Started this before jdc's post, posting after. The point on Hong Kong is well-taken.
The Soviet flag will always be a symbol of totalitarianism, oppression, and purges for people who seek freedom and justice on the most fundamental levels. I understand the red scare was weaponized by conservatives/Republicans against their adversaries to the degradation of our country, something I obviously think people need to learn. I don't think we have to trade one understanding for the other.
Are you talking about the Soviet flag? Or the American one? Because this can easily be described for the bulk of American history, especially if you're not a white person.
Honestly, if you fully consider the pros of the Soviet Union and the cons of the American Empire, the difference becomes infinitesimal. I've talked to people who left countries that were previously part of the USSR to come to the US. They said it only truly became unlivable once it collapsed which wouldn't have happened if the West didn't treat the USSR like an existential threat.
The United States has never been under totalitarian rule, and the Soviet Union was. Only one party was legal in the Soviet Union, the Communist Party, where in America other parties have always been legal. The United States has never had a purge of its dissidents, and the Soviet Union did, the Great Purge or Great Terror. Stalin was responsible for the death of 20 million of his own people. One-party, autocratic rule plus the killing of dissidents is oppression on a scale we haven't known since slavery (which ended here just four years after it ended in Russia). I made my statement knowing that the first two items were true of the Soviet Union and not the United States, while the third (oppression) was greater in the Soviet era (due to totalitarian rule and methods used to quell dissent) than at any point in the U.S.A. (saying a lot considering our past use of internment, Jim Crow, and of course the red scare and detention of possibly communists and communist sympathizers.), because I am aware that people try to equivocate the two when there is absolutely no comparison to be made.
Were I articulate and motivated and overall more talented, I could write a book on the ills of American imperialism and free market capitalism. The Gilded Age was a real horror show, though that was over by the rise of the Soviet Union. Overall, comparing the U.S.A. to the Soviet Union, especially in terms of overall freedom and democracy, make the U.S.A. look like a utopia in comparison.
I don't even get the point in trying to defend this comparison, when there are economic and political systems in the world right now that we can aspire to, i.e. in various Scandinavian and Western European countries, where democracy is optimal and human suffering (at least per freedom and economic equality measures) is minimal.