Americans scream and spit on Chinese democracy while they cling to electoral colleges and governor appointed senators and the fight to disenfranchise minority voters en mass.
I just don’t know how to take any of it seriously. China’s a dictatorship because it’s ruled by a single, seemingly insurmountable communist party. But Texas and Florida can elect Republicans to a bulletproof supermajority for 40 years and that’s just the Will Of The People.
A Congress with a 20% approval rating enjoys a Lockean Mandate, while a Parliament with 50-70% approval is a tyrannical regime of brutal oppression.
And don’t even get me started on prison population…
How are we even defining democracy anymore? It just seems like American Exceptionalism.
For each country and territory, Freedom in the World analyzes the electoral process, political pluralism and participation, the functioning of the government, freedom of expression and of belief, associational and organizational rights, the rule of law, and personal autonomy and individual rights.
Their assessment of the US democracy:
EIU (2024): 7.85/10, “flawed democracy”
Freedom in the world score (2025): 81/100
These scores obviously are not about other things that matter, like economic stability or access to healthcare.
Oh! All this time and I hadn’t clocked that tankie was referencing the Tiananmen Square massacre. That makes a lot of sense.
I thought it was something related to think-tanks or something, some kind of weird way of saying “brainiac” or having “big-brained ideas” in a derogatory manner.
Americans scream and spit on Chinese democracy while they cling to electoral colleges and governor appointed senators and the fight to disenfranchise minority voters en mass.
I just don’t know how to take any of it seriously. China’s a dictatorship because it’s ruled by a single, seemingly insurmountable communist party. But Texas and Florida can elect Republicans to a bulletproof supermajority for 40 years and that’s just the Will Of The People.
A Congress with a 20% approval rating enjoys a Lockean Mandate, while a Parliament with 50-70% approval is a tyrannical regime of brutal oppression.
And don’t even get me started on prison population…
How are we even defining democracy anymore? It just seems like American Exceptionalism.
There are multiple organisations invested in rating democracies worldwide, the main one is from The Economist EIU ,(https://www.eiu.com/n/campaigns/democracy-index-2025/, there are numerous places where the raw data is published more accessible such as here: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/democracy-index-eiu).
I personally prefer the index made by Freedom House (https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world) because it includes what a regular citizen experiences:
Their assessment of the US democracy:
EIU (2024): 7.85/10, “flawed democracy” Freedom in the world score (2025): 81/100
These scores obviously are not about other things that matter, like economic stability or access to healthcare.
Damn, you can’t even use China as the positive comparison here without some random tankie getting pissed I didn’t adequately glaze China.
Yeah, the comparison is positive, but also anyone who disagrees with you wants you murdered by a tank.
FFS, can you people take any level of criticism?
Oh! All this time and I hadn’t clocked that tankie was referencing the Tiananmen Square massacre. That makes a lot of sense.
I thought it was something related to think-tanks or something, some kind of weird way of saying “brainiac” or having “big-brained ideas” in a derogatory manner.
It’s not. It’s referencing the Hungarian Revolt of '56.
Hahaha.
Well, in my heart of hearts, this is who it’s really talking about.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie