Carl

In 2024 Puerto Rico held a referendum on precisely this question, and the majority (58%) chose statehood while only 11% chose independence. It's not a perfect measure (retaining the current status quo wasn't an option, only 63% of voters turned out) but it shows a pretty clear preference IMO.

What's nuts to me is that neither major American party has gone for it. The House passed a bill in 2022 which would have admitted PR as a state but it went nowhere - but damn that's two whole Senate seats that could go to either party if they came out as strongly pro-PR. Same thing for DC.

I think "most" people just believe uncritically the things they were taught growing up, that is until something happens that shakes that belief and they either choose to double down or reexamine their previous assumptions. All the new western tankies from the past decade-ish aren't coming from nowhere!

For like three months before the invasion, Western sources were egging it on with everything they had. Tankies mostly got it wrong by assuming that Putin would be smart enough not to take the bait, because we all recognized that it would be a disastrously bad idea.

Oh hey we were right about that much at least.

holodomor

Nobody is denying that the Soviet Famine happened, what they deny is the totally fabricated claim that it was a targeted genocide against Ukrainians.

uyghur suppression

Nobody is denying that there was/is a police crackdown, what they deny is the totally fabricated claim that it is a targeted genocide against Uyghurs.

"authoritarian" is a buzz word that left-liberals like yourself use to attack any country that has successful left-economic programs. Whether you realize it or not, you have been trained to deploy this label in defense of US empire.

That's why a system like China's is the only sensible one for a large country in the present world order - leaving important things up to unregulated markets and media is an abdication of responsibility.

Do you have reading comprehension issues? He doesn't deny it happened in that comment, he calls it a US-backed color revolution and says that the PRC was right to put it down.

Calling the entire protest a color revolution is a matter of opinion, but it is an undeniable fact that many of the most high-profile protest leaders were US-backed.

The imgur album linked in the comment is almost 100% disinformation once it starts describing the alleged atrocities.

The first removed comment shown in the post is someone falsely claiming that China has "constant efforts to pretend it didn't happen"

The linked imgur album is also full of outright disinformation about the incident.

Could you describe to me, in your own words, how the North Korean government functions and what elements make it a dictatorship? Because 99.99% of people who spout this nonsense don't know shit about fuck and uncritically believe every single lie about that country that they hear from any given Western propaganda outlet.

It would be great if we could only support countries that were 100% good all the time, but tankies support countries that oppose the US even if they're far from good because they recognize that no socialist revolution of any kind is possible until US hegemony is broken.

What Dessalines spouts is by and large uncomfortable truths that are paved over by Western government misinformation and propaganda, your reaction is that of someone clinging to the lies they were raised with rather than accepting the truth.