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This is a good example of heresy suppression. It has the same amount of intellectual weight as countering a list of the many positive achievements of the USA wi

by spats1990 7y ago

This is a good example of heresy suppression. It has the same amount of intellectual weight as countering a list of the many positive achievements of the USA with "but smallpox blankets", "but the meatgrinder carceral state", "but CIA backed coups," "but PRISM/XKEYSCORE" etc. The point of thinking about what is and isn't heresy is working on the ability to avoid being blinded by a single data point (or that's what I took from the essay anyway).

philwelch 7y ago
The claim that the Chinese Communist regime "is not bad and should be supported" is horrific and evil, and equating their atrocities with the Snowden leaks is absurd. I'm not saying that there isn't anything we could possibly learn from China. They seem to have talented engineers and to have accomplished some serious innovations in the fields of manufacturing and construction in recent decades. In fact, I consider it absolutely imperative to learn from the PRC's example in the "know your enemy" sense. That doesn't mean uncritical admiration.
- spats1990 7y ago
  >The claim that the Chinese Communist regime "is not bad and should be supported" is horrific and evil Goodness me. Where exactly did I say this? There was no attempt at a moral equivalency in my post. What I was trying to convey was that in any serious discussion of the US Government, a driveby, one-line post reminding us all that certain US agencies do unquestionably bad things and are answerable to essentially no one would be treated the way it deserved to be: as a single data point in a larger discussion, and essentially worthless without more substance or an attempt to connect to the larger discussion. Heresy suppression. On the Anglosphere internet of late November 2019, it is unquestionably heresy to say anything non-negative about China, especially on Hacker News, as your response so aptly demonstrated (again, no one in this thread has expressed anything near uncritical admiration.) You've mistaken my identification of something as heresy for support of the heresy, I think.
  - philwelch 7y ago
    > Goodness me. Where exactly did I say this? You didn't. The guy I was originally replying to did. If you're going to wade into a thread to defend somebody else's position, it behooves you to understand what their position actually is. I actually kind of agree with you. If someone starts discussing the merits of Guderian’s doctrine of mechanized warfare or Von Braun’s rocket designs, it would be ridiculous to counter that argument by raising irrelevant objections about concentration camps. But I raised those objections specifically in response to someone who specifically said the communist regime in China was good and deserved uncritical emulation. You want an example of heresy? Go practice the Islamic faith in Xinjiang. You will be shipped to a concentration camp and the government will station a man in your house to sleep in the same bed as your wife.
    - spats1990 7y ago
      >You didn't. The guy I was originally replying to did. If you're going to wade into a thread to defend somebody else's position, it behooves you to understand what their position actually is. The commenter upthread was specifically asked to list some things they considered positive about China. I think it is pretty uncharitable to consider their response uncritical, as their reticence about expressing their views suggests they are well aware of the negative aspects of the regime (perhaps more so than you and I are, through firsthand experience) as well as of how people expressing any positive sentiment about any aspect of China are recieved on forums like these. >You want an example of heresy? Go practice the Islamic faith in Xinjiang. You will be shipped to a concentration camp and the government will station a man in your house to sleep in the same bed as your wife. Bad things are bad. Is it ok for me to wonder at the motives of those telling me that particular bad things are worse or more worthy of discussion than other bad things, especially when those bad things have been known for quite some time but only discussed in media for the last year or so? I have known about the camps and human rights violations in Xinjiang since 2017 at least, but back then nobody wanted to discuss it on the Internet with me as a geopolitical issue. So it's... good? I guess, that it's becoming more broadly known. Edit: i see this whole subthread is detached now for being offtopic. I want to be careful here since I already got warned once for losing my temper about this subject. When you're from a geopolitically insignificant country, like I am, the actions of the big powers look different. Happy to leave it at that for now.

philwelch 7y ago

The claim that the Chinese Communist regime "is not bad and should be supported" is horrific and evil, and equating their atrocities with the Snowden leaks is absurd. I'm not saying that there isn't anything we could possibly learn from China. They seem to have talented engineers and to have accomplished some serious innovations in the fields of manufacturing and construction in recent decades. In fact, I consider it absolutely imperative to learn from the PRC's example in the "know your enemy" sense. That doesn't mean uncritical admiration.

spats1990 7y ago
>The claim that the Chinese Communist regime "is not bad and should be supported" is horrific and evil Goodness me. Where exactly did I say this? There was no attempt at a moral equivalency in my post. What I was trying to convey was that in any serious discussion of the US Government, a driveby, one-line post reminding us all that certain US agencies do unquestionably bad things and are answerable to essentially no one would be treated the way it deserved to be: as a single data point in a larger discussion, and essentially worthless without more substance or an attempt to connect to the larger discussion. Heresy suppression. On the Anglosphere internet of late November 2019, it is unquestionably heresy to say anything non-negative about China, especially on Hacker News, as your response so aptly demonstrated (again, no one in this thread has expressed anything near uncritical admiration.) You've mistaken my identification of something as heresy for support of the heresy, I think.
- philwelch 7y ago
  > Goodness me. Where exactly did I say this? You didn't. The guy I was originally replying to did. If you're going to wade into a thread to defend somebody else's position, it behooves you to understand what their position actually is. I actually kind of agree with you. If someone starts discussing the merits of Guderian’s doctrine of mechanized warfare or Von Braun’s rocket designs, it would be ridiculous to counter that argument by raising irrelevant objections about concentration camps. But I raised those objections specifically in response to someone who specifically said the communist regime in China was good and deserved uncritical emulation. You want an example of heresy? Go practice the Islamic faith in Xinjiang. You will be shipped to a concentration camp and the government will station a man in your house to sleep in the same bed as your wife.
  - spats1990 7y ago
    >You didn't. The guy I was originally replying to did. If you're going to wade into a thread to defend somebody else's position, it behooves you to understand what their position actually is. The commenter upthread was specifically asked to list some things they considered positive about China. I think it is pretty uncharitable to consider their response uncritical, as their reticence about expressing their views suggests they are well aware of the negative aspects of the regime (perhaps more so than you and I are, through firsthand experience) as well as of how people expressing any positive sentiment about any aspect of China are recieved on forums like these. >You want an example of heresy? Go practice the Islamic faith in Xinjiang. You will be shipped to a concentration camp and the government will station a man in your house to sleep in the same bed as your wife. Bad things are bad. Is it ok for me to wonder at the motives of those telling me that particular bad things are worse or more worthy of discussion than other bad things, especially when those bad things have been known for quite some time but only discussed in media for the last year or so? I have known about the camps and human rights violations in Xinjiang since 2017 at least, but back then nobody wanted to discuss it on the Internet with me as a geopolitical issue. So it's... good? I guess, that it's becoming more broadly known. Edit: i see this whole subthread is detached now for being offtopic. I want to be careful here since I already got warned once for losing my temper about this subject. When you're from a geopolitically insignificant country, like I am, the actions of the big powers look different. Happy to leave it at that for now.