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alecesne85 karma

What part of China?

alecesne67 karma

A lot of that is the great firewall. When I was studying in China in 2009, my then girl-friend now wife and I started discussing the Tiananmen incident. She knew far more than I did about the events leading up-to and encompassing the protest, but hadn't seen images of the actual suppression of protesters. I showed her the iconic tank image and the images of mangled people on bicycles who had, you know, been run over by tanks. She'd never seen them. Had to do it over a VPN.

There are often more than two sides to a story, and depending on which facts you're presented with, you can come to radically different conclusions.

If you're an ordinary citizen in China, you hear "re-education camp" and you see videos of job training and people learning to be nationalist rather than radical. That's it. So most people think "yeah, it sucks for them, but it's better than having domestic terrorists."

It is difficult to overstate how influential controlling access to information is for modern people. If I went into the waiting room of the immigration court in San Diego on a busy day and interviewed half a dozen long-term U.S. residents about their removal proceedings and how the Department of Homeland Security treats people, you'd come away thinking the U.S. government was trying to purge people for racial reasons, and in a way that was harsh and arbitrary. But if you were to listen to the judges, they might sound reasonable. And if you were to watch select news fees that fed you the activities of criminal aliens being deported for cause, you'd think DHS was full of heroes. What's scary is that these days, the media we see amplifies our existing positions on things.

It is easy to ideologically disagree with the re-education camps in Xinjiang. And the detention centers in California and Texas for that matter. But it's hard to make policy on a national level. It's hard to police borders. And it's hard to trust information these days because it can come from so many places.

I don't claim to have answers, and I try and present an open and relatively neutral position in my posts. Further, I have a lot of faith in the U.S. justice system and the integrity of our courts and, with a few reservations, our police. But we've sent armies to a lot of places. Our soldiers have done and continue to do things that we don't talk about publicly. Things that our adversaries will remember and broadcast along other communication channels.

So, in answer to the first question, "why don't exchange students notice what they're leaders are doing" I'd reply "because that's not what they've seen in the evidence presented to them in the media."

We're not as far apart as you might imagine. Everyone is human, and most people are just trying to get by.

alecesne7 karma

A lot of sex offenders were minors themselves at the time, and don't want to go knocking on neighborhood doors every time they move. Have a page where they can explain themselves. When they move in, send the neighbors a post card with a link; 90% probably won't go to the page, but you've discharged your statutory duty with minimal awkwardness.