> In my understanding it is not an attack on the country of china, to show their population a glimpse of truth.
When one country wants to give the population of another "a glimpse of truth", no matter how well meaning, it's usually seen as a threat to the nations sovereignty, for better or worse.
As it stands right now, the US are no longer interested in either being in opposition to warmongering countries (Russia) nor stand up against countries it sees as oppressive to it's own population (China), it's clearly heading down a road of self-isolation which makes sense when you consider the ultimate goal of the current regime.
The "glimpse of truth" is coming from embassies within their borders. They could disallow the embassies if they honestly see the air quality data as a threat to their sovereignty.
I think even that gives too much credit. Trump loves being antagonistic towards China (even though with the big picture of how much damage he's doing to global perceptions of technology, the reliability of the US as a trading partner and Western alliances they really don't mind) and actively threatening the national sovereignty of random smaller countries that won't respond. But air quality is the sort of thing than libs care about, so from the point of view of his administration this woke nonsense must be stopped
His power comes from managed appearances, bought with the destructive catharsis, that seems to sooth frustrated people with limited (social, economic, scientific, defense) horizons. Even his followers recognize that, but still respect him for pulling it off. “For them.”
So yeah, there isn’t going to be a coherent plan behind this, other than adding chapters to the story he spins to keep his peeps engaged, as he dismantles and silences every form of effective opposition he can.
The stories of who’s to blame for people’s frustrations, How he is the answer. What “we” “deserve” and he should take, others be damned. Who is for him vs. who is the “enemy”. What helps him vs. what is “waste”.
The MAGA shtick is weaponised resentment and toddler rage against anyone who makes MAGAs feel stupid or morally defensive, on top of the usual conservative rage triggers against anyone "weird" or non-conforming, especially sexually.
Science, scientists, any morally secure adult professionals, are near the top of the list. "These people make me feel dumb, so I have to punch them in the face to compensate" is the underlying motivation.
If it's not checked it's going to turn into a bloodbath against science and rationality in general.
Well, yeah. For example, Trump and his administration clearly lies about a lot of stuff, and it's fine and dandy if foreign news agencies report on these lies, no one bats an eye about that. But if you started seeing campaigns from German government for example, to "offer a glimpse of truth" to the US citizens, I think most nations would react negatively towards something like that, and most likely call it propaganda, even though it would actually be "spreading the truth".
Basically, what the US has been doing to the world for a long time ("Spreading democracy") is more and more seen as an act against a country's own sovereignty.
Offering data on the germans embassy site about the foreign government (they do, or rather in the AA, Auswärtiges Amt) is not really the same as financing and organizing political campaings in other countries. And we are still talking about air quality sensor data ..
Yeah, no I understand it sounds trivial and "it's just air quality sensor data" but it's less about what the actual data is about, and more about the intention of publishing something.
I agree that the quest for truth should always trump whatever politics are going on in a country, but the common person doesn't really have that "science" mindset so a lot of the population at large would see something like that as infringement on sovereignty, no matter if what's being spread is true or not.
"see something like that as infringement on sovereignty"
I would ask the people. The stories shared here from Shanghai seem to indicate support of knowing about their air quality. They are the ones to breath it.
> I think most nations would react negatively towards something like that, and most likely call it propaganda, even though it would actually be "spreading the truth".
