I still see many people here who, even now, still do not grasp that the country they're living in, on the government level, has joined the group of "China and Russia". It is no longer "China and Russia's imperialist authoritarianism are a danger to democracy across the globe, and we need to decouple from them.". It is now "China, Russia's, and the USA are a danger to democracy across the globe, and we need to decouple from them". For the first time in more than a century, we now have all of the geopolitical superpowers (of which there are currently 3), have very similar governments, based on a single paramount leader who holds in effect complete power and demands unconditional fealty from every single person in a position of power, subject to career-ending or soon much worse punishment. Not just to them, but to anyone in their vicinity, e.g. family or colleagues, to strike proper fear into them. See: non-Krebs SentinelOne employees having their security clearances revoked.
Let's take a look at this whitehouse.gov statement from the US.
> Yet in recent years, elitist leaders in Government have unlawfully censored speech and weaponized their undeserved influence to silence perceived political opponents and advance their preferred
For those desensitized, replace "elitist" in that sentence by "reactionary", "capitalist", "anti-revolutionist" or "intellectual", and re-read.
The earlier everyone faces the reality, the quicker something can be done about it. I propose at the very least, everyone starts saying "the USA" instead of "the US government" when talking about these topics, in line with how the overwhelming majority of the time, the actions of the Russian and Chinese governments are simply denoted by "Russia" and "China".
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/addr...