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You’d do more harm than good. Your “fighting for glory” is somebody else’s “insidious foreign intervention”. Let the people speak for themselves.

by knzhou 7y ago

gowld 7y ago
What about Chinese Communist Party, which has no problem performing "insidious foreign intervention" at scale in Hong Kong? What about the people who say they want support? Do their needs matter? N ational govements are convenient fictions, not natural laws. We are all kin on this planet Earth. Imagine if the US civil war was never fought, because it was up to the slaves to "speak for themselves" (by which you mean fight by themselves) about their slavery. Imagine if the US never joined WW II, because it was up to the Holocause victims to "speak for themselves".
- knzhou 7y ago
  See, the problem is that these slogans work for all sides. People want to group up and go out to "fight for glory" against the hated enemy. That natural instinct is what the commenter I was replying to was feeling. It's what we felt when we joined WWII, and it's also what the Axis citizens felt when they started WWII. It is what the Union soldiers felt and also what the Confederate soldiers felt. It is the same impulse that had cavemen bashing each other's skulls in during the stone age. If you view this conflict as only an opportunity to go out and "fight for glory" in a foreign country, to have some fun punching out foreigners, without understanding what precisely it is about, you're no better than a mercenary or a caveman with a club. A basic test to see if you have this understanding is if you know what the other side would say to justify itself. And no, "they hate freedom" is not, and never has been, the right answer.
  - PavlovsCat 7y ago
    If you see no more than "slogans" in that, that's on you. > People want to group up and go out to "fight for glory" against the hated enemy. No. Speak for yourself. You simply and repeatedly omit the part about the moral dimension, and fighting against injustice, a person or nation becoming the enemy just because of what they did to others. Would you want to be put into a concentration camp just for the sadistic fancy of others? And if you were, would you say nobody should care about it? Unless the answers are yes and yes, you aren't practicing what you're preaching. Yes, Hitler said he had to kill the Jews to save the world, and the world says Hitler was a mass murderer. You have to make up your own mind, you can't just shrug and say both sides think they're right, so it's neutral. I also wonder how much you actually know about the atmosphere under the Nazis, I would recommend a few books by Sebastian Haffner to start with. And do the people who fled the country to fight against the Nazis count, or the people who didn't dare to speak up, etc.?
    - knzhou 7y ago
      > No. Speak for yourself. You simply and repeatedly omit the part about the moral dimension, and fighting against injustice, a person or nation becoming the enemy just because of what they did to others. I've been on the other side of this sloganeering. I'd say I'm a relatively patriotic American. I recently went to Europe and talked with a lot of very liberal Europeans, and they asked me precisely the same questions. To them, America had long ago become the enemy just because of what they did to others. They put kids in cages. They flagrantly violate international law. Their healthcare and police systems kill their own citizens just for the sadistic fancy of others. How could I live in such a terrible country, they asked me, and not spend every moment trying to leave or overthrow its government? Didn't I know that America had no respect for human rights? The problem was that their favored news sources were incredibly biased, reporting nothing but the worst events happening in America, and ascribing the worst possible motivations to all Americans. They had literally heard about nothing good happening in my country in years. That's the kind of distortion you get if you listen to stories for only one side. In that kind of bubble, you can be convinced that any group is morally reprehensible. That's why so many people enthusiastically signed up for the Nazi party so many decades ago. That's why I met Europeans that think America is its successor. If the narratives you hear are so one-sided that you can't ascribe any motivations to your enemies besides pure hatred, then you don't understand what is actually going on. Think about the number of news stories you have read that attempt to paint a group in a bad light. Divide this by the number that try to paint it in a good light. If this ratio is worse than 10:1, then you never actually made a moral choice -- your emotions were decided for you by editorial slant.
      - HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago
        Thank you.
      - monkeycantype 7y ago
        Hello knzhou, I think what you describe is a very interesting experience. I'm not an American, but I lived there for many years as a young adult, and I now live in Australia. One thing both our countries have in common is that we both lock children in cages - refugee children - and we pay private contractors to do it in out of the way places - and extraordinary lengths are taken to avoid public oversight. Terrible things happen in both countries, and overseas on behalf of both countries. Currently a prominent former Australian solider appears to be under investigation for kicking civilians of a cliff (to their death) in Afghanistan because it was inconvenient to keep them prisoner. I say _appears_ because there is a lot of secrecy around the case. Being challenged on the the ugliest truths about our nation or group is difficult, and it is rarely done in a way that is an example of elevated standard of generous and noble behaviour the speaker suggests we should be held to - If there is a European country that is an example unbroken principled dignified conduct I would be delighted to learn of it's existence. That said, the anger at the hypocrisy of the person challenging us, is probably best separated from the shame we feel at the truth about the darkest sides of our nations. Everything that is good and true about the United States and Australia as immigrant nations that allowed people fleeing poverty and war a new and better life, is not invalidated by, nor does it invalidate the reality that both nations were built on a genocide of the original inhabitants, that slavery and oppression were used to build the foundation of the wealth we now enjoy. I think we are a better kind of patriot, when we see the horrors of our own countries and do no look away or excuse them, and we are even better when we work to fix the parts of our nations that are broken. I've always felt the phrase 'my country, right or wrong', is a more noble statement if is taken to mean I take responsibility 'right or wrong' rather than the double speak interpretation of "right even when it's wrong". If you are anything like me, then probably both of us are guilty of not being patriotic enough, of enjoying the privileges and wealth our nations provide and taking too little responsibility for helping steer its course.

