The country of Tiananmen Square?

True but irrelevant.

The country whose people practically develop an ever-changing coded language to avoid big brother coming down hard on any sort of criticism?

Yes. I never said that China tolerates criticism, but that doesn’t mean Chinese people live in fear of their government. An incompetent government will have criticism coming from every which way, necessitating draconian measures and exaggerated crackdowns, which does lead to fear (ask me how I know). This isn’t the case for China because, despite their faults and the evil shit they get up to, Chinese people are generally satisfied with their governance. Fear isn’t an automatic result of authoritarianism; it appears when there’s too little carrot and too much stick.

The country that runs “reeducation” camps for many who do get caught?

True but irrelevant.

The country that has Uyghurs and Tibetans to blame “within,” and Japan without? Or the US?

Source? Not for their oppression of Uighurs and Tibetans, or rivalry with the US and Japan, I know about these, but that they’re using any of these as scapegoats for their own troubles. Oppression can be motivated by things other than scapegoating, and it’s not like China is lacking in real reasons to oppose the US and Japan. Without something that corroborates your claim this is just a non-sequitur.

Where senior cadres of the party magically grow richer?

This is just a non sequitur. Senior CCP officials are rich, but the other half of your claim “everyone else pretty much won’t” goes against everything we know about Chinese economic growth.

If this happens I hope this is the straw that broke the camel’s back

Absolutely not, this camel can take a lot more of these.

Think of the list of political rights you take for granted. The right to voting, free speech, association, peaceful assembly, etc. Those don’t exist or are severely curtailed, meaning that political activity and discourse that anger the ruling class can and will be punished. How much is tolerated and what kind of punishments are doled out varies depending on the strength and heavy handedness of the ruling regime.

People live in fear and try to adapt, self-censor. Authoritarian leaders need a bogie man, somebody they can blame for all their failures. So an ethnic group, minority, or another country will constantly be blamed for everything from the economy to ingrown toe nails. The elite will get richer, everybody else pretty much won’t.

Not necessarily. Authoritarians are usually corrupt/incompetent, which tends to lead to these things, but competent dictators with legitimate public support exist, China being the best-known example.

*Basic political rights. You can have a perfectly liberal democracy where the average person is one missed paycheck away from starving to death. Education for example has nothing to do with authoritarianism, except that authoritarians tend to benefit from lack of education.

Counterpoint: All of 20th and 21st American history outside of WWI and WWII. The US never declared war on Iraq or Afghanistan.

Congress can try the rule of law since they’re useless anyway, but your average person really has much better uses of their time than hoping it’ll work, because it won’t.

Hell, they gave it to Henry fucking Kissinger.

The generation of Gazan children that lived through the war will likely be the most traumatized, both physically and mentally, in the world. I don’t want to even think about the generational trauma that will result from this.

Oh the supreme court is rotten no argument there, but he’s not being tried by the supreme court, at least not yet. The regime would have to appeal decisions at multiple levels before getting there, and by that point it won’t matter anymore.

I expect a kangaroo court.

I don’t. The US justice system isn’t that compromised just yet. It’s only really stacked against the poor; if you can pay enough (which Maduro presumably can) you should be able to expect a somewhat fair trial.

If you’re from the US, then that someone is you and your fellow Americans. If you’re not, then you’d need (a lot more) Americans to get off their asses first, which I wouldn’t bet on personally. It’s gonna get worse before it gets better.

Just, how long would it take for the people there to free themselves?

However long it takes. Historically a foreign invasion only pushes the timer further back, doubly so when (neo)colonialism is involved.

Thought about them. What now?

I wish everyone involved in that “raid” a slow and painful death. “Endangering US troops” my ass those assholes deserve to be endangered.

Obviously, letting Israel get away with bombing Gaza and other Palestinian areas is part of that trend.

My point is that it’s not a “trend;” Israel has been committing atrocities against Palestinians since before day 1 and it didn’t affect their international recognition one iota. Then they committed more atrocities and were rewarded with international trade, investment and arms. Even after they recognized the State of Palestine they kept encroaching on its territory. There is no time in history when Israel didn’t get away with bombing Palestinians, and this trend holds elsewhere. International law has never applied to great powers in any meaningful sense; it’s always been a cudgel for beating smaller powers when they get out of line.

This was a strong era of international law and legal regimes were added and became increasingly more binding, not the other way around. When the USSR collapsed and Germany was unified 1989-1991 many started to envision an ‘end of history’ as the world would converge into a global liberal order etc.

Clearly the US and its allies never felt the need to follow these legal regimes, if their behavior during and after the Cold War was any indication. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change#1945–1991:_Cold_War. This optimism you’re talking about was nothing more than naivety that never reflected the real world, is my point. When did international law ever restrict American imperialism? Soviet? French? British? The only real difference now is that Westerners can’t ignore this stuff any more; as someone from the third world I can tell you nobody I never felt like I or anyone else were protected by international law. Iraq alone is conclusive proof that the rules based order was a farce. What you’re describing is the West losing faith in the farce they created; nobody else had any faith in this shit in the first place.

I’m not sure when exactly, probably 2010ish.

If there was ever such a thing (there wasn’t), there’s no way it can be argued to have survived the War on Terror, so it has to be before 2001.

If 23 years ago counts as “modern,” yes.

Not your goddamn business. It’s literally that simple.

There’s “building codes require a safe room” dangerous" and there’s “I might actually get lynchrd” dangerous. Exposure to the latter will allow people to accept the former.

Once again, this is another ridiculous take that once again only serves to shift blame to the working class.

Nor really. I can hate both the abusers and their enablers.

The American people are not a fucking monolith.

Sure, but how many Americans have ever acted against their government’s imperialism? 1%? 5%? 10%?

What you’ve done here is taken an example or two of things that vaguely happened and have generalized an entire population with those examples with non sequiturs stitching everything together.

I… gave examples to support my point. What? Do you want an exhaustive list of every instance of American imperialism apologia?

It’s a giant claim to say that “Americans have demonstrated zero capability to reign in their ruling class” on top of it being a very vague claim that certainly appears to have the tools ready to put some wheels on a goalpost

Then I’ll make a falsifiable prediction: No imperialist escapade the American ruling class tried to manufacture consent for has failed to get off the ground within the last 30 years.

So I’m gonna go ahead and point out that for one: you’ve made the same sweeping generalization as the parent comment that you already admitted went too far.

It went to far in the sense that it implied the American working class chooses to engage. That’s wrong; (most) Americans allow the choice to be made for them and either passively refuse to do anything about it or actively shut down serious attempts by people who want to do something about it. That’s not much better.

Don’t blame it on the American, don’t blame it on the jew, blame it on the fucking system.

Am I allowed to blame people who defend the system, then? What about people who have nothing but excuses for why they totally definitely have to comply with the system? The point is: Everything I’ve seen since I’ve started following American politics has only managed to convince me that America is unsalvageable in the medium term and the world would be better off if it was broken down into smaller and weaker states. Fingers crossed for civil war.