Because Russia and China are nationalist societies with majority-centric viewpoints. There is propaganda, but it is minimally presented as a foregone conclusion. Citizens engage intellectually with other topics. The US is a pluralist society engaged in constant propaganda warfare. There are no boundaries to this, and it becomes the central theme of absolutely everything, with a special focus on intellectual institutions like universities as primary battleground. Russia and China have already passed through their very costly indoctrination phases, and will no longer allow it. The US may be at the peak of it now.
As a side note, I see a constant theme of American exceptionalism, mostly negative recently, and this seems to me to be a primary feature of the propaganda war. It is foolish to read history or news, and believe that you yourself would have acted differently than any other population-level actor in the same state of information and influence. And if you are absolutely certain otherwise, you can be just as certain that your information is incomplete or just wrong. This should not be surprising when you consider that there is nothing that is sacred from propaganda. Nothing. All lies have value to somebody, most likely not you. If nobody is benefiting from the belief, that may be an indicator of truth, and if somebody is already benefiting from a lie, they will probably censor the truth.
If you want to live in a free pluralistic democratic society without a propaganda infestation, you have to remove the moral hazards of mass influence. Reparations, for instance, and more broadly, torts that give value to speculative or non-financial harm, or punitive damages, especially when the defendant is the state itself, and the award is paid for by the people, by force, with guns. There are less-obvious versions of profiteering from information warfare that involve influence of politicians, perhaps a permissive or anti-competitive regulation, perhaps a direct payout to an industry, or through a population that will spend it predictably, seniors on healthcare, the poor on monopolist retail.
Certainly, yes, the first amendment is an enabler for all kinds of speech including propaganda, but the features of our system that give it value should also be considered, notably perhaps the lack of such such an originalist interpretation of the 10th amendment.
As a side note, I see a constant theme of American exceptionalism, mostly negative recently, and this seems to me to be a primary feature of the propaganda war. It is foolish to read history or news, and believe that you yourself would have acted differently than any other population-level actor in the same state of information and influence. And if you are absolutely certain otherwise, you can be just as certain that your information is incomplete or just wrong. This should not be surprising when you consider that there is nothing that is sacred from propaganda. Nothing. All lies have value to somebody, most likely not you. If nobody is benefiting from the belief, that may be an indicator of truth, and if somebody is already benefiting from a lie, they will probably censor the truth.
If you want to live in a free pluralistic democratic society without a propaganda infestation, you have to remove the moral hazards of mass influence. Reparations, for instance, and more broadly, torts that give value to speculative or non-financial harm, or punitive damages, especially when the defendant is the state itself, and the award is paid for by the people, by force, with guns. There are less-obvious versions of profiteering from information warfare that involve influence of politicians, perhaps a permissive or anti-competitive regulation, perhaps a direct payout to an industry, or through a population that will spend it predictably, seniors on healthcare, the poor on monopolist retail.
Certainly, yes, the first amendment is an enabler for all kinds of speech including propaganda, but the features of our system that give it value should also be considered, notably perhaps the lack of such such an originalist interpretation of the 10th amendment.