You’d do more harm than good. Your “fighting for glory” is somebody else’s “insidious foreign intervention”. Let the people speak for themselves.

by knzhou 7y ago

You’d do more harm than good. Your “fighting for glory” is somebody else’s “insidious foreign intervention”. Let the people speak for themselves.

gowld 7y ago

What about Chinese Communist Party, which has no problem performing "insidious foreign intervention" at scale in Hong Kong? What about the people who say they want support? Do their needs matter? N ational govements are convenient fictions, not natural laws. We are all kin on this planet Earth. Imagine if the US civil war was never fought, because it was up to the slaves to "speak for themselves" (by which you mean fight by themselves) about their slavery. Imagine if the US never joined WW II, because it was up to the Holocause victims to "speak for themselves".

knzhou 7y ago
See, the problem is that these slogans work for all sides. People want to group up and go out to "fight for glory" against the hated enemy. That natural instinct is what the commenter I was replying to was feeling. It's what we felt when we joined WWII, and it's also what the Axis citizens felt when they started WWII. It is what the Union soldiers felt and also what the Confederate soldiers felt. It is the same impulse that had cavemen bashing each other's skulls in during the stone age. If you view this conflict as only an opportunity to go out and "fight for glory" in a foreign country, to have some fun punching out foreigners, without understanding what precisely it is about, you're no better than a mercenary or a caveman with a club. A basic test to see if you have this understanding is if you know what the other side would say to justify itself. And no, "they hate freedom" is not, and never has been, the right answer.
- PavlovsCat 7y ago
  If you see no more than "slogans" in that, that's on you. > People want to group up and go out to "fight for glory" against the hated enemy. No. Speak for yourself. You simply and repeatedly omit the part about the moral dimension, and fighting against injustice, a person or nation becoming the enemy just because of what they did to others. Would you want to be put into a concentration camp just for the sadistic fancy of others? And if you were, would you say nobody should care about it? Unless the answers are yes and yes, you aren't practicing what you're preaching. Yes, Hitler said he had to kill the Jews to save the world, and the world says Hitler was a mass murderer. You have to make up your own mind, you can't just shrug and say both sides think they're right, so it's neutral. I also wonder how much you actually know about the atmosphere under the Nazis, I would recommend a few books by Sebastian Haffner to start with. And do the people who fled the country to fight against the Nazis count, or the people who didn't dare to speak up, etc.?
  - knzhou 7y ago
    > No. Speak for yourself. You simply and repeatedly omit the part about the moral dimension, and fighting against injustice, a person or nation becoming the enemy just because of what they did to others. I've been on the other side of this sloganeering. I'd say I'm a relatively patriotic American. I recently went to Europe and talked with a lot of very liberal Europeans, and they asked me precisely the same questions. To them, America had long ago become the enemy just because of what they did to others. They put kids in cages. They flagrantly violate international law. Their healthcare and police systems kill their own citizens just for the sadistic fancy of others. How could I live in such a terrible country, they asked me, and not spend every moment trying to leave or overthrow its government? Didn't I know that America had no respect for human rights? The problem was that their favored news sources were incredibly biased, reporting nothing but the worst events happening in America, and ascribing the worst possible motivations to all Americans. They had literally heard about nothing good happening in my country in years. That's the kind of distortion you get if you listen to stories for only one side. In that kind of bubble, you can be convinced that any group is morally reprehensible. That's why so many people enthusiastically signed up for the Nazi party so many decades ago. That's why I met Europeans that think America is its successor. If the narratives you hear are so one-sided that you can't ascribe any motivations to your enemies besides pure hatred, then you don't understand what is actually going on. Think about the number of news stories you have read that attempt to paint a group in a bad light. Divide this by the number that try to paint it in a good light. If this ratio is worse than 10:1, then you never actually made a moral choice -- your emotions were decided for you by editorial slant.
    - HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago
      Thank you.
    - monkeycantype 7y ago
      Hello knzhou, I think what you describe is a very interesting experience. I'm not an American, but I lived there for many years as a young adult, and I now live in Australia. One thing both our countries have in common is that we both lock children in cages - refugee children - and we pay private contractors to do it in out of the way places - and extraordinary lengths are taken to avoid public oversight. Terrible things happen in both countries, and overseas on behalf of both countries. Currently a prominent former Australian solider appears to be under investigation for kicking civilians of a cliff (to their death) in Afghanistan because it was inconvenient to keep them prisoner. I say _appears_ because there is a lot of secrecy around the case. Being challenged on the the ugliest truths about our nation or group is difficult, and it is rarely done in a way that is an example of elevated standard of generous and noble behaviour the speaker suggests we should be held to - If there is a European country that is an example unbroken principled dignified conduct I would be delighted to learn of it's existence. That said, the anger at the hypocrisy of the person challenging us, is probably best separated from the shame we feel at the truth about the darkest sides of our nations. Everything that is good and true about the United States and Australia as immigrant nations that allowed people fleeing poverty and war a new and better life, is not invalidated by, nor does it invalidate the reality that both nations were built on a genocide of the original inhabitants, that slavery and oppression were used to build the foundation of the wealth we now enjoy. I think we are a better kind of patriot, when we see the horrors of our own countries and do no look away or excuse them, and we are even better when we work to fix the parts of our nations that are broken. I've always felt the phrase 'my country, right or wrong', is a more noble statement if is taken to mean I take responsibility 'right or wrong' rather than the double speak interpretation of "right even when it's wrong". If you are anything like me, then probably both of us are guilty of not being patriotic enough, of enjoying the privileges and wealth our nations provide and taking too little responsibility for helping steer its course.