to their mission then maybe there's still hope for them.'

Hmmm... Something is amiss.

Protest china, thank you.

Protest israel, you deserved to be fired.

It's not 'people' demanding anything. It's the elites. Why would the elites want to ban facebook or any social media they control. Not to mention facebook, reddit, youtube, etc are much older than tiktok.

How does that follow? The war united the west, not divide it.

> China is the only one actually capable of influencing the world to embrace despotism and collectivism at the expense of freedom.

You mean china is the one forcing collectivism ( EU ) on europe? What is 'the west' other than collectivism?

So many stupid people watching stupid youtube videos and regurgitating nonsense. You probably have a brain. Try using it sometimes.

The most despotic entities in the world isn't china, it's the US and the EU. The most collectivist entities it the world isn't china, it's 'the west'.

Is china forcing everyone to be like them? Are they exporting communism everywhere? No. Guess who is trying to force everyone to be like them? The west.

Why? They are the most spoiled, privileged and entitled group out there. Not only did they force google, facebook, etc to give them preferential treatment in search/algorithm/etc, now they want google, facebook, etc to pay them for the 'privilege' of giving them preferential treatment. Not only do they want google/facebook to send users to their sites, they want google/facebook to pay them for that privilege. The shameless hubris.

> therefore directly tax the platforms and then redistribute the revenue to a fund created by government for news journalism themselves.

No. That's for authoritarian countries like britain and china.

> huge risks of unintended consequence

But government funded news has no risks?

What we need is to break up google/facebook/etc. We need competition in the search, smartphone, social media, etc space. The fundamental problem is that two companies control so much of american mindshare.

What does this have to do with the fact that most south vietnamese wanted reunification? You mean governments are able to pay poor men to sign up for wars? Shocking.

So we are agreed that the south vietnamese wanted to vote for reunification and the US renegged on that vote. Nothing else matters. That's the crux of the problem.

> and the north had to murder several hundred thousand south Vietnamese when they won the war?

But most of the south vietnamese military supported the north. Especially towards the end of the war. If your assertion was true, then how evil must the US truly be to allow hundred of thousands of soldiers to be murdered? Oh wait, you are just making shit up. And if the north was murdering hundreds of thousands of south vietnamese soldiers, there would have been an uprising. Oh wait, there was no uprising. Stop making things up.

> They just wanted to reunify peacefully so badly?

Yes. It's why the vietnamese agreed to the partition. They foolishly expected that the US ( the self-proclaimed defender of democracy and freedom ) was negotiating in good faith. Hopefully the vietnamese learned their lesson.

You are outright lying about basic historical facts. Not sure why you expected to get away with it. Especially here.

Yes.

> If countries like Brazil or India want to have everything censored

They aren't even the worst. The biggest advocates of censorship on american social media is europe, canada, israel, etc.

> create some subsidiary application solely for people within each of those countries

Or maybe brazil or india should outright ban these platforms and create their own? These countries have their own national tv stations, newspapers, etc? Why don't they have their own twitter, facebook, etc?

If media essentially controls who you vote for, shouldn't india, brazil and every democracy control their own media? Seems to me that a foreign nation controlling so much of your social media is a direct threat to your democracy.

Besides, if we continue on this path of global social media, we would have to censor everything everyone finds offensive. It would be the tyranny of the offended. The worst kind of tyranny.

The vietnamese won their war of independence against france ( aka first indochina war). Then the US stepped in to protect 'european colonial interests' gave the southern half of vietnam to france with the promise that the vietnamese people will have a vote. When polls showed southern vietnamese were overwhelming for reunification with the north, we renegged on our promise and did not allow a vote. And hence the 2nd indochina war happened.

> The Vietnam war, or at least the fighting that us Americans refer to by that name, was started by the sovereign state of North Vietnam invading the sovereign state of South Vietnam

The vietnam war was the US fighting the Viet Cong. Do you know who the viet cong was? They were SOUTH vietnamese. The vietnam war wasn't the US fighting north vietnam. It was the US fighting south vietnamese freedom fighters.