I definitely can’t take full credit, but I appreciate this. My mom was a foster system case worker and bestowed her empathetic ways to me. I also admire people like Patrice Lumumba, Fred Hampton, Parenti and a few other folks. I like to assume most working class folks aren’t approaching a debate or idea with malice. Our brains are so inundated with stuff on the daily; we have opportunities to reduce that load and be respectful.

The US has the largest military and police force in the world, and has had their hand in a multitude of regime changes, top secret experiments, etc. “Most propagandized in the world” might be a stretch, but the propaganda machine that has been manufacturing consent on this scale for years is easily among the worst of them all. Couple that with being in bed with Israel—another heavily propagandized population.

Because US propaganda has never been interrupted for 250 years. The regime in control of the USA has been the same regime the whole time, and the propaganda of that regime never went through an overturning. Russia's propaganda machine started in 1992, because the propaganda machine of the USSR went through a counter-revolution with the dissolution of the USSR and its machinery. The same is true of China, which would only have it's propaganda machine since 1950.

Additionally, the USA is the inventor and creator of essentially all modern mass media from movies, to television, to the internet. It has the largest and most prolific media production organizations in the entire world, and it has such a robust propaganda system that it has literally been running radio and TV stations for propaganda on every inhabited continent for decades.

It has the time, the means, the capabilities, the money, the power, the history, the staffing, and the motive and it doesn't have an adversary anywhere near as effective as it is for everyone else.

Also, PR professionals in the US outnumber journalists by more than 6 to 1. And most journalists are enmeshed in the Western propaganda engine, just as they had been in Europe well before the USA even existed.

American exceptionalism, of course

Yeah, I'd accept "we're heavily propagandized," but "most in the world" is quite the claim.

capitalists fucking LOVE wars

Wait, I thought China was capitalist?

Yeah. I haven't seen a single person actually praise Putin, because he has not achieved a single thing worth of defense and praise in all of the years he's been Russia's leader.

Xi however is a different case. His country is doing very well on many metrics and is threatening to overtake the US hegemony on the world stage. Around the time when China seemed to start catching up to the West, you started reading about how China literally was 1984 irl.

Outfits connected to the same US that is the single biggest reason for everything bad in the middle East and the Islamic world started condemning China for islamophobia. These same US based outfits also condemned China for worker abuses, despite the fact that their country was built on the backs of slaves, and still utilities the labour of millions of undocumented immigrants. That's not to speak about how prisoners are used as cheap workforce in America.

The US and its propaganda arm has spewed so many lies and destabilized so many regions that I simply cannot trust anything they say about any other country -- especially not a well-positioned rival. Why is China the eternal Big Bad? The same atrocities the Chinese are accused for have been committed by many allies to the yanks, with comparatively non-existent backlash and critique. The US lies to accomplish its strategy goals, something that even the blindest US shill can't deny. Is it that unbelievable that they would lie about China?

Then you look at China and see a nation that isn't only threatening the US position as the world leader, but also doing much more in service of its people than all American presidents since Reagan combined. You notice how narratives about "social credit scores" are exaggerated beyond parody without any criticism in Western media, and your trust to the West's judgement of other nations starts to falter.

Why would I believe the US and its rhetoric about China? I know they don't give a single fuck about human rights, they just want to "win". To me, it's more likely that the majority of whatever China is accused of doing is exaggerated or simply untrue.

That's what leads me to "defend" the country. I'm not Chinese, I don't live there and I gain nothing by being positive to them. However, westerners talk about China with such racism that I simply refuse to partake in. Westerners are also guilty of far uglier crimes and should therefore just zip it.

I also love to see that there exists a government that can jail billionaires and force them to pay their fair share to the people from which these leeches get their riches. In the US, you're supposed to eat a rich man's shit with a grin